Chapter 19
At first, he did not say anything.
He stood in the doorway of the back room, with his hat in his hand and his coat still on his shoulders and the street dust still on the toes of his boots, and looked at her.
He looked at her steadily and slowly and in a particular silence. When he had walked into the shop one minute ago, he had known what he was about to see. He was now obliged to do some quick interior rearrangement on the subject.
Alice did not move.
She did not move because she could not. Her hand had gone to her throat of its own accord, to the place where the pendant ought to have hung (she had put it away three days ago because she had not trusted herself to wear it since the orangery).
Her other hand had gone to her hip, to the place where the silk fell against her curves, and she found that her body had decided to remain where it was and to let him look without consulting her.
From the doorway, Mrs. Hatcher, who had not lost her composure once in twenty years of dressing brides, said in a very polite voice, “Lady Joanna, I believe you mentioned you wished to see the new patterns that have just arrived from Brussels. Shall we?”
“Yes,” Joanna said from beyond the door in a voice that suggested she understood exactly what was happening and proposed to be entirely complicit in it. “Yes, Mrs. Hatcher. The Brussels patterns. I have been looking forward to seeing them.”
“They are at the front, Lady Joanna.”
“At the front, Mrs. Hatcher. By all means.”
The two of them moved away, and the paneled door quietly clicked shut.
Cassian and Alice were left alone.
It was, Alice realized after a moment, the first time they had been left alone in a room with the door closed.
The orangery had had three glass doors, an open walk, and an entire household at the windows.
The terrace at Almack’s had been four feet from two hundred people.
The dance floor had been the most public possible place.
This was not.
This was a small, warm paneled room with a chair, a screen, and a long mirror. The door had a latch on it, and the latch was at present holding the door shut.
Cassian set his hat down on the chair. He did not come closer.
“Lady Alice.”
“Your Grace.”
“You are—”
“Yes.”
“That is—”
“Yes.”
“Alice.”
“Your Grace, I am quite aware of what I am wearing.”
“Yes.”
He came closer by perhaps two feet, which was as close as he had been to her since that morning four days ago, and stopped there.
He did not touch her. He had, she could see, decided very precisely how close he was going to come.
He had calculated it the way he calculated everything.
He had decided that two feet, in a paneled room with a latched door and a young woman in a silk dress that did not reach her knees, was the precise and impossible distance at which he could remain a respectable man.
“You look…” he trailed off.
“I look what?”
“This would look well with my gift.”
She lifted her hand back to her throat to the place the pendant ought to have been.
“Which you are not wearing.”
“You do not own me.”
“Yet.”
“We shall see, Your Grace, whether you ever do.”
He smiled.
The smile was not an entirely respectable smile. It was the small, one-sided private smile he had worn on the dance floor. It was the smile of a man whose patience had run out.
“That argument again, Alice.”
“That argument again, Your Grace.”
He took half a step closer. She did not step back.
“The things,” he rasped, “I would do to you in this dress.”
She felt the words land on her skin. They landed on the side of her neck where his mouth had been four days ago and on the small of her back where his hand had been four days ago and on the inside of her thigh where his fingers had been four days ago, and in each of those places, she felt them like a particular heat that was not, strictly speaking, a result of anything that had happened in this room.
“Your Grace.”
“The things you would beg me for until you surrendered.”
“Cassian.”
She had said it without meaning to. She had said his Christian name in a small, paneled room on Bond Street with the door latched and her hand at her throat, and she watched his face briefly go still.
It was the stillness she was beginning to recognize.
She had touched a wound he had not expected her to.
He drew a long breath and let it out slowly. He did not, she noticed, draw it altogether steadily.
“Even looking at you hurts,” he said, his voice low.
She did not know what to say to that.
She did not say anything. Instead, she let her hands hang at her sides and stood very still in the silk dress, letting him look at her the way he was looking at her.
For two years, he had been pretending he had not been looking. Now, he stopped pretending.
After a long moment, she said, “Your Grace.”
“Yes, Alice.”
“I do not think we should marry.”
He went still.
He went still in a different way this time. He went still in the way of someone who had been hit where he had not been expecting to be hit and needed a moment to register the location.
“No?”
“No.”
“And yet you are trying on wedding clothes.”
“I am trying on underclothes.”
“You are trying on the underclothes for the night on which I shall make you mine.”
“Cassian—”
“You said yes to me four days ago, Alice, in your father’s orangery.
You said yes to me again that same morning, in your father’s morning room.
You said yes to me last night in the letter you sent Joanna in which you accepted the invitation to her house party.
You have said yes to me a great many times in the last week, and now, you are saying what? ”
“I want children, Your Grace.”
He did not answer.
