And then she became aware of the silent figure of the housekeeper in the background, and she relinquished Barbara to her competent care. She paced aimlessly in the drawing room while her friend was taken up to her room to wash her hands and face and change her dress and comb her hair and otherwise use up half an hour before being brought down for tea.

She was looking her neat, tranquil self again. Dear, dependable Barbara, whom she loved more than anyone else still living, Hannah thought as she beamed at her and crossed the room to hug her again.

“I am so, so happy that you came, Babs,” she said. She laughed. “Just in case you did not understand that when you arrived.”

“Well, I did think you might have shown just a little enthusiasm,” Barbara said, and they both laughed again.

Hannah suddenly tried to remember when she had last laughed, and could not recall an occasion. No matter. One was not meant to laugh while one was in mourning. Someone might call one heartless.

They talked without ceasing for all of an hour, this time both listening and talking, before Barbara asked the question that had been uppermost in her mind since the Duke of Dunbarton’s death, though she had not broached it in any of her letters.

“What are you going to do now, Hannah?” she asked, leaning forward in her chair. “You must be dreadfully lonely without the duke. You adored each other.”

Barbara was probably one of the few people in London, or in all of England for that matter, who truly believed such a startling notion. Perhaps the only one, in fact.