“Absolutely not,” she said. “Cecily, you cannot—you are already in the papers for precisely this kind of–”
“Beatrice.”
“I mean it. An unchaperoned conversation with the man is the last thing you need when your reputation is already–”
“What reputation?” Cecily cut in. Not bitter, simply a practical observation. “The one that is currently decorating the front pages of three separate newspapers? I think we are somewhat past the point where a conversation in a drawing room represents my greatest threat.”
“That is not the point.”
“Then what is the point?”
“The point,” Beatrice said, “is that appearances still matter. They will always matter. And being found alone with him a second time, even here, even now, is the kind of detail that people remember and embroider and–”
“Beatrice.” Their mother’s voice was quiet and final.
Both of them turned.
Beatrice pressed her lips together.
Lady Moreland looked at Cecily for a moment, then at Beatrice, then back at Cecily. “Let them speak.”
Beatrice stared at her. “Mama, you cannot seriously–”
“Her name is already in the papers.” Lady Moreland’s voice was steady, each word placed with care. “With sufficient detail that anyone who was in Brighton that morning will know exactly whois meant, and by the end of this week, anyone who wasn’t will know as well.” She rose from her chair. “We are not protecting a reputation, Beatrice. We are attempting to salvage one. Those are different things, and they require different solutions.” She smoothed her skirt with one practiced movement. “Little more harm can be done by a conversation, and considerably more good may come of it. Come.”
Beatrice stood slowly. She crossed toward the door and paused beside Cecily, close enough to speak quietly.
“If he says anything that offends you,” she muttered under her breath, “even slightly–”
“I will tell you everything,” Cecily said. “I promise.”
Beatrice looked at her for one more moment, then she nodded once and left. Lady Moreland followed without looking back.
The door clicked shut behind them.
The quiet that followed was immediate and different from any quiet that had existed in the room before—the particular silence of two people alone together who had not yet established the terms of being alone together.
Cecily became aware, in the way she had been trying not to become aware all afternoon, of exactly how much space the Duke occupied. Not merely physically, though he was tallenough that the room seemed to have slightly adjusted its proportions around him.
It was something else. The intensity of his attention, perhaps. The way he stood now, without the performance of the proposal, without the audience, and simply looked at her with those green eyes as though he had time and intended to use it.
She clasped her hands in front of her and looked back.
She had spent the last ten minutes in the corner of the room organizing her thoughts with the focused precision of someone who knew they were about to negotiate the terms of their own life and could not afford imprecision. She intended to use them.
“I will marry you,” she agreed.
Something moved in his expression. She pressed on before he could speak.
“But I want to be absolutely clear,” she continued, “about what that means and what it does not mean. Because I suspect you and I may have somewhat different understandings of the word marriage, and I would rather we establish the terms now, plainly, than discover the discrepancy later when it is considerably harder to address.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “By all means.”
“This will be a marriage of convenience.”
She kept her voice even, her eyes on his, refusing to let his composure unsettle hers. “A practical arrangement, entered into for the protection of my family’s name and for no other reason. I am not agreeing to it because I wish to be married, and certainly not because I wish to be married to you specifically. I am agreeing because my mother’s standing and my sister’s happiness matter to me more than my own preferences in this particular moment, and because the alternative–” She paused. “Because the alternative is worse.”
“That is remarkably candid,” he allowed.
