When she tells her husband that Nan knows - excuse me, NAN KNOWS - his first thought is if Nan’s going to tell Theo and ruin her chances at becoming a duchess. Of course, she makes a big scene in the middle of the party before dragging the Colonel off to remind him that this is all his fault as he continues to brush any responsibility off. George tracks down her husband to let him have it. After Nan tears into her for the lies and mistakes she’s made and twists the knife by wondering if she was closer with her father when she was little because somehow she knew she didn’t belong to Patty, Mrs. Tracy can take a hike! And yet, when Nan and Jinny discuss it later, they just say, “Oh, daddy will always be impossible,” and move on. You can’t really blame Nann … but can you really blame Patty? Or, at the very least, can you blame Patty more than Tracy? He’s the dude who couldn’t keep it in his pants and forced Patty to devise a way to keep her family’s reputation from being destroyed! Also, while he may have a great mustache, he’s still flirting with hot young women right in front of his wife’s face. Upon her arrival, she proceeds to get wildly annoyed with her mother for throwing a lavish party to celebrate her daughters that features doves in cages as the decor (“it has to do with birds being chic”), runs upstairs and hides in her bedroom, and then deliver a supremely dramatic “I am nothing to you” as a means of telling Patty that she knows everything. Instead of developing a plan during her time on the open seas, Nan lets her emotions lead the way. That is a lot for any person! That is stressful! If I were Nan, I’d ask the captain to do a couple of laps out in the ocean before docking in New York. On top of all of that, Nan may not even want to marry Theo because she has just learned that Guy did come back for her at Runnymede, and she definitely has the hots for Guy.
The other option is to lie to him for the rest of their lives. But more than that, she has to decide if she will tell Theo about who she is, even though it may mean she will lose him - a duke marrying someone like her was a tough sell back in the 1870s. Nan has a lot to think about on her travels across the Atlantic: Not only is she trying to reckon with the fact that her family has been lying to her face and grapple with the fact that she will have to face her parents - her mother, especially - after learning the truth about her illegitimate birth, but she also is gearing up to become a duchess, a fact that the entire eastern seaboard of the United States seems obsessed with.
George, who has just learned her entire life has been a complete lie. But perhaps the most changed is our dear Nan St. Conchita has learned how suffocating marriage can be, Lizzy has experienced true cruelty, Mabel has discovered a place and a person who makes her feel more like herself, and Jinny is slowly becoming a shell of a human thanks to her twisted and manipulative husband.
None of them has returned the person they were when they left. And it is definitely what has happened to our feisty buccaneers, who all make a quick stop back in New York for what was supposed to be Jinny and Seadown’s wedding before that slimy piece of shit forced her to elope. You’ve probably embarrassed yourself at least three times. It’s not unusual to return from a lengthy trip abroad feeling like a changed person.