"He'll come," Robert said grimly. "Tomorrow, most likely. Or the day after. He certainly needs this settled quickly."
"Then I suppose we shall deal with it when he does." She kept her voice deliberately light, though her stomach churned at the thought. The Duke of Montclaire, here, in their drawing room. The man her brothers had spent her entire life teaching her to despise.
"You won't be alone with him," Charles said suddenly, as if this were a great concession. "We shall all be here."
"How comforting," she murmured. "Nothing says successful courtship quite like four hostile brothers glowering from the corners."
"This isn't a courtship," Robert snapped. "It's a business transaction."
"Ah. How romantic. I've always dreamed of being a business transaction."
Mrs. Coleridge stirred. "Perhaps we might discuss this more calmly..."
"Calmly?" Robert's voice climbed. "They want to take our sister!"
"I wasn't aware I was going anywhere," she said. "Though I suppose a duchess would have her own carriage. That might be nice. I could actually arrive at assemblies on time instead of waiting for Charles to finish his fourth adjustment of his cravat."
"This isn't amusing," Robert said severely.
"No," Ophelia agreed. "It's not. But shouting won't change it, will it? The will is signed. The requirement is set. Either I marry the Duke, or he loses his estate. Those are the facts."
"You could refuse him," Henry suggested, and there was something calculating in his tone. "Publicly. Imagine...the Duke of Montclaire, rejected by a Coleridge."
"And then what?" She kept her attention on the roses, though she could feel their eyes on her. "We go back to glaring at each other across ballrooms? Teaching our children to hate people they've never met? Another forty years of this exhausting feud?"
"You sound as if you want to marry him," Robert accused.
"I sound as if I'm tired." She set down her scissors with a definitive click. "Tired of being invisible except when I'm useful. Tired of watching you all waste energy on ancient grudges. Tiredof being the Coleridge everyone forgets exists until moments like this when suddenly I'm terribly important."
The silence that followed was uncomfortable in the way only truth could make it.
"We don't forget you," Charles said, though he had the grace to look ashamed.
"What did I wear to church last Sunday?"
No one answered.
"What's my middle name?"
More silence.
"When is my birthday?"
Robert opened his mouth, then closed it.
"October fifteenth," she supplied helpfully. "I'll be four-and-twenty. Well past the age where anyone might expect a brilliant match, even without our family's... complications."
"That's not...” Edward started.
"True? Of course it is." She rose, smoothing her skirts; a plain morning dress of pale blue that none of them would remember an hour from now. "I am the invisible Coleridge daughter. The one who plays pianoforte adequately, dances without causing comment, and arranges flowers that no one notices. And now, suddenly, I'm visible. Because the Duke of Montclaire needs a Coleridge bride, and I'm the only one available."
"We're trying to protect you, sister" Robert said stiffly.
"From what? A life of wealth and title?" She laughed, though there was no humor in it. "Or from the terrible fate of marrying without love? Because I hate to disappoint you, but that was always my most likely future. At least this way, the lack of affection comes with a coronet."
"You're worth more than that," Mrs. Coleridge said softly.
"Am I?" She moved to the window, looking out at the garden where everything grew in cheerful disorder. "I'm three-and-twenty, with a minimal dowry and a family reputation that ensures I'll never marry well. My choices are spinsterhood, a marriage of convenience to someone of our own class who needs my dowry, or this. A duchy."
