But there was something honest about it, she thought. Nothing performing. Nothing pretending to be more than it was. "How long have you been out here? " "Since before the birds started. " He offered her the cup. She looked at it.
"That is your cup. " "I haven't drunk from it yet. I had it brought out and then forgot it about it while I was thinking. " She took it. It was tea, nearly perfect temperature, which meant the timing of his thinking had been accidental rather than planned. She drank a small amount and handed it back. "What were you thinking about? " she asked.
"Yesterday," he said. "Specifically the look on Mrs. Corbett's face when I asked everyone to leave. " Nora almost smiled. She is going to write about this in her professional memoirs. "She keeps memoirs? " "Every matchmaker keeps memoirs.
It is how they survive the occupation. " She pulled her shawl tighter and looked at the stone wall. Your grace, I want to ask you something directly. All right. Yesterday was dramatic and surprising, and I understand there was a logic to it, even if the execution was startling. But I need to understand what you are actually proposing.
Not in the grand gesture version. In the plain version. He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "I want to spend the next few days speaking with you honestly. Not in a formal setting with a chaperone taking notes and a matchmaker hovering with a clipboard.
Just talking. And at the end of those days, I want to know whether what I think I already know about you is real, or whether I have built something in my imagination that does not exist. " "What do you think you know about me? " He looked at her directly. "That you are the kind of person who moves toward problems. That you do not require applause for it. That you are honest, even when honesty is inconvenient.
And that you have been standing in other people's shadows for long enough that you have started to believe the shadow is your natural size. " Nora went very still. The birds had started by now. Small sounds in the bare branches of the trees along the garden wall. The frost was beginning to soften in the growing light. "That is a great deal to conclude from a horse incident and an ink stain," she said, and her voice was careful.
"It is," he agreed. "Which is why I want to find out if I am right. " She looked at him for a moment. His face was steady. Not demanding. Not performing.