“Three times.”
Josephine exchanged a glance with Arabella, who sat writing a letter at the writing desk with serene concentration, having perfected the art of ignoring her younger sisters. The faintest curve touched Arabella’s lips before she returned to her correspondence to one of her numerous cousins scattered across England.
Seraphina stood apart from the others, near the doorway, her arms folded across her bodice in the manner she adopted when she was bracing for the dowager’s arrival.
Alistair entered the drawing room looking as though he had recently been caught in a downpour and had attempted to make himself presentable in its aftermath. His auburn hair was still damp at the temples, darkened to the color of old copper, and though he had changed into dry evening clothes, there was a restlessness about him that the rain seemed to have intensified rather than quenched. His gaze found Josephine’s across the room, and the warmth in it, the private acknowledgment, made her pulse quicken beneath the stiff bombazine of her mourning gown.
Do not blush. Not here. Not in front of the girls.
She managed her features and inclined her head in greeting, and he returned it with the ghost of a smile before turning to address the room.
“I trust you are all well this evening.”
“We are imprisoned,” Seraphina said flatly, though there was no real venom in it. “The rain has seen to that.”
“Indeed. I ventured out this afternoon and can confirm that the grounds are attempting to return to the sea.” He moved to the fire and extended his hands toward the flames, and Josephine noticed the faint tremor in his fingers before he curled them into fists and lowered them to his sides. Something about his walk had unsettled him.
The sound arrived before the woman did. The rhythmic clack of a walking stick against uncarpeted stone, growing louder with the inexorable patience of approaching weather. Josephine felt the familiar tightening in her chest, the involuntary clenching of her hands in her lap, and watched the same tension ripple through the room. Genevieve withdrew from the window. Juliet closed her book. Arabella set down her pen. Seraphina’s jaw hardened.
The dowager duchess Margaret Oxley entered the drawing room as she entered every room, as though she were bestowing a favor upon its occupants by deigning to appear. Her iron-gray hair was dressed with severity beneath a cap of black lace, and her mourning gown was heavy with heirloom jet that glittered against the dark fabric like the eyes of carrion birds. Her thin mouth was set in an expression of permanent dissatisfaction.
Hobbs materialized behind her, spectral and silent. “Dinner is served, Your Grace.” He addressed the old woman, and the slight was as calculated as it was familiar.
The household fell into the order the dowager had established long before Alistair’s arrival. Margaret first, Josephine behind her, the girls following in descending age. It was a procession Josephine had walked so many times that her feet knew the steps without instruction, the familiar choreography of deference. Alistair disrupted it without comment. He stepped past Margaret, offered Josephine hisarm, and walked her forward. Ahead of the dowager, ahead of the girls, ahead of the arrangement that had governed this household since before Josephine had married into it.
He glanced down at her as they exited the room, and the look in his eyes was not triumphant but a quiet assurance that this was how it would be from now on. She felt the solid warmth of him through the wool of his coat, and her chest eased even as the sharp intake of breath behind them confirmed that Margaret had understood exactly what had just occurred.
They entered the dining room in this new order, and the room that greeted them was no warmer than it had been on any other evening, the fire in the great hearth waging its nightly losing battle against the ancient walls. But tonight the rain added its voice, a muffled percussion against the high windows, and with Alistair’s arm still beneath her hand, the vast space felt smaller and closer than usual.
They took their seats, and the first course arrived, the same thin soup that appeared at every meal, steaming without conviction in its bowl.
Alistair waited until the servants had withdrawn to the edges of the room before he spoke. “I have an announcement.”
Four pairs of young eyes turned toward him. The dowager continued to sip her soup as though he had not spoken.
“Josephine and I are to be married. I have secured a license, and we shall take our vows in a few days.”
The silence that followed was total, broken only by the distant murmur of the rain and the faint clink of the dowager’s spoon being placed, with great care, beside her bowl.
Genevieve was the first to react, her large blue-green eyes filling with undisguised delight. “Oh, how wonderful! It is just like—” She caught herself, glancing at the dowager, and swallowed the rest of the sentence.
Seraphina looked from Alistair to Josephine and back again, her expression unreadable for a long moment before something shifted behind her eyes, not quite trust but the cautious recognition of an ally proving himself. “Congratulations, cousin,” she said. Her voice was affectionate, and Josephine heard in it the courage it took to speak those words in the old woman’s presence. “And to you, Josephine. I am glad of it.”
“As am I,” Arabella added, her posture still impeccable but her eyes bright. She reached beneath the table to squeeze Josephine’s hand, a gesture hidden from the dowager’s sight. “We wish you both every happiness.”
Juliet said nothing, but when Josephine glanced at her, the quiet twin offered a small deliberate nod, an expression so contained and so full of meaning that it said more than any of her sisters’ words.
The dowager had not moved.
She sat with her hands folded before her, her soup now untouched, her pale eyes fixed on Alistair with an expression that might have been carved from the same limestone as the cliffs outside. When she spoke, her voice carried the cold sound of a blade drawn slowly from its sheath.
“You intend to marry your uncle’s widow. Barely two months after his death. In this house, which is still draped in mourning.”
“I do.”
“The scandal will be ruinous. Every family of consequence in the county will close their doors to this household. You will make pariahs of these girls before they have had the chance to be anything else.”
The girls went rigid. Josephine felt the old familiar dread pooling in her stomach, the instinct to shrink, to yield, to let the old woman’s authority wash over her like the rain outside, relentless and impossible to resist.
