He had been eyeing her dance card a little too thoroughly to notice any ill effect it had on her, so by the time she tucked it away he was only surprised by her changed tone (what, no wit for once?) and bemused by the flush at her neckline. (Endymion, as he realised what he was doing, hurriedly stopped looking at her there.)

“You know, I’m sure my mother is just as bad,” he said airily instead, none the wiser as to her altered mood, and supposing that – the room was too warm, or she was trying to temper her exasperation with her mother’s efforts with measuredness. “Worse, maybe. You have – the same number of siblings as I do, don’t you?” Endymion squinted, suddenly remembering facts about the Potts family that had not been remotely relevant to him in – years. Seven daughters in all, if he recalled it right. “Imagine mine, and with only one of us married,” Endymion added, with a hopelessly-amused shake of his head. He was trying to be married much more diligently than his sisters, but his sisters were – close to lost causes, generally. Thistle’s sisters were doing much better, in all (even with or without the scandalous elopement of Miss Zinnia). “She still has her hands quite full.”

Really, Mrs. Potts and Lowri Dempsey would make rather good friends.

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