Chapter 20 #2
"You do not have that luxury, and neither, I am afraid, does she.
" His mother's gaze shifted to Amelia, not unkind, exactly, but unflinching.
"You married out of scandal, Sebastian, whatever affection came with it.
The only way to survive a scandal in this city is to stand in front of it, in your own ballroom, with your name on the invitations, so that the ton has nothing left to whisper about because you have shown them there is nothing to hide. "
Amelia felt the words land harder than expected, the reminder of exactly what their actions had cost them even now, even after everything. She kept her expression even, and felt Sebastian's hand tighten slightly against her back, as though he had felt the flinch she hadn't allowed her face to show.
"I will not have my wife paraded through a ballroom as an apology for existing."
"No one is asking her to apologize. I am asking her to be seen, on your arm, happy, in your own home, because that is the single most effective argument against every ugly rumor currently circulating, and considerably more effective than either of you hiding from it.
" She folded her hands, and for the first time, something almost pleading crept into her voice.
"I did not fight for this family's name through years of mismanagement simply to watch you finish the work of ruining it out of stubbornness. "
"Do not speak to me of mismanagement."
The room went very quiet.
Sebastian said nothing for a long moment, and Amelia watched the conflict of a man being asked to trust a version of his mother he had spent a decade guarding himself against move behind his eyes.
She wanted, badly, to simply tell him to refuse, to protect the fragile, private happiness they had only just found, and yet she understood that refusing outright would cost him something too, a version of peace with his mother he might not get another chance at.
"A ball," Amelia said, quietly, into the silence, "that is not too much to ask for."
Both of them turned to look at her.
"One evening. We host it properly, we stand in front of whatever rumors are circulating, and we give them nothing further to whisper about.
" She held Sebastian's gaze, steady, willing him to hear what she was offering.
Let her have this much. Let it be over quickly, and let us go back to what we were building before she arrived.
"And afterward, Your Grace returns to the dower house, and this family's business is once again conducted by the two people actually living in it. "
The Dowager Duchess's mouth curved, the smallest fraction, something that might have been respect. "That is an entirely reasonable proposal."
"It is my proposal to accept or refuse," Sebastian said, sharp, though Amelia felt some of the fight go out of him even as he said it, "not hers to negotiate on my behalf."
"Then accept it," his mother said simply, "because it is the same offer I came here to make, phrased rather better than I would have managed it myself."
He looked at Amelia, something unreadable moving across his face, and she watched him war with the old instinct to refuse simply because refusing felt safer than being managed by anyone, even her.
He said nothing for a long moment, jaw tight, and then, finally, gave a single, curt nod, and Amelia felt the whole room's tension ease by a fraction, though she suspected, watching the satisfied set of the Dowager Duchess's mouth, that she had simply traded one difficulty for another.
"One ball," he said finally, low. "And then she leaves us be."
"Agreed." His mother rose, already reaching for the small leather notebook she had apparently brought for precisely this purpose, and Amelia felt the first small flicker of unease at how quickly the woman's grief had reorganized itself into efficiency.
"I will stay and begin with the invitations this afternoon. "
It began, Amelia would think later, rather more like an invasion than the planning of a ball.
By the second day, the Dowager Duchess had commandeered the drawing room, the morning room, and a length of the east corridor entirely for the purpose of laying out fabric samples, and Amelia found herself standing before a table of ribbon in four shades of blue that all looked, to her admittedly untrained eye, essentially identical.
"This one," the Dowager Duchess said, holding a length of pale silk to the window light with the exacting attention of a woman who had spent thirty years running a household, "or this.
The first reads as youthful. The second reads as a duchess who has already secured her position and need not try quite so hard.
You will want to consider which impression you'd prefer to make, given the circumstances. "
"I confess I cannot tell the difference between them."
"That is because you have not spent a decade learning to see one.
There is a great deal you do not yet know, Amelia, which is precisely why I am here to manage it.
" She snapped her fingers. "The second. Amelia.
You will need three hundred place cards addressed by Thursday, and I have not yet had a firm answer on the orchestra. "
"I do not know the answer on the orchestra."
"Then you had best find it, hadn't you." It was said briskly, without malice, the way one might correct a new housekeeper still learning the running of a large establishment, and it was somehow worse for the absence of any unkindness in it at all.