She half smiled as Barbara recognized the pun and exploded into laughter.

“Oh, Hannah,” she said, “you are bad.”

“Yes, aren’t I?” Hannah agreed.

And they both laughed.

“But what are you going to do?” Barbara came back to the question and looked very directly at Hannah for an answer.

“I am going to do what the ton expects me to do, of course,” Hannah said, spreading her other hand across the arm of her chair and admiring the rings she wore on her third and little fingers. She tipped her hand slightly forward so that they caught the light from the window and sparkled in a thoroughly satisfying way. “I am going to take a lover, Babs.”

It sounded a little… wicked spoken aloud. It was not wicked. She was free. She owed nothing to anyone any longer. It was quite unexceptionable for a widow to take a lover provided it was a secret affair and she was discreet about it. Well, perhaps not unexceptionable. But certainly quite acceptable.

Barbara was, of course, of a different world than her own.

“Hannah!” she exclaimed, color rushing up her neck and over her cheeks and on up across her forehead to disappear beneath her hair. “Oh, you horrid creature. You said it to shock me and succeeded admirably. I almost had a fit of the vapors. Do be serious.”

Hannah raised her eyebrows. “But I am perfectly serious,” she said. “I have had a husband and he is gone. I can never replace him. I have had escorts. They are always good company, but I find them less than completely satisfactory. They feel depressingly like my brothers. I need someone new, someone to add some… oh, some vividness to my life. I need a lover.”

“What you need,” Barbara said, her voice far firmer, “is someone to love. Romantically, I mean. Someone with whom to fall in love. Someone to marry and have children with. I know you loved the duke, Hannah, but it was not-”