Page 57

“You are looking at my swag,” Charlotte said from the window-seat, “and finding it wanting. You have your steward’s face.”

“I am sure I have no such face.”

“You have exactly such a face. Augusta, do look.”

“She is,” Augusta agreed, without glancing up from her work beside the fire. “It is a very fine face, and it has run better houses than mine. But if it straightens one sprig of that holly before Twelfth Night, I shall have it put out in the snow.” She threaded her needle calmly, quite as though she had settled the matter. “Sit down, Rosalind. You have done enough managing of rooms this season to last you into your dotage. This one is to stand exactly as crooked as the children left it.”

Rosalind sat, and did not mind the sitting.

A knock sounded below, and Charlotte sat up with an air of enormous satisfaction. “That will be my brother. He has been quite unfit for human company since Tuesday.”

“You are about to see a man undone, Rosalind,” Augusta said, without looking up from her needle. “Do try to look surprised.”

* * *

Stephen Danforth came in with Phoebe half a step behind him, and Rosalind understood the moment she saw them. Phoebe entered glad and unguarded, her color high and her hand resting upon Stephen’s arm, where she had put it herself. Her heart leapt, for where was the old careful checking that had once met the girl at every threshold? It had gone out of her entirely, and Rosalind was glad past speaking before a word was said.

“Lady Holt.” Stephen made his bow, and then he seemed to lose the thread of whatever he had meant to say next, shaking his head at himself. “Forgive me. I have said this forty times to my horse on the way here, and it went very smoothly to my horse.”

“Horses are a forgiving audience,” Augusta said. “We shall try to be no worse. Sit down, Mr. Danforth, for you are making the room anxious.”

“I had rather stand, if you will allow it, Lady Holt. I cannot say it sitting.” He drew a breath, and Rosalind waited, for he was not a man who could dress a thing up. She had liked that in him since the first afternoon, when she had watched him refuse to let Phoebe soften a kindness. “I have asked Miss Phoebe to marry me, and she has said she will.”

Charlotte’s hands flew up to her mouth, though for once she managed to hold her tongue.

“I came to say it plainly to the people she counts as hers,” he went on, “because she tells me there are precious few of them, and I should like the few to hear it from us and not from a card.”

For a long moment, nobody spoke, and then Charlotte gave a shriek that was entirely improper and flung herself off the window-seat. “Oh, I knew it! Did I not say it would be this very week? Did I not say so, Augusta?”

All at once the warm little room filled up with gladness, though Rosalind herself did not move. She looked at Phoebe, at the high color and the steady eyes, none of it borrowed and none of it checked. Joy turned over in her chest until it ached, for how many years had she been glad for other people from the far side of a room? How many times had she watched such an announcement and told herself that watching was enough? And I called it my place.

“Phoebe,” she said, softly.

“I know.” Phoebe came across to her, careless of Charlotte, and took both of Rosalind’s hands in hers. “I know what you are going to say, and you need not, because I should only weep. I have wept twice this morning already.”

“Then I shall not make it a third,” Rosalind said.

“Mr. Danforth says my eyes go quite alarming.” Phoebe’s fingers tightened about hers as though she would not let go. “Only say you are glad, and I shall have everything I came for.”

“I am glad,” Rosalind said, and it was true all the way to the bottom of her. “I am so glad I can hardly speak it. You have chosen well, and you have chosen for yourself.” She pressed the girl’s hands. “You will not know how rare that second thing is until you are old and looking back upon it.”

“Mama was not glad.” Phoebe said it without flinching, which a month ago she could not have done. “She said a great many cold things, and Cassandra said none at all, which from Cassandra is colder.”

“Because Mr. Danforth has nothing she wants?” Rosalind asked quietly.

“No title, no great fortune, only the gentry living and a good plain heart.” Phoebe’s chin came up. “Mama made it very clear that I was throwing myself away on the heart and keeping none of the rest, and I find I do not care.”

“Do you not?” Rosalind asked, though she already knew the answer.

“I have spent nineteen years caring what Mama thought of every breath I drew, and I have stopped. Stopping is the best thing that has ever happened to me.” Her grip tightened again upon Rosalind’s hands, warm and sure. “I should rather have his heart and a small house than every door in London open and a husband of her choosing.”

“You are not of age,” Rosalind said gently, because someone had to say it, and she would rather it were her. “She can make it hard for you. She can make you wait.”

“She can make me wait, but she cannot make me choose otherwise.” Phoebe glanced at Stephen, and her mouth curved. “Stephen says he will wait as long as the law requires, and a year past it if I ask.”

“And shall you ask?”

“I shall not, for I am not going to spend two years being managed for the privilege of a thing I have already decided.” Her voice warmed. “Lady Holt has been very useful on the subject of what a determined girl may do with two years and a respectable aunt willing to have her to stay.”