She made her way to the chairs by the empty hearth and hesitated for a moment. She turned and sat in the chair he had always sat in when they played chess.
“Can I get you anything, Phee?”
“You should sit as well, Lord Danforth. I have to tell you something.” She lifted her veil. Her face was pale. Her eyes were red. She looked so sad. Of course, she must miss her father terribly.
He sat in the chair that had been hers for so many years.
“Yes, Phee. I want to talk. I have so much I want to tell you, to explain to you—”
“Stop.”
He stopped. There was a silence and he spent it drinking in her face. There was a change there, a hardness he had seen on his own mother’s face once upon a time.
Her light had gone out.
“I need you to marry me, Lord Danforth.”
His chest was full. Was it possible? What had brought about this change of heart? Had it been his last letter when he had vowed he would do anything to marry her? But hadn’t he put that in every other letter preceding that one? But maybe she had opened this one. What did it matter? She wanted to marry him. And hewoulddo anything.
“Yes. Yes. That’s all I want, Phee.”
But her face was not the face of a woman who wanted to get married. Not the face, he thought, of a woman in love. It was the face of a prisoner, facing execution. Unsmiling. Stony. Without hope, without life, without the spark that was his Phoebe.
He got up from his chair and came and knelt in front of her. He took one of her gloved hands. “Will you marry me, Lady Phoebe Finch?” Her hand was limp in his.
“Yes.” She took her hand away. She was not looking at him but at the empty hearth.
He sat back on his haunches.
“You deserve to know why you have to marry me,” she said. “I have missed my monthly courses. Twice. I am almost certainly with child.”
“With child?”
“Yes.”
The day of the funeral when he had spent inside her. She had gone to the priest’s hole for comfort and he had come to give that to her. And now, because of his own lack of control, his abandoning himself to the moment, she was with child.
She cleared her throat. “It’s good of you not to say it’s my fault. Because, of course, it is. I know it is. I took you, rather than the other way around. And it’s good of you not to say you think it must be some other man’s child. I have only ever lain with you, so it must be yours.”
“I know you haven’t been with another—”
“And I’m not wily enough to trick another man and get him to marry me while carrying your child. But I must marry. I can’t hurt my mother or shame my family further. So I must marry you, George Danforth.”
“You-you don’t want to marry me, do you?” He could barely get the words out.
“What I want has been neither here nor there for a long time.” She stood. He stayed kneeling, looking up at her. “Tomorrow, come to the town house in the afternoon and ask to see my brother. Unless you change your mind.”
“I won’t change my mind,” he said quickly.
“I’ll tell him why you’re coming so you won’t have to do that. I want you to get a special license so we can get married right away, outside of a church, away from public view. I am sure everyone will guess why we are marrying since I am still in mourning, but I’d rather not have the wedding be a spectacle. Certainly, everyone will know once the baby is born in seven months or so.”
“You know I want to marry you, don’t you, Phoebe?”
She nodded and went to the door and opened it before he could get to his feet. She put her veil down. She took a step out the door and spoke.
“I don’t know why since no one else wants me.”
“Phoebe.” She must have run down the steps because the stairwell was empty when he finally stood at the top of it, calling out her name.
