There was a pause, and Cassin raised his glass again.
Stoker said, “And she would say the same of you, no doubt?”
“She does not hide her enthusiasm for me,” Joseph said, biting back a smile. “From the beginning, she has wanted me. She has made that very clear.”
The dining table of Berymede seated twenty-four, but when her brothers were away and there were no guests to dinner, Tessa and her parents took their evening meal in a small windowed alcove that overlooked her mother’s roses.
Joseph had joined the family there on Wednesday, the day before he proposed. He had laughed with her father and described tropical flowers to her mother. He had winked at Tessa across the table and asked her to tell them about her antique German piano.
Until that meal, Tessa had never realized how rare it was for anyone to ask her to contribute to dinner conversation. Oh, she had always made herself heard at mealtimes. In a family of four brothers, she’d learned early to interject and tease and speak loud enough to be heard over the din, but she couldn’t remember ever beingasked.
What are you reading, Tessa?
What piece are you working on at the pianoforte?
What new music would you like us to collect for you when we are in Town?
But Joseph had asked. He’d asked this and more.
And no matter what she said, he appeared captivated. His attention thrilled her in a way that no male attention ever had, after years of earning the attention of so many men. He truly wished to know—and not simply thewhat, he wanted to knowwhy.
If Tessa waited for a certain question—Why a rushed convenient marriage, why me?—she did not prompt him, and he did not ask.Thank God.
If hehadasked her, would she have told him about the baby?
Possibly.
Maybe.
Hopefully.
Hopefully she would have blurted out the truth and begged him to understand her desperation—and also her burgeoning love.
Because she was falling so very much in love with Joseph Chance. And not simply because he was saving her and not simply because he was handsome and charming.
She loved him because he seemed to trulyseeher, to decipher her.
He understood that she was pretty and silly and gay, but also that she was curious and empathetic and felt happiest when she encouraged other people. Had anyone at Berymede ever seen her as more than entertaining or cute? To Joseph, she felt entertainingandinteresting; she was pretty but also so very clever.
And despite the secret about the baby and the manipulation of her parents, she believed she understood him too. She understood what he had overcome, the brilliance and hard work that had hastened that triumph. She saw the humility, the strength, the desire—desire to achieve all of his wild aspirations and desire for her.
Her parents, of course, were oblivious to all of it. Her parents, as always, were concerned with only one thing: the appearance of the St. Croix family in the eyes of the world—or rather, in the eyes oftheirworld, which was lofty London society. What would their friends and peers think? How would the gossip papers depict their union? What level of envy was painted by the picture of Joseph Chance and Tessa St. Croix?
“I had held out hope for a title,” said her father, Wallace St. Croix, a day after Joseph’s proposal. He was seated with his back to the alcove window, sawing into the bony side of fish. “You could have been a countess or even a duchess, I daresay.”
Although the St. Croix family boasted wealth and refinement, their bloodline was more French than English, with nary an aristocratic relation in sight. It was no secret that Tessa’s beauty and dowry might one day see her married into this previously unattained rung of society.
And perhaps at one time, Tessa had dreamed of marrying a lord. But only vaguely, only in as much as she dreamed of having curly hair instead of straight, or of seeing Venice instead of the canals of any other place in the world. It sounded nice, but so did so many things.
Her more defined, more authentic dream had been far purer—simple, really. She had dreamed of falling in love. Real love, like in a play, like Orpheus and Eurydice. She dreamed of falling in love the way Berymede’s head groom, Virgil, loved his wife, Susan, the kitchen maid. She wished to be in love like her friend Sabine’s mother and father, before her father had died.
In contrast, the marriage of Tessa’s parents was a partnership. Wallace St. Croix was wealthy and well connected, and Isobel St. Croix was beautiful, stylish, and exacting. Together, they shared one goal, which was to be revered in society. They worked in tandem to achieve this, they reveled in their strides, they cursed their setbacks.
Her mother had brought her up to marry the most eligible man she could possibly ensnare, but Tessa’s own intent had been to use her considerable allure to marry for love.
She would be lying if she said she had not enjoyed four seasons of auditioning one potential True Love after another. There had been many men, yes, but was True Love special if it was easy to find? If she stumbled upon it with the first man or the second... or any number ofwrongmen? Mostly, she told her friends, who teased her about her many beaux, she would meet the wrong man. But she would not find the correct man if she did not weed through all the others.
In the end, she cared less about eligibility and more about finding her one, perfect match. What good, she’d thought, were the dresses and the dance cards if the end result was not True Love? She wanted the fairy-tale union with a handsome, dashing man and a passionate wedding night that swept them both away.
