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“In front of the entire room.”
“Anthony.” She said his name the way a woman says a thing she cannot quite believe, shaking her head slowly. “You should have corrected it that instant!”
“What would you have had us do? Contradict a woman well into her seventies, in the middle of a ballroom, in front of witnesses who would have made considerably more of the correction than they ever made of the original announcement? It was simpler, in the moment, to let it stand.”
“Simpler for whom?”
“For everyone involved, I had hoped, though I will grant you the whole affair has grown rather more complicated since.”
Seraphina lowered her hands slowly, studying him with an expression he couldn’t place. “This is a very great deal to have been carrying, Anthony, but it is trouble.”
“It is fine,” he said. “Whatever else comes of it, I give you my word that I will not let your sister’s reputation suffer for my grandmother’s indiscretion. I did not agree to any of this to see her ruined by it.”
“How do you intend to ensure that? You know as well as I do how this society treats a woman who is clever and outspoken and not inclined to soften herself for anyone’s comfort. My sister reads things she is not meant to read and says things she is not meant to say, and she has never once apologised for either, which I love dearly about her and which the ton will happily use against her the moment it suits them.”
Anthony held her gaze a long moment, something settling into place behind his expression that had not been there a moment before, a fierce, immediate protectiveness that caught him rather more off guard than the question itself.
“That will not happen to her,” he said, quietly and without his usual lightness. “Whatever it costs me to prevent it. We will manage it between us, whatever form that takes. You have my word, and I do not give it lightly.”
Seraphina’s gaze eased visibly at that, the last of the tension going out of her shoulders. “Well, thank you.” She studied him a moment longer, then nodded, as though satisfied by whatever she had found in his face. “If anything else happens with my sister, Anthony, I would like to know of it. I do not ask to interfere. I ask only to be trusted.”
“That seems fair enough, Your Grace. Perhaps I might ask her to give you a little more of the particulars herself, when the opportunity arises.”
Seraphina laughed. “When pigs fly, perhaps. You clearly have not spent years attempting to extract information from Leonora Ashcroft when she has decided a thing is not yours to know.”
Anthony smiled. “She is that stubborn with you as well, then? I had rather hoped it was a particular favour she reserved only for me.”
Seraphina smiled too. “She is stubborn with everyone, in her own fashion, and has been since she was a child. But she is charming with it, in a way that is difficult to hold against her for long. She looks after people without being asked to. When she loves someone, she loves them fiercely, and she does not do it quietly, however quiet she may seem on the surface. The stubbornness becomes rather useful, you understand, when someone in the family needs a person willing to stand firm on something the rest of us don’t want to say aloud. It makes her rather adorable, in its own way, however much it exasperates the rest of us in the meantime.” Seraphina’s expression softened further. “I cannot fault her for any of it. She simply has a great deal she is trying to manage at present, more than any of us fully understand, I think. We are hoping, once she finally has the answer she has been searching for, that she might find some measure of peace in it.”
Anthony said nothing to that.
Seraphina nodded, her head tilting slightly, the last of her earlier briskness fading away. “May I ask you one more thing, Your Grace? Not as an interrogation. Only because I find I want to know the answer rather badly.”
“You may ask. I make no promise of an answer.”
“Are you lying to my sister? Not about the arrangement, or your grandmother, or any of the rest of it. I mean the plainer question beneath all of that. When you tell her things, are they true?”
He considered the question properly, rather than reaching for the easiest reply available to him, and found, somewhat to his own surprise, that a short laugh escaped him before he had decided to allow it.
“No,” he said.
“Because she will know,” Seraphina added. “It will do you no good.”
“I find, rather inconveniently, that I am not able to manage it with her, I assure you. She has a habit of seeing directly through whatever I attempt, and calling me out for it the moment I try, which I did not anticipate when any of this began.”
“Do you care for her? Truly, I mean. Not the arrangement, nor the necklace, or whatever practical scaffolding first brought the two of you together. Her. Leonora herself.”
He was quiet a long moment, choosing his words with more care than he generally extended to conversation. “I mean no offense when I say this, but she is the most infuriating woman I have ever had the misfortune of striking a bargain with. But I admire her more than I have admired anyone in a very long while, if I am honest about it, which I am finding I am rather compelled to be this afternoon. She is intelligent, and wise beyond her years. She is also very kind, at least to my grandmother.” He paused. “I would appreciate it if none of that reached her directly.”
“It shall not. She would not believe me regardless.” Seraphina sighed. “Thank you. That is all I wanted to hear.”
“I have kept you both from your contract long enough,” she added, gathering herself at last, the whole of her bearing considerably lighter than it had been before. “Do be careful with her. That is the only thing I ask, beyond everything you have already given me today.”
Anthony nodded. “I have no intention of being careless with anything of hers.”
Seraphina pressed a hand to William’s shoulder as she passed him, and paused at the door, looking back at Anthony. “For what it is worth, I am glad of it. Whatever this has become. She has needed someone willing to see past all that stubbornness for a very long time, and I confess I did not expect it to be you, of every man in London she might have crossed paths with.”
She left the room without waiting for further response, and the quiet that settled after her departure felt considerably larger than the space itself, broken only by the soft crack of the fire in the hearth. Anthony remained standing, staring at the closed door, until William’s voice pulled him back into the room.
