Harper looked at her. The shift in her had been visible, but she did not bother offering him any sort of explanation for it.
“Here at Wilmington,” she said, in a steady voice. The last thing that she wished to do was to show him show she truly felt, “Onefinal event, at the end of the season. I have a suitor in mind and I need one more occasion to establish things properly.”
“It seems like a bit of a hasty decision,” he said, and there was a strange flicker of emotion in his eyes, “who is the suitor?”
“Elias Talbot,” she said. “He is good and kind and the arrangement would be a sensible one. I just need one more opportunity to make it formal. Whatever you have spent on the season, on the dresses and the introductions and everything else, I will pay you back after I am married. Every penny, I want that clear between us.”
The library was very quiet, and Harper was looking at her with a confused expression.
“Are you being serious?”
“There is no reason for me to joke to you,” Temperance said, as though she was trying to establish some distance between the two of them. “Truly, I have no reason so you should assume that I am being serious at all times.”
He stood up and crossed the room towards her so that the distance between them was now small. She felt her heart beat speed up.
“You are not going to pay me back,” he said. His voice was very quiet.
“I am,” she said. “It is the right thing to do, and you should do know this, as you care very deeply about the principle of things.”
“Temperance,” he wanted.
“I will not leave it outstanding,” she said. “I will not be in your debt, and you do not need to be generous to me.”
His face flickered with realization.
“So that is what you’re upset about?”
“You shouldn’t assume that I am upset about anything,” she huffed. “That would be rather presumptuous on your part.”
“That is not what I meant,” he said, shaking his head, “When I said generosity, that is not what I meant and you know that.”
“But you said it anyway. Besides, it does not matter what you meant,” she said. “We need not focus on the semantics of the matter, but it matters what it is.”
“And what is it?” he said.
She looked at him for one long moment, and thought about Alethea saying it is not one sided and about Charity saying that was possessive and about the park and the library and the dress the color of her eyes and all of it, all of it, accumulating into something she did not have the luxury of acting on.
“It is my life,” she said. “And I would like to manage it myself.”
She stood up, and without thinking, she put some distance between them.
“Temperance, we not yet done speaking..”
“Oh, but I am done here,” she replied. “I shall see you later, Your Grace.”
When she returned to her chambers, the house was dark and quiet around her, and she did not sleep for a very long time.
What is happening to me?
“What is happening to you?”
“I cannot come and visit a friend?” Harper raised his eyebrow at his friend, Edmund, whom he had given the trouble of visiting at an hour close to midnight. They had met at the nearby Club, and decided to share a few drinks.
“You can, but it is not usual behavior for you,” Edmund grinned. “So I can only suspect that there is something going on that I am not privy to, but I would very much like to be.”
Harper rolled his eyes. He knew that his friend was not one to fish around for gossip, and therefore knew that it was not something that he should take offence at.
“She’s an odd one,” Edmund said after a moment.
