The next morning arrived on the wings of a cold wind that carried a mass of heavy, grey clouds along in its wake. There was no rain, however, and so Sophia wrapped a shawl tight around her shoulders, tucked George's sparse hair beneath a wool cap and set out towards Stantreath.

The town itself was situated roughly two miles from the front door of the cottage, the majority of the buildings fanning out from the walls of Stantreath castle, a decaying fort that had spent the last two centuries of its existence bending to the will of the wind and the waves that beat against it.

The castle loomed larger with every step along the rutted and potholed road, its crumbling walls standing stark against the grey, shifting sky. Sophia put one hand to her bonnet as she looked up at it, her sharp eyes seeking out various shapes and shadows in the ruins, all of them transforming into characters in the story that she told to George as he bounced cheerfully on her hip.

She had decided on the morning walk for no other reason than to expend some measure of the energy that had built up within her since her encounter with Lord Haughton the previous day. She had slept fitfully during the night, her pillow receiving countless thumps and poundings from her fists, as if the lumpiness of the filling was the sole cause of her insomnia.

Everything about Lord Haughton's visit had filled her with ire. His unexpected arrival on her doorstep, his knowledge and supposition of too much of her family's situation, his poorly veiled insults against George's illegitimacy, and then the self-aggrandizing posture he'd assumed when making his offer to her, as if she should have been thanking him on bended knee for his charity.

And where was his miscreant of a brother throughout all of this? The man was George's father, and she or Lucy had yet to hear a word from him, as if he was incapable of carrying on normal human interactions. But then, perhaps he wasn't. If he was the sort to tumble about with young women of Lucy's class without any offer of protection or marriage, it followed that he most likely wouldn't be the sort to check in with his conquests after they'd adjusted their skirts and returned to their previous life.

And so along came his brother, ready to clean up the mess made by his younger sibling. Sophia's thoughts suddenly came to a halt. How many times had Lord Haughton had to do this? How many other women had been seduced and then abandoned? For all she knew, little George could have a passel of half-siblings scattered across the country, possibly over parts of the continent, as well. She had no idea how... prolific this David was, and the more she considered it, the more she realized she did not wish to know.

A slight turn in the road brought her into the main part of Stantreath, its neat rows of low houses seeming to hunker down even closer to the ground this morning, as if threatened by the heaviness of the clouds that shifted above them. Tucking George against her shoulder as a strong blast of wind pushed out from between two stone houses, Sophia slipped into Kirkland's Tea Shoppe for a brief respite from the chill.

The Tea Shoppe sold more than simply tea, its dark shelves filled with coffee, spices, laces and ribbons, bolts of fabric, patterns, books (no novels, as Mrs. Kirkland frowned upon such nonsense), and various other knick-knacks that could easily distract a person from their original purpose in entering the establishment.

A bell jingled on the door, alerting the shop's proprietors to Sophia's entrance. Mrs. Kirkland was the first to appear, that woman gliding out from the back room in a fuss of starched lace and frills, her cap so heavy with ribbons that the woman's neck seemed ready to crumble beneath the weight of it.

There was a smile on Mrs. Kirkland's face as she entered the front room, but as soon as her eyes alighted on Sophia, her grin faded and her already thin lips became nearly nonexistent. "Can I help you?"

Sophia stepped away from one shelf in particular, displaying an array of watch fobs that had caught George's attention. "Some sugar, I think." She didn't need any sugar, but she did need an excuse to loiter about the shop until she'd shaken the chill from her bones, and sugar was the first and only thing to come to her mind.

While Mrs. Kirkland reluctantly filled her order, Sophia switched George to her other hip and gave his mittened hands a squeeze to make sure they weren't bothered by the nip in the air. Without a word, Mrs. Kirkland dropped the paper-wrapped cone of sugar onto the counter and named a price that Sophia knew was higher than the one given to other customers.

