She trusted that look because he always came out of it with a remedy. The room fell quiet around him. Even her mother, who had not stopped weeping since the letter was read, seemed to still. Genevieve watched her father's face and waited. She had learned long ago not to rush him in these moments.
To interrupt was to lose whatever careful architecture he was building behind his eyes. So she waited, and her mother waited, and the clock on the mantle marked the seconds with indifferent patience.
After a moment, his eyes met hers, and his expression softened.
“Actually,” he said softly. “I may have an idea.”
He stood up and gently took Genevieve's hand in his own. It struck her, distantly, how rarely he did such things. He was not a cold man, but he was a practical one, and tenderness had never been his native language. That he was reaching for it now told her more than his words had.
“Genevieve, I am about to ask you for something I have no right to ask of you. Please, will you at least consider it?”
Her heart thudded in her chest, feeling a nervous tightness she had not expected to feel.
“Of course, father,” she whispered.
Whatever he was about to say, she found to her own quiet surprise, that she was not going to refuse him. She did not yet know why. She simply knew, in the particular way she had always known things before she had the words for them, that some part of her had already decided. She waited, an
d her hands were still, and she listened.
Chapter 2
There were few mornings Thomas Harrington could recall feeling quite so acutely aware of his own heartbeat. He had dressed carefully, perhaps more carefully than was strictly necessary, and had dismissed his valet twice before finally being satisfied with the result.
It was not vanity that drove him, or so he told himself, but rather the particular anxiety of a man who understood that today was not merely another day. Today was the day his life changed irrevocably, and he found he wanted to meet it looking like a man who deserved what was coming to him.
He had not always been certain that he did.
He had fallen in love with Clarissa Penrose at what he could only describe as an inconvenient speed. It had not been a gradual thing, a slow accumulation of admiration and regard of the sort that he had always imagined love to be. It had been sudden and slightly alarming, like missing a step in the dark. He could still place the exact evening.
A dinner at the Ashworths', the candles burning low, Clarissa laughing at something her neighbor had said with her whole face, unselfconsciously, as though she had entirely forgotten to be composed. He had watched her and felt something shift in his chest that he had not known how to name and had not, if he was honest, particularly wanted to. It had seemed inconvenient at the time.
It had seemed considerably more inconvenient since. It did not hurt that she was extraordinarily beautiful. Honey blonde hair that was pinned up in exactly the right way, blue eyes that looked at him warmly, and a figure that seemed to have been carved like a Roman statue. It was clear the Penroses were blessed in that regard, as Clarissa’s younger sister was also beautiful, but not in the same definitive way his Clarissa was.
These traits, combined with such a warm and welcoming household… he had not seen it as beneath him to court and propose to Clarissa. Quite the contrary, he had counted himself an extraordinarily fortunate man.
Eventually, he finished his dressing and descended the wooden stairs of the Harrington estate. The sun seemed brighter, the portraits of his family seemed to be smiling at him, and the wind whistled outside in a particularly pleasing tune.
He had hardly sat down to eat his breakfast when his valet entered the dining room, holding a piece of paper.
“Sir, there is…” the man hesitated.
“Speak plainly, Geoffrey,” Thomas said, standing up. “Whatever has you acting so nervously on a day like today?”
“The Penroses,” the valet swallowed hard. “They are requesting your presence at their estate. It is urgent they say, Mr. Harrington.”
Thomas froze. They wanted him at their estate, immediately. Not at the chapel at the appointed hour? There should be no reason to be summoned at such a time unless there was some sort of a problem…
He shook the thought away.
I know well what Mrs. Penrose’s constitution is. She is likely consoling her nervous daughter.
He told these things to himself, hoping and praying that it was surely just a small detail requiring his attention. Something easily resolved.
“Send for the carriage,” he said, standing up.
As he walked through his estate, he felt a presence watching him from the stairs.
“Is everything quite alright?” Lady Margaret Harrington called out. He froze. His grandmother had sharp wits and an even sharper tongue. In his excitement he had quite forgotten that she had come to his estate for the wedding. He turned to her, giving his best smile.