Once a Duchess by Elizabeth Boyce Page A

outside town. No one minds so much in the country.”
    Isabelle opened her mouth to protest, but Naomi ran over her again.
    “They took you away from me,” she said, suddenly vehement. “When you married Marshall, you became a Lockwood, part of my family. You were the sister I never had. That dreadful Lady Lucy Jamison will never feel like family.”
    Isabelle drew back, thunderstruck by Naomi’s words. Was Marshall betrothed? “It’s kind of you to say such nice things about me, Naomi, but if your brother is to wed Lady Lucy, you must try to think charitably of her.” The words felt like razors, slicing her up as she said them.
    Naomi scowled. “Supposedly, there is an understanding, but I’ve heard nothing of it from Marshall. I pray he doesn’t marry her. What a mistake that would be.”
    As flattering as it was to hear Naomi preferred her to Lady Lucy, it wasn’t right to disparage the woman. She picked her words carefully before continuing. “Naomi, is this … ” She gestured back and forth in the space between them. “You coming here, the invitation, is this about you not approving of Lady Lucy?”
    The younger woman drew herself up. “Certainly not.”
    “Please think about what it is you’re asking,” Isabelle said. “Flouting propriety like this just isn’t done. You cannot know — ”
    “I do know,” Naomi interrupted, her blue eyes alight with fierce determination. “Everyone treats me like a Ming vase, ready to break at the slightest upset, only to be handled with the most delicate touch. You should see the way Marshall looms over me at balls, like my larger, uglier shadow. It is most provoking!”
    Isabelle laughed against her fingers at the image of the unflappable Marshall closely guarding his darling sister.
    “Mother treats me like the veriest goose. Just as she does Marshall and Grant, like we lack possession of a sound mind between us, and only she can save us all from ourselves.
    “I know I’m not supposed to pursue an acquaintance with you, or even acknowledge you. I wouldn’t have, if Grant had his way yesterday. He was quite vexed with me for speaking to you, you know.” Naomi gave her a look that universally bespoke the ridiculousness of the male sex.
    “You mustn’t alienate your family for my sake,” Isabelle said.
    Naomi waved her worry away with a hand. “As I said, Isabelle, I am not the ninny they’d like to take me for. I know the rules, and I know that rules are made to be broken. Sometimes,” she amended, smiling wryly. “Perhaps, for the sake of appearances, we cannot see each other regularly, but we can correspond, and we can visit on occasion. Does this not strike you as reasonable?”
    Naomi’s words began to spread through Isabelle like the flame of revolution, igniting a heady change of perspective. All these years, Isabelle had punished herself, acting like the cast-off adulteress they all took her for. Though she’d not committed the unpardonable sin for which she was divorced, on some level she’d believed herself deserving of contempt.
    For years, she blamed her friendship with Justin as the source of her woes. Had he not visited her at Hamhurst while her husband was away, the circumstances may have been different. Marshall had known about Justin from the start of their unlikely romance and had accepted their friendship without remark.
    Since the divorce, she’d taken Justin’s disappearance as evidence of some sort of guilt on his part and hers. But there had been no wrongdoing, other than the impropriety of inviting him without her husband’s knowledge. At the age of eighteen, though, it had been as natural as breathing for Isabelle to call upon her longtime friend for company. She had been naïve, but she’d never been an adultress. No matter what Caro said she’d witnessed in the woodcutter’s cottage, what she’d seen had been Justin tending her injuries, not a tawdry liaison. The fact that Marshall persisted in his refusal to accept