"No," Arthur said. "She does not. And I will not be the reason she is humiliated." "You would not be."
"Would I not?" Clara asked, turning back to him. "A duke comes to court the eldest daughter and leaves with the younger. There are drawing rooms that would feast on that for a year."
Arthur had no answer. She was right. He could bear gossip. Clara would be made into a story.
Eleanor would be pitied in public and examined in private. Lady Danvers would rage behind doors. Lord Danvers would feel insult even if no insult had been intended. The cost stood in the room with them, no longer invisible.
Clara wrapped her arms loosely around herself, not from cold, but from the effort of staying still. "My independence is not bravery all the time," she said. "Sometimes it is simply the place I go when the world is too loud. I made a life inside myself because I could not trust the rooms outside it to be kind."
Arthur listened without moving. "I do not dislike love," she continued. "I dislike being asked to trade myself for the appearance of it. I would rather be alone than admired falsely, and I would rather be forgotten than chosen for a role I never wanted to play."
She looked at him then, fully. "If you are trying to escape your duty, do not run toward me. I will not become another door you use." The warning should have pushed him back.
Instead, it steadied him. She was not asking to be rescued. She was not asking to win. She was asking him to be clear, even if clarity took him away from her.
Admiration rose in him with such quiet force that it left no room for argument. "I would never ask you to be a hiding place," he said. "Then do not decide tonight." He stilled.
Clara's voice softened. "Fear can sound very much like truth when it is loud enough. If you break with my family, let it be because you know your own mind in daylight, not because the library is warm and I am the only person here who lets you breathe." Arthur looked at her for a long moment.
There were women who would have taken his confession and shaped it into a proposal before dawn. There were families that would have locked the door and called witnesses. Clara gave him the harder gift. She refused his confusion and demanded his integrity.
He bowed his head once. "You are the most difficult comfort I have ever known." A faint, sad smile touched her mouth. "Comfort should not make cowards of us."