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Marry a stranger?

The thought alone made warmth rise steadily through her cheeks.

She had never so much as held a gentleman's hand with romantic intent, never stolen a kiss behind a hedgerow as some village girls talked of doing, never received flowers or declarations beneath stars. Instead, she had spent far too many evenings reading borrowed novels by candlelight, imagining what love ought to feel like rather than seeking it in reality. Her lack of experience was apparently irrelevant for the Household of Buckingham, as the qualification for marriage was measured by her ability to bear children, which failed to measure up to the vision of marriage she held.

She had always believed that, one day, someone would choose her, not because he required an heir, but because, out of every woman in England, he could imagine no happier life than one spent beside her.

Naive, perhaps.

Hopelessly romantic, certainly.

Yet she had treasured the dream all the same. Her gaze drifted slowly between the two people who had raised her.

Mr Didley stood with his hands folded in front of him, the parchment dangling from his fingers. Mrs Didley busied herself staring into the fire, though there was nothing to see amongst the dying embers.

Neither of them could meet her eyes.

Not because they wished to be rid of her.

She knew better than that.

No...

They could not bear the shame of asking.

Twenty thousand pounds.

The sum was so inconceivably vast that Eliza struggled to comprehend it. Twenty thousand pounds would fulfil their dream of caring for children for the rest of their years, and then some.

It would repair the roof before another winter found its way through the fractured slates. It would replace thin blankets with warm woollen ones, purchase proper mattresses instead of straw pallets and ensure no child was ever turned away simply because there was no bread left to divide between another mouth.

Perhaps Mr Didley could finally afford spectacles strong enough to read his sermons without squinting. With any luck, Mrs Didley would no longer have to patch the same little dresses for the girls, until the fabric could bear no more stitches.

Her chest tightened painfully.

One marriage. One sacrifice. Dozens of children saved.

The arithmetic was heartbreakingly simple; the actual decision was far less so. At last, Mr Didley raised his eyes to hers.

"Eliza," he said softly, "before you say anything at all, I want you to understand something."

"We shall never force you.”

His voice was quiet.

"You are a woman now. The choice is yours, and whatever that choice may be, you shall always have a home here."

The words should have comforted her.

Instead, they made the weight of the decision settle even more heavily across her shoulders. For most girls in the village, their futures were decided for them. They would be forced to work or be married off, with arrangements made by their parents. The Didleys, however, had always empowered those under their roof. Her future would be hers to decide, and that was, in some ways, the kindest gift they could give her.

So, even though there had never been an "our dearest Eliza," only "Eliza," she never doubted the affection her adoptive family held for her.

That knot in her stomach began to grow again.

It did not mean she did not yearn for something more. Something like the wholehearted, unquestioning devotion she had read about in novels and imagined for herself.

Though the proposed bargain was for a marriage of convenience, she could not help but hope that if she accepted it, genuine affection might blossom. It seemed a greater possibility than ever finding the kind of love she had always dreamed of from her straw bed in Windleham.