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“You wish for me to marry her, do you not?” Luke asked.
“What do you think!?” Noah snapped toward him.
“I know, I know.” Luke held up his hands. “But tell me, would that really make anything better?” His question hung in the air for a minute, unanswered. “Jemima, how many times have you told me that I am a tainted man by now?
Like a rotten apple in a fruit bowl, everything that touches me will also go bad. If I marry her…am I not just dragging her down further? She will forever be known as the lady that had to condescend to marry a rake and cad like me.”
“There are more simple ways to put it,” Noah said with a glimmer of humour across the room. “Like marrying for love.”
“I have to be smart, Noah. I do not know if I could do it to her, to drag her further into hatred by theton.You’ve faced that anger, Jemima. You know better than any other how unforgiving they are. Would you have Annie suffer that same censure if she married me?”
“Oh, Luke, stop making excuses.” Jemima jumped to her feet. Her words shocked him to the core, making him fall silent. “She will suffer censure regardless! What is done is done. It cannot be undone. She will be abhorred by thetonif you do not marry her and gossiped about if you do. Either way, it will happen. There is nothing you can do to change that.” Jemima shrugged. “Perhaps it’s about time you stopped thinking of theton.”
“What do you mean?” Luke asked slowly.
“She means that we have never heard anyone who has declared more not to care what thetonthinks, and then acts according to the ton’s opinions anyway,” Noah explained. “Do you truly not care what they think? Good! Then act according to your own heart, more than your fear of them.”
“Do you love her?” Jemima asked again.
“I do,” Luke uttered the words, watching as Jemima stepped toward him with a smile.
“Then ask her to marry you for your sake as well as her own. What is the harm in that?”
Luke paused, looking between the two of them in thought. He was aware of Noah pouring a second glass of brandy. He crossed the room toward the two of them, carrying the two glasses in his hand.
“What if she says no?” Luke asked eventually, confessing his greatest fear.
“Then you know the fear all men feel when they ask the woman they love to marry them.” Noah pressed the second glass into Luke’s hand. “It’s a risk, but one that is worth taking, is it not?”
There is that word again, risk....
Luke had talked so much of risk with Annie, taking that risk to see her come what may, that the idea jolted him to the core. He took the glass and raised it to his lips, sipping heartily.
“So?” Jemima asked. “Will you ask her or not?”
***
“We have a visitor,” Barbara declared, looking out of the window at the street.
Annie looked up from the teacup in her lap that was untouched. She couldn’t clamp down on the hope inside of her, for it enveloped her that fast.
Is it Luke?
Yet that hope was dashed a second later when Barbara turned back to face her from the window.
“What can Mr Knight have to say to us now?” she whispered, talking more to herself than to Annie at all.
Mr Knight? What could he be doing here?
Annie was ushered to lower the teacup to a table beside her and stand to her feet by Barbara as they waited for Mr Knight to be shown into the room.
“Say nothing,” Barbara warned her in a low voice. “He must already think ill enough of you as it is.”
“If he thought so ill of me, Mother, why has he come?” Annie’s question remained unanswered as her mother frowned, offering now words.
Soon, the door was opened, and the butler stepped aside, allowing Mr Knight to walk into the room.
“Mr Knight, what a surprise.” Barbara hurried to curtsy with an overly eager smile. “You do us a great honour in coming to visit us. I fear, you have no doubt heard of what….” She faltered as Mr Knight lifted a scrap of paper in his hands.
