The moon had moved on the water. Somewhere behind them a door opened and shut, and a gust of music and laughter came and went. Sidwell Glennville looked at the Duke of Foss Cliffe for a long time, and he let her look, and did not hurry her, and found that he was unaccountably holding his breath.
"There would have to be conditions," she said finally.
"Name them."
"I will not lie to my father. He is ill, not simple, and I have never deceived him in my life, and I do not mean to begin. He will know the truth of it. He can keep a secret. He has kept graver ones."
"Agreed."
"And you will settle nothing on me that I have not earned. On my sister, on my father, that is charity. And I will swallow my pride and let you. Because pride is a luxury I cannot presently afford them. But not on me. I will not be bought even by a kindness. When this is over, I walk away with exactly what I brought, which is myself and my good name and nothing more."
Something in him wanted to argue, and something wiser in him did not. "Agreed."
"And," she said, and here for the first time a ghost of the old laughter came back into her face, thin but real, "you will have to court me publicly, convincingly. You will have to be seen to like me. Your grace, which I am given to understand does not come naturally to you. And I warn you now, I shall be watching your performance closely and marking it hard. If we are to sell the county a love match, you cannot stand about looking as though you smell fish. You shall have to smile. You did it once tonight. I have seen that you can. I shall hold you to it."
And the Duke of Foscliffe, Winston, who did not smile, who had a heart like the cliffs, laughed. It came out of him rough and unpracticed, like a hinge that has not turned in years, and it startled them both, and Sidwell put her hand quickly to her mouth as though to catch her own answering grin before it escaped.
"Agreed," he said when he had recovered himself. "God help me. Agreed to all of it."
"Then we have a bargain." She put out her hand, her small gloved mended at the seam hand, as a man might to seal a deal, and after a startled instant, he took it and shook it once gravely.
And the absurdity of the two of them shaking hands upon a false engagement on a moonlit terrace struck them at the same moment, and they stood there in the dark, grinning at each other like a pair of conspirators.
"I ought to know," he said, still holding her hand. "The Christian name of the woman I am to marry for the sake of my performance."