"Yes." "Though you love him?" "Yes."
"Because of Cressida Halverton?" "Because of duty. Because of scandal. Because I cannot make him unhappy."
The Dowager Duchess tapped her stick. "Sit down, child. I have something to tell you, and you cannot receive it standing." Vivienne sat.
"That arrangement was made by my late husband and Lord Halverton in the year my son turned six. It has never been a contract. It has never been announced. It was, at best, a comfortable understanding between two old men who are now both dead."
"Lord Halverton left his affairs in disarray. His widow has been trying to force this match for two years because, if it does not happen, the Halverton estate will not be saved. There is no debt to my son or to my house. There is only pressure. That is all."
Vivienne stared at her.
"Cressida Halverton does not love my son," the Dowager Duchess continued. "She does not even like him. I have spoken to her three times since Christmas. She is a shallow, unhappy girl who is being sold by her mother, and she knows it. If my son married her, he would ruin two lives, his own and hers."
"If he does not marry her, there will be talk for a season, perhaps two. It will pass. The Halverton estate will fall. That is Lady Halverton's problem, not ours."
"But—"
"But nothing." The old woman's voice was very quiet. "My son is thirty-one. He has run this estate for six years. He has raised his sister's child. He has never asked anything for himself. Not once. Do you understand me? Not once."
"Then he came into my sitting room this morning and stood by the window like a boy of nineteen. I saw his face and thought, at last, he has asked. And you, Miss Ashcombe, intend to refuse him for the sake of a scandal that would last two months."
Vivienne could not speak.