Page 52 of The Duke’s Defiant Love

Sebastian said nothing, because there was nothing honest to say that did not confirm exactly what Julian had already guessed.

“She asked me not to see her again until the wedding.” Sebastian confessed.

"There it is," Tristan said, gently, none of his usual mischief in it now. "You did the honorable thing, Sebastian. No one in this room disputes that. But honorable and romantic are not the same coin, and I suspect she noticed the difference rather more sharply than you did, standing in that drawing room hearing you announce your intentions as though reading out a verdict."

"I do not know how to undo it."

"You do not undo it," Nathaniel said. "She has asked for a week, you give her the week. And after that, you make certain your acrions sat what you failed to say this morning. Words alone will not convince her now. She has already decided what your proposal meant. You will have to prove otherwise, in whatever manner she will actually accept."

Sebastian set his glass down, untouched, and stared into the low fire, turning the whole of it over in his mind: the wedding one week hence, her face at the bottom of the Doctors' Commons steps, the week of distanced she asked of him, the brief pressure of her gloved hand in his before he had forced himself to let her go.

I did what society demanded of me. He thought it plainly, without flinching from it, because flinching from it would not change what he'd done. And in doing it, I may have cost myself the one thing I never meant to lose.

"I have a week," he said finally, quietly, more to himself than to any of them.

"You have a week," Julian agreed. "I would not waste a single day of it."

"His Grace has already sent word, Miss Hartwell." Madame Girard spoke around a mouthful of pins, adjusting the drape of ivory silk at Amelia's shoulder with brisk efficiency. "He instructed me most particularly to spare no expense. Every yard of lace, every fitting, every alteration, all to be settled directly with him. I have never in twenty years of dressmaking received quite so generous an instruction."

"How thoughtful of him." Amelia kept her voice even, though her chest went tight and cold at the news.

"Thoughtful is precisely the word. His instructions were most particular." Madame Girard straightened, studying the fall of the fabric with a critic's eye. "You are a fortunate woman, Miss Hartwell."

"Yes." Fortunate. The word sat oddly in her mouth. A man who could not bring himself to say he wanted her had apparently found it easier to pay for whatever she required instead. As though the whole difficulty between them might be settled the way he settled his tailor's bill, promptly and without further discussion.

She held her composure through the remainder of the fitting, and lost a fair portion of it the moment she reached home, dropping onto her bed amid a spread of ribbon samples with a sigh that had very little to do with fatigue.

"That bad?" Mary settled beside her, already sorting through a box of trim with the single-minded focus she brought to anything involving fabric.

"He has instructed the modiste to spare no expense. Everything billed directly to him."

"That sounds very generous."

"It sounds like a man settling an account, Mary. Not a man marrying a woman he actually wants." Amelia picked up a length of pale blue ribbon and set it down again. "I cannot tell what he wants from any of this. Whether he wishes for a wife, or whether he simply wishes for the scandal to disappear, and a wedding happens to be the fastest way to manage it."

"Perhaps it is both."

"That is precisey the problem."

"Only because you seem determined to believe one must make the other untrue." Mary held up two ribbons side by side, considering them with a seriousness entirely disproportionate to the question. "People are not always able to say the true thing plainly, Amelia. Sometimes it’s easier to show what one feels than to put it into words. Papa has never once told Mama he loves her outright in my hearing, and yet he has brought her the same bouquet of white roses every anniversary for three and twenty years, and I have never once doubted what he meant by it."

"White roses are not the same as settling a modiste's bill."

"No. But they are both a man saying something he cannot manage to say with his mouth." Mary set the ribbons down and took Amelia's hand instead, squeezing it once, gently. "I do not know what is in his heart, dearest. I only know that a man who did not care at all would have left the arrangements to your father and thought no further about it. He did not do that. Whatever it means, it is not nothing."

Amelia said nothing to that, turning the thought over long after Mary had gone to bed, and found no comfort in it strong enough to outlast the week still standing between her and an altar she was no longer certain she wanted to reach with quite so many unanswered questions still hanging over it.

The church was full by the time Amelia arrived.

Apparently, neither family had seen any advantage in pretending the wedding was something to hide.

Every pew was crowded with faces she recognized from a dozen ballrooms, familiar mouths that had smiled at her over champagne glasses and eyes that had watched her dance, flirt, stumble, and, most recently, become the subject of London's favorite scandal. They turned as one when the doors opened.

For one strange moment, Amelia wanted to laugh.

Of course they had come.

London had been fed this story for a week. It had dissected every rumor, embroidered every detail, and invented whatever pieces it had not been given. Now they had gathered to see how it ended.