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“I do not think you have been anything but honest.”

“It can still hurt someone.”

“Yes. Nevertheless, I prefer the truth.” He set down his hat. “I will not ask you to reconsider. I only wished to tell you, before we were reduced to polite congratulations, that my regard was genuine. I called because I wanted to see you. I wanted it very much.”

Her eyes stung. She did not blink.

“Mr. Harrington.”

“My sister hopes you will write,” he said, recovering his composure. “About the plants, if the duke proves too tedious a subject. She has already cleared a shelf for your recommendations. I fear we have both become ambitious.”

She laughed. It hurt, and it was real, and it was the only thing she could have done. He smiled back at her, a little crookedly, and rose.

“I wish you every happiness,” he said. “I shall be very much annoyed if you do not have it.”

He bowed and went out. She heard his step in the hall, unhurried, and the murmur of the footman, and the click of the door. Then the house was quiet, and the mint moved slightly on the sill in the draft from the closing door, and her mother, at the far end of the room, rose and crossed the carpet and put a hand on her shoulder and left it there. It was all she did, and it was enough.

Mrs. Hartley kept her pins in a little cushion strapped to her wrist and seemed to require every one of them. She moved around Lydia in the back room of the modiste’s in Bond Street, tugging at a sleeve, smoothing a seam, then making Lydia turn toward the light. Silk remnants lay in a basket beneath the window. The gown was ivory, with an overskirt of Mechlin lace, and when Mrs. Hartley lifted the hem, the lace rustled softly against Lydia’s stockings. It was the most beautiful thing she had ever worn. She hated it a little.

“Arms up, Lady Lydia.”

She raised them. In the long glass the pale silk changed with every movement, warm where the sun reached it and almost gray in the folds. Her mother sat behind her in a gilt chair, watching the seamstress work. It was Monday morning, and neither had found an easy subject since Friday’s tea.

“You may say it,” said Lydia.

“Say what, darling?”

“Whatever it is you are not saying. It is making the pins nervous.”

Mrs. Hartley selected another pin from her cushion and examined the point.

“I was merely thinking,” said the countess, “that you look lovely.”

“Thank you.”

“And that a great many marriages begin with less.”

“Most of them, I imagine, begin with a husband who does not resent being congratulated.” Lydia watched Mrs. Hartley lift the lace clear of a pin. “He asked me to marry him, Mama. Then he spoke as though I had contrived the question.”

She had told her mother on Friday night. At first, she had intended to repeat only the words about duty, leaving out the accusation that she had gloated. Then the countess had asked why her hands were shaking. Lydia had sat down and told her everything. Her mother had listened without attempting to make Tristan’s words kinder than they were. She had offered to speak to the earl, and Lydia had asked for a moment to think before anything was done.

“He was cruel,” her mother said. “And I should have been more careful about the speed of these arrangements.” She waited until Mrs. Hartley bent to the hem before adding, more quietly, “You do not owe us a wedding because we have discussed one.”

“It was easier to hurt me than to contradict her,” Lydia said.

“He may have been afraid. He need not have been unkind.” Her mother moved her chair so that Lydia could see her without the mirror. “Do not marry him hoping that if you are good enough, he will learn his manners.”

“He asked me himself.” Lydia had meant to say it firmly. Instead, she heard the appeal in it and disliked herself for making one. “Why ask, if he meant to punish me for answering?”

“Then he must speak to you before Thursday.”

“And if he says the same thing?”

“Then we shall hear it.” The countess drew the reticule’s cord through her fingers. “Your father can postpone the arrangements. A gown may wait in a wardrobe. I would rather pay Mrs. Hartley for work we never use than watch you put it on because you believe it is too late.”

“Would Papa agree?”

“He has already said so.”