Chapter 16 #2
It was not a servant with more tea. It was Mr. Arthur Finch, pink-cheeked from the morning air, his cravat slightly askew, his earnest smile already in place before he had fully crossed the threshold.
He stopped when he saw Mr. Denbigh, and his smile flickered — confusion, then recovery, then a polite mask that did not quite fit his face.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said. “I was not aware you had a caller. Your maid said I might—”
“Mr. Finch.” Lady Eleanor rose with the brittle grace of a woman whose carefully orchestrated morning had just collapsed around her ears. “How delightful. Do come in. You know Mr. Denbigh, I believe?”
“By reputation.” Arthur bowed to Mr. Denbigh, then turned to Sophia with an expression of such unguarded pleasure that she felt something twist behind her sternum.
“Miss Ainsworth. I hoped I might find you at home. I have been thinking about our conversation at the Cavendish ball — the one about the Turner, and the light, and — well, I have been thinking about a great many things.”
“Have you.” Sophia’s voice came out flatter than she intended.
“I have.” He settled into the chair beside her, oblivious to the tension crackling through the room like static before a storm. “And I realised that I had not been entirely clear about my intentions. Not in the way that matters.”
Mr. Denbigh raised an eyebrow. Lady Eleanor looked as though she were contemplating throwing herself out the window.
“Mr. Finch,” Sophia began, “this is perhaps not the ideal moment—”
“I know it is unconventional,” Arthur said, and his cheeks flushed a deeper pink.
“But I have never been very good at convention. You must have noticed. I say the wrong thing at the wrong time, and I stand in corners when I ought to be dancing, and I cannot seem to master the art of saying one thing while meaning another. So I thought — well, I thought I might simply say what I mean.”
He leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees, his eyes fixed on Sophia’s face with the desperate sincerity of a man who had rehearsed this speech a dozen times and was now delivering it to an audience of three instead of one.
“I am not a wealthy man,” he said. “I am not a titled man. I am not the sort of man who sets drawing rooms ablaze with his wit or his charm or his prospects. But I am a steady man, Miss Ainsworth. A reliable man. And I believe that a marriage founded on mutual respect and shared domestic purpose is a marriage that can weather any storm.”
Sophia felt the words settle over her like a shroud.
“I have a modest estate in Surrey,” Arthur continued, his voice gaining confidence now that he had found his rhythm.
“It is not grand, but it is comfortable. The household requires a firm hand — the previous housekeeper was somewhat lax with the still room accounts — and I have often thought that a wife with a talent for organisation and a steady temperament would find great satisfaction in bringing order to the place. The gardens, too, are in need of attention. Nothing that a dedicated mistress could not set right within a season or two.”
A firm hand. A steady temperament. The still room accounts.
Sophia could see it, suddenly and with terrible clarity: the years stretching ahead of her, each one identical to the last. The household ledgers.
The linen inventories. The careful management of servants and menus and social obligations.
Arthur would come home from his modest business in the village, and she would tell him about the new curtains for the morning room, and he would smile his earnest smile and call her his dear girl, and she would die by inches in a house that smelled of lavender and slow decay.
She would never write another essay. She would never sit in a quiet room and argue about Turner with a woman like Lady Beatrice. She would never feel the salt wind on her face and hear a voice say I look forward to it with the weight of a promise that had not yet been broken.
“You are very kind, Mr. Finch,” she heard herself say.
“I do not wish to be kind. I wish to be honest.” He reached for her hand, and she let him take it because pulling away would have required more cruelty than she could summon.
His palm was warm and slightly damp. “I know that you are a woman of considerable intellect. I have always admired that about you. But I also believe that a woman’s truest fulfilment lies in the domestic sphere — in the management of her household, in the raising of her children, in the quiet satisfaction of a well-ordered life. Do you not agree?”
The question hung in the air between them, and Sophia understood that he was not asking.
He was assuming. He was offering her a future he had already furnished, a life he had already arranged, a cage he had already gilded and was now holding open with the expectation that she would walk into it and thank him for the privilege.
She did not answer. She could not answer. Her throat had closed around all the words she wanted to say — I write essays that make people uncomfortable, I kissed a man I am supposed to despise, I want a life that is larger than your still room accounts, and none of them would come out.
Mr. Denbigh cleared his throat. “Mr. Finch. I believe Miss Ainsworth and I were in the middle of a conversation of some importance.”
Arthur blinked. He looked from Mr. Denbigh to Sophia to Lady Eleanor, and something in his expression shifted, the slow dawning of a man who had walked into a room and failed to notice that the furniture had been rearranged.
“I see,” he said. “I have interrupted something.”
“You have interrupted a proposal of marriage,” Mr. Denbigh said. “My proposal. I am awaiting Miss Ainsworth’s response.”
Arthur’s hand dropped from Sophia’s. His face went through several expressions in rapid succession, surprise, hurt, embarrassment, and finally a careful blankness that looked expensive on him, like a coat he had borrowed and did not know how to wear.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “I had no idea.”
“Nor should you have.” Mr. Denbigh’s tone was not unkind, but it was final. “These matters are generally conducted in private.”
“Of course. Of course.” Arthur rose, and his chair scraped against the floor with a sound like a wounded animal. “Lady Eleanor. Miss Ainsworth. I shall call another time.”
He did not look at Sophia as he left. The door closed behind him with a soft click, and the room seemed to exhale.
Mr. Denbigh turned back to her. “Well, Miss Ainsworth? I believe I have been patient.”
Sophia’s hands were cold. She pressed them flat against her skirt and felt the texture of the muslin beneath her fingers, cheap fabric, last year’s pattern, the best her mother could afford.
Everything in the room told the same story.
The faded upholstery. The single vase of hothouse flowers, already drooping.
The clock on the mantel that had belonged to her grandmother and had been pawned once already, redeemed only because Benedict had sold his hunter to raise the funds.
She thought of the diamond ring waiting in Mr. Denbigh’s pocket. She had not seen it yet, but she knew it was there. Men like Mr. Denbigh did not propose without the ring.
She thought of Greenly Hall in winter, the east wing open to the sky, the rain coming through the roof and pooling on the floorboards her great-grandfather had laid with his own hands.
She thought of Alistair’s mouth on hers, and the way he had pulled back as though the kiss had burned him, and the words he had not said.
“I require time,” she said.
Lady Eleanor made a sound, a small, strangled thing that might have been a sob if she had permitted it to become one. Mr. Denbigh’s expression did not change, but something flickered behind his eyes. Disappointment, perhaps. Or confirmation of a suspicion he had already formed.
“Time,” he repeated.