“It is often that. Half the marriages in England?—”
“I am not interested in half the marriages in England. I am interested in the one you are currently proposing to me in a nursery in the middle of the night because a solicitor told youto find a wife quickly.” She held his gaze. “I am interested in the fact that you have just asked me to bind myself to you for the rest of my life and offered me no reason to do so beyond convenience.”
He was quiet for a moment.
“I am being honest with you,” he said. “That is the reason I am offering. I could have dressed it differently.”
“How chivalrous.”
“I mean it.” He did mean it; she could hear it. “I am telling you plainly what this would be, because I think you deserve plainness more than you deserve a comfortable lie.” He took a deep breath. “It would not be a love marriage. I am not capable of that. Grand declarations, love stories—” He stopped and shook his head slightly. “That is not what I am. Any arrangement between us would be practical. I want you to know that before you answer.”
The words landed exactly where they were aimed.
Isadora kept her face composed because she had learned composure young and had long since made it reliable, and because some things were nobody’s business but her own. Certainly not his.
But underneath it, in the quiet place she kept carefully separate from her expression, something turned over slowly and did not right itself.
Not romantic. Not a love story.
She had known this, of course. She had known it about him for years, known it consciously, cataloged it among her numerous and well-evidenced opinions about him, filed it alongside charming and reckless and constitutionally opposed to anything resembling permanence. She had known it.
It was remarkable, she thought distantly, how much it was possible to know a thing and still feel it when it was said aloud.
“Then you need not worry,” she said, her voice perfectly even. “I have no intention of marrying you.”
James did not look away. He studied her with the quiet attention he reserved for things he was genuinely trying to understand.
“You would have no more Seasons,” he pointed out.
She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”
“London. The endless performance of it.” He moved slightly closer, as though proximity would help him make the point. “The ballrooms and the suitors and the careful conversations with women who are measuring whether you are a threat and men who are measuring whether you are an asset. All of it gone.”He watched her face. “You could live here. Quietly. Exactly as you prefer. Read your books. Walk the grounds. Avoid society entirely if you wish.”
She looked at him.
“You are attempting to appeal to my preferences,” she said.
“I am presenting the terms.”
“James—”
“I will build you a library,” he added. “Larger than Blackmoor’s.”
There was a pause.
Despite every intention, despite the lingering sting of his words, Isadora felt the corner of her mouth attempt something she refused to let it complete—a smile.
Because he was serious.
That was the remarkable thing. He was entirely, genuinely serious, offering her a library as though it were a dowry, as though he had thought carefully about what she valued and decided to come at her from that direction, which was both deeply calculated and, she had to admit, impressively accurate.
“Isadora, I am trying to demonstrate that I have considered what this arrangement would cost you and intend to account for it,” he said, with the patience of a man who believed he was being reasonable.
“What it would cost me,” she repeated.
“Yes.”
“You have not considered what it would cost me.”
