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“Twice, then. Do not make me say it a third time.” But she put out her hand, and Rosalind took it, and the two of them held on for a long moment in the middle of the warm, loud room. James turned his eyes away to let them have the moment, and found Westcott at his elbow doing the same.

“Well, Dover,” Westcott murmured. He had come up from the country for the day, at no notice and at considerable cost to his own Christmas, and had said not one word about either. “You are grinning like an idiot.”

“You are to stand up with me at the church,” James told him.

“I volunteered before I remembered what churches are like in winter. I shall hold a grudge about the weather for thirty years, and stand up with you regardless.”

Stephen Danforth came in not long after, with Phoebe bright beside him on his arm, and the room grew louder for them. Phoebe went straight to Rosalind and took both her hands.

“Rosalind! I shall have to learn to call you Lady Dover after the wedding, shall I not? I am not sure I shall manage it.” Her smile trembled and steadied. “I have spent my whole life with a sister who would not have crossed a street for me, and this Christmas I have found another who crossed a great deal more than a street.”

Her chin came up, in the brave new way she had. “You got me here. You let me talk my courage up on the afternoons when I had none, and you championed me to a man I had no right to expect.”

“Phoebe,” Rosalind began, but Phoebe pressed on.

“You never once asked what I could do for you in return, and that is the only kind of kindness I had never had. I know the law made us sisters two years ago. I think I should like to be one on purpose now.”

“You are my sister,” Rosalind replied, pressing her hands, “and you have arranged it yourself, which is the only way you do anything now. I could not be prouder of you if I had taught you the trick myself.” She kissed Phoebe’s cheek. “Go and be glad, both of you. There is a great deal of gladness about today, and I will not have anybody stinting.”

Stephen made his bow to James, plain and entire, without a particle of London in it. “I gather we are both to be country gentlemen, with happier years ahead of us than we had any business expecting.”

James clasped his hand warmly.

* * *

It was Charlotte who called for music, for Charlotte called for everything sooner or later. There was the small pianoforte that Augusta kept tuned, though nobody in the house had touched it all season, and a general looking-about began for somebody who might be persuaded to play.

“I shall play,” said Rosalind.

The room went quiet with surprise. Charlotte stared at her. “You? You have told me a hundred times that you are no musician!”

“I told you wrongly.” Rosalind crossed the room and sat down at the instrument. “My mother taught me, though I have not played since she died. That is eleven years now.” She smoothed her skirts, her chin steady. “I do not wish to stand at the edge of it any longer.”

Her mother had taught her on wet afternoons at Marbury, before the house went quiet. After Cecily died, Rosalind had stopped. Calling herself no musician had been easier than explaining why she would not touch the keys.

She set her fingers on the ivory.

They did not move.

“I may have forgotten all of it,” she admitted.

“Then begin with the part you remember,” Charlotte said at once.

Augusta looked up from her chair. “Your mother never remembered all of it either. She simply began and expected the instrument to catch up.”

Rosalind laughed, though her eyes burned. “That sounds like Mama.”

“It was exactly like her. Play, child.”

Rosalind looked down at the keys. For eleven years she had expected the first note to bring back the last sick winter instead of the mother who had laughed over wrong notes.

She pressed one key. Then another.

Nothing terrible happened.

“Again,” Augusta said.

Rosalind tried once more.