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“No.”

“It does not make me unlovable.”

Augusta’s hand tightened over hers. “No, child.”

“For one moment I thought it did. I thought, there is the proof at last.” Rosalind swallowed. “But you loved me before I knew any of this. James noticed me before the gowns, before anyone else did. None of that changes.”

“None of it.”

“Then they may punish me for it, but they do not get to tell me what I am.”

Augusta’s eyes shone. “No. They do not.”

Rosalind let out a breath that was nearly a laugh.

“It does not excuse him,” she said then, and the new steadiness held in her voice. “I have been sitting here making excuses for him without leave from myself, telling myself he held back because of what he carried. It is the kindest story, and I shall not have it.”

“No?”

“A man’s doubt is his own to carry, Aunt. It is not a daughter’s to be diminished for. He let me be set below the salt in my own father’s house, and he called it peace.” Her hands were trembling again, though her voice was not. “His hand rose an inch toward me at Lady Brierley’s and found his snuffbox instead, and I have spent years pretending I did not feel it not come. The doubt explains the hand that did not reach. It does not forgive it.”

“No, it does not.” Augusta’s eyes glittered. “And since we are saying everything in this room tonight, and shall not get another such night, I will tell you that I have hated him for it these eleven years, more than I have ever hated Selina, who is at least afraid and at least loves her own. He was afraid too, and he let his fear be your whole childhood, and called the quiet of it virtue.”

Rosalind opened her mouth to speak, but Augusta lifted one hand.

“I have never forgiven him, and I do not expect you to. I only wanted you to have the key before the world handed you the lock.”

Rosalind sat with that for a long moment.

“Why tonight?” she asked at last. “Why not a week ago, or a year ago, or never at all? You always said you meant to carry it with you.”

“Because tonight you have something to lose.” Augusta’s gaze was very direct. “A week ago you were a clever, invisible girl whom no one would trouble to pull down. Tonight you are a viscount’s near-betrothed and the quiet triumph of the Season, and that is exactly the height a whisper likes to push a woman from.”

“And the ball on Friday.” Cold washed through her. “The Stamfords’ ball, where the whole Season will be gathered.”

“Which is why you shall walk into it knowing.” The evenness of Augusta’s voice caught, one degree, and held. “I would not for all the world have you learn this in a public room with the Ton’s eyes on your face, when you had every right to learn it first, in private, from someone who loved your mother and who loves you. You may be cut, Rosalind, and I cannot promise you will not be, but you shall not be surprised. That much was in my gift, and I have given it, and I would give it again before I would let that room have your face.”

Rosalind turned her hand beneath her aunt’s and held it properly, both of hers wrapped around it, and neither of them spoke.

“Thank you,” she said at last.

“Do not thank me. I have just spent the worst thing I owned, and you will make me regret the spending if you thank me for it.” But the hand did not pull away.

“I am not thanking you for the secret. I am thanking you for letting me meet it standing up.”

“And how do you mean to walk into it?”

“As myself.” The words settled something in her chest even as she said them. “They have been making of me what they will all my life, and they were wrong every time.” She lifted her chin. “I should like, just the once, to let them be wrong to my face.”

Augusta looked at her for a long moment.

“There she is,” she said, very quietly, and there was nothing dry in it at all. “There is your mother’s daughter.”

Rosalind’s throat tightened, and for a moment she could not speak at all.

Then Augusta rose, with the small stiffness of a woman who had sat too still too long over too hard a matter, and went to the chimney-piece. She stood a moment with her back to the room, before the small painted oval of a dark-haired woman with a quickness about the turn of her head, and rested her hand upon the shelf as though to steady herself.

“Go up to bed, child,” she said, without turning. “We have done enough true things for one night. Carry it carefully, for you shall want it whole on Friday.”