“I want a family, Cassian. I have wanted one since I was nine years old. I have wanted one since the day my sister was born and my mother put her in my arms. I had so much love I did not know what to do with, and I had to give it to the maids and the puppies and the kitchen boys because there was no one else to give it to. I have wanted a family of my own since I was a child, and I will not give it up. Not for a title. Not for a duchy. Not even for you.”
He was looking at her face.
He was not, she registered with a slow thump of her heart, looking at her body anymore.
He had stopped somewhere in the middle of what she had just said and was now looking at her face.
His face had cycled through several emotions, and what was on it now was something Alice did not have a name for but suspected was very close to pain.
“Alice.”
“Cassian, I will not. I cannot. Since the orangery, I have spent my days asking myself whether I could give it up for you, and the answer is no. I am sorry. I am very sorry. I have dreamt of a nursery since I was nine years old. I do not think my heart was made for an empty one. And as much as I have come to—” She broke off.
She had been about to say something she had decided, four days ago against an orange tree, that she would not say.
The thing she had been about to say belonged in the bright, paneled room on Bond Street to a man who had moved up their wedding to seven days from today and who had not yet been told, by her or by anyone, what she felt about him.
It was the one piece of information she had decided she would not give him until she had made up her mind.
She closed her mouth and breathed very slowly.
“As much as I have come to tolerate your company,” she said, more quietly, “I will not give that up.”
He looked at her. He looked at her for a long while.
The clock on Mrs. Hatcher’s small mantelpiece, which Alice had not noticed until this moment, ticked four times, five times, six times.
“You can still have my company, Alice.”
“Cassian—”
“You can still have my company. We can do a great many things together, you and I. We can have the house and the orchard and the lake. We can have the dancing and the dinners and the small house in town for the Season. We can have a great deal of pleasure in each other. We can have all of that, Alice, without—”
“Without children.”
Cassian nodded. “Without children.”
“That is not enough, Cassian.”
“No.”
“I am sorry.”
“Do not be sorry.” He closed the distance between them.
He did not touch her. He came to within six inches of her and stopped, his arms hanging at his sides.
He had decided he could stand six inches from her while she was wearing a silk nightgown without touching her, and he was holding to the decision.
His face was perhaps four inches above her own. His voice when he spoke was very quiet.
“Alice.”
“Yes?”
“Listen to me. You can have what you want.”
She did not understand him. She did not understand him at all.
She looked up at him, feeling the color drain from her face, and said in a small voice she did not recognize as her own, “What?”
“You can have what you want. You can have your family. You can have your children. You can have a house full of them, Alice. You can have six of them if it pleases you. You can have them with whatever husband you choose. I shall not stand in your way.”
“Cassian—”
“Listen, Alice. I shall have a carriage ready at the back of the chapel. On the morning of our wedding, you can choose. You can walk down the aisle and become my wife, or you can take the carriage instead and go where it takes you, and I will not follow.”
“Cassian—”
“You will be ruined; I will not pretend otherwise. You will be ruined and shunned by the ton, and your sister will be hurt by the scandal, and you will not in another twenty-five years be received in the houses you have been received in until now. But you will be free. You will be free to marry whomever you choose when the scandal has died and to have as many children as you choose and to live whatever life you choose. I cannot give you a family. I cannot. But I can give you the freedom to find one without me.”
“Cassian…”
“That is my offer.”
She put her hand to her mouth because she could not decide what to say if she did not, and she did not want to find out in front of him.
He gently took her wrist and lowered her hand. “Alice.”
“Yes.”
“You have one week. Seven days. Come to the house party. Come tomorrow morning as we agreed. Let me show you what it could be like. Spend the week at Langton. See the rooms, see Joanna, see the orchards. Matthew will be there as well and Richard. See what your life could be like in it, and then, on the morning of our wedding, decide. I will not press you. I will not court you. I will not, in any of the seven days, speak to you about silk nightgowns. I will give you the week to decide. And whatever you decide, I will accept.”
“You—”
“You will not be trapped in this.”
“Cassian.”
“Let me show you.”
He stepped back two feet, picked up his hat from the chair, looked at the door, and then looked back at her one more time.
“Mrs. Hatcher,” he said, raising his voice slightly. “Lady Alice shall take the silk nightgown. And anything else of the kind you have in store. You may send the bill to Langton House.”
“Your Grace,” said Mrs. Hatcher.
“Have a good day, Lady Alice.”
“Have a good day, Your Grace.”
He left the room.
Alice heard the bell at the front of the shop ring and the particular tread of his boots on the floorboards and then the bell again as the door closed behind him.
She stood there for a long minute, looking at herself in the long mirror.
This time, she did not look like a woman a man might want to mark as his. She looked like a woman who had just been given a choice.