Louisa sighed. She had anticipated this reaction. “Let us calm down with the histrionics. I saw you speaking with your friend at the Atherton ball, and with the Marquess of Beresford, who, as it happens, is friends with some of my friends, and who let slip that you and he had an affair years ago.”
Daniel stared at her. He said nothing.
“I don’t judge you, to be clear. I’m also not naive. I know some men prefer their own sex. Greystone has a close friend who does, as well, and even though I don’t completely understand it, I don’t view it as wrong or sinful. What I do think, though, is that, again, you and I will not suit. I want…I want more than what you can offer. I want to be loved and desired, not just tolerated.”
“I could learn to love you with time.”
“Couldbeing the operative word.”
“Louisa, I—”
“Do you want the other reasons?”
He grunted affirmatively and threw his hand aside, as if he understood protest was futile. “Please.”
“The third is that my mother told me that have a business arrangement with my father that hinges on me marrying you. That does put me in a complicated spot because I do not wish to harm my father or his business prospects, so I don’t know what to do with that, aside from asking if it’s true.”
“It is true that your father and I have a business deal that is contingent on our wedding actually happening.”
Louisa was disappointed to have that confirmed. “I’m sure my delicate female brain is too weak to understand it,” she said with a raised eyebrow, “but that is something I intend to revisit later.”
“Then tell me the fourth reason.” Daniel’s tone had grown testy, and he crossed his arms now.
“If you must know, I love another, and he has offered for me, and I’d like to be free of this betrothal so that I might marry him instead, because I think he and Idosuit, and we’d be very happy together.”
“Greystone,” Daniel said flatly.
“I suppose it would probably surprise you to know that, until about a week ago, I didn’t know any of this. I didn’t know about your affair with Beresford until a couple of nights ago, in fact, although after the way you spoke with Lieutenant Hanley at the Atherton ball, I had some suspicions. And the one time you and I kissed, it felt… I felt nothing. There’s no connection, no passion between us. So I had begun to suspect you felt no lust for me, which I take no offense to, by the way, as I am old and plain and…well, it doesn’t matter. But I didn’t know I had romantic feelings for Fletcher—for Greystone—until recently, either. And now I’m rambling.”
“Do you find me so horrid that you must concoct all these reasons?”
“Concoct? No, not at all. I meant it when I said yes to your proposal. I wish you had not announced it so publicly, but it’s in the past. I thought the two of us would get on well. You’re very handsome and you have some charm. I thought we’d grow to care about each other over time. But it seems our engagement has unlocked all of this other information, and now that Fle—Greystone, now that Greystone has offered to me, I find myself contemplating the future. I am sorry. But surely this is a relief to you, too.”
“On the contrary,” Daniel said. He sighed. “You’re right, I do prefer my own sex. And I thought marrying might be a curefor it. I do genuinely like you, Louisa. You’re not plain. You’re very pretty. And you make me laugh.”
“Thank you, I think. But you know as well as I do that we will likely never mean more to each other than friends do. You don’t love me, and you never will. And so we are at this impasse, because I want to end our engagement, but my family will not let me, I suppose because of this business deal. And I think marrying Greystone would make me happy. I guess I can’t know that. He and I have always regarded each other like siblings. But he says he loves me now, which is already offering me something you can’t give me.”
“You haven’t…had relations, though, right?”
“With Greystone? No.” She decided to omit that they’d kissed. “He won’t so much as touch me while I’m still engaged to you. He is a gentleman, after all.”
Daniel frowned. “You’ve put me in an awkward position, Louisa.”
“I know. I know, Daniel, and I’m so sorry to be doing this to you, but I want out of the engagement, and I know of no way to make that happen without being upfront and honest about why. Surely you see my logic.”
“I do. But you must also understand my position. Breaking the engagement will make us both look terrible, it will be a huge scandal. I need a wife so that it does not become more widely known that I have had dalliances with my own sex, and…”
“Wait.” Something horrible suddenly became clear to Louisa. “You offered for me because of my proximity to the shelf, didn’t you?”
“No, I—”
“It makes sense. I am, after all, too old to be a debutante. I’m practically a spinster. Several suitors have told me I’m too clever for my own good, or they distrusted my relationship with Greystone, which I guess they were right to, but at any rate, I have arrived at this present moment rather old to be a new wife and so I must have been desperate, right? I would have said yes to your proposal because I needed to or I risked social ostracism. And then you made the deal, whatever it is, with my father to further incentivize the marriage. Because Greystone is not exactly poor, and his family and mine have known each other for decades, so he is a more logical choice of husband now that he’s come to his senses. But I’m trapped.”
“You aren’t trapped.”
“But you do not intend to let me out of the engagement.”
“I don’t.”
