“It isn’t that,” Somerset said. “I have been thinking a great deal of how we shall manage our engagement.”
“Have you?” Eliza asked, smiling.
“And I think it would be best if you returned to Balfour,” he finished.
Eliza laughed, thinking he was making a joke. He did not laugh with her.
“Eliza, our engagement will cause a furor,” he said. “You know it will. We cannot get around that fact.”
“No,” Eliza agreed. “But why should that mean I need return to Balfour?”
“Because the life you have been living these past weeks,” Somerset said evenly, “is already causing talk. And so, it would behoove us to remove you from the public eye a little, before we make any announcement.”
“You make it sound as if I have been cavorting around town in my petticoats,” Eliza said. “I assure you, I would recollect having done so.”
“Be reasonable, Eliza,” Somerset said. “I am trying to protect you.”
“I cannot return to Balfour,” Eliza said.
“What is a month or two of quietude—if in exchange we have a lifetime of happiness?” Somerset said. “Then we will announce our engagement over the summer, and in the autumn we can marry quietly.”
“In the autumn?” Eliza repeated. It was only April.
“It is when your mourning will be finally complete, in its entirety,” Somerset said. “When did you think we would marry?”
She certainly had not thought he would insist upon such traditional propriety. Why, Lady Dormer had married on the year mark after her husband’s death—and true, it was still considered something of a joke in high society, but . . .
“What if . . .” She clutched his hands. “Oliver, what if we just married, now? It is going to raise eyebrows no matter how long we wait—what if we married and bore the consequences now. We would at least be together.”
Somerset was shaking his head.
“You know I cannot,” he said. “I cannot risk doing such harm to my family.”
Eliza stared at him. A decade later and it seemed they were having the same argument. They might as well be reading from the same script, only they had swapped parts, for she was urging him to bravery and he speaking of familial duty.
“Would it matter?” she asked. “Would the consequences truly be so bad? They cannot forbid it, they cannot keep us apart anymore, they do not have the power to do . . . anything, really.”
“It would not be proper,” Somerset said.
“Hang propriety!” Eliza cried. “I have lived my life by the rules of propriety and I do not wish to any longer.”
“Do not talk in that way!” he snapped. “It does not become you. You know we cannot ‘hang propriety.’ Our lives would be forever dogged by it.”
“I cannot return to Balfour,” Eliza said, pulling insistently upon the hands still holding hers for emphasis. She could abide waiting until autumn, she could abide delaying her happy ending more months on still, but to exchange her life here for Balfour? No, that she could not do.
“You can,” he said, eyes fixed on hers as if intensity alone would convince her. “You must. You will live quietly for a few months, while my sister ensures a good match for Annie, and then we will marry without fuss and retreat to Harefield. As long as we do not flaunt ourselves, or mix much in society, the upset will subside and our families will be safe.”
“And now I am to live in isolation after we are married, too?” Eliza said, appalled.
She took her hands from his.
“Be reasonable, Eliza,” Somerset said, growing irritable now.
“I am being reasonable,” Eliza insisted. “It is just all so different to what I had imagined. I thought we would marry next month, that we might honeymoon abroad, spend the next Season in London, taking in the galleries and museums and seeing our friends . . .”
“But I despise the city,” Somerset said, frowning. “Why on earth would we choose to spend time in London when we do not have to? We can attend local assemblies if we wish—what does London have, that Harefield cannot provide?”
“A thousand things!” Eliza said instantly. “Friends. Diversions. Dances. Art. You may pick any one of them!”
Somerset let out a quiet, disbelieving laugh.
“You are not serious?” he said. “I know you like to draw, Eliza, but it cannot surely serve as a reason to keep us apart. This is the only way we can be together. You must see that.”
“I do not just like to draw,” Eliza snapped, “it is part of me. An important part.”
“It did not used to be.”
“If you truly think that, then you were not listening.”
Somerset scrubbed a hand across his face.
“Be reasonable,” he said, again.
“You are not trying to find another solution!”
“You never used to be this stubborn,” Somerset said.
“No, you used to think me spiritless,” Eliza said. “Which would you prefer I be? I cannot do both.”
“You are being impossible.”
“These terms are impossible,” Eliza said.
“I am not trying to make you unhappy!” Somerset said. “Sacrifices must be made.”
“But why does it always have to be me who sacrifices?” Eliza said, casting her hands up into the air. “I have sacrificed enough, Oliver, and I cannot sacrifice any more.”
“This is the only way,” Somerset said, very emphatically, “for us to be together. You must see that.”
Eliza stared at him for a long moment.
“Perhaps you are right,” she said, at last. “Perhaps it is the only way. It is just that I cannot do it.”
“It is only six months,” Somerset said.
“It is only six months—and before that it was ten years,” Eliza said. “And before that, always. I have had enough of waiting for my life to begin.”
“What are you saying?” Somerset said, face paling. “Do you . . . Do you no longer wish to marry me?”
His voice broke in the middle of the question.
“I would marry you in an instant,” she said hoarsely. “But not like this—I cannot go back.”
“You would be my wife,” Somerset said. “Would that not be worth it? After all the years we have both waited?”