The Bridegroom Wore Plaid by Grace Burrowes

on that point. Very blunt.
    Augusta brought her attention back to the matter at hand.
    “You’re disappointed in your elders, Hester. That’s to be expected, but you must forgive us our flaws if you’re ever to accept the same peccadilloes in yourself.”
    “So it’s all right to steal a kiss?”
    What to say? This was ground Julia ought to be covering, a challenge a widow was far better equipped to handle.
    “You don’t steal the kisses. They are stolen from you, but you must use great caution.”
    “I know.” Hester hunched forward, elbows on her spread knees in a pose no lady ever assumed in company. “If anybody sees, if the gentleman can’t keep his mouth shut, if word should ever get out, I’m ruined.”
    “The gentlemen generally keep such things to themselves, because the behavior reflects badly upon them, at least in Polite Society. I have my suspicions about what’s said among the men when the port is served.”
    Hester gave a philosophical little shrug. “We gossip over tea; they gossip over port, brandy, or whisky.”
    “There is danger in kisses, though, Hester.”
    Hester turned her head to frown at Augusta over her shoulder. “Danger?”
    Oh, for pity’s sake… “Men become impassioned, and their manners desert them.”
    They took to begging and promising and begging harder, and a lady could lose her virtue in the time it took to brew a pot of tea. A furtive, slightly uncomfortable and very awkward end to years of proper behavior and careful upbringing, and a lady needn’t part with a stitch of her clothing to see it done.
    But Augusta couldn’t put it like that to Hester.
    “Maybe Aunt became impassioned.” Hester was frowning in thought. “Her manners were certainly nowhere in evidence.”
    “Nor her dignity, I daresay.” But what would it be like, to be so carried away with passion that manners and dignity mattered naught? Connor was a very handsome man, almost as handsome as the earl.
    Hester harrumphed out a sigh. “It’s silly, to be so hungry for kisses you take to accosting men in the woods.”
    “Yes. I’m glad you can see that.” And what Augusta never wanted her cousin to see was that such behavior was the result of loneliness overcoming good sense, breeding, manners, and even sanity. Loneliness coupled with a sort of desperate courage and irresistible opportunity.
    “This brings me to my second concern,” Hester said, sitting up.
    “Have we resolved Julia’s situation to your satisfaction?”
    “You’ll say something to her? I wouldn’t want her to get in trouble.”
    “I’ll say something to her, but my guess is Connor is in the best position to say what needs to be said, and perhaps he already has.”
    Hester’s face creased into a grin. “Suppose you’re right, and he’s plenty big enough to take care of himself. What I really need to discuss with you is this notion Genie has taken into her head to get herself ruined.”
    “ Ruined? ” Augusta barely got the word out, so disconcerting was the very idea. “She can’t be ruined. Uncle will be wroth with me and Julia both if that should happen.”
    “I overheard her discussing this with Gilgallon when he came by her sitting room to see about her ankle. She wants him to ruin her so she can’t marry respectably. She was begging him, in fact. I don’t think he was very taken with the notion.”
    ***
    The baron had spent his morning in the library, some damned book about fowling pieces open before him as he’d waited for a shrieking chambermaid to rouse the alarm.
    He’d been certain the English spinster would be found dead in her bedroom, or at the very least, quite, quite ill. Either outcome would do, because it would be little trouble to press a pillow over the face of a badly debilitated woman and finish the job in the dead of night.
    The rest of the morning had passed, and no alarm had been raised.
    When Augusta had sent word she’d take a tray in her room rather than join the family for