“I don’t understand why I can’t just marry Fletcher. You and father were great friends with the Greystones. You know him, you know he is a good man. I won’t want for anything with him, either.”
“Because the world is not that simple. Because we made an agreement with Rotherfeld that we cannot break.”
“But Mother—”
“No, Louisa. Youwillmarry Rotherfeld. I am done discussing this matter. Finish your tea.”
Instead, Louisa left the room.
* * *
“I gave her my heart. She said she had to think about it.”
Fletcher was three servings of whiskey into his night at the club. He felt like he was swimming. The room was spinning. Everything was funny.
“All right, my drunk friend,” Owen said. “Let’s start again. You talked to Louisa.”
“I told her I love her, and I want to marry her, and she said she has to think about it.”
“In Louisa’s defense, sheisengaged to another man.”
“She’s going to marry that buggerer Rotherfeld, and I will die alone.” He saidbuggererwith a couple of extraers.
“Sohe’sdrunk,” said Lark, sitting across from Fletcher.
“You won’t die alone,” said Owen. “You’re a wealthy man with a title. If you made it known you wanted to get married, families would start throwing their daughters at you.”
“But I want Louisa.”
“What did she say, exactly?” asked Hugh, who had mostly been quiet through this conversation.
What had she said? It was a little fuzzy now, truth be told. “I told her I love her and want to marry her. I offered to go with her when she tells Rotherfeld their engagement is off, but she said she had to do it herself.”
“That’s promising,” said Owen.
“But otherwise, her reaction was…understated. I told her I love her, and she treated it like a small matter. Like a small task to which she had to attend.”
“I’m sure you’re exaggerating,” said Lark. “I saw you speaking together at the Atherton ball. She cares for you.”
“She said so, but she didn’tactlike it. And she said she needs time. But there’s no time!”
Owen rolled his eyes and took Fletcher’s glass away. “No more whiskey for you.”
“I recognize the wedding is less than two weeks away, but maybe she just needs a couple of days to sort out her affairs,”said Hugh. “She needs to break the engagement, which is not always easy.”
“Maybe.”
Owen patted his knee. “You did the right thing. You made it clear how you feel. And it sounds like she intends to end her engagement to Rotherfeld, so you’ve won, my friend.”
“I won’t have won until she says she’ll marry me.”
“She will, my friend, she will.”
Everyone else seemed to agree.
Fletcher wished he could have more faith that what everyone was telling him was true. He could see dozens of ways this could go wrong. Louisa could decide she loved Rotherfeld after all. Or she could decide she wanted Rotherfeld’s wealth and power. That was very unlike Louisa, but stranger things had happened. Rotherfeld could decide not to end the engagement for whatever reason. Likely he needed Louisa more than she needed him.
He tried to tell himself everything would work out. Still, Fletcher spent the next hour swirling in his cups. Sobriety eluded him, especially once an attendant handed him another snifter of whiskey. He sipped it as his friends discussed whatever their own days had been like.
