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“You realise…” William said, moving to pour them both a drink from the sideboard without being asked. “…that I have known you the better part of fifteen years, and I have never once seen you give an account like that one to anybody.”
Anthony cleared his throat. “I do not know what you mean.”
William let out a small laugh. “You do, in fact, know precisely what I mean, and the fact that you are pretending otherwise only proves my point rather more thoroughly than if you had simply admitted it outright.” William crossed the room and pressed a glass into Anthony’s hand before settling into the chair, folding one leg over the other. “You have spent years perfecting the art of appearing interested in absolutely nothing. Every ball, every card game, every eligible young lady paraded past you by some hopeful mama, and you have managed to look equally unmoved by the whole of it, every single time. I have watched you do it for the better part of a decade. I have admired the consistency of it, frankly, even when it irritated me on your behalf.”
Anthony squinted his eyes. “There is a compliment buried in there somewhere, I assume.”
“There is. Because this is the first time in all those years that I have watched you fail to manage it. Admit it, whatever this began as, Anthony, it has stopped being a pretence somewhere along the way. I suspect you know that a great deal better than you are willing to say aloud, even to me, and certainly better than you have said it to my wife.”
Anthony turned the glass slowly in his hand without drinking from it. “It is a business arrangement,” he said, finally, though even to his own ear the words carried considerably less conviction than they ought to have.
“We were meant to discuss the Bristol contract a fortnight ago, Anthony. You postponed it twice. Once for some matter at the estate that would not wait, and for the other, well… you did not give me a reason. I did not think much of either excuse at the time. I am thinking rather more of them now.”
“What precisely are you suggesting?”
“I am suggesting that a man who has spent fifteen years arranging his entire life around not being occupied by anything beyond estates and ledgers has been remarkably occupied these last two months.” William set his own glass down, folding his arms. “You have gone rather pale, if it is any comfort to you.”
“It is not.”
“I did not imagine it would be.” William’s mouth curved, though the amusement in it was gentler than usual. “I will grant you this much. It began as pretence. I have no quarrel with that part of your account.”
“Ah.” Anthony allowed himself the smallest measure of satisfaction. “So you do think it is pretence, after everything you said to me not five minutes ago.”
“I said it began as pretence. I did not say it has remained one, and you know perfectly well those are not the same claim. You have spent your whole adult life distancing yourself from exactly this sort of entanglement, Anthony. I have watched you do it. Every mother who paraded a daughter past you, every friend who suggested you might one day marry and settle the succession properly, and you turned each of them aside without the smallest flicker of difficulty. You do not let things slide. It is not in your nature. Yet your grandmother stood up in front of several people and declared you engaged, and you let it stand. I should like to know why a man who corrects everyone, about everything, as a matter of course, found himself suddenly unable to correct the one in an instant.”
Anthony did not answer immediately, though the answer was there, plainly enough.
“I am biased toward her,” he finally admitted.
“There it is.” William said it quietly.
“It does not mean what you are about to suggest it means.” Anthony set the glass down. “She has been remarkably generous with my grandmother, who is not an easy woman to manage. I owe her a debt for that, considerably more than I have yet repaid, and a man who feels he owes a debt is naturally inclined to think well of the person he owes it to. That is the whole of the bias. Nothing further.”
“There are a great many ways to repay a debt, Anthony, and permitting the entire ton to believe you are engaged to the woman is a curious choice among them, if gratitude were truly all that moved you.”
“It is not so curious as you are making it sound.”
“It is that curious, and you are arguing the point with me rather more forcefully than a man secure in his own explanation generally needs to.”
Anthony let out a groan. “We keep going around in circles. Are we going to discuss the Bristol contract, William, or did I come here today to be interrogated first by your wife and now by you?” Anthony set his jaw, done with the subject for the afternoon, whatever truth had been dragged out of him in the course of it. “I have given you rather more of an answer than I intended to give anyone today. I should like it to be enough.”
William held up both hands, conceding the point with a short laugh. “Fair enough. Fair enough. We shall discuss the contract. Come through to the study. We have much to discuss.”
He led the way out of the drawing room, and Anthony followed, though he found the walk down the corridor did considerably less to settle him than he had hoped it might. The word he had used sat uncomfortably in his chest, refusing to be set aside as easily as the rest of the conversation had been.
Biased.
Was he really biased to her?
Is that all it was?
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“That colour would do nothing for her, Lady Byron, and I do not understand why you insist on holding it up as though it might.”
Lady Byron turned to Marian. “It is a perfectly respectable blue.”
Marian groaned and shook her head. “It is the blue of a drowned man’s lips, don’t you see? I will not have Leonora looking like a corpse simply because the draper’s boy told you it was fashionable this season.” Marian set the bolt of fabric down, and the shop girl hovering nearby took a visible step backward. “Leonora, come here and tell this woman what you actually like, since she does not appear to trust my eye in the matter.”
