It was almost as though she had to remind him of it, too. He snapped out of whatever daze he was in, and cleared his throat.
“Right. Ladies first.”
Then she stepped out from the tree and walked back toward the blankets, finding Albina watching her.
Her mother’s expression was the one that Temperance had seen before, the expression of someone watching something they were glad to see and sorry about in equal measure. It was there for only a moment before Albina looked down at her cup and smiled at something in it.
“What?”
“Nothing,” Albina smiled. “I just... Sometimes I wonder how long it is going to take for you to see what is so apparent to me, and right in front of you.”
CHAPTER 19
“Ithought we might take a promenade this morning,” Harper said, at breakfast. “The weather is good. It would be useful to be seen together in the park.”
Albina set down her teacup. “How lovely.”
“No thank you,” Temperance replied. “I feel rather tired, and would much like to spend the day indoors.”
“It would be useful,” Harper said, “to be seen together. Given the current state of the season.”
“The current state of the season is fine,” Temperance said.
“It would benefit you,” he said.
“You keep telling me what would benefit me,” she said, still looking at her toast, “and yet somehow my situation remains unchanged.”
“Temperance,” Albina said, very quietly.
“I am simply pointing out,” Temperance said, “that being paraded around the park on Harper’s arm has not thus far produced the results he seems to think it will, and I would rather spend the morning doing something useful.”
“Such as?” Harper said.
“Well, reading perhaps.”
“I think you’re just arguing with me for the sake of it,” Harper sighed. “You have a habit of doing that, but I think that this will benefit you.”
“One can say that you have a habit of telling me what exactly might benefit me,” Temperance replied.
She didn’t know why she was feeling so argumentative. She knew, objectively, that it was in her best interest to go.
After all, it was valuable social currency being seen out with the Duke. And she shouldn’t squander the opportunity.
“What is going on with you?” Harper asked. “Has something happened?”
Temperance quickly shook her head.
“Then what is your problem?”
Temperance thought this over in her head. Perhaps her problem was that precisely that she was tired of all the pressure that she had been putting on herself to find a husband.
And going to the park seemed like more pressure was waiting for her.
Of course, she would not say it out loud with her mother present. So instead she decided to just agree.
“What time?” Temperance asked.
“Ten o’clock,” he said. “If that suits.”
