“Whatever you think best,” Lavinia said.
Lady Montfort narrowed her eyes, suspicious of the easy acquiescence. “I have not finished with you, Lavinia. Not by a long shot. But for now, I must salvage what is left of the Pembroke name. If you have any shame at all, you will at least try to look pleased.”
“Delirious with joy,” Lavinia said, but Lady Montfort had already swept from the room, the feathers in her turban bobbing like the prow of a ship in high seas.
Frances waited until the door had shut, then rushed to Lavinia’s side. “You cannot do this,” she whispered. “You cannot give up your life for me.”
“I would give up far more,” Lavinia replied, “if it meant you would never know what it is to be at someone else’s mercy.”
Frances’s lips trembled. “I don’t deserve?—”
Lavinia pressed a kiss to her sister’s forehead. “Deserving has nothing to do with it. Now go on, let Mrs. Down see to your breakfast. I must prepare for my last day at Evermere Hall.”
Frances nodded, tears threatening again, but left without argument. Lavinia closed the door softly behind her, then pressed her palms to the edge of the dressing table and stared at her reflection.
She saw, for a moment, the ghost of the girl she had been: hopeful, unbroken, still believing in miracles. She had notknown then what it cost to love someone enough to give up everything.
She brushed her hair and arranged it into a bun at her nape, pulled on the neatest of her day dresses, and fastened the buttons so slowly one would think she was dressing for her own execution. As she reached for her gloves, she realized her hands were shaking.
She would not let it show. Not for anything.
“Enter.”
Tristan did not look up as he spoke. The tapping on the study door was not the insistent sort that announced an emergency, nor the tentative kind employed by servants.
Lavinia stepped into the room.
Tristan rose, knocking his chair against the runner in his haste, and was forced to catch it by the backrest. “Lady Lavinia,” he began, “I had not expected you this morning.”
She did not cross the threshold, only lingered at the very edge. He cleared his throat, gesturing to the seat before his desk. “Please… do sit.”
“I will not be long,” Lavinia said. Her gaze traveled along the shelves, the mantel, the empty grate, but she did not look at him directly.
Tristan, caught entirely off guard by the chill in the air, tried to recover. He remembered the conversation at their last meeting, the way she had recoiled when he’d corrected Sophia, the storm that had crackled in the space between them. It was clear, even now, that she had not forgiven him.
Taking a breath he said, “Lady Lavinia, I must apologize for my outburst yesterday. My words?—”
“Today shall be my last lesson with Lady Sophia.”
The room contracted around the words, its dimensions suddenly two sizes too small. For a moment, he could only stare. “Your last?” He kept his tone even, but he could not quite suppress the urge to steady himself against the desk. “Is this… have I?—?”
“You have done nothing,” Lavinia said, her voice so dry it might have been baked in the sun. “The decision is my own.”
He drew a slow breath. “I am sorry, nonetheless, if I have caused offense.”
“None taken, Your Grace,” she replied. “You were quite clear about my station and the limits of my role.”
He caught the barb, but let it pass. “May I ask, then, why you are leaving?”
Lavinia’s eyes found his at last, cool and blue and unassailable. “I am to be married,” she said, as if discussing the weather or the price of coal.
It landed with the force of a rifle shot.
“To whom?” The words slipped out.
“Lord Dawnford.”
Tristan’s hand closed around the edge of the desk. “Dawnford,” he repeated, as if the syllables were an affront to decency itself. “I was unaware you had accepted his suit.”