Sophia sighed. There were several people throughout the town who insisted on treating her like a pariah, no matter that she had arrived in town months before claiming to be a proper widow charged with the care of her child and younger sister. She knew the gossip that had begun to circulate not long after their arrival, gossip that increased tenfold after Lucy had taken it upon herself to abscond from Stantreath without any word as to her whereabouts. The stories went that Sophia had never been married at all, or that she had been mistress to some titled gentleman who had tucked her away in the country once her husband had died and she'd found herself heavy with the man's child.

After taking the overpriced sugar and tucking it into the bag she had slung on her arm, she exited the shop prepared to be struck in the face by another great push of wind from the direction of the coast. But it was an uncommon stillness that met her as she stepped out onto the main street, the sound of the various types of traffic—both wheeled and pedestrian—sounding especially loud now that they weren't swept away by the wind to another corner of the county.

It wasn't until the roof of the vicarage came into sight that the first drop of rain landed on her forehead. She was about to turn her steps back towards home when the rumble of carriage wheels came up beside her, the harness of the horses jangling as the driver ordered them to a halt.

Sophia glanced up at the carriage and smiled. A moment later, the window dropped down and an elderly bonneted head poked out of the small, rectangular space. "Silly girl!" the lady's reedy voice came from beneath the oversized piece of millinery. "What are you on about, taking a child out in such frightful weather?"

"Lady Rutledge," Sophia replied with a curtsy. "I was just on my way back to the cottage."

"Nonsense!" The feathers on the old lady's bonnet shivered in accompaniment of her feigned horror. "You'll bring that baby into this carriage at once, and then I'll see you back to Rutledge House for cakes and a bit of warming in front of the fire."

Sophia knew not to argue, and so allowed the carriage door to be opened to her, and even permitted Lady Rutledge to settle a blanket over her legs before the carriage set off again.

"Now, give me that child!" Lady Rutledge held out both of her spindly arms, her bejeweled fingers sparkling in even the dim light inside the carriage.

Sophia obliged and passed George to the other lady, who took him eagerly before bestowing a loud kiss on the boy's nose. "Such a treasure," Sophia heard her remark under her breath. "Such a heavy thing," she then said at a much louder volume. "I believe he's grown since... Oh, when did I see him last?"

"It was Tuesday." Sophia settled back in her seat, feeling a quiet pride at the boy's obvious good health and appetite.

"Hmm, Tuesday?" Lady Rutledge counted it out on her fingers. "Too long, too long," she muttered. "And if it wasn't for my nearly running over the two of you in the road, I wouldn't be able to see you today either. You need to escape that dreadful hovel of yours. Keeping yourself locked away won't do any good, either for yourself or for this little terror." She pressed another kiss to the child's head.

"We are not locked away," Sophia protested.

"No, of course not. But neither are you doing anything."

"I'm taking care of George," Sophia pointed out. "I'm keeping a home, cooking and... and cleaning."

"And what of you?" Lady Rutledge punctuated the question with silly face that made George squeal with delight. "Are you visiting? Do you attend any of the assemblies? Do you have any friends or close companions?"

"Lissy visits quite often." Sophia clenched and unclenched her hands in her lap. "And I am not a hermit, as you seem to be insinuating."

"Oh, I am not insinuating anything! I am saying quite plainly that you are languishing in that house, punishing yourself and this child for something you're not even guilty of doing."

Sophia looked out the window as the gates to Rutledge Hall came into view. "I don't have to punish myself. The majority of the town seems more than capable of doing that for me."

As they passed through the gates and started up the long drive that led to the main entrance of Lady Rutledge's home, Sophia let her gaze rest on the elderly woman as she doted on George. Her family had been acquainted with Lady Rutledge for years, Sophia's maternal grandmother having shared her debut season in London with the venerable lady when she herself was nothing more than a fresh-faced young woman on the lookout for a suitable husband. And if it hadn't been for Lady Rutledge's intervention, Sophia reminded herself, she and Lucy would never have been given the cottage for their use. It was because of Lady Rutledge they were allowed a second chance at a life untainted by scandal.

"The people in this town are a great lot of fools," Lady Rutledge announced as the footman opened the door to the carriage and let down the step. "They shun people over the silliest things. Do you remember the Latimer girl? The one they claimed created a scandal because she didn't have the proper amount of lace on her gown? Psh!"

