“She is,” Elizabeth said, with a lightness that did not illuminate her face. “And Captain Marlowe is everything a sensible woman ought to want.”
Darcy glanced toward the crowd. “Then we are both admirably sensible.”
“Unusually so.”
Darcy’s gaze followed the thread of her voice, settling briefly on the back of Marlowe’s uniform.
“He seems… earnest,” he said.
“Oh, painfully,” Elizabeth replied. “And dreadfully courteous. I do wish he would contradict me more.”
“Perhaps he is too wise.”
“Or too cautious. There is nothing so tedious as unrelenting agreement.”
He looked at her. “I had not found you tedious.”
Her eyes flicked to his, sharp and unreadable. “You have never agreed with me long enough to find out.”
A breath passed between them—shallow, charged, entirely inappropriate.
Elizabeth smoothed her glove. “You ought to return to Miss Ashford. I believe she was preparing to astonish you with her views on classical architecture next.”
“I am braced for it.”
She glanced up, a reluctant smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. “Be kind.”
“Always.”
She dipped her head, almost a bow, and slipped away into the crowd—leaving him standing very still, wondering whether anyone else had ever made being reasonable feel quite so foolish.
Chapter Twenty-Six
20 December
Captain Marlowe’s handwriting wasunexpectedly elegant. That was her first thought.
The second, more pressing thought was that she had no more than five days—perhaps six—before some unnamed social guillotine came down upon her neck.
Elizabeth folded the note again and set it beside her teacup. It had arrived that morning by hand, delivered with an unnecessary flourish by a footman in a naval-blue livery. Inside was a neatly penned invitation to a Christmas gathering near the Serpentine—a skating party hosted by one of Marlowe’s cousins. He had included a line in his own hand, tucked just below the printed card:
“It would be the greatest honor to steady your hand on the ice—if I might be so bold. And I should be pleased if your sister wished to attend us as well. Yours, with admiration and a good deal of hope—M.”
It was not poetry, precisely. But it was close enough to make her stomach twist in several directions at once.
A Christmas outing. Music, lanterns, ice that would groan politely beneath her boots while Captain Marlowe offered his arm and said something gallant about the stars. It was exactly the sort of invitation she needed at exactly the right moment.
The gathering was public, which meant spectators. It meant opportunity. It meant she could be seen in his company, and possibly claimed by it. And Captain Marlowe—poor nervous man that he was—would never invite her at all unless he hoped for something more.
She lifted her teacup to her lips and stared at the folded note.
He was the best prospect she had. He was generous. Affable. Inclined to flattery. And if he asked every five minutes whether she preferred orange punch or lemon, well… she could learn to tolerate attentiveness.
She had no illusions about love. Love was not what one needed when one's reputation hung by a thread sewn by a jealous rival. What she needed was a husband who would not flinch at scandal. One who admired her enough to forgive it—or better, to dismiss it entirely.
Better that than the world thinking her too clever to wed.
Better a man who admired her blindly than one who saw all too clearly.
