He held it up, turning it in his palm, and pressed the memory of that night against every detail he knew of Lady Lavinia: the tilt of her chin, the gleam in her eyes, the timbre of her laugh.
There was no doubt.
He reached for the second object in the drawer, a small thing wrapped in linen. It was a single hairpin that she had left behind on a storm-wrecked afternoon when Lavinia had instructed Sophia in the schoolroom. The pin was nothing but a plain bit of wire tipped in cheap glass. Yet even in his blindness, he had not been able to throw it away. He set the two artifacts on the blotter side by side.
He stared at them, fists balled on either side, shaking.
All this time. All this time, you idiot. You had her here, and you did not see her, and now you've lost her forever.
Tristan ran his hand over his face, then gripped his hair as if he could wrench out the answer by force. He tried to slow his breathing, but it would not slow. He was on fire and sinking in ice, and the paradox made him want to smash everything in reach.
He swept the contents of the desk onto the floor. The inkwell, the papers, the silver pen knife. The crash gave him the smallest satisfaction. He slammed the drawer shut, then yanked it open again, as if the force of his rage might summon her back into being.
Tristan could feel himself coming apart. He saw the man he had been—uncompromising, like an immovable object—and despised him. He saw every moment with Lavinia replayed.
He paced to the fireplace, then back, then to the window and back again. He considered writing her a letter. He consideredriding to Pembroke at once. He considered a thousand things, all useless.
You cannot let her marry him. You cannot let her go.
Striding to the door, he rang the bell with such force that the cord snapped from its fitting. He waited, vibrating with impatience, until the butler appeared at the door.
"Your Grace," the man began, but Tristan cut him off.
"Send for my solicitor. At once."
The butler’s eyes widened, but he bowed and left without further question.
Lavinia sat in the drawing room of Pembroke Manor, waiting for nothing and everything, or perhaps only for the next thing to happen. She thought that if she stayed absolutely still, the future might not arrive.
However, the door burst open with a violence that nearly toppled the vase on the escritoire. Nancy entered first, trailed by Hester, then Moira, and finally Fiona, who had never once raised her voice above the din of a drawing room but was now white-faced.
Lavinia barely had time to set her cup down before Nancy seized both her hands. “Is it true?” Nancy said. “Have you really accepted Lord Dawnford?”
Lavinia blinked, once. “News travels with remarkable speed in your house,” she replied, though she could see at a glance that Nancy would not be dissuaded by jokes.
“It’s in the air!” Hester cried, circling the sofa to plant herself at Lavinia’s shoulder. “Lady Montfort has told everyone. And Lord Dawnford is hunting the Lord Chamberlain for a license.”
Moira shut the door with a bang and regarded Lavinia with her arms folded, and her head cocked like a hawk. “You look as if you’ve been shot,” she said. “Or as if you’re about to be.”
Fiona found her way to Lavinia’s other side. “I do not understand. Not even a fortnight ago, you said—” she trailed off, but the question was plain.
Lavinia did not let herself shrink under their scrutiny. Instead, she drew a long, careful breath. “It is true,” she said, keeping her voice perfectly level. “I am to marry Lord Dawnford. By next week, it will all be over.”
A chorus of dismay broke out at once, voices overlapping like the crash of hailstones on the conservatory roof. Nancy, tears already threatening to betray her, pressed harder. “But why, Lavinia? You cannot stand him. You told me yourself he was a vulture. A snake. A?—”
“A necessary solution,” Lavinia cut in, freeing one hand to pat Nancy’s knuckles.
Moira huffed and marched to the hearth, setting her back to the fire as if better to block Lavinia’s retreat. “Marriage without love is a prison. I’ve seen what it does to women—turns them to shadows, or else to monsters.”
“I am neither,” Lavinia replied, fixing her with a stare.
Fiona leaned in. “If there is anything, anything at all, we can do to help, you need only say.”
Nancy broke in again with her voice trembling. “He is a brute, Lavinia! I know you do not care for society’s opinions, but this is more than that. There are rumors of what he has done to other women.” She squeezed Lavinia’s hands until the knuckles showed white. “Please, say you will not do it.”
Lavinia’s composure was now held by the thinnest margin. “It is too late. The arrangements are made.” She stopped, biting off the rest. They did not need to know the full misery of her accounts.
“There must be another way,” Hester said, almost pleading. “You are clever. Smarter than any of us. Surely you can find it.”
