Chapter 32
Tristan stood frozen as Lavinia’s words flooded his mind. He was not sure if he was capable of movement, not after what had just transpired.
You see me now, but you won't tomorrow.
For a long, howling moment, the world flattened, shuddered, and rebuilt itself in a way that he could not recognize. He could not breathe. The mystery woman from the Scarfield masque. The waltz that had burned through him. The secret he had kept, convinced he would never know who she was.
He staggered backward, gripping the edge of a table for support. It was Lavinia. It had been Lavinia all along.
He tried to recall every detail from that night: the feel of her in his arms, the perfume at her neck, the cool intelligence behind her every riposte. He had spent months thinking of the masked stranger as a ghost, a phantasm conjured by too much brandy and too little sleep.
But no, she had been here, beneath his nose, every day since, and he had failed to see it. Worse, he had driven her into the arms of a man like Dawnford.
Tristan ran out to the hall, but she was already gone, and her hack had pulled away. How long had he been standing in shock for?
His chest tightened. The world was a narrowing tunnel, and all he could see was that last look she gave him.
He marched to his study and crossed to his desk.
His hands were shaking, and he nearly dropped the key twice before he managed to turn it in the drawer.
The lock resisted, as if even the desk was loath to confront what lay within.
When it finally gave, he yanked it open so hard the wood nearly splintered.
Inside was the amethyst pendant. He plucked it out and glimmered in the half-light, dull yet beautiful, the flaw through the center glinting like a wound.
He held it up, turning it in his palm, and pressed the memory of that night against every detail he knew of Lady Lavinia: the tilt of her chin, the gleam in her eyes, the timbre of her laugh.
There was no doubt.
He reached for the second object in the drawer, a small thing wrapped in linen.
It was a single hairpin that she had left behind on a storm-wrecked afternoon when Lavinia had instructed Sophia in the schoolroom.
The pin was nothing but a plain bit of wire tipped in cheap glass.
Yet even in his blindness, he had not been able to throw it away.
He set the two artifacts on the blotter side by side.
He stared at them, fists balled on either side, shaking.
All this time. All this time, you idiot. You had her here, and you did not see her, and now you've lost her forever.
Tristan ran his hand over his face, then gripped his hair as if he could wrench out the answer by force. He tried to slow his breathing, but it would not slow. He was on fire and sinking in ice, and the paradox made him want to smash everything in reach.
He swept the contents of the desk onto the floor. The inkwell, the papers, the silver pen knife. The crash gave him the smallest satisfaction. He slammed the drawer shut, then yanked it open again, as if the force of his rage might summon her back into being.
Tristan could feel himself coming apart. He saw the man he had been—uncompromising, like an immovable object—and despised him. He saw every moment with Lavinia replayed.
He paced to the fireplace, then back, then to the window and back again. He considered writing her a letter. He considered riding to Pembroke at once. He considered a thousand things, all useless.
You cannot let her marry him. You cannot let her go.
Striding to the door, he rang the bell with such force that the cord snapped from its fitting. He waited, vibrating with impatience, until the butler appeared at the door.
"Your Grace," the man began, but Tristan cut him off.
"Send for my solicitor. At once."
The butler’s eyes widened, but he bowed and left without further question.
Lavinia sat in the drawing room of Pembroke Manor, waiting for nothing and everything, or perhaps only for the next thing to happen. She thought that if she stayed absolutely still, the future might not arrive.
However, the door burst open with a violence that nearly toppled the vase on the escritoire. Nancy entered first, trailed by Hester, then Moira, and finally Fiona, who had never once raised her voice above the din of a drawing room but was now white-faced.
Lavinia barely had time to set her cup down before Nancy seized both her hands. “Is it true?” Nancy said. “Have you really accepted Lord Dawnford?”
Lavinia blinked, once. “News travels with remarkable speed in your house,” she replied, though she could see at a glance that Nancy would not be dissuaded by jokes.
