Secrets of an Accidental Duchess Read Free Page A

must go. Margie will be hungry soon, and I simply can’t abide it when her nurse feeds her.”
    Margie was Phoebe’s eight-month-old daughter, a lovely child with the strongest lungs Olivia had ever heard on an infant. She took after her mother in temperament,though she possessed her father’s strikingly dark hair and eyes.
    Olivia smiled. “Give my darling niece a big kiss from her Auntie Olivia, will you?”
    “Of course.”
    “
Must
you go, Phoebe?” Jessica complained, waving her cards. “We haven’t finished the game.”
    They’d been playing cribbage while Serena was embroidering a bonnet for Margie.
    Phoebe crossed her arms tightly across her chest. “You can’t understand, Jess. What it’s like to be a mother. I can
tell
when she needs me. I can feel it.”
    “How perfectly ghastly.” Jessica grimaced at Phoebe’s bosom. “I hope I never have children and never, ever feel any such thing.”
    “You can’t mean that!” exclaimed Olivia. “What about all your suitors, Jess?”
    All three of her sisters swung their heads around to stare at Olivia and she took a step back, feeling the window ledge push into her spine. “What?” she asked. “Why are all of you looking at me like that?”
    “Suitors don’t necessarily translate into motherhood.” Serena’s lips twitched. She was obviously fighting a smile.
    “Well, they translate into proposals of marriage, eventually. Then engagements and weddings. And those, in turn, translate to motherhood.”
    “
Pfft,
” Jessica hissed. “Not true. Not at all true.”
    Serena raised a brow at Jessica. “Care to explain how
that
works, Jess?”
    Jessica shrugged and turned up her nose in a particularly Jess-like expression. “Not really. I just happen to know that there are ways to prevent conception.”
    “Ways that are utterly deadly to both mother and child,” Phoebe muttered, frowning.
    “Not necessarily,” Jessica said, looking superior.
    “If that’s so,” Serena said, “we don’t want to hear about them. In any case, you’re scandalizing poor Saint Olivia.”
    Their gazes all turned to her, and Olivia felt the burn of a flush crawling over her cheeks. “You’re not scandalizing me!”
    “Oh, yes we are,” Phoebe said in the tone of a wizened old man. “There are certain topics best not discussed in Saint Olivia’s presence.”
    Jessica shook her head soberly. “You’re red as a lobster, Liv. Obviously this conversation is distressing you.”
    “It is not.” Olivia pressed her hand to her heated cheek. “Not at all.”
    Jessica turned to Serena and Phoebe. “I think we’d best let her continue to think that suitors mean eventual motherhood.”
    “But will that make her more likely to seek one?” Serena asked.
    Jessica turned back to her. “Well, Liv? What do you think? No suitors and no motherhood, or shall we find you a suitor forthwith so you can start popping out litters of babies?”
    Phoebe wrinkled her nose. “Jess! Is it possible for you to be any more indelicate?”
    Jessica snapped back, “And who are you to speak of indelicacy, Mrs. Run-off-to-Gretna-Green-with-the-first-man-you-meet Harper?”
    “Oh, stop it, both of you,” Serena said. “Before this escalates into a silly argument, I have something to tell you. Something important.” As the sisters turned to her,Serena looked down at her embroidery, scarlet spreading across her cheeks. “Well, Jonathan and I haven’t been trying to
prevent
anything.”
    As Olivia frowned at her, trying to understand what on earth she was talking about, Phoebe dropped her cards and jumped out of her chair. “You’re pregnant!”
    Pressing her lips together, still staring downward, Serena nodded.
    “Oh, Serena,” Olivia breathed. “Really?” Serena had been hoping to conceive ever since Olivia and Jessica had arrived from Antigua.
    “Yes,” Serena whispered. “I’m sure of it. But you forgot to call me Meg again.” The smile on Serena’s face told Olivia she