“It is time,” he said carefully, “to return to the original terms. For both our sakes. The Season is over. The gossip has faded. There is no reason–”
“No reason?”
“Cecily–”
She had had enough listening to him.
She stood up and looked at him for a long moment—at the utterly shuttered expression he wore—and she felt grief move through her cleanly and completely.
She picked up the notes from the armrest and set them on his desk. He looked at the papers, then at her.
She did not wait for anything else to be said; she walked out.
She didn’t exactly know how she got into her room. She walked towards her bed stiffly, sat on the edge of her bed, and looked out the window for a long time without seeing anything.
Responsibility?
The word pierced through her so hard it hurt.
She had refused six men in three Seasons on the grounds that she would not be someone’s obligation. She had sat in drawing rooms, smiled at perfectly suitable gentlemen, and turned them all down because there had been nothing underneath it—no real thing, nothing that would hold.
She had been told she was foolish. Impractical. Too particular. Too slow to decide. She had agreed to a marriage of convenience because she had had no other choice and had told herself, clearly and in her own words, that she would not give her heart to a man who had not chosen her freely.
And then he had kissed her in a garden, and everything changed.
A loud sob escaped her, and she pressed her fingers to her lips. Her ring caught the light, and she looked at it. Then she stood up.
She was not going to cry in this room. She was not going to cry anywhere in this house. Not because she was too proud, but because if she started, she was not sure she would stop, and there were things that needed to be done.
She went to find Isadora.
Isadora was lounging in her room, with a book open in her lap. She looked up when Cecily came in.
“Cecily.” She smiled. But as she looked at Cecily’s face, her smile slowly faded, and she closed the book without being asked. “Tell me.”
Cecily sat in the chair by the window. She was quiet for a moment, looking for the right words, and then she decided there were no right words and used all she had.
“I am going to go and stay with Beatrice,” she announced. “For a while. I need you to help me. Can you do that?”
Isadora went still. “For a while?”
“Yes.”
“Cecily.” She gasped and sat up straighter. “Is everything alright? Is someone ill? Is it Horatio?”
“No, no. Everyone is fine. It’s not—no.” Cecily shook her head. “I’m sorry. I should have said that first. Everyone is fine.”
Isadora let out a breath. Then she looked at her more carefully.
“Then what–” She stopped. Her eyes trailed over Cecily’s face—the careful stillness of it, the tight eyes, the set of a jaw that was doing a great deal of work. “What did he do?”
Cecily opened her mouth. Then closed it.
She tried again. “He was perfectly–”
Then something happened to her voice on the second word, something she hadn’t allowed.
She pressed the back of her hand briefly to her mouth and looked at the window, breathing through her nose until she was sure she had it back under control.
