Chapter 5 #2
“I respect you.” The simplicity of it was somehow more convincing than any elaborate declaration would have been.
“I want that to be clearly understood before I say anything else. I respected you when you were a stranger kneeling in wet sand on a beach at five in the morning, and I have not revised that opinion since.” He paused.
“And I would never, ever dishonor my wife while we share a roof. You have my word.”
The certainty of it moved through her chest in a way she hadn’t expected. She looked at him carefully.
“While we share a roof,” she echoed. “You have used that phrase twice now. I want to make sure I understand what you mean by it.”
Something like approval moved briefly across his face. “You are very precise.”
“I am asking a direct question.”
He studied her for a moment, and she had the distinct impression that he was deciding how honest to be. Not whether to be dishonest, which was different. He seemed, beneath all the charm and his green eyes and the devastating ease of him, to be a man who preferred the truth.
She filed that away.
“Our marriage will be temporary in all but name. We will appear together here in Brighton first, then London for however long it takes for this particular piece of gossip to be replaced by the next one, which in my experience takes no more than a few months. Society has the attention span of a well-dressed goldfish.” He said it without cruelty, simply as an observation.
“After that, you are free to live as you wish. We will be married in name, in law, on paper, but your life will be your own.”
Cecily listened to this. Absorbed it. Turned it over.
She thought of fourteen-year-old Cecily on the garden bench with the violet notebook and the borrowed novel and the absolute, unshakeable certainty that love was coming and would be worth the wait.
She thought of every suitor she had turned down, every drawing room she had sat in, and every morning she had woken up, telling herself that she simply hadn’t found it yet.
She thought of the convent. The quiet life. The alternative.
This was not what she had wanted. It was so far from what she had wanted that she could not quite hold both the wanting and the reality in her mind at the same time without something aching.
A temporary marriage to a man she didn’t know, built on paper and convenience and the particular cruelty of other people’s opinions, with nothing underneath it and nothing promised at the end.
But her mother’s name would be safe. Beatrice would not have to watch her become a cautionary tale at every dinner party in London.
And she would not have to spend her life in a convent, which she was almost entirely unsuited to, and the thought of which had terrified her considerably more than she had allowed anyone to see.
This was not the life she had dreamed of. But it was something. And it was honest. And it was hers to agree to on her own terms, which was more than most women in her position could claim.
She lifted her chin.
“I have one final question,” she said.
He waited.
“Your sisters.” She watched his face. “You told me you have two younger sisters. If we are to share a roof, even temporarily, I will be part of their lives. I will not be an indifferent presence in your house, and I will not pretend to be something I am not for the benefit of two young girls who deserve better than pretence.” She held his gaze.
“I want to know that you understand that. That you are not expecting me to be invisible simply because this is a convenience.”
Something shifted in his expression that was different from anything she had seen before. Something that had nothing to do with charm or composure, and everything to do with the man underneath both—something unguarded and brief and unexpectedly, wholly genuine.
“My sisters are the most important people in my life.” He said it without decoration, without performance. “I would not ask you to be invisible to them. I would only ask that you be kind. They have not always received a great deal of kindness from people outside this family.”
She looked at him. “I am always kind. It is one of the few things I am reliably good at.”
The almost-smile returned, softer this time. “Then we are agreed.”
She lifted her chin. “Very well, then. We are agreed.”
He held her gaze for a moment longer.
The afternoon light was shifting through the drawing room window, falling differently now, and in it she could see the green of his eyes very clearly—the way they were simultaneously guarded and present, the way they had not once, in the entire conversation, looked anywhere other than at her face when she was speaking.
As though what she said mattered. As though she were someone worth the attention.
She was aware, suddenly and inconveniently, that he was staring at her.
She looked away first.
“You will need to return to London,” he said. “Today, if it can be managed.”
She looked up. “Today?”
“Today.” He pulled on his glove. “The special license requires my presence in London, and the ceremony cannot wait. Every day we delay is another day the papers have something to say about you.” He glanced at her. “I realize this is not the pace you would choose.”
“I was going to say it gives me very little time to–”
“Pack,” he finished. “I know. I apologize for the inconvenience.”
A brief pause, in which the word inconvenience hung in the air between them with the slight irony of a word they had already had cause to discuss. His eyes found hers, and the ghost of something—warmth and the faintest trace of rueful acknowledgement—flickered in them.
“The ceremony will take place before the weekend. Thursday, most likely. Friday at the outside.”
“That is four days,” she pointed out.
“It is.” He pulled on the second glove and looked at her with an expression that was not unkind, but was entirely certain. “I realize it is not the wedding you would have chosen.”
The understatement of that landed somewhere between absurdity and something more painful, and she chose, carefully, to let it pass.
“No,” she uttered. “It is not.”
Something crossed his face then—brief and genuine, gone almost before it arrived, but she caught it. Not guilt, exactly. But something quieter. The expression of a man who was aware of what he was costing someone and had not yet decided what to do with it.
Then it was gone, and he inclined his head.
“I will send word about the arrangements.”
He moved toward the door, before he turned to look at her. His green eyes held hers for a moment that lasted slightly longer than it should have, with Brighton going about its business outside and the rest of her life waiting on the other side of the week.
“Good afternoon, Lady Cecily,” he said quietly.
Then he left.
Cecily stood where she was and listened to his footsteps in the hallway, his low exchange with the butler, then the front door closing.
She stood there until the sound of the carriage had faded, the drawing room fell quiet, and there was nothing left of him except the faint impression of a presence that had rearranged the room around it and not entirely left.
Then the door opened, and her mother and Beatrice came back in, and the questions began. She answered them as best as she could.