He recognized the smallness. It was a smallness she had used at the age of nine when she had told him she did not mind that their father had not come to her birthday supper. It was a smallness he had not been able to bear at nine and could not bear now.
“Cassian, may I ask you a question?”
“You will ask it, whether I permit it or not.”
“Why are you helping her?”
“What?”
“Why are you helping her, Cassian? I have been mulling it over for three days, and I do not understand the shape of it. She did what she did at the Worthington ball, and you did what you did, and the two of you could have parted ways there. You could have called for your carriage and gone home.
“She would have been ruined and sent to the country, and that would have been the end of it. You did not have to propose to her. You did not have to put the banns in for next Sunday. You did not have to write your name in all eleven slots of her dance card the other night. Cassian, why are you helping her?”
Cassian took a slow breath. He had many answers prepared. He had been preparing them for three days. He had prepared the one about Joanna’s reputation, which was true. He had prepared the one about his own reputation, which was true. He had prepared the one about Alice having been about to throw herself on some unsuitable man at the ball, and his having done her the small civility of intervening, which was also tru, and which he had polished in his head until it gleamed.
He looked at his sister and did not give her any of them. “I do not know.”
“You do.”
“I do not, Joanna.”
“You do, and you are not going to tell me, which is your own business, but you must at least tell yourself. You must tell yourself, Cassian, bBecause if you do not…”
“What?”
“Then this will end very badly. For both of you.”
He looked back at the dance floor. Alice was finishing the dance, before the young viscount led her off. Her face was composed in the particular way it had been for the past forty minutes. She was holding something very large just out of view.
She had not looked at him since the other night on the terrace. She had not looked at him as she had returned to the ballroom. She had not looked at him as she had gone to her mother, made an excuse about the heat, and accepted a glass of lemonade. She had not looked at him tonight as she had taken Lord Sefton’s hand for the first dance. She had not looked at him as she had laughed at the young viscount’s dull face.
She was, he realized, doing it on purpose.
It was not avoidance. It was discipline. She had decided, on the way back to the ballroom, that she was not going to let the room see what had happened on the terrace, and she was holding the line of that decision with the same disciplined neatness with which, he was beginning to understand, she did everything that she actually cared about.
For three days, he had told himself he wanted to mark her with a diamond and that it was a possessive impulse he would have to manage. He understood now that he had been wrong about the shape of it. He had wanted to mark her because he had wantedvery badly to see her wear something of his and acknowledge it in public.
She was not going to be marked. She was going to be married to him, by license or by banns, before the Season was out. She was going to walk down the aisle. She was going to take his name. She was going to allow him, on the day of their wedding, all the things one was allowed.
But she was not going to be marked.
He set the glass down on the windowsill very carefully. “Joanna.”
“Yes.”
“What did you mean, both of you?”
Joanna did not look at him. She did not look at him for some time. When she did, her face reminded him of her sixteen-year-old self, standing in the doorway of his study, having come to ask him for advice that he had not had any idea how to give.
“I meant what I said. This will end very badly, Cassian. You will survive a thing like a man like you survives anything—you shall close a door and not open it. But she will not survive it as you do. She is not made to. She will break, Cassian. Slowly and over a great many years in a great manor house out of London. She will break very gracefully because she does everything gracefully, but shewillbreak. She is doing it for her sister, you are doing it forthe look of it, but you are both lying to yourselves about why. One of you is going to find out you were lying. I would very much prefer that you found out before you married her, and not in twenty years.”
He looked at her. “That is a remarkable speech for a girl of twenty-three.”
“Twenty-four next Tuesday. You always forget.”
“I do not forget.”
“You do. But it is only Tuesday; you have time.”
