“Tell me why it’s different.”
“You know why.”
“Because I’m a lady?”
“Yes, of course. And because you and I shouldn’t be out here together like this.”
“Still worried about scandal,” she said. “Sometimes I think worrying about scandal is the biggest part of you.”
“I think you must know it isn’t,” he said. “Besides, it’s you I’m worried about. I’ve put a lot of time and energy into you, Lady Lavinia, and I would hate to see it all go to waste because you aren’t protecting yourself from rumors. How do you think it would look to the gentlemen at this party if they found out you had been out here in the garden with me? No one would ever want to marry you.”
She looked away for a moment, and he thought he must have hurt her. It made him feel guilty, and he was about to say something—to apologize, tell her he hadn’t really meant it in the way it had sounded. Something had to be said.
But when she turned back to him, her eyes were blazing so fiercely that he imagined he could see sparkles of green in the darkness. “Is that what you think?” she demanded. “That a little thing like this could change my fortunes so entirely? Make it so that no one would ever want me?”
“I’m not criticizing you,” Seth said. “This is the way the world works. People get ideas about young ladies, and those ideas change everything. They just do.”
“You’ve never given me enough credit,” she snapped. “You always think I’m less than I am. You think I don’t understand the way the world works, that I’m out here speaking to you because I don’t realize it puts me at risk.
“Don’t you remember that I’m the one who saved you from a scandal in the first place? Don’t you recall the reason you decided you owed me in the first place? And now you think I’mnot clever enough to have made the choice to be here on my own,knowingthe risks.”
“I think you should go back inside,” Seth said firmly. “That’s what I think.”
“Well, Ican’tgo back inside,” Lady Lavinia insisted. “I can’t go, because you’re wrong about something else, too. You’re wrong to think that I’m going to struggle to find a gentleman who wants to be with me.”
“I never said that,” Seth told her, genuinely surprised. Was that what she had heard? What he’d said—what he believed he’d said—was that she was going to struggle to find love with someone. The idea that someone would want to be with her wasn’t difficult to believe at all. It was the idea that such a person would also be someone she would choose—that was what gave him trouble.
Lady Lavinia didn’t bother to clarify with him what he had meant to say to her. “Lord Hennington has proposed,” she said.
Seth felt as if he had been punched. “What?”
“He’s asked my father for permission to marry me.”
“I understand what proposal means,” Seth barked. He had a million questions and didn’t know what to ask. “When?” he managed. “When did this happen?”
“Just now,” Lady Lavinia said. “I just came from my father’s chambers, where Lord Hennington made his request.”
“He hardly knows you,” Seth objected.
“Do you think I don’t know that?”
“What did your father say?”
“He gave his permission.”
“So you’re going to marry Lord Hennington.”
“Lord Hennington says that he wants me to choose for myself,” Lady Lavinia said. “But I think you and I both know that I’m not going to have any real say in the matter. My father has made his decision.”
“Then why are you here?” Seth asked her. The question came out sounding unnecessarily gruff, but hewasirritated. “If you’ve already found a marriage, you don’t have any more reason to spend your time talking to me. What are you doing here? Why aren’t you off with your fiancé, celebrating?”
“I have nothing to celebrate!” Lady Lavinia burst out. “You’ve left a serious gap in my education, Your Grace.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know how to love him!”
He stared at her, unable to make sense of her words.
