You have avoided your obligations long enough.
Quarter to ten.
The lodge.
V.
She read it twice, as if extra repetitions might change the words. They did not. They sat on the page with the same infuriating certainty Victor always carried, as if the world had no choice but to arrange itself around his decisions.
Avoided your obligations?
She almost laughed, though there was no humor in it. He summoned her as if she belonged in a ledger, a figure that had not yet been accounted for.
“Gwen,” Arabella hissed softly, craning her neck. “Is it a proposal? Is it a duel? Is it a scandal?”
“It is a summons,” Gwen replied, folding the paper sharply. Her fingers shook only a little.
Eleanor’s eyes narrowed. “Fromhim?”
“Yes.” Gwen nodded.
Arabella’s mouth fell open. “Oh.”
Eleanor’s lips thinned. “What does he want?”
“It does not say.”
Arabella’s eyes flicked to the nearest clock, a handsome gilt thing that stood on a bracket above the entrance arch. “It is already nine,” she whispered. “You would never reach the edge of town in time. Unless he has sent a carriage.”
“Of course, he has sent a carriage,” Eleanor drawled. “He would not leave that to chance.”
Gwen clutched the note harder, feeling the edges press into her palm. “It does not matter. I am not going.”
Arabella’s hand shot out, catching her wrist. “Not going?”
“He made it abundantly clear,” Gwen said, trying to keep her voice steady, “that this is an arrangement and nothing more. He does not love me. He will not. There is no future for us. I will not cling to a man who has already told me the limits of his regard.”
Arabella’s eyes softened. “Gwen…”
“Do you wish to see him?” Eleanor asked quietly.
Gwen closed her eyes for a moment. She saw Victor’s hands on her skin, felt the careful way he had held her when she hadcome apart in his arms, heard the rasp in his voice when he had spoken of a childhood devoid of softness.
“Yes,” she whispered. Then, firmer, “No. I do not know.”
“Then you must pretend you do not,” Eleanor said briskly. “You have made your decision. You will not drop your plans for a man whose walls have stood longer than you have been alive.”
Gwen nodded. The logic steadied her, even as the ache in her chest grew.
“Still,” Arabella interjected, biting her lip, “if you mean to end it, you ought to do so properly. A note. A farewell. Something. Otherwise, he will keep seeking you out. You cannot afford asnagin your plan.”
Eleanor nodded her head in agreement. “If you do not go, he may grow persistent. And persistence from a man like him is dangerous. Better to look him in the eye and say that it is over.”
Gwen looked around the glittering room, the swirl of gowns and the gleam of jewels. She felt oddly disconnected from it all, as if she were standing behind glass. Men moved about like pieces on a chessboard, ladies fluttered like decorative birds, and somewhere beyond these walls, a carriage waited to carry her toward a future she could not have imagined a few months ago.
“He will think I have come for money,” she said dully. “For obligation, not for him.”
“That may be for the best,” Eleanor answered. “Let him believe it.”
