“Mrs. Hardy was once a countess,” he said musingly, as though he was just recalling it. He paused a beat. “She said she’s happy now.”
It was as casually cruel as he’d ever been. And his unworthy willingness to be cruel told him how he felt about all of this.
She went still.
And then her eyes began to shine with tears and he felt like a brute.
“You intend to accept the earl’s proposal?” His voice was uninflected.
Their eyes locked for what seemed an eternity.
Then the corner of her mouth tipped wryly. “What wouldn’t you do for someone you loved?” Her voice was shredded.
She meant, of course, her family.
After a moment, he nodded once.
“Well. So seldom do problems have such a single neat solution,” he said finally. “Congratulations.” His voice had gone hoarse.
She cleared her throat. And gave her head a little toss.
“He’ll be visiting my father at the end of the month, weather permitting. I’m to give him my answer then.”
The end of the month was about a week away.
Lorcan could not reply.
He was impaled by a fury that seemed to have as many prongs as the devil’s pitchfork. It was akin to how he’d felt as a boy witnessing the carelessness with which others treated things—food, and shelter, and clothing—he viewed as precious, and his fury was somehow directed at Daphne, too. It was laced through with a paniche could not quite identify, and this mystery was part of the panic: so seldom was he uncertain about anything anymore.
And so some of this fury was for himself.
Because it seemed unfathomable that she should be viewed as anything—a pawn, for instance, for her father, or disposable, in the case of Havelstock, or a stepmother and bed warmer, in the case of the earl—other than beautiful and precious and rare.
Which told him definitively that he saw her as beautiful and precious and rare.
He breathed carefully through this realization, as if it were a grave threat to his well-being.
If she was able to see herself this way, would she still tremble over Havelstock’s betrayal? Would she trade one life of utility in her family for another of utility with an earl? This girl, with skin like satin, and lips like fire? With a mind like a diamond and a laugh that made him feel the sun rose in his chest?
He did not know to convey any of this to her. He did know that she’d saved herself once before, by lowering herself out the window on bedsheets.
She’d said “enough” then.
Perhaps if another option were presented to her.
“Daphne... How much does your father owe?”
For a moment he thought she might refuse to reply.
“Five hundred pounds.”
Good God.
He took this in silently. The gold-and-ruby loop he wore in his ear was worth at least that. No wonder she was interested in it.
He considered what he wanted to do, and whether she would recoil in outrage. Or embrace the opportunity for what it was.
So he allowed an interval of silence to elapse, as they sat together quietly.