Penelope took a deep breath. “Not precisely, Father.”

“She did not accept!” The pitch at which her mother spoke was appropriate only for the most heartbreaking of mourning or a Greek chorus. Though it apparently had the additional purpose of setting dogs to barking.

After she and the dogs had completed their wails, Lady Needham approached the table, her skin terribly mottled, as though she had walked through a patch of itching ivy. “Penelope! Marriage proposals from wealthy, eligible young men do not blossom on trees!”

Particularly not in January, I wouldn’t think. Penelope knew better than to say what she was thinking.

When a footman came forward to serve the soup that was to begin their evening meal, Lady Needham collapsed into her chair, and said, “Take it away! Who can eat at a time like this?”

“I am quite hungry, actually,” Olivia pointed out, and Penelope swallowed back a smile.

“Needham!”

The marquess sighed and turned to Penelope. “You refused him?”

“Not exactly,” Penelope hedged.

“She did not accept him!” Lady Needham cried.

“Why not?”

It was a fair question. Certainly one that everyone at the table would have liked to have answered. Even Penelope.

Except, she did not have an answer. Not a good one. “I wanted to consider the offer.”

“Don’t be daft. Accept the offer,” Lord Needham said, as though it were as easy as that, and waved the footman over for soup.

“Perhaps Penny doesn’t wish to accept Tommy’s offer,” Pippa pointed out, and Penelope could have kissed her logical younger sister.

“It’s not about wishing or otherwise,” Lady Needham said. “It’s about selling when one can.”

“What a very charming sentiment,” Penelope said dryly, trying her very best to keep her spirits up.

“Well it’s true, Penelope. And Thomas Alles is the only man in society who appears willing to buy.”

“I do wish we could think of a better metaphor than purchase and sale,” Penelope said. “And, truly, I don’t think he wants to marry me any more than I want to marry him. I think he’s just being kind.”

“He isn’t just being kind,” Lord Needham said, but before Penelope could probe on that particular insight, Lady Needham was speaking again.

“It’s hardly about wanting to marry, Penelope. You’re far beyond that. You must marry! And Thomas was willing to marry you! You’ve not had a proposal in four years! Or had you forgotten that?”

“I had forgotten, Mother. Thank you very much for the reminder.”

Lady Needham lifted her nose. “I gather you mean to be amusing?”

Olivia’s brows rose, as though the very idea of her eldest sister being amusing was unbelievable. Penelope resisted the urge to defend her sense of humor, which she liked to think was very much intact.

Of course she hadn’t forgotten it. Indeed, it was a difficult fact to forget, considering how often her mother reminded her of her marital state. Penelope was surprised that the marchioness did not know the number of days and hours that had passed since the proposal in question.

She sighed. “I am not aiming for humor, Mother. I’m simply . . . not certain that I want to marry Thomas. Or anyone else who isn’t certain that he wants to marry me, honestly.”

“Penelope!” her mother barked. “Your wants are not paramount in this situation!”

Of course they weren’t. That wasn’t how marriage operated.

“Really. How very ridiculous!” There was a pause as the marchioness collected herself and attempted to find her words. “Penelope . . . there is no one else! We’ve searched! What will become of you?” She collapsed elegantly back in her chair, one hand to her brow in a dramatic gesture that would have made any one of the actresses on the London stage proud. “Who will have you?”

It was a fair question, and one that Penelope should probably have considered more carefully before she revealed her uncertainty about her marital future. But she hadn’t exactly decided to make such an announcement, at least, not until she’d made it.

And now, it seemed like the best decision she’d made in a very long while.

The thing was, Penelope had had plenty of opportunity to be “had” in the past nine years. There had been a time when she was the talk of the ton—passably attractive, well behaved, well-spoken, well-bred, perfectly . . . perfect.

She’d been betrothed, even. To a similarly perfect counterpart.

Yes, it had been a perfect match, except for the fact that he had been perfectly in love with someone else.

Scandal had made it easy for Penelope to end the engagement without being jilted. Well, at least, not precisely.

She would not describe it as a jilt, exactly. More of a jolt, really.

And not an unwelcome one.

Not that she would tell her mother that.

“Penelope!” The marchioness straightened again, her anguished gaze on her eldest daughter. “Answer me! If not Thomas, then who? Who do you suppose will have you?”

“I shall have myself, it seems.”

Olivia gasped. Pippa paused, her soup spoon halfway to her lips.

“Oh! Oh!” The marchioness collapsed once more. “You cannot mean it! Don’t be ridiculous!” Panic and irritation warred in Lady Needham’s tone. “You are made of stronger stuff than spinsters! Oh! Don’t make me think of it! A spinster!”

Penelope thought that it was in fact the spinsters who were made of stronger stuff than she, but she refrained from saying such a thing to her mother, who looked as though she might topple from her chair in a state of utter desperation.