“And then what?” she asked. “I stay here forever and we wait for gossip to grow a new head every morning? Or I find some other man?”
Nicholas opened his mouth and then shut it. Violet slid into the chair opposite.
“You don’t have to decide this minute,” she said gently. “You can take an hour. Or ten.”
“An hour will not change what I know,” Maria said, surprising herself again. She set down the water. Her hand shook only a little. “I am disappointed. That is true. I am…hurt. That is true. I thought I had chosen. I liked that feeling. And now the choice is being made for me.” She looked at Nicholas. “But I will not have you fight him. Not over this.” She drew in a careful breath.
“I accept.”
Nicholas’s shoulders sagged with relief and immediate guilt. “Are you certain?”
“No,” she said honestly. “But I am certain of this: he will not harm me. He will be infuriating. But he will not harm me.” She stared at the far bookcase, not seeing it. “He told me last night I had found my future husband. He was not asking.”
Violet’s brows flicked.
“He went to you?”
“Briefly,” Maria said. “He asked if I had other suitors. I told him no. I told him I had already chosen. He told me I had, and left.”
Nicholas ran a hand through his hair.
Maria rubbed her thumb over a notch in the chair’s arm.
“I wanted… I wanted the man I chose to want me back, loudly. This is not that. This is… something else.”
Nicholas moved to sit on the low table, facing her, knees almost bumping her knees.
“Then let me say the wrong thing again, and we will fix it if it is wrong.” He swallowed. “He does want you.”
“He wants to solve a problem,” Maria stared at him.
“He also wants you,” Nicholas said. “But if at any point you wish to change your mind…”
“I will not ask you to fight the world to gratify my pride,” she said. “I have enough pride for both of us.” She pushed to her feet because sitting made her feel smaller. Standing made the room behave. “What happens now?”
“Now,” Violet said, moving smoothly into work, “we choose a gown you can breathe in and we speak to Mrs. Walsh about menus and to the vicar about sermons.”
Nicholas nodded, “Yes, I should expect the two of you to figure out those details. I shall take my leave now.”
He paused at the door and looked back at Maria, awkward again.
“I’m proud of you. For what that’s worth. I wish I had been good at this earlier.”
“You’re good at it now,” she sighed.
Once the two women were alone, Violet exhaled and rubbed her brow. “How angry are you with me?”
“I am not,” Maria said. “But I wish you had consulted me at the very least.”
Wedding preparations were in full swing.
Prudence, Charity, and Temperance had formed a small barricade around Maria. It was less protection and more persuasion, but the shape was the same.
“Stop moving,” Temperance said, mouth full of straight pins. “If you breathe like that, I’ll have to let out the side seams again.”
“I’m not breathing,” Maria said, stiff on the fitting stool.
“That explains a lot,” Charity murmured, threading a needle with a neat flick.