Chapter 2 #2
"I mean it sincerely," Thomas said. "And I would never…
" he paused, selecting his words with care, his throat drying as if rebelling against the very thought of what he was to say.
"I would never wish Clarissa to enter into a marriage against her heart.
Whatever pain this causes me today, I would not have wanted that for her. "
He swallowed hard and looked down at his hands.
If she had just told him, to his face, that she was in love with another, perhaps he could have ended things in a way that benefited them both instead of leaving their families in shambles.
If she had been honest, perhaps he could have pieced together his heart.
The silence that followed was of a different quality from the one before. Something had shifted. Mr. Penrose moved away from the window, and Thomas had the distinct impression of a man steeling himself for a second blow after the first had already landed.
"There is another matter," Mr. Penrose said. "And I ask that you hear me out entirely before you respond."
Thomas studied him.
"Very well."
"You came here today intending to marry. Your need for an heir, for the continuation of your family's estate, none of that has changed with this morning's news," Mr. Penrose said delicately.
"No," Thomas agreed, carefully. "It has not."
He thought of the Harrington estate. Of his grandmother’s home. Of the portraits lining the gallery, the weight of a name that expected to be carried forward. Of a distant cousin in Northumberland, he had met precisely twice and had no wish to see inherit everything his family had built.
"Then," Mr. Penrose said, "I would ask you to consider a proposal."
He said it plainly, without embellishment, in the manner of a man who had learned long ago that plain words served better than dressed ones. He gestured to his younger daughter, who had not moved from her place by the fireplace.
Thomas looked at Genevieve.
She was looking at the floor. Then, as though feeling his gaze, she looked up, and their eyes met for what he realized was perhaps the first time they had ever truly done so. She was pale. She was frightened, he thought, though she was hiding it admirably. She did not look away.
He turned back to Mr. Penrose.
"You are asking me," Thomas said slowly, "to marry Genevieve. This morning."
"The contract between our families need not change. The chapel is arranged. The guests are expected." Mr. Penrose's voice was steady, but his hands, Thomas noticed, were not. "I am aware of what I am asking. I am aware that I have no right to ask it."
Thomas stood very still for a moment. Then, almost without meaning to, he sat back down.
He knew Genevieve Penrose in the way that one knows the younger sister of one's intended.
That is to say, barely at all. She had always been present at dinners and gatherings, quiet and pleasant, the sort of person whose absence one would notice but whose presence one rather took for granted.
He could not recall a single conversation with her alone.
She had always simply been there, on the periphery, polite and undemanding and entirely unexamined.
He felt a sudden and uncomfortable guilt about that.
He looked at her now with the deliberate attention he had never previously thought to offer her, as though seeing her properly for the first time, which he supposed he was.
She was composed in a way that struck him as remarkable, given the circumstances, her hands still, her chin level, her expression giving away very little.
He was aware she was a woman grown, but her auburn hair, green eyes, and gentle features made her seem more innocent than others her age.
An innocence that should not face a situation such as this.
There was something quietly determined in the set of her that he had not expected.
He wondered, with a discomfort he did not entirely understand, what else he had failed to notice.
She was not Clarissa. He was aware of that with a clarity that was almost unkind in its precision.
She did not fill a room the way Clarissa did, did not pull the light toward her.
But there was something in the steadiness of her, the way she was simply present and undemanding in the middle of all of this, that he found, against all expectation, that he could look at without flinching.
That was not nothing. That morning, it was most certainly not nothing at all.
"Does she—" he began. "Is Miss Genevieve amenable to this arrangement? Has she been consulted?"
"She has," Mr. Penrose said. "And she is."
Thomas looked at her again. She gave a small, precise nod that told him nothing about what she actually felt, and he found he respected her enormously for the composure of it.
He thought about what this morning had done to the Penrose family.
He thought about what Clarissa's flight would mean for their standing, for their name, for the quiet respectability that was the only currency they had.
He thought about Genevieve specifically, young, blameless, entirely uninvolved in any of this, and what it would mean for her marriage prospects to be the sister of a woman who had fled her wedding to a Harrington.
He thought about the Harrington estate.
He thought about Clarissa, which he immediately stopped doing because it created a deep ache in his chest that he did not know how to resolve. He looked at Genevieve once more.
She was still watching him with those steady green eyes, not pleading, not performing, simply waiting, as though she had already accepted whatever he decided and was merely present for the announcement.
Something about that quiet patience settled something in him he had not expected to find settled today.
"I will agree," he said at last. "On one condition."
Mr. Penrose straightened.
"Name it,” the older man replied. Thomas glanced over at Genevieve, who was watching him, like a small animal watching something that it could not decipher if it was a friend or a predator. He knew her life was in his hands.
"I would like to speak with Miss Genevieve," Thomas said. "Alone. Before any agreement is final… If she will permit it."
Genevieve looked at him steadily for a moment. She glanced at her parents, silently asking for reassurance. A soft blink from her father was the only small, quiet signal that she received. She turned back to him.
“Of course,” she nodded.
“The drawing room should be empty,” Mrs. Penrose said.
“We shall go there then,” Thomas said, standing up. He gently held out his arm for Genevieve. Gingerly, she wrapped her arm around his, the warmth seeping into his skin.
He needed to hear it from her if she was truly willing. His heart could not take another mistake.