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Or, she would spend every minute of it rotting with this feeling, dreading the future. But postponing was the only thing she could do.
The door creaked open behind her.
She knew the sound of Liam’s footsteps without even looking as he approached and stopped just before her.
She turned, just enough to catch sight of his chin, his cheek, the lion’s mane of hair that fell over his shoulder, askew from how it had been almost neatly tied back during the service.
“Brandy,” Liam Graves said, offering her a glass. It had no more than a mouthful of liquor in it, just enough to put a rush of heat in her skin, a little color in her cheeks.
She didn’t need brandy for that. All she needed was to look at him a little too long.
Diane swallowed, realizing they were alone in the vestibule together, unchaperoned. It made her thoughts drift towards the sort of forbidden thoughts she’d been having at the altar.
Scandals had started from less.
She nodded, looking pointedly at their shoes as she took the brandy from him. She took a gulp of it, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment and then gasping at the way it burned down her throat.
Liam hummed, though it sounded less like he was expressing a concern and more like he was holding back a note of amusement.
Diane set the glass down indelicately on the nearest table. Then she turned fully, facing the doorway and the man currently blocking her view of it. She set her eyes squarely at his shoulder, and no higher. She had spent a lot of her courtship studying Liam’s shoulders. It was the only way to converse with the man.
“If you’ll let me pass, I need to have a word with the priest,” she said to his cravat. “I think I need to ask him if we can reschedule the wedding.”
Liam Graves and his cravat remained impassive and un-passable.
“Postpone indefinitely, then,” he said after a moment, and Diane wasn’t sure she had heard him correctly.
"What?"
She gawked at the man’s shoulder for a few moments. He couldn’t mean that. Could he?
Yet he failed to elaborate.
“Don’t be so verbose on my behalf,” she said incredulously, when she couldn’t come up with a proper response. It was entirely like Liam to offer only the fewest of words, but entirely unlike him to suggest something so drastic.
She allowed herself to glance up to his face. There was something else etched in his expression, beyond the usual stoic stare. Something almost soft.
His brow furrowed. “That is...is marrying Martin what you want?”
Diane swallowed and looked at the wallpaper instead of Liam.
“Martin and I are suited to one another. Our temperaments are similar, our preoccupations complement one another,” Diane said. All things she had said a number of times in conversations congratulating the match, as if they were the foundation she was to build a happy household. Her eyes fell downward on Liam again, to one of the buttons on his blue coat. “Please, let me pass.”
She took a step forward to demonstrate her intentions, expecting him to step back, or away, or move at all.
“You cannot marry him!” he insisted, the statement bursting forth from him with startling urgency.
