Penelope’s smile was so dazzling Agatha had to look away in self-defense—just in time to take note of Eliza and Sydney, gazing meaningfully at one another over a book of madrigals the girl had just unwrapped.
Sydney reached out and touched the back of her hand with just a fingertip; her lips curved teasingly... then Captain Stanhope’s belly laugh rang out again and the two young people pulled away from one another.
Agatha quashed a sigh. It had been months, now. More than time to have a proper motherly talk with her son about how his courtship was progressing. A flash of memory warmed her and had her smiling softly. She’d resented her own parents’ interference when she was his age; she had much more sympathy with them now, from the vantage of mature perspective.
Her mother would be laughing at her, Agatha knew.
Well, at least one Griffin could find happiness with the person they loved. Agatha was doomed to pine for the foreseeable forever, but there was no reason her son should do the same.
She managed to snag Sydney by the elbow as everyone else trooped to the dining room for dinner. “I have something for you,” she murmured.
Sydney stopped and tilted his head. “You already gave me a gift.”
“So I did, but indulge me.” Agatha reached into her pocket and pulled out her silver wedding band. It gleamed hopefully in her palm when she extended her hand to her son. “You might like to take this as well. To keep handy. If you can think of someone who might be inclined to accept it.” She smiled expectantly.
Sydney’s lips tilted up, just as she’d hoped, but his smile gleamed much more falsely than the silver. “I don’t believe I’ll be needing a ring, Mum,” he replied softly.
Her heart ached at his words. “You don’t think Eliza would have you?”
His face tightened even more. “We’ve decided...”
Agatha waited the space of five whole breaths before her impatience got control of her tongue. “You’ve decided what?”
“We’ve decided not to get married.” The words came out all in a rush, as if Sydney were trying to shove the incriminating sentence out the window before the constables came in and caught him with the evidence.
Agatha stood there, shocked.
Sydney tried to leave, but his mother’s hand shot out quick as a striking snake and latched onto his coat sleeve. The ring tumbled to the wooden floor and chimed a protest.
“What do you mean,not to get married?” Agatha hissed through a clenching jaw.
“Mrs. Griffin?” Eliza stepped cautiously toward them down the hall. “Is everything alright?” She spotted the bright ring on the floor and bent to pick it up.
Sydney froze. Eyes wide, mouth flat, poised on the edge of a precipice, with a long fall threatening.
Agatha bit back a thousand different harsh words.
Eliza turned the ring back and forth, then raised her eyes to the Griffins, twin statues on the parlor threshold. After a moment, she held the ring out to Agatha—slowly, as though confronting some kind of wild beast liable to turn feral at any moment. “This is yours, isn’t it, Mrs. Griffin?” Her smile was calm, poised, but the light in her eyes was just a shade too steely. She knew what she was doing, handing that bauble back.
Agatha closed her hand around the ring and felt the chill metal leach the heat from her palm. “It is mine, and was my mother’s before that.”
Eliza nodded. “You wouldn’t want to lose it, then.”
Sydney’s eyes darted back and forth from his mother to his... His what? Beloved, but not betrothed?
Agatha’s head spun, dizzy from the speed of revelations. “I had rather hoped to have a reason not to wear it much longer,” she said weakly, then pressed her lips together and tried to resurrect some maternal fury. “I’d hoped you might be the one to wear it instead.”
Eliza tilted her head. “But it would get tarnished, or dented, in the course of my work. I couldn’t risk it.” One quicksilver glance flashed to Sydney, and then her gaze was back to clash with Agatha’s. “Something so precious is worth being thoughtful about. Once damaged, it might be impossible to repair.”
Her eyes begged Agatha to understand what she was trying not to say.
Agatha could only shake her head. The conversation had gotten so beyond her she didn’t know how to grasp it. There was a time for delicacy—and there was a time to heave delicacy aside like so much rubble and get right to the heart of the matter. “Sydney tells me you two have decided...notto get married.”
Eliza nodded quickly, visibly relieved. “That’s right, ma’am. We’ve been talking about it for a few months now.”
Agatha’s eyes narrowed. “Justtalking?”
Eliza had the grace to blush.
