“I don’t,” Lizzie admitted. “You know how those things are. Everyone in the county will be there since you and Hugh are in residence and you’ll be bringing two additional ducal couples to the fray. They’ll push in and talk too much and ask for too many dances and it all seems…” She dipped her head. “It’s too much.”
“I know you don’t love these gatherings,” Amelia said carefully. “I know they are silly sometimes, and overheated and the punch is bad. But they are also a way to meet and thank Hugh’s people for their hard work and support.”
Lizzie folded her arms. “It isn’t as if I don’t make myself available. I visit the village regularly and call on a great many friends and tenants.”
“Of course you do,” Amelia rushed to agree. “I only mean…Lizzie, I worry about you. Your desire to avoid all gatherings like this, I fear, will limit your choices in the future.”
Lizzie shifted. “I assume you mean my marital choices.”
“Yes, to be blunt about it. It isn’t that anyone expects you to marry tomorrow. You are young and have many years to find the right person. But if you refuse to look or make any attempt, then how will you ever do so?”
“Hugh will arrange a marriage for me eventually,” Lizzie said with a little shrug that dismissed her darker feelings on the subject. “We will discuss what match will make the most sense from a financial perspective and a title advantage. I will meet the person and if I feel I could get along with them on a basic level, then we’ll marry.”
Amelia stared at her, lips parted with surprise and, it seemed, horror. “Lizzie!”
Lizzie shook her head. “What? That is how it is done in our world.”
“Perhaps in some corners of our world, but never ours. You cannot want such a bloodless, loveless union. Not when you are surrounded by friends who are made so happy by love! By passion. You cannot tell me that you want something less than a true union of the heart.”
“Idon’twant that,” Lizzie insisted, though there was a twinge of regret in her heart that she shoved away so the words rang strong and true.
“A great many people have said the same,” Amelia insisted, worrying her hands before her. “But you know love is true. That it’s real.”
“I also know it isn’t for me,” Lizzie said as firmly as she could muster.
Amelia stared at her, eyes wide and shiny with tears that didn’t fall. Tears of pain and pity and loss. Lizzie hated that she had put them there, but this had been a conversation a long time in the making and perhaps it was best to have it and be done with it.
Amelia cleared her throat. “Perhaps you could—”
Lizzie held up a hand to interrupt her. “I know you mean well. I love you more than anything for it. But I cannot risk what you are describing, Amelia. I won’t.”
Now Amelia’s jaw set and the expression on her face went from grief to anger. “I hate that Aaron Walters did this to you. I hate that he took something you feel you cannot get back.”
“Virginity is not retrievable,” Lizzie said, and felt her cheeks heat with a blush.
“It’s not your virginity I’m referring to,” Amelia said, arching a brow.
“Well, I’m not sorry,” Lizzie declared, brightening her tone as best she could. “I mean, I am. Of course I am. But what I went through…it brought you to Hugh, didn’t it? So there’s…something good from the bad, and that is enough for me.”
Amelia was silent for a beat, and then she whispered, “We want you to be happy, my love.”
Lizzie stepped forward and took her sister-in-law’s hand. She lifted it to her heart, and for a moment the two women simply held stares, connected as they had been since the first moment Lizzie met Amelia. They’d been true sisters ever since, and she knew Amelia would feel her heart if she allowed it.
“Then let me stay home,” Lizzie said softly. “I am not up for the assembly tonight. Iwilldo it some other time.”
Amelia’s breath left her lips in a shuddering sigh, but Lizzie knew it was a sound of surrender. She’d won this battle, though it didn’t feel like a triumph of any kind. When she saw Amelia’s pity, it felt more like a defeat. “If that is what you want, I will speak to Hugh.”
“Very good,” Lizzie said with a sigh of her own. “Come, I was thinking about going to the music room to practice my pianoforte. I’ll walk with you to my brother’s study.”
Amelia nodded and the two linked arms as they exited her private parlor and walked down the hall together. “You won’t make a fuss with Katherine and Charlotte, will you?” Lizzie asked as they neared Hugh’s study.
Amelia shook her head. “I’ll tell them you felt under the weather. A slight headache.”
Lizzie was going to answer her, to thank her for her discretion, but she was distracted as Morgan rounded a corner from the opposite side of the hall and came toward them with a long, certain stride. He was wearing a jacket today, and the buttons strained slightly against that broad chest.
He smiled as he saw them standing a few feet from Hugh’s office. A bright, wide smile that made Lizzie want to return the expression, no matter how fraught her morning had been. But she fought the urge and merely inclined her head in his direction as a greeting, then squeezed Amelia’s hand and slipped away from the both toward the music room. She hoped there she could find a little peace.
It seemed the last place it existed for her in this house. And she needed to lock everything out, especially Morgan Banfield, and find that peace again.