“It’s in the air!” Hester cried, circling the sofa to plant herself at Lavinia’s shoulder. “Lady Montfort has told everyone. And Lord Dawnford is hunting the Lord Chamberlain for a license.”
Moira shut the door with a bang and regarded Lavinia with her arms folded, and her head cocked like a hawk. “You look as if you’ve been shot,” she said. “Or as if you’re about to be.”
Fiona found her way to Lavinia’s other side. “I do not understand. Not even a fortnight ago, you said—” she trailed off, but the question was plain.
Lavinia did not let herself shrink under their scrutiny. Instead, she drew a long, careful breath. “It is true,” she said, keeping her voice perfectly level. “I am to marry Lord Dawnford. By next week, it will all be over.”
A chorus of dismay broke out at once, voices overlapping like the crash of hailstones on the conservatory roof. Nancy, tears already threatening to betray her, pressed harder. “But why, Lavinia? You cannot stand him. You told me yourself he was a vulture. A snake. A—”
“A necessary solution,” Lavinia cut in, freeing one hand to pat Nancy’s knuckles.
Moira huffed and marched to the hearth, setting her back to the fire as if better to block Lavinia’s retreat. “Marriage without love is a prison. I’ve seen what it does to women—turns them to shadows, or else to monsters.”
“I am neither,” Lavinia replied, fixing her with a stare.
Fiona leaned in. “If there is anything, anything at all, we can do to help, you need only say.”
Nancy broke in again with her voice trembling. “He is a brute, Lavinia! I know you do not care for society’s opinions, but this is more than that. There are rumors of what he has done to other women.” She squeezed Lavinia’s hands until the knuckles showed white. “Please, say you will not do it.”
Lavinia’s composure was now held by the thinnest margin. “It is too late. The arrangements are made.” She stopped, biting off the rest. They did not need to know the full misery of her accounts.
“There must be another way,” Hester said, almost pleading. “You are clever. Smarter than any of us. Surely you can find it.”
She shook her head. “If there is, I have failed to discover it. And I have been searching for a long, long time.”
Moira’s voice softened, and her arms dropped to her sides. “You have always done what you must, Lavinia. But this—” She paused, her grief palpable. “You deserve more than a noose.”
It was the kindest thing anyone had said to her all week.
Lavinia’s composure wavered; she looked down at their entwined hands and, for a moment, allowed herself to feel the depth of the loss.
Not just for herself, but for Frances, for the house, for every life that would be flattened by Lord Dawnford’s footfall.
“Perhaps,” she said, “but deserving has nothing to do with it. I have made my decision. It is not what I wish for, but it is what must be. If I do not marry him, he will come for Frances.”
The women stood around her, forming a silent bulwark against despair. They did not argue, not after that. Instead, Nancy released Lavinia’s hands, wiped her own eyes, and squared her shoulders.
“Then we will help you,” she said, voice fierce. “With the dress, the flowers, and everything. We will see to it that he never makes you cry.”
Hester nodded, setting her chin. “I will design the invitations myself. No one will say the wedding was not the event of the year.”
Fiona reached for Lavinia’s hand and squeezed it. “And I will have my cook bake the cake. He will choke on it if he so much as looks at you crosswise.”
Even Moira softened and came closer. “And I will attend you on the day, to see you safe.”
Lavinia blinked rapidly, refusing to let her own tears fall. She had never loved them more, these women who had been her army and her armor. “Thank you,” she said, and the words felt strange, inadequate.
Nancy hugged her tightly and suddenly. “Whatever comes, we are with you.”
Hester, not to be outdone, wrapped her arms around them both. Fiona joined, soft and tentative, and Moira placed a gentle hand on Lavinia’s shoulder.
For a moment, the fortress of their friendship seemed unbreakable. But when they had gone, and Lavinia was left alone again, she stared at the wall, not seeing it. The ache inside her was so large, it crowded out everything else.
She pressed her palm to her chest, feeling the uneven thump of her heart. She tried to picture what might come after, but saw only a blankness, a void.