"Lillian..."
"If you will excuse me." She rose, smoothing her skirts with hands that trembled slightly. "I find I have developed a headache. I believe I shall retire early."
She left before he could respond, and she did not look back.
Chapter Seventeen
"It was nothing. I am making too much of it."
Lillian paced the blue room while Rosanne watched from her perch on the bed, her expression troubled.
"It does not sound like nothing," Rosanne said carefully. "It sounds as though he took your ideas and presented them as his own."
"Perhaps he did not realise what he was doing. Men are often careless about such things; they do not mean to claim credit, they simply…...Forget where they heard something."
"And the comment about ladies not being interested?"
Lillian stopped pacing. That was harder to explain away.
"He has been so attentive," she said, more to herself than to Rosanne. "So interested in everything I have to say. How can that be the same man who dismissed me so casually in front of others?"
"Perhaps because they are not the same thing." Rosanne's voice was gentle but firm. "Being interested in private is easy. It costs nothing. But acknowledging a woman's intelligence in public, treating her as an equal when other men are watching, that is different. That requires a man to risk being seen as unconventional, even foolish."
Lillian sank onto the edge of her bed, her head aching in truth now.
"Daniel never did that," she heard herself say. "Whatever his faults, and Heaven knows they are numerous, he never pretended I had not spoken. He argued with me. He challenged my ideas. He told me I was wrong when he thought I was wrong. But he never..." Her voice caught. "He never acted as though my thoughts were his to claim."
"No. He did not."
They sat in silence for a moment. Lillian thought about the conversations she had shared with Daniel; the debates about estate management, the philosophical discussions, the moments when he had looked at her with something like wonder and said she wasremarkable.
He had meant it. Whatever walls he had built, whatever fears he harbored, he had looked at her and seen an equal. Not a foolish woman. Not a convenient wife who would manage his household efficiently but an equal.
"It is probably nothing," she said again, but the words sounded hollow even to her own ears.
***
The following afternoon, Lady Smith summoned Lillian to her private sitting room.
The invitation arrived after luncheon, delivered by a footman with an expressionless face. Lillian followed him through the labyrinthine corridors, her stomach tight with apprehension.
Lady Smith was seated in a wing chair beside the fire, a glass of wine in her hand and an expression of satisfaction on her face.
"Miss Whitcombe. Sit."
Lillian sat, arranging her skirts with as much composure as she could muster.
"You have made quite an impression on Mr. Potter." Lady Smith's tone was conversational, but her eyes were sharp. "I had intended him for Lady Rosanne, but he has made his preferences clear. I am not in the habit of forcing matches where there is no inclination."
"Lady Smith, I assure you, I have not sought..."
"Of course you have not sought. You are not that sort of woman; I can recognise the type." She waved a dismissive hand. "The question is not whether you have pursued him, but whether you will accept what he offers."
Lillian felt her cheeks flush. "We have known each other less than a week. It would be premature to speak of..."
"Premature? Nonsense." Lady Smith set down her glass with a decisive click. "I have watched a great many courtships unfold in this house, Miss Whitcombe. I know when a man is serious, and Mr. Potter is serious. He will propose before the week is out and I would stake my reputation on it."
The words landed like stones in Lillian's stomach. A proposal. She had suspected it, but to hear it stated so baldly, so certainly, was something else entirely.
