He crossed to the window where Wilfrey had been standing moments before and looked out at the grounds, at the green sweep of lawn and the distant tree line and the lake glinting silver in the morning light.
“I taught her to diminish herself so that a man who cannot tell one Roman historian from another might find her palatable. And she did it. She did it beautifully. And I stood across the room and watched it happen and felt as though I had taken something precious and filed down its edges until it fit inside a box it was never meant to occupy.”
The words hung in the air. Hugo had not planned to say them. They had risen from somewhere below the armor, from the place where he kept the things he did not examine, and now they were out, and he could not retrieve them.
Edward was quiet for a long moment. The clock on the mantel ticked. A bird sang outside the window, oblivious and cheerful.
“You are in love with her.”
“I amnotin love with her. I simply find her an interesting diversion.”
“Hugo, you just delivered a speech about Roman historians and the filing down of precious edges.”
Hugo pressed his forehead against the window glass. It was cool against his skin, and he closed his eyes and let the cold anchor him.
“She wants Wilfrey.”
“She wants what Wilfrey represents. Travel. A life which she won’t have to fuss over a needy husband.”
“And I represent what? Scandal sheets and whipped cream?”
Edward’s chair scraped against the floor. Footsteps crossed the room, and then Edward stood beside him at the window, shoulder to shoulder, the way they had stood a hundred times before. At school. At funerals. In the aftermath of disasters, both public and private.
“You represent something she has not allowed herself to want.” Edward’s voice was quiet. “You represent the possibility that a man might see all of her, the sharpness, the stubbornness, and the fire, and want more of it rather than less. Wilfrey will appreciate her mind if it does not outshine his. You would hand her a torch and stand back to watch her burn.”
Hugo opened his eyes. The grounds stretched before him, impossibly green, impossibly peaceful. Somewhere in this house, Lily was walking through a gallery with her aunt, wearing a gown he had chosen and a hairstyle he had suggested and a set of skills he had taught her, all of it designed to deliver her into the arms of a man who would spend the rest of his life showing her oak trees and never once understanding what he had.
“We kissed. At the opera. On the balcony,” Hugo said flatly, as though he was mentioning the weather. “And then she ran. So no, Edward. She does not want me.”
“She kissed you and ran because she felt something she was not prepared to feel. That is not rejection. That is terror. And terror, in my experience, is a far more promising foundation for a marriage than oak trees.”
Hugo almost laughed. The sound caught in his throat and came out as something closer to a breath, half amusement, and half despair.
“When did you become an expert on courtship?”
“I married Sophia. I navigated a scandal, a gossip columnist, and a mother-in-law who wept at breakfast. I am eminently qualified.” Edward clapped his shoulder. “Tell her.”
“Tell her what?”
“You want her.”
“I do not want her. The engagement is a performance. If I tell her the truth, it changes everything. She will feel trapped, obligated, guilty. I will not do that to her.”
“So, your plan is to suffer in silence while you help her marry another man.”
“My plan is to honor the arrangement.”
Edward studied him. The assessment was thorough, unflinching, and carried the weight of fifteen years of friendship and from a man who had once been exactly this stupid about a woman and had lived to tell the tale.
“You are an idiot,” Edward said.
“I know.”
“An extraordinarily well-dressed idiot, but an idiot.”
“Noted.”
Edward squeezed his shoulder and released it. He returned to his chair and picked up his toast, which had gone cold, and bit into it with the philosophical acceptance of a man who recognized that some problems could not be solved over breakfast.
