“It would seem she has more confidence in me to resolve it than I have had in myself just lately,” he said. “She wishes for it to remain a secret from the girls, particularly Juliet. She’s a bit prone to dramatics on occasion. We shouldn’t like to make her first Season one full of worry.”
“I won’t say anything of it.”
“I know you won’t,” he said. “You’re not one to betray a confidence. I told my mother also that I intend to marry you.”
Mercy missed the next step and trod directly upon his toes, and to his credit he did not betray her misstep with so much as the tiniest of flinches. “Oh, Lord. Thomas—”
He gave a small shake of his head. “I’m not asking. Not yet, not when I haven’t the right to ask. Not when asking now would make me no better than the rest of them. But when I have caught up with Fordham, when I have recovered our family funds—then, I will ask. I only wanted you to know.”
“And to this”—this utter lunacy—“your mother said…what, precisely?”
“She thinks I’m a fool not to have married you straight off. Not because your dowry could replenish our coffers, mind you, but because she has always adored you.” He drew her to a stop, and she realized that the music had ended at last, that their dance had concluded.
The only one they would be permitted.
“I don’t want you dancing with Earnshaw,” he said, “because you are going to marry me. I have got a week going spare while we wait for Fordham to reappear, and I mean to use it to the best advantage I can manage.” He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and led her from the floor once more.
“Which is?” she inquired, and he turned her not toward the baroness, who waited with the girls upon their next partners, but toward the door of the ballroom.
“To make certain that when I do ask,” he said, “you will agree.” He laid his free hand over her own, his fingers warm and strong as they grasped hers. “Billiards?” he asked.
And she found herself strangely glad to be the wallflower she had always been. Nobody noticed as they walked out of the doors and into the night.
Chapter Nineteen
How did one refuse a proposal of marriage that had not, in actuality, been tendered? The thought had plagued her all through the carriage ride back home, which had been mercifully brief, and it lingered still at the forefront of Mercy’s mind as she bent over the billiard table, struggling to turn her mind to the task of sinking the red ball into a pocket.
She had given Thomas certain expectations, no doubt, with the intimacies they had shared. Above all, he was an honorable man, upstanding and rigidly moral. There was little room in his regimented life drawn of such stark blacks and whites for the shades of grey that colored her own.
Impossible to tell, at this juncture, if he truly wished to marry her or only imagined that he did. Whether he had convinced himself that marriage was the most reasonable, logical outcome, whether he had assumed that the liberties he had taken and which she had granted had made marriage a foregone conclusion, at least to his mind. She had a week, perhaps, before that proposal was given in earnest.
One day, he would be grateful for her refusal. As she was grateful that his present financial state and his rigid sense of honor kept him from tendering that proposal immediately. Because the moment she refused, she knew it would all come to an end. The camaraderie, the closeness they had somehow falleninto which had grown to feel more natural than breathing. The intimacy they shared.
Only a week, and she would have to fit a full lifetime into it. One week to hold within her heart for the rest of her days. It wouldn’t be a lie, exactly. More like a dream, which would break upon waking—no promises made which he would feel obligated to honor. Once she had honored hers, told him the truth she had concealed these last weeks, he would be glad of it.
And it would end. It would all end.
She missed the shot; a rare blunder.
Thomas chuckled, adjusting his spectacles upon the bridge of his nose as he nudged her away from the table to make his own shot. “Something on your mind?” he asked as he lined up his cue.
More than he could possibly know. More that she was of a mind to tell him at present. “A fair few things,” she admitted. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I’m about to beat you,” he said, and with a smooth stroke of his arm he sank her ball, clinching the game for himself. “I can’t imagine you would have let me, had you been giving the game your full concentration.”
In fact, her concentration had been split across half a dozen things, each vying for attention, clamoring in her head. But nothing quite so much as him. She busied herself with collecting the ivory balls, replacing them in their silk-lined case as he retreated to the sideboard to pour two glasses of brandy.
“Tell me,” he said as he offered her a glass, and his voice held such a depth of warmth—as if she could tell him anything. And he meant it, she knew. Or thought he did, at least.
“Tomorrow,” she said, in a burst of nervous energy. “I’m going tomorrow. To Cheapside.” She had promised him this much.
He stilled, glass half-raised to his lips. “To a tavern?”
Mercy gave a short nod.
“Which?”
“The…The Black Swan,” she said. “I’ve never been there before. I will not be recognized.” At least, she didn’t think so. Though her experience with taverns was limited, she had gotten the impression that the people who frequented them tended to choose one to patronize, and rarely altered their habits unless out of necessity. “You’re not happy,” she said.