Sophia took George back into her arms and waited for her companion to descend from the carriage. Lady Rutledge, for all of her vitality and bluster, was not steady on her feet, and so it took the aid of the footman along with Lady Rutledge's cane to help her arrive at her own front door.

"And that vicar!" The older woman pushed into the house, nearly knocking her butler off his feet with the end of her cane. Sophia nodded to the equally aged man who returned her attention with a genuine grin for both herself and the baby. "What's his name? Finley?"

"Fenton," Sophia supplied, and followed Lady Rutledge into the drawing room after one of the maids appeared to divest her of her bonnet and shawl.

"Fool, more like," Lady Rutledge hobbled over to the sofa, a grand, plush thing upholstered all in dark green velvet. "I've never seen such a hypocrite, not in all my years. And such a slimy creature, too. Why, I cannot count the times he's stood in this very room, oiling his way around the furniture while he eyes my trinkets, as if he'd stash them into his pockets the moment my back was turned. Pull the bell, will you?"

Sophia gave the bell pull a hard tug and then settled on the floor with George, the better to keep him within arm's reach and away from all of Lady Rutledge's fine trinkets.

"It's why I won't invite him or that wife of his to dine here. I can't trust that I'll still have all my silver intact by the end of the evening."

"Their son is not as... oily, as you put it."

"No," Lady Rutledge agreed, though with some reluctance. "But I cannot say I care for the way he looks at you."

"At me?" Sophia looked up sharply. "What do you mean?"

"Oh, you're young, so you don't know. But believe me when I say that young man has his eye on you from the moment you enter the church until the second you leave again. If not for his parents or the fact you're supposed to be grieving a dead husband, I'd say he would've already made his feelings known."

Sophia shook her head and unhooked George's fingers from the edge of a lace tablecloth that he seemed intent to drag down onto his head. "You're mistaken," she said, and attempted to distract the child with a small, tasseled cushion. "He's hardly spoken to me once since we've arrived here."

"Because his parents probably won't allow him near you," Lady Rutledge said with a point of her cane towards Sophia's head. "If I can see how goggle-eyed their boy is when he's within twenty paces of you, then so can everyone else. And I've no doubt they've already lectured against him chasing after one such as you."

"Such as I?"

"Poor," she began, ticking the first item off one of her gnarled fingers. "Lacking connections," she ticked another finger. "And much too opinionated for their liking." A tick for a third finger. "If there's something a pompous bag of air such as our dear Reverend Fenton detests more than anything else, it's someone who would dare to open their mouth and utter a word against him. And that's you from head to heel, m'dear."

Sophia's mouth opened and closed several times before she could utter a word in reply. "You make me sound quite dreadful, like the most belligerent of harridans."

Lady Rutledge shook her head. "No, you are incorrect. That particular coronet belongs to none other than myself, and I will lay waste to anyone who attempts to steal that title away from me."

She reached down as George crawled over to her, her wrist turning sharply from side to side as she shook her bracelet before the infant's grasping hands. "Of course, the fact that I possess a title along with this estate, which has become refuge for a rather large quantity of mice and bats, I'm afraid, permits a fair number of the town's inhabitants to forgive a greater share of my eccentricities." She straightened up again, though the bracelet was now gone from her wrist, the gleaming pearls clutched between George's pudgy fingers. "Unfortunately, that same piddling title and this drafty pile of stone is not enough to lend my connection with you the same measure of forgiveness. Perhaps if I had another ten or twenty thousand guineas to my name, I could provide you with more than a drafty cottage and the occasional ham from the smokehouse."

Sophia extricated the bracelet from George with a deft sweep of her hand. She slipped the jewelry out of sight and managed to secure his attention with the tinkle of a small, silver bell before his lip could tremble over the loss of the beaded bauble. "Hmm. An astounding thing, the power a bit of coin can wield over one's transgressions."

"Or how others perceive them," Lady Rutledge was quick to add.

