She wanted to ask him why it bothered him so much, if there was ever a chance that he might share her feelings. But it felt too terrifying to do that.
“I accept the apology,” she said finally. “For what it is.”
She should have gone to bed after the apology. She had accepted it and said what she needed to say. Now, she had every reason to stand up and say goodnight. Instead, she stayed in the armchair and they sat together in silence again.
It was Harper who broke it.
“You don’t have to marry,” he said.
She looked at him.
“You and your mother can stay here at Wilmington, regardless of whether you marry. That is something I should have said at the beginning, perhaps but I am making myself clear now.”
The room was very quiet for a moment.
“Why are you saying that to me now?”
“Because of all the trouble that you are going through,” he said.
“Oh, right.”
Temperance felt silly for thinking that could be, for a second, something else or something deeper. Of course it was typical of him to only be thinking of practical reasons.
“It’s really no trouble at all, really,” she said with a little more force than she expected to put in.
He was quiet for a moment.
“But you should not have to choose between an unwanted marriage and uncertainty,” he said. “This is your home and it should feel like your home. If I have not made it feel that way, I would like to correct that.”
She looked at him for a long moment. Something was moving in her chest that was warm and complicated.
“I cannot simply stay,” she said.
“Why not?”
Because it is hard for me to be around you and not fall deeper in love with you.
“I just do not think it wise to be left at your mercy,” she said, and said it plainly, without apology. “You are a good man, I believe that now, but circumstances change. You might marry again, and your wife might have opinions about two women living in your estate indefinitely. Your goodwill is genuine right now but goodwill is not a legal document and it cannot protect me the way a marriage can.”
“You think I would change my mind?”
“I think that people do,” she said. “Not out of cruelty, just because life moves and arrangements that made sense at one point stop making sense at another, and I would have nothing to stand on except your current goodwill. I have spent too much of my life in exactly that position.”
Something seemed to snap inside of Harper at the words, and the warmth seemed to drain from his face.
“A marriage to a stranger offers you the same uncertainty,” he said, defensively, “You would be at someone else’s mercy, someone you have known for a handful of conversations, whose character you cannot fully know yet, whose circumstances canchange just as mine can. At least here you know the terms. You know me.”
She looked at him.
“Wouldn’t you rather,” he said, seemingly composing himself, “Wouldn’t you rather count on my generosity than on the goodwill of a man you barely know?”
Generosity.
The reaction that she had to that word was almost visceral. All of a sudden, she felt as though she was back in the nunnery. Every person who had ever described her situation as something they were graciously providing rather than something she was owed.
She looked at Harper and she knew he had not meant it the way it had landed but it did not change anything.
“I do not think that I require your generosity,” she said in an impassive voice. “And we needn’t speak about this anymore. There is something far more important that I need to discuss with you, I would like to arrange a ball.”
