He was worth everything.

“You did this on purpose,” Sesily was saying. “You never wanted to be an aristocrat. And now you’ve dragged the rest of us back into the muck with you. Look at us, faded and wrinkled after days in a carriage. In Cumbria.”

“It’s beautiful here,” Sophie said.

“If you like sheep,” replied Sesily.

“And green,” added Seleste.

“It’s not London.” Seline sighed.

“Honestly, we should be called the Spoiled S’s.”

“None more than you, Sophie.” The retort was from Seraphina, and Sophie turned to her, shocked by the words. Her eldest sister spoke quietly, the words somehow firm and kind. “Do you know how we responded when we returned home after the Liverpool party to discover that you’d left with nothing more than the word of an alleged footman dressed in stableboy’s clothing? We were so proud of you. You’d turned your back on a world for which you’d never cared. I thought it was quite wonderful.” She tilted her chin toward the other Talbot sisters. “As did they, though they won’t admit it.”

“I’ll admit it,” Sesily said. “You’ve always been the first to defend us. I was very happy to defend you.”

“And I,” Seline said. “Mark thought you were damn fantastic.”

“Seline, language.”

“It was Mark’s language, Mother.”

“Well, I am unable to admonish him.”

Sophie smiled. She’d missed her sisters. Her mother. The whole wild family.

“But it wasn’t so easy to be proud of you when London turned on us. We didn’t expect the aristocracy to simply exile us,” Seline added. “Which I’m sure sounds like heaven to you, Sophie. But . . .”

“It’s not for us,” Seleste finished.

Of course, Sophie knew that. She didn’t wish them the life she wanted. She wished them all the life they wanted for themselves. Happiness in the shape of garden parties and titles and invitations to Windsor Castle.

She sighed. “I am sorry that I have caused such trouble,” she began. “But if the scandal sheets have taught us anything, it is this: when the summer is over and you’ve all returned to London—without me—Society will forget you ever had a youngest sister, and your gentlemen will return. And, if they do not, you’re all young, beautiful, and outrageously wealthy,” she pointed out. “The three most important qualities in a future bride. You’ll find other gentlemen. Who deserve you more.”

Silence fell.

“You deny it?” she said, looking from one to the next. “I assure you, you all remain beautiful, despite my scandalous behavior. I shall ask Papa for my dowry, and fade away. All will be well.” She turned to Seline. “It’s you who always says we’re like cats. You’ll survive this. Easily.”

“Even cats have a limit on their lives,” the Countess said, the sad words strangely familiar. An echo of the Liverpool Summer Soiree.

When everything had changed.

“It’s not beauty that’s the problem,” Sera spoke quietly from her place on the edge of the tableau. “Sophie—”

“It’s the blunt.” The words came from the door, which Sophie hadn’t heard open. Her breath caught as she turned to her father, crop still in hand, trousers still covered in dust and horse sweat.

“Papa.” She paused. “You came.”

And that’s when she knew that something terrible must have happened. Jack Talbot did not hie across Britain with his wife and four daughters for a lark. A sense of wild foreboding threaded through Sophie, and she had the keen realization that this day would be the most important of her life. It was the day she said good-bye to King. And the day that her father changed everything.

Her father looked to the rest of the girls. “Find your rooms, girlies.”

They did as they were told, leaving in a squawking gaggle, along with the countess, to find rooms that were no doubt being aired for the first time in an age. If she weren’t so shocked by her father’s arrival, she would have been amused by the idea of the Duke of Lyne coming face-to-face with the Dangerous Daughters.

Once alone with her father, she asked, “Why are you here, Papa?”

“I came,” he said, “because I can’t take care of this.”

She blinked. “Papa, you know as well as I do, Society will find another thing to loathe in less than a week. It likely has already.”

“But Haven won’t.”

“Haven is an ass,” she said.

“That’s never been more true, kitten, but he’s a duke. He holds the purse strings.”

Her brows snapped together. “You’re Jack Talbot. You’re richer than all of them combined.”

Her father went silent. “Not without them, Sophie. That was the deal I struck for the title your mother wanted so badly. They invest, I mine. And you all become ladies. I can’t make money without the nobs. And you’ve done an excellent job of running them off. Calling Haven a whore did it better than I ever could’ve.”

Fear gripped her at the words. It made sense, of course. Titles weren’t simply doled out, not without requirements. “I thought it was a wager?”

He smiled. “It was. But Prinny made the terms. And I accepted them.”

“They’ve stopped investing?”

“Pulled their funds to a man. Haven took great glee in making it so. I received notice from thirteen of them by sundown after your excitement. The rest came in the morning.” He paused for a long moment before he approached her, and for the first time in her life, she saw Jack Talbot’s age. His worry. “You want your dowry? Your freedom?” He shook his head. “I want to give it to you. But there ain’t no dowry to be had, kitten. I can’t keep your mother and sisters in new clothes and gilded carriages and—” He looked to a nearby table. “Now why in hell do they need birdcages on their heads?”

She smiled, halfheartedly. “At least there’s no bird in it.”

“Don’t say that in front of Sesily, or I’ll have to find funds for birdfeed.”

She shook her head. “Papa. I thought we were—”

“You’d be surprised how quickly blunt flows out the door, kitten. Especially when the nobs want you gone.” He reached for her, and she went into the embrace. He smelled of leather and horseflesh, the scent wrapping her in memories of her childhood, when what was right was all that mattered. Jack Talbot had always been larger than life—a hero in every sense. He’d fostered Sophie’s love of books, embraced her desire for more than the aristocracy. And in all her life, he’d never once asked her for help. Perhaps she could have found a way to deny her sisters what they wished, but her father—he hadn’t an ounce of the dramatic in him. And if he was concerned for their future, so, too, was she.

He kissed the top of her head. “I was so proud of you for standing up for your sister. For yourself,” he whispered there. “But now . . . they have us by the bollocks.”

She pulled back, staring into his clear brown eyes. “Haven behaved abominably.”

“And I’d have beaten him blue, love. Don’t you doubt it. But the world was watching you. His world. You embarrassed him in front of it.”