Lord Edmund Hereford had sent a formal letter of interest to Ada’s father, who was traveling from the country and expected in London within the week. Nothing was official. Nothing was decided.
But the letter existed. And Lady Whitmore told Ada about it over breakfast with the satisfaction of a woman who considers the closing of a chapter a satisfying ending in itself. Ada read the letter.
She set it down. She ate her breakfast. She thought about Lord Hereford and his uncomplicated warmth and his estate in Shropshire, where the wisteria probably climbed perfectly reasonable trellises and asked nothing complicated of anyone.
She thought about what a good life that could be. And she thought about Maximilian Royce, who had remembered her at 4:00 in the morning 3 weeks after the musicale, and who had said he was sorry for not remembering sooner.
And who had been circling her for 6 weeks with all the careful approach of a man trying to land somewhere he wasn’t sure he was allowed. She thought about a man who had publicly, repeatedly, emphatically declared himself too old to choose a bride.
And who had, in that same breath, been showing up wherever she was with the reliability of a compass finding north. She had been patient for 10 years.
She’d been patient enough. The Langley afternoon reception on the 16th of June was a large, loose affair. 30 people across two drawing rooms and a conservatory.
The kind of event where conversations could be private without being conspicuous. Ada arrived with her sister and her mother, spoke to several people with perfect courtesy, and then, when the moment presented itself, walked to the conservatory where she knew he would be.
Because Maximilian always eventually found his way to the edges of rooms and conservatories were the most defensible edge available. He was standing near the palms, looking out at the small enclosed garden beyond the glass.
And he turned when she entered. Something moved across his face. Relief, she thought, or its cousin. And then the composure came back down like a curtain.
She stopped a few feet from him. The conservatory was empty of other guests. Through the glass, the garden sat still and green in the afternoon light.
I need to say something to you. And I need you to let me finish before you respond. He nodded once.
She took a breath, not of uncertainty, but of the kind of precision she applied to everything. Do I came back to London because of you? Not entirely.
The season was always the plan and I was always going to come. But I came back willing, without dread, because for 10 years the thing I most wanted to do when I returned was stand in the same room as you, at 20, and understand whether what I felt at 10 was a child’s fantasy or something true.
He was very still. I have spent 6 weeks in the same rooms as you. And the answer is that it was something true, which is inconvenient.