Despite everything, Celine smiled. “And we shall live on what? Our staggering lack of theatrical ability?”
“We have other talents. You’re clever with figures; I can sew. Anne can… well, Anne can be pretty and marry rich.”
“Lucy—”
“I know.” Her sister’s voice sobered. “I know why you’ll do it. For us. For Mama. Even for Papa, though goodness knows he doesn’t deserve such devotion.” She took Celine’s hand gently. “But what about doing something foryou?”
A fair question.
Whatdidshe want?
At three-and-twenty, she was already teetering on society’s shelf. Perhaps she had dismissed suitors not merely because they bored her, but because she sought… something more. Someone more. Someone who might match her wit, her will, her restless yearning for—what, precisely? She did not even know.
“Did you know,” she said quietly, “that he offered separate bedchambers for the first month?”
Lucy’s eyes widened. “He did?”
“To let me ‘acclimate,’ he said.”
“That’s… unexpectedly considerate.”
“That was my thought.” Celine stared at the roses, brittle and brown. “Everything about him tonight was unexpected. He might have forced the matter with Papa alone, but he came to ensure that I had a choice. A terrible one, yes—but a choice all the same.”
“You’re talking yourself into it.”
“Perhaps.” She squeezed Lucy’s hand. “Or perhaps I am acknowledging that, of all the cages available to women like us, this one might be the most… intriguing.”
“Intriguing,” Lucy echoed. “That is certainly one word for it.”
They fell silent, listening to the distant pulse of London—the rumble of wheels, the faint cry of vendors, the laughter of those whose lives were not collapsing.
“If you do it,” Lucy said at last, “if you marry him—promise me something.”
“What?”
“Don’t let him change you. Don’t fade into his shadow. Fight him if you must. Argue. Be yourself, even if—especially if—he dislikes it.”
Celine drew her sister close and kissed her temple. “I promise. And I suspect the Duke of Rothwest has no idea what he is bargaining for.”
“Good.” Lucy’s smile was fierce. “Let the Beast learn what happens when he cages a Broker woman.”
Chapter Three
“Absolutely not.”
Lady Broker’s voice cut through the morning room with the authority of a woman who had held a household together on increasingly creative economies for the better part of a decade. She stood rigidly at the window, hands clenched in the folds of her morning dress. Even the sunlight filtering through the glass did not soften her expression.
“Mama—” Celine began, but her mother whirled around, two high spots of colour burning in her cheeks.
“Do not ‘Mama’ me, young lady. Do you imagine I raised you to be bartered off like livestock? Do you think I spent twenty-three years teaching you French and watercolours and proper precedence only for you to be handed over to that—that—”
“Monster?” Celine suggested mildly, stirring her tea with unnecessary care.
“I was going to say ‘man,’” her mother snapped, though her expression suggested she’d been thinking something far less charitable. “Though I use the term loosely. The Duke of Rothwest possesses many qualities, I’m sure, but warmth is not among them.”
“Neither is bankruptcy,” Celine pointed out. “Which is precisely what awaits us without his intervention.”
“There must be another way.” Her mother began to pace—a habit developed during Papa’s first financial disaster and perfected through every one that followed. “Your Aunt Prudence has connections. Perhaps she might arrange something. A position as a companion, or—”
