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Lydia turned her head. Her mother’s face was bent over the reticule, and her fingers had begun to unpick the drawstring, and the gesture was so unlike her that Lydia forgot for a moment to be angry.

“Turn, please,” said Mrs. Hartley, kneeling to mark the hem.

She turned, careful of Mrs. Hartley’s hand. The lace caught briefly on the edge of the fitting stool. Lydia bent to free it before anyone could help her, and for a moment saw only the tiny stitches holding one pattern to the next. Someone had worked a long time to make this. She would be expected to wear it for a morning, then keep it folded away. She straightened slowly, thinking of Tristan bending over her cut finger in the library, so absorbed in the small hurt that he had forgotten to be impatient.

She wanted that man. She could not be sure which one would come when they met again.

Tristan came on Monday afternoon. Her mother had arranged the meeting at Lydia’s request and remained in the adjoining room, beyond an open door. The wedding gown was upstairs beneath a sheet. Down here, in her ordinary blue muslin, Lydia felt more capable of speaking as herself.

He did not sit until she asked him. There was a small packet in his hand, which he placed on the table between them.

“The license has been obtained,” he said, indicating the packet. “Your father attended to give his consent. He has seen the proposed settlements as well.”

Lydia did not reach for it. “That is not what I wanted to discuss.”

“I know.” He put his hat beside the packet, then moved it away again; there was scarcely room for both. “I behaved badly. In the passage. You had done nothing to deserve it.”

“You asked me to marry you.”

“Yes.”

“Then you must not behave as though I stole the question from you.”

He lowered his head for a moment. A cart passed in the street, rattling hard enough to make the glass in the cabinet tremble. Lydia waited until it had gone. He looked tired, but she would not let tiredness become an explanation for which she was expected to supply forgiveness.

“I will not,” he said. “Whatever brought us to that afternoon, I made the offer.”

“And do you stand by it now?”

“I do.” He met her eyes. “If you still wish to marry me.”

The relief was stronger than she cared to admit. She held to the edge of the chair until she could trust herself to speak. “I have not changed what I want from marriage. You know that.”

“I know.”

“I want to live with my husband, not merely under his roof. And I want children.” She had intended to mention her drawings first. Now the harder wish was out, and she made herself leave it there.

His hand tightened on his knee. She saw it and wished she had not, because pity made it harder to ask the next question. She asked it anyway. “Are you expecting me to give those things up?”

“No.” The answer came quickly; what followed did not. “There are things I find difficult to discuss. I cannot promise to become a different man by Thursday.”

“I did not ask you to. I asked whether there is room in our marriage for what I want.”

He looked toward the window. When he answered, his voice was quieter. “I cannot make you a promise about children simply because I fear losing your answer. It would be dishonest.”

She ought to refuse him. A sensible woman would choose a husband who wanted the same life as she did. A man who could speak of children without looking as though the very thought wounded him. Mr. Harrington might have offered her such a future. Yet she had never wanted to discover what lay behind his silences, or found herself searching a room for him before she knew she was doing it. Tristan could offer her no certainty, but she believed there was something between them, something fragile and unfinished, and she could not quite bring herself to abandon it. Whether that was courage or foolishness, she could not yet tell.

Lydia looked at the packet. Through the open door she could hear her mother turning a page, then turning it back. Nothing in the room had changed since he arrived, but she felt suddenly foolish in the chair she had chosen because it faced his.

“Then tell me when you can,” she said. “But do not leave me to guess for the next ten years. I shall ask again.”

Tristan turned back. “You shall have an answer.”

“From you. Not your mother.”

“Yes.”

The room she had imagined with Harrington returned to her with painful clarity: good light, a garden, no need to extract a promise by degrees. She could still have an easier life, though perhaps not with him now. Across the table Tristan was waiting. She wanted him to say something foolish, or provoking, anything that would let her answer without weighing every word. That, too, was part of why she wanted him.