The arrival of the maid was enough to turn their conversation towards lighter matters, and when the tea things were brought in, Lady Rutledge amused herself with the task of feeding George bites of cake from her own fingers.

"You'll spoil him for all other foods," Sophia warned, though there was a smile on her face.

"Let him be spoiled," the older lady cooed. "His lot is already a more difficult one than he deserves, and so I'll thank you not to begrudge him a few crumbs of lemon cake and cream before he's even made the transition to proper trousers."

Sophia tucked into her own plate of delicacies, one that was swiftly followed by a second when Lady Rutledge threatened to have the leftovers packed up and delivered to her doorstep if she refused to eat her fill.

"And now it is time for us to be leaving," Sophia said as she dabbed the last crumb from her mouth and bent down to retrieve a yawning George from his post at Lady Rutledge's skirts. His own hands and face were sticky, but she didn't mind the mess as he burrowed his face into her shoulder and settled more comfortably in her arms.

A glance at the windows told her that the harsh breeze and spitting rain had yet to relent, but when Lady Rutledge called to have her carriage again brought around, Sophia waved the offer away as she settled her shawl around her shoulders. "You've done more than enough for us this morning," she said, and wrapped one edge of the shawl more snugly around a dozing George. "I'll make better time on foot, and the jostling of the carriage is more likely to wake him from his nap. But you have my gratitude."

Lady Rutledge tapped the end of her cane on the floor, a sign of her agitated mind. "I don't deserve your gratitude, and that will be enough on that subject. Though I do wish you'd take my advice and move into my home permanently. I have more than enough rooms, and you'd have more than enough spiders and mice to keep you company, should my own presence ever become too much to bear."

Sophia stepped forward, dropped a light kiss on Lady Rutledge's cheek, and watched as the older woman touched George's downy hair with a gentle hand. "You've done so much for us already," she told her. "You've given us our own home, and a chance for George to grow up away from the scandal associated with his birth."

"Your sister," Lady Rutledge began, her voice lower now that she was speaking so near to the infant's sleeping form. "She wasn't ready. To be a mother, to face the responsibility that comes with it." A click of her tongue and Sophia looked up to see the woman shaking her head. "But she was too young, I think. And the loss of your parents was a difficult burden to bear at such a formative age."

Sophia fought against the urge to sigh, to allow her shoulders to droop beneath the weight of all those countless responsibilities that had been added to her burden since the moment Lucy had confessed to being with child.

The image of Lord Haughton arose in her mind, unbidden, and a frisson of tension coursed through her limbs. The day before, his offer had been nothing less than repellant to her, but now that she was once again free to dwell on the bleak prospects her future contained, she wondered which path would be the show of greater strength: To take his money, to acquiesce to his demands? Or to fight him, merely to assuage her own pride?

"I am curious," Sophia said, before stepping out the door. "Have you ever heard of a Lord Haughton, or encountered any members of his family?"

"Haughton?" Lady Rutledge pursed her lips, her eyes squinting as if she were peering back through the annals of time and memory. "Rings a bell. Of course, when you arrive at my station in my life, nearly everything sets off the ringing of some bell, somewhere, and yet I can never recall where I last saw my favorite pair of gloves. But Haughton, yes..." She gave her cane another strong tap on the floor. "Proud, disagreeable, and overly concerned with the importance of rank. Probably kept a dog-eared copy of The Peerage tucked beneath his bed pillow. Though I will admit his wife was an uncommonly beautiful creature, and about as welcoming as a day old fish dinner."

Sophia bit back a laugh while George squirmed and shifted against her chest. "So is this... Is this the former Lord Haughton, I assume?"

"Oh! Is there a new one?" Lady Rutledge raised one shoulder in a thoroughly unladylike gesture. "I hadn't heard. Of course, when you live at the edge of the world, it does take a bit of time for news to find its way here." She raised one eyebrow. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason." Sophia hoped the lie wouldn't show on her face. "Lissy thought she had heard a bit of gossip, and... Well, it looks as if the rain has nearly quit," she said hastily. "I really should be on my way."