Page 91 of A Fragile Enchantment

“At his stag party at Nightingale’s.” Sinclair made a face. “I was disinvited. No surprise there.”

“I see… What is a stag party?”

He looked at her with exaggeratedly wide eyes. “It’s only the most important day of a man’s life. His last day of freedom!”

He explained it to her, but she had a hard time following. From what she could glean, a bunch of people sat in a room, drinking and eating until they lost all sense. Then, maybe, in a wine-drunk haze, they hunted a deer, skinned it, and presented it as a gift to the bride the next day. Niamh suspected he was having one over on her, but she didn’t want to embarrass herself further by pressing the issue. The image of Rosa, holding a deer skin in her arms, unimpressed and completely bemused, nearly killed her.

“You should count yourself lucky,” said Niamh. “In Caterlow, we parade the newlyweds through the streets and cover them in mud and flowers. Then we chase them into a lake.”

“That sounds infinitely more fun.”

A silence fell over them, and Niamh buried her face in her hands. This was an entirely ridiculous idea. Kit had already proposed to her—horribly, yes—but she would never have the honor of expecting another. If he called off the wedding, she would have nothing at all. All her work, wasted. Her one chance to give her family a better life, gone.

“Is it really wise to risk so much?” she murmured. “Jack’s plan will work.”

“All right.” Sinclair frowned. “Let’s play it out, shall we? Kit and Rosa get married. Castilia stays out of any military conflict for five years. You go home, knowing you had something real and you let it go, but at least you didn’t rock the boat for anyone but yourself. That’s it for you? True happiness?”

That sounded absolutely dreadful. “I… I don’t know.”

He raised an eyebrow. “When you’re on your deathbed, do you think you’re going to reflect on how proud you were to put everyone’s needs before your own? Do you think you’ll wish you’d given upmore?”

Hope blossomed within her, but she crushed it in her fist. “How can I possibly live for my own happiness, when I have so little of it left? How can that possibly be meaningful, when my family is counting on me?”

“Because it’s not meaningful to kill yourself little by little to make people happy!”

Niamh reeled back at the sudden fierceness in his voice.

“Believe me, I’ve tried. I’ve tried so many fucking times.” He sank back down into his chair, as if suddenly exhausted. The quiet pain in those words made her heart lurch. “I tried to be the son Pelinor wanted. I tried to save Kit from himself when he didn’t want to be saved. But that’s not love. That’s madness. That’s cruelty—to you and everyone else around you. Can’t you see that?”

Niamh choked on a sob. When she thought of what made her happy,trulyhappy… It looked like this: brandy in a cozy room with someone who might be her friend again. It looked like playing lawn games in the summer, or curling up beside Kit in the rain, or embroidering absentmindedly while he tended to his greenhouse. It looked like a thousand quiet moments, each of them as small as a candle flame. But together, they were luminous—as expansive and bright as a galaxy. How could such beautiful, tender things be selfish?

Happiness looked nothing like sewing by a lacemaker’s lamp long after her body had begun begging for mercy. It looked nothing like aching fingers and swimming thoughts. It looked nothing like sinking deeper and deeper under the weight of exhaustion andregret.

Sinclair sighed and offered his handkerchief to her. “I’ve seen alot of horrible things growing up in Sootham. The lengths people will go to in order to protect their legacy. The things they’ll do, the people they’ll hurt. But I’ve seen a lot of beautiful things, too. There’s this lake near my family’s country home. This may sound ridiculous, but I used to love to watch the ducks.”

When Niamh laughed, he smiled encouragingly. “When they hatch, they imprint on the first living thing they see. Most of the time, that’s their mother. But one season, an egg got left behind in the nest, and when the duckling hatched, it imprinted on the duke’s hound. Whatever they imprint on, they swim toward it headlong. Even if it’s dangerous, even if they’re completely wrong, they follow that instinct. It’s the first thing they ever do. They live for love.

“Nothing is guaranteed, Niamh. We all die. You and I are dying right now, but we’re alsoalive. Love is what makes life worth living. Love is what makes us act when we most need to. That’s what your legacy is. It’s how you love the people around you, not how much you’ve sacrificed for them.”

Niamh dabbed her eyes with his handkerchief. “Thank you, Sinclair. Really.”

“Don’t mention it.” When he smiled, he looked like the god of mischief himself. “So, what do you say? Shall we pay Kit a visit at Nightingale’s?”

26

Despite the late hour, the streets of Sootham were teeming and alive. Niamh, however, kept her eyes trained on her feet. The cobblestones were treacherous tonight, glistening with damp. Rainwater—and a slurry of other unseemly liquids—pooled in the cracks and reflected the oily, golden light of the streetlamps.

She would not ruin either another hemlineora pair of slippers. She would not look like a careless child on the one night of her life it mattered. She stepped carefully off the curb—and immediately was jerked backward by a firm tug on her elbow. Niamh stumbled back into Sinclair, just as a carriage tore out of the night itself. It clattered by, a blur of horses and crushing wheels. Her heart slammed against her rib cage.

“Careful.” He offered his arm to her, and she gratefully accepted.

He led her around puddles and the gentlemen pouring out of the gambling dens and clubs, loud and merry and unsteady with drink. Never in her life had she felt so completely out of her element. This, she understood, was not a place girls like her were supposed to be. But on the arm of one of the most infamous political columnists in the city—and with little reputation left to lose—she felt oddly safe.

Sinclair leaned down conspiratorially and said, “This is where all the nobles take their mistresses. You’ll find the best gossip here.”

“Revealing your trade secrets, Sinclair?”

“Hardly,” he scoffed. He jerked his chin toward a building across the street. “Here we are. The doom of high-society men.”