Fiennes Estate, Grosvenor Square — Morning
The household had scarcely finished breakfast when Marquess Reginald and Marchioness Josephine stepped back into the entrance hall, both still carrying the faint stiffness of people returning from a Very Important Conversation.
They expected peace.
They expected quiet.
They did not expect their daughter—already cinched into her riding habit of deep navy, hair swept into a tidy coiffure suitable for horseback—striding toward the door as though she meant to escape London on her own two feet if Coriolanus refused to cooperate.
Josephine froze. "Sophia Fiennes, where do you think you are going?"
Sophia halted mid-stride, jaw tightening with the defiance unique to young women who believe themselves terribly logical. "I am going on a ride, Mama."
Reginald looked at her boots, her gloves, the determined tilt of her chin. He wisely stepped aside so his wife could take the lead.
