“Clio!” he exclaimed, genuinely shocked.
“If you didn’t want me to learn swears, you ought not have sent me to the Continent,” she informed him archly. “They are far more liberal with what they say around young ladies. But to my point, you need to behonestwith Phoebe. You need to explain that you’re being such a wretched ninnyhammer because you are afraid.”
Aaron waited a moment for any instinctive denials that wanted to fly from his mouth. Surely, he should protest this. He had just told his sister that he had married Phoebe out of a plan to improve his reputation—and by extension, Clio’s prospects. Love was not involved in any capacity.
Except no such denials emerged from his lips.
“I think… I might love her,” he said wonderingly.
Clio rolled her eyes expansively. “God, men are sostupid,” she sighed to the ceiling as though praying for deliverance from such ineptitude. “Yes,” she continued, turning back to her brother. “Of course, you love her. Youidiot.”
Aaron lacked any grounds to protest this near-constant stream of insults.
“What do I do with that?” he asked, throwing up his hands. “I already knew that I had erred grievously—I already knew I had to make amends. But now, knowing this—knowing how I feel about her… What am I supposed to do now?”
It all seemed so impossible. But to Clio, apparently, it was simple.
“If you love her,” she told him, her gaze pinning him like a bug to a card, “then you have to show her.”
Phoebe spent the last few days leading up to Christmas alternately moping in the room that Ariadne had given her—“For as long as you need it; I mean that,” her friend assured her—and trying not to make her friend regret this by forcing a bit of cheer whenever she encountered her hosts.
And then, on the twenty-third of December, Phoebe got her courses, and she spent most of the day in bed, weeping. Even she didn’t know if she was weeping because she was relieved not to be expecting—as this gave her an undeniable reason to see her husband again—because she was mourning the possibility of a child—which would tie her irrevocably to Aaron—or merely because she’d always gotten weepy when her courses arrived.
On Christmas Eve, David and Ariadne were scheduled to go to the house of her brother, Xander Lightholder, the Duke of Godwin. This was evidently where the majority of the extended Lightholder clan gathered each Christmas, lest they risk theDuke of Godwin’s wrath. Ariadne invited Phoebe along, but Phoebe declined the invitation.
“You are part of the family now,” Ariadne reminded her.
“If I’m forced to go, you should be forced to go,” David said less diplomatically as his wife kicked him under the table.
This, at least, got a small smile from Phoebe.
“I’m in no spirits for it,” she said, shaking her head. “I have to go see my sister and father today, anyway.”
Christmas never had been much of a jolly affair at the Turner household, but that suited Phoebe’s mood perfectly.
Since she was apparently suffering from the worst luck in the world, however, she was greeted by an ebullient Hannah, who was leaping to and fro with such vigor that she marveled over how such a thing was even possible in her sister’s condition.
“Phoebe, Phoebe, Phoebe!” Hannah trilled, grabbing Phoebe’s hands and twirling her in a circle before Phoebe even managed to get out of her cloak and hat. “Happy Christmas! Isn’t everything so wonderful?”
Absolutely nothing at all was wonderful, and Phoebe was prepared to say as much…
And then she caught the glint of a ring on her sister’s finger.
Despite her own troubles, a wave of relief washed over Phoebe.
“Oh, Hannah,” Phoebe breathed, seizing her sister’s hand to examine the beautiful gold and sapphire band that sat there. “Tell me it’s Loyd that you’re going to marry.”
“Yes, yes, of course it is!” Hannah said, cheeks red, apparently too happy to protest Phoebe’s clear tone of doubt. “It’s the most wonderful thing. He came here—with hismother—and said that he loved me, and he was going to marry me, and that was that!”
Phoebe privately reflected that she did not consider the presence of a future mother-in-law to add to the romance of a proposal, but she supposed that, in Hannah’s particular circumstance, it was likely a relief to know she would no longer have to hide in the shadows while her husband-to-be kowtowed to his mother’s every whim.
“That’s wonderful,” Phoebe said. She managed to shake Hannah off just long enough that she could remove her cloak and hand it to a nearby footman, who had waited through all of this with considerable patience.
“Itiswonderful,” Hannah agreed with a happy sigh. “Loyd and his motherdidalready have plans for Christmas, which is just too bad, but Loyd told us all that this would be the last event in which his mother was the priority, so he wanted to give her that. It was very thoughtful of him,” Hannah added, lest Phoebe mistake the import of this gesture of filial piety.
“Besides,” she continued, dragging Phoebe through to the parlor, where a fire was blazing and plates of shortbread and bowls of wassail were waiting for celebrants to enjoy, “he said it—right to his mother’s face!—that I would be his priority after we are wed which will be as soon as the banns are read.” Hannah let out a little squeal of delight. “Less than three weeks and I shall beLady Loyd.”
She said it the way another woman might have saidthe Queen of England.
