Outside the gallery, somewhere in the south corridor, a clock chimed the half hour. Alice waited until it had finished.
The dark gleam of the portrait’s varnish caught the lamplight at one corner, and Henry’s painted face was, for an instant, a little more alive than it had been.
She took a deep breath.
She took a deep breath because she had decided, somewhere in the last quarter of an hour, that she would not leave this gallery without having extracted from Cassian a few of the ordinary things she had not in two years of knowing him. She had been his betrothed for nearly a fortnight, and she did not even know his favorite color.
“Your Grace.”
“Yes.”
“I am to be your wife in six days.”
“Yes.”
“And I am supposed to convince a great many people that we are madly in love.”
“You are.”
“Then I must know a great many small ordinary things about you. I would very much like to begin with the ordinary things. What is your favorite color, Your Grace?”
Cassian regarded her with a careful look. It was clear that he had not been expecting to be asked that question in the gallery in front of his brother’s portrait.
“I can’t say.”
“You can’t?”
“I have never been asked, Alice.”
“In thirty years.”
“In thirty years.”
“That is a long time to not have been asked about one’s favorite color, Your Grace.”
“Yes.”
“Well, then, think of one right now.”
“It’s green.”
“Green?”
“Green, Alice. And I did not think of it right now. I have had two years to think about it. I have decided green.”
Alice felt her face warm.
She did not answer at once. She was wearing pale yellow this evening, not green. She had worn green at Almack’s a week ago. She set that small fact aside in the careful place she had been keeping such facts about Cassian since the ball, and she moved on.
“And your favorite hobby?”
“Boxing.”
“You box?”
“I have been boxing since I was fifteen. Lord Greencliff taught me. I have boxed three times a week in every week of my life since I was sixteen, except for the week of my father’s funeral and the week of Joanna’s measles. I am a moderately competent boxer.”
“You—”
