"Mr. Harrington." Genevieve's voice was quiet and even. "I am deeply sorry."
He looked up at her. Her face was genuinely pained on his behalf, he realized, not merely performing sympathy. It helped, fractionally, in the way that small kindnesses sometimes do in large disasters. Then he looked at the rest of the family and saw that same look. Despite Clarissa’s actions, they all still cared for him in that deep, familial way.
All at once, he realized how they must be affected, too. He knew that their good name was something they relied on, and if Clarissa had taken that with her, there was little for this family. There would be few prospects for Genevieve, and who could say how this would affect Mr. Penrose’s businesses? Beneath the care and consideration, there was anxiety and embarrassment.
He straightened. Whatever was happening inside him would have to wait. There were other people in this room, and they were suffering too, and he was not the kind of man who forgot that.
"This is not your fault," he said, looking at Mr. Penrose. "I want that to be clearly understood. Whatever Clarissa has chosen to do, this is not a reflection on your family, nor on anything you might have done differently."
Mr. Penrose closed his eyes briefly. The relief on his face was painful to witness.
"You are a good man," the older man said.
"I mean it sincerely," Thomas said. "And I would never…" he paused, selecting his words with care, his throat drying as if rebelling against the very thought of what he was to say. "I would never wish Clarissa to enter into a marriage against her heart. Whatever pain this causes me today, I would not have wanted that for her."
He swallowed hard and looked down at his hands. If she had just told him, to his face, that she was in love with another, perhaps he could have ended things in a way that benefited them both instead of leaving their families in shambles. If she had been honest, perhaps he could have pieced together his heart.
The silence that followed was of a different quality from the one before. Something had shifted. Mr. Penrose moved away from the window, and Thomas had the distinct impression of a man steeling himself for a second blow after the first had already landed.
"There is another matter," Mr. Penrose said. "And I ask that you hear me out entirely before you respond."
Thomas studied him.
"Very well."
"You came here today intending to marry. Your need for an heir, for the continuation of your family's estate, none of that has changed with this morning's news," Mr. Penrose said delicately.
"No," Thomas agreed, carefully. "It has not."
He thought of the Harrington estate. Of his grandmother’s home. Of the portraits lining the gallery, the weight of a name that expected to be carried forward. Of a distant cousin in Northumberland, he had met precisely twice and had no wish to see inherit everything his family had built.
"Then," Mr. Penrose said, "I would ask you to consider a proposal."
He said it plainly, without embellishment, in the manner of a man who had learned long ago that plain words served better than dressed ones. He gestured to his younger daughter, who had not moved from her place by the fireplace.
Thomas looked at Genevieve.
She was looking at the floor. Then, as though feeling his gaze, she looked up, and their eyes met for what he realized was perhaps the first time they had ever truly done so. She was pale. She was frightened, he thought, though she was hiding it admirably. She did not look away.
He turned back to Mr. Penrose.
"You are asking me," Thomas said slowly, "to marry Genevieve. This morning."
"The contract between our families need not change. The chapel is arranged. The guests are expected." Mr. Penrose's voice was steady, but his hands, Thomas noticed, were not. "I am aware of what I am asking. I am aware that I have no right to ask it."
Thomas stood very still for a moment. Then, almost without meaning to, he sat back down.
He knew Genevieve Penrose in the way that one knows the younger sister of one's intended. That is to say, barely at all. She had always been present at dinners and gatherings, quiet and pleasant, the sort of person whose absence one would notice but whose presence one rather took for granted. He could not recall a single conversation with her alone. She had always simply been there, on the periphery, polite and undemanding and entirely unexamined.
He felt a sudden and uncomfortable guilt about that. He looked at her now with the deliberate attention he had never previously thought to offer her, as though seeing her properly for the first time, which he supposed he was. She was composed in a way that struck him as remarkable, given the circumstances, her hands still, her chin level, her expression giving away very little.
He was aware she was a woman grown, but her auburn hair, green eyes, and gentle features made her seem more innocent than others her age. An innocence that should not face a situation such as this. There was something quietly determined in the set of her that he had not expected. He wondered, with a discomfort he did not entirely understand, what else he had failed to notice.
She was not Clarissa. He was aware of that with a clarity that was almost unkind in its precision. She did not fill a room the way Clarissa did, did not pull the light toward her. But there was something in the steadiness of her, the way she was simply present and undemanding in the middle of all of this, that he found, against all expectation, that he could look at without flinching. That was not nothing. That morning, it was most certainly not nothing at all.
"Does she—" he began. "Is Miss Genevieve amenable to this arrangement? Has she been consulted?"
"She has," Mr. Penrose said. "And she is."