“High praise,” he said solemnly though his eyes glinted with amusement.
They both chuckled, and for a moment the air between them felt lighter, less perilous. Yet beneath the ease, she felt something linger, almost an unspoken awareness of what such an arrangement would mean.
At last, she sighed, her laughter fading into a softer, steadier breath. “Very well then. I agree to marry you.”
He inclined his head, but she thought she caught a flicker of something deeper behind his composed expression. She wondered if it was relief, perhaps, or gratitude.
“All right then,” he echoed, looking slightly disheveled, but it suited him. “We shall start the preparations as soon as tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” she gasped.
“Why not?” he shrugged. “You have free rein to arrange everything.”
Against all better judgment, she relished the idea.
“Thank you,” she smiled. “I promise not to make it overly pompous.”
“Pomp away,” he grinned. “Let’s give those wicked tongues something to dwell on.”
That was another idea she liked.
As he turned toward the door, Cordelia’s fingers tightened around the brush in her lap.
“Good night… Cordelia,” he said her name again, and something tugged at the very strings of her heart.
“Good night… Mason.” She seized the chance to do the same.
It amused him. He closed the door behind him, leaving her in the quiet sanctity of her chamber.
She could stay here now as she had so desperately wished. She could keep her home, her independence, at least in part. So why did his proposal leave a faint ache in her chest, as though some small, fragile thing within her had broken?
Chapter Twenty
“You are looking very pleased with yourself, my dear,” the Dowager Duchess observed, her needle paused mid-stitch. “Have you frightened away another unwanted solicitor?”
Mason smiled faintly as he closed the door behind him. “Not today, Mother. I have come to tell you something rather more serious.”
She set her work aside at once, regarding him with patient expectation. The lamplight softened the fine lines about her eyes though the years had written their sorrows plainly upon her face. Yet, as ever, there was that air of quiet grace, hope worn not like a banner but like a stubborn flame that refused to be extinguished.
“I am going to marry Miss Brookes,” he said simply.
For a moment, her lips parted, as though she could scarcely believe she had heard aright. Then her whole countenancebrightened with an expression so unguardedly joyful that it stole his breath.
“Mason!” She rose, crossing to him with an agility that belied her years, and she took both his hands in hers. “You cannot know how happy that makes me.”
He chuckled softly, drawing her into an embrace. She was slight in his arms, and he was struck, as he always was, by how she had endured so much without letting bitterness take root.
“I think I can guess,” he murmured. “You and she must have been conspiring over tea these past weeks.”
He knew it was not true, but the jest made his mother laugh, and that was all he wanted to hear right now, that warm and untroubled laugh.
“She is a remarkable young woman. I have seen her sit with me for hours, never impatient, always ready to listen or to distract me with some amusing tale when she sees I am melancholy. And I believe she has brought more color into this house than it has seen in many years.”
He eased back to look at her properly. “Then you approve?”
“My dear boy,” she said, squeezing his hands, “I cannot imagine a lady more suited to you, not merely because she is intelligent and spirited, though she is both, but because I believe she seesyou for yourself. Not for your title, not for your position, but foryou.”
A warmth spread through him, unexpected and steadying as he revealed much more than he wanted to. “That is precisely what I fear,” he said, only half in jest. “It is a rare and disarming thing to be seen so clearly.”
