Chapter 8 #2
"Ideal," Samuel said. "The Herveys are well-connected and the guest list is always broad enough that the word will spread efficiently." He paused. "I shall be there, as it happens. You can introduce us."
Thomas nodded.
“Yes, it is an excellent venue to do just that.”
“But there are things you must do while there, together,” Samuel said, sipping his tea once more.
“Things I must do?” Thomas repeated.
“Yes,” Samuel nodded. “You must treat her as your wife, in all the ways it means to be so. Otherwise the ton will say she is simply a replacement for her sister, that you have entrapped a well-liked woman, and that sympathy can turn to pity and then to gossip. The people around her need to keep up the narrative that she is your true wife, whatever might be happening behind closed doors and at your estate.”
Thomas tensed up.
“I do not think I can treat her in such a way,” he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Genevieve and I… we have an understanding-”
“An understanding is all well and good, but if the ton hears, they will twist it into something unsightly. You know this as well as I do,” Samuel sighed.
“I know, but—”
“No, there is no but,” Samuel shook his head. “If you are unable to treat her as she should be treated as your wife, in public, then she will be faced with the most atrocious rumors and speculation. Is that what you want for her?”
Thomas thought about Genevieve. He thought about her on their wedding morning, moving down the line of his staff with a composure that had left him quietly astonished.
He thought about her in the drawing room over the past weeks, present, warm, asking him questions about the estate that were the questions of someone who was paying genuine attention rather than performing interest.
He thought about what it would mean for her if the whispers continued, if the story of her sister's flight followed her into every room she entered for the next several years, attaching itself to her name like something she could never quite shake free of.
The thought produced in him a feeling that was adjacent to anger but quieter and considerably more resolute.
She had done nothing. She was entirely innocent of every aspect of this situation.
She had stepped into an impossible morning and conducted herself with a grace that he was still, if he were honest with himself, somewhat awed by.
"She does not deserve that. She should not have to carry any of this," he said.
"No," Samuel agreed simply. "She should not." He reached for the broadsheet. "So make sure she does not."
Thomas nodded, his shoulders sagging.
They sat together for another half hour, talking of other things: the progress on the eastern boundary fence, which Samuel had a view on, and a mutual acquaintance's new horse, which Samuel also had a view on, and the likelihood of the autumn being as wet as the previous one, on which Samuel reserved judgment.
Thomas rode home through the bright cold morning, feeling if not settled in the larger sense, then at least purposeful in the immediate one, which was the next best thing and would serve for the moment.
He rode back at a slower pace, which was entirely the horse's doing and not a thing he would have chosen for himself.
Thomas Harrington was not, by nature, a man given to contemplative ambling.
Contemplative ambling was for poets and people with uncomplicated interior lives, and Thomas had always suspected he qualified as neither.
He was thinking about the ball. More specifically, he was thinking about Genevieve at the ball, which was a more complicated proposition than it had any right to be.
He had watched her, in the way one watched things that were unexpected and therefore faintly difficult to categorize. She was not what he had anticipated. He was not entirely certain what he had anticipated, something quieter, perhaps, something more carefully contained, but it had not been this.
It had not been someone who laughed at things that genuinely struck her as funny rather than things that were socially appropriate to find amusing.
It had not been someone who asked the housekeeper about her sister's new baby with the focused enthusiasm of a person who actually wanted to know the answer.
It had not been someone who had, on one memorable occasion, nearly walked directly into a doorframe because she was attempting to carry a book, a cup of tea, and what appeared to be a small decorative cushion she had picked up for no reason he had ever been able to determine.
She was, in short, not particularly what he would have called polished. She was something considerably more disarming than that.
She did not deserve any of it. Not the whispers, not the sideways glances, not the particular social cruelty of being regarded as a replacement rather than a person.
She had done nothing except exist in cheerful, slightly chaotic proximity to a situation that had gone entirely wrong, and the world was proposing to make that her problem indefinitely.
He found that he objected to that. Not with any great heat. More with the quiet, settled objection of someone who had encountered something that was simply and plainly unfair. He decided, without much drama, that he did not intend to let it stand if it was within his power to prevent it.
Samuel was right. He needed to take her to the ball, and he needed to do it properly. Which meant he needed to speak to her. Properly. Without the careful distance he had been maintaining, which had seemed polite at the time and now seemed, on reflection, rather more like cowardice.
He nudged the horse into a slightly brisker pace.
He was not, he told himself, looking forward to the conversation. He was simply prepared to have it. There was an entirely meaningful distinction between those two things.
He was almost certain of it.