Then he laughed.
It was a short sound, not unkind, but unambiguous in its meaning. “Love.”
“Yes.” She held his gaze. “We tell them that you and I formed a sudden and overwhelming attachment. That Eliza, being the generous creature she is, recognized it and stepped graciously out of the way so that you might—” She paused. “So that we might be together.”
He stared at her.
“It is,” she continued, before he could speak, “a perfectly believable story. It requires no complicated particulars. It accounts for the change of bride without suggesting anything improper about Eliza—she appears nobly selfless rather than scandalously absent—and it places the irregularity squarely at the feet of sentiment, which half of England will forgive immediately and the other half will at least find romantic enough to repeat.”
Tristan said nothing for a moment. Outside, the gates of the Hall appeared through the carriage window—stone pillars, wrought iron, a lodge-keeper already touching his hat.
“You want me,” he said at last, very precisely, “to tell the assembled guests of my wedding breakfast that I was struck, between the betrothal and the altar, by an uncontrollable passion for my bride’s companion.”
“Her dearest friend,” Imogen corrected. “It sounds slightly more plausible that way.”
“It sounds,” he said, “like the plot of a particularly overwrought three-volume novel.”
“Then it will be thoroughly believed. Undoubtedly, half the county hasreadthat novel.”
He turned to look at her fully. There was something in his expression she could not read—not quite exasperation, not quite reluctant calculation, not quite the faint, dangerous flicker of amusement she had learned to watch for. Some combination of all three, and something below them that she could not yet name.
“You are very composed,” he said, “for a woman who committed fraud at an altar not an hour ago.”
“I find,” she said, “that composure is considerably easier when one has a plan.”
“And before you had the plan?”
She thought of her hands, hidden in her skirts the entire drive. “I was considerably less composed.”
He said nothing. The carriage turned through the gates, and the long pale front of Somerset House appeared at the end of the drive—stone and symmetry and an absurd number of windows catching the morning light, flanked on either side by yew hedges clipped into submission.
“It will not,” he said finally, “hold up with everyone.”
“No,” she agreed. “But it does not need to hold up with everyone. It needs to hold up with the room. Those who question it—” She hesitated. “Those who know you well, perhaps, they will find their own answers in time. But for today, for this breakfast, we need nothing more than a story that the majority of themwantto believe. And people are remarkably willing to believe in love matches, particularly at weddings.”
“How illuminating,” Tristan murmured. “You have clearly given considerably more thought to the practical management of scandal than I have.”
“I have eight siblings,” she said. “It was something of an education.”
Another silence, shorter this time, and different in quality. The carriage drew to a smooth halt. Through the window shecould see the first carriages already arrived, guests already gathered on the broad front steps—silk and morning coats, the bright flash of a woman’s parasol, the small black figure of what she suspected was the bishop.
Tristan reached across and settled his glove over her hand on the seat between them. He did not grip it, merely covered it—a light, deliberate pressure, the kind one might use to still a thing that was in danger of flight.
“You understand,” he said quietly, “that there are people in that house who know me rather well. People who will find the notion of my having fallen headlong into a love match approximately as credible as my having taken up with a circus troupe.”
“Yes.”
“They will not believe it.”
“They will not be able todisproveit,” she said. “Which is rather more useful.”
He looked at her for a moment. The pale grey light from the window made his eyes impossible to categorize—not quite silver, not quite blue, something cool and altogether too attentive.
“A love match,” he repeated. The words came out flat, but not hostile. He appeared to be testing them the way one tests ice before committing one’s weight.
“Madly in love,” she said, and heard the slight, reckless edge in her own voice. “Helplessly so. From the very first moment.” She paused. “That is what they’ll need to hear.”
A faint, thoughtful crease appeared between his brows.