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Despite herself, Leonora felt the corner of her mouth twitch, and pressed her lips together before it could become anything more incriminating. “You paint a frightening picture of your own household, Your Grace.”

“I paint an accurate one. You have been in it for only a short while but you cannot claim surprise.” He looked at her then. “I am not asking you to wear it forever. Only in front of her, so that she may have the small comfort of believing her most persistent wish has finally come true. The rest of the time, you may keep it in a drawer and forget it exists.”

“That is a great deal to ask over a piece of jewellery.”

“It is considerably less than what you are already doing for her three afternoons a week, and rather more pleasant than the last gothic horror she made you read aloud, which I understand involved no fewer than four separate hauntings and one deeply improbable curse.”

“The curse was not improbable. It was simply poorly explained. There is a difference, and I would think a man who sits in Parliament debating the finer points of legislation might appreciate it.”

“Ah. Now we arrive at the true objection. You did not dislike the book. You disliked its structure.”

“I disliked that the author clearly did not understand the mechanism of her own curse, which is unforgivable in a genre that depends entirely on internal logic to be frightening at all. A ghost that follows no rules is not eerie, Your Grace. It is simply careless.”

Anthony lifted his head and arched his eyebrows. “How did we go from talking about your ring, to books and curses?”

“Because you asked me to consult, and I do not consult in a straight line, Your Grace,” she answered. “My mind moves as it pleases, and you will simply have to keep pace.”

He let out a sigh. “I begin to suspect keeping pace with you is a full occupation in itself.”

“Then you begin to understand my guardian’s difficulty in raising me.” Leonora glanced down at the case again, though she did not miss the way his mouth twitched at that. “You did ask for my opinion. I am arriving at it by the scenic route.”

“By way of gothic curses and careless ghosts?”

“Everything is connected, if you think about it properly. A ring, like a curse, ought to follow some sort of internal logic. It should suit the person wearing it, mean something particular to them, rather than simply glittering enough to satisfy whoever is doing the choosing. Otherwise you have bought a very expensive piece of nonsense, and called it sentiment.”

Anthony studied her for a moment longer than the remark strictly warranted, something unreadable moving behind his eyes. “That is unexpectedly philosophical.”

“I contain multitudes, Your Grace. You are only now discovering this because you have spent most of our acquaintance assuming I exist chiefly to be difficult.”

“You do exist chiefly to be difficult. I simply had not accounted for you being clever about it as well.” Anthony cleared his throat, and gestured toward the case. “Might we return to the ring now, please, before you find some way to connect it to a treatise on agriculture.”

“I make no promises.” Leonora shrugged.

Anthony laughed, a short, surprised sound that seemed to catch even him off guard, and Leonora found herself absurdly pleased by it before she could stop the feeling from showing on her face.

“Very well,” he said. “I am asking you properly now, and not teasing you into it. I would value your opinion. We are bound to the same deal for at least three months, whether either of us particularly chose it, and it seems a poor use of that time to spend the whole of it as adversaries.”

“We are not adversaries. Adversaries imply a contest with a winner. I simply find you insufferable on a schedule that happens to be fairly constant.”

“That is possibly the closest thing to friendship you have offered me since we met.”

“Friendship?” Leonora looked at him, then. “You consider us friends, Your Grace?”

“Not yet.” He said it plainly. “But I would like us to be. We are meant to convince an entire household, and my grandmother in particular, that we are considerably more to each other than two people bound by an inconvenient arrangement. That becomes a great deal easier if we are not, in fact, adversaries the whole while.”

Leonora considered that. It would, she thought, make things a great deal easier if they were on the same page about most things, rather than arguing over every small matter simply for the satisfaction of winning.

“That sounds like a good idea,” she said. “A difficult idea to execute, but a good one, nonetheless.”

“Well then.” Anthony gestured toward the rings spread beneath the glass. “Can you pick one? Which one do you want?”

Leonora looked down at the case again, and let her gaze settle on a slender band of yellow gold set with a single sapphire, dark and deep as a storm gathering itself over open water. It was beautiful, and it was almost impossible to look away from it.

“That one,” she said, and pointed. “That one would not embarrass either of us. Though I will note that sapphire has historically been associated with clarity of thought and fidelity, which strikes me as either a very apt choice for a false engagement, or a very poor one, depending entirely on how honest you intend to be about the whole arrangement.”

“I intend to be exactly as honest as the situation requires, which is to say, not remotely.”

“At least you are consistent.”