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“You would know,” Sam grumbled.
“But can you imagine?” Evie said, shutting the catalog and putting it aside. “What if I had married John?”
“Oh, no!” Sam grimaced. “You would be carrying his child now!”
Evie leaned back and screeched in laughter. “That’s terrible.”
Sam tapped her on the arm. “No, but imagine if you got married, and I still fell in love with him after your wedding!”
Evie covered her face with her hands. “I can’t imagine.” But as she uncovered her face, she wasn’t laughing anymore, though her eyes still held a gleam of humor. “Well, I suppose, things would have still worked out the way they have.”
“How do you mean?” Sam asked.
“Hopefully, you would have been honest about it.”
“How could I be honest about something like that?”
Evie shrugged. “You would say, ‘Sorry, dear, but I love your husband.’”
Everyone laughed at the ridiculous idea.
“Or I would have seen it,” Evie continued conjecturing.
“And then what?”
“And then I’d divorce him. Become a scandalous divorcee and would probably still end up marrying Gabe, just… in a different way.”
“Would you come up with a different excuse to entrap him?” Sam raised her brow.
Beatrice was all ears at this turn of conversation. “You trapped your husband into marrying you?”
Evie wrinkled her nose. “Well, not really, I offered him a deal he could not refuse. But if I didn’t have that deal to fall back on, I’d offer him something else. You see, I was desperately in love with him, and he didn’t even look my way.”
Beatrice shook her head in disbelief. “I find that hard to believe.”
“I assure you, he didn’t. Or at least, he wasn’t interested in marriage, and therefore didn’t even look at young debutantes.”
Beatrice pondered the statement before asking, “But would you… would either of you trap your husband into marrying you if you had no other choice?”
The women exchanged a glance and then Sam looked at Beatrice with a slight tilt to her head and a curious look in her eyes. “I don’t think I could.”
But Evie was deep in thought. “Even to secure a man you love?”
Sam turned to her with a look of incredulity. “Especially not if he was the man I loved. If I claimed to care about him, why would I trap him?”
Evie shrugged. “I think you shouldn’t dismiss it out of hand. Think back to the time you met John and fell in love with him. Wouldn’t you do absolutely everything in your power to keep him?”
“Would you?” Sam countered. “Would you have trapped Gabriel, taking away his choice and acting selfishly?”
Evie shrugged again. “I don’t know. I have not been in a situation like that. If I had, perhaps I would.”
Sam shook her head, dismissing the idea out of hand. “I know you, Evie, perhaps better than you do yourself. You’re too honorable to trick a person you claim to love in order to gain something that you need.”
“To save my grandfather’s dukedom…” Evie shook her head, thinking something through. “I don’t know if I would act honorably. I think it depends on the situation and how much that other person is losing by your treacherous hand. I wouldn’t hurt a person I love. I wouldn’t be the reason for their suffering. But in a moment of desperation, would I have lied and used every trick in my possession? Perhaps.”
Well, that didn’t help Beatrice at all. And perhaps it wasn’t meant to help. She was looking for affirmation from people she liked, perhaps even admired. But people she admired would not be acting dishonorably. And therefore… she shouldn’t either.
“Besides,” the duchess suddenly exclaimed. “It never works out well. I know a woman who made her come out around the same time as we did. She tricked her now husband into marrying her, pretended to fall for him, while she had ulterior motives!”
