Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

“ M atthew, I’m so glad you’re here,” Lavinia said, smiling up at her elder brother. “I thought you had decided not to come to this party, and when you came walking in the other day, I can’t tell you enough how pleased I was to see you.”

“I also thought you weren’t coming,” Edwina spoke up. She was walking on Matthew’s other side as the three siblings made their way along the garden path. Unlike Lavinia and Matthew, who kept a steady pace together, Edwina kept stopping to examine a flower or a marble statue and then hurrying along to catch up with them. She had just finished examining some delicate looking purple flowers that Lavinia couldn’t identify and had come away with one plucked from the vine and tucked behind her ear.

Matthew looked at her with fond amusement. “You shouldn’t be picking the Duke of Harbeck’s flowers, Edwina.”

“He has so many! He’ll never know what I did,” Edwina said, laughing.

“No, but it’s still not right of you to do it.”

“You’re such a stickler for the rules,” Lavinia told her brother. “You always have been. You must know that you haven’t a chance at getting Edwina to change her behavior. She’s always been free-spirited, and she always will be.”

The truth was that Lavinia found herself spending a lot of time thinking about the concept of people changing their behavior to make others happy. Was it something that should be expected of them? Was it even possible? She didn’t know. What she did know was that it was impossible to consider ideas like that without thinking of the time she had spent with the Duke of Loxburgh, who had thoroughly ignored her since she had walked out of his library the previous night.

She couldn’t decide how she felt about that. On the one hand, she had been sincerely offended by the way he had spoken to her. Perhaps she should have seen it coming. Maybe she should have realized that the only possible reason he could have for wanting to help her was that he believed her incapable of helping herself.

She thought back over the conversation they’d had in the library. What was it, really, that had offended her so badly? He was right that all he had really done was agree with the things she had said herself. She had commented on the fact that no one found her desirable after having spent time in her company. Had she expected him to pretend it wasn’t true?

The only thing she could think, the only thing that made sense of it, was that she had genuinely allowed herself to believe that he saw her differently than other people did. After all, he had consistently pointed out that he found her to have potential. He was right that she shouldn’t have expected anything, and yet she found that she had expected that he would tell her that everyone else was wrong about her. That he saw something they didn’t.

He had never seen anything others didn’t see. All he had ever seen in her was a problem that he thought he could fix. And it wasn’t even that Lavinia felt that he was wrong about that—it was just that she didn’t want to spend time in the company of someone who saw her that way. If she wanted to think of herself as flawed and needing to be fixed, she could get that from her father.

At least he wasn’t with them today. “How did you persuade Father to let us have the morning to ourselves?” she asked Matthew.

“Oh, I told him I’d try to convince you to get serious about the need to marry and settle down,” Matthew said. “Which is something I think you need to take more seriously, by the way. If you had focused on it last season the way you should have, you wouldn’t be in the predicament you’re in now.”

Lavinia sighed. “You know I tried,” she told her brother. “I gave it my best effort. I can’t control everything. I’m just an awkward person. I’m starting to think that’s something that can’t be fixed. For a time I believed it was something the right gentleman might overlook but, if so, I didn’t find the right gentleman. That isn’t my fault.”

“You should have asked Father to help you if you were having trouble finding someone.”

“Well, that would have only put me exactly where I am right now one year sooner,” Lavinia pointed out. “Father is intent on marrying me to some friend of his—someone I don’t even know. He hasn’t even given me a name.”

Matthew nodded. “I know,” he said. “Father and I have talked about it.”

They walked in silence for a few moments, watching Edwina as she ran on ahead. Lavinia smiled to see her sister looking so youthful and carefree. She hoped Edwina would be able to remain that way for a very long time.

Matthew cleared his throat. “I think you need to do what Father wants you to do,” he told her. “I think you need to prioritize a marriage to this gentleman he’s chosen for you. You should ask him to go ahead and make the introductions.”

“If Father wanted to introduce me to this man, he would have done so already,” Lavinia said. “He isn’t waiting because I haven’t requested an introduction.”

“I don’t know if you’re correct about that,” Matthew objected. “After all, he told you that you could have this house party as a final opportunity to find a match for yourself. I think he’s determined to honor that promise, if only so that you can’t say later that he broke his word to you.

“Of course it’s his intention that you’ll marry the person he’s chosen for you, but he wants to make sure you don’t complain about it. He wants to make sure you can’t tell him he didn’t give you enough opportunity to find your own marriage.”

“But you don’t think I will find my own marriage,” Lavinia said.

“I think you could, given enough time,” Matthew said. “I also think you’ve had quite a lot of time to make the attempt now. You know I love you, Lavinia, but I think if you were going to succeed at this, you would have done it.

“It’s time now for you to accept the fact that Father wants to help you. It’s time for you to go to him, tell him you’re resigned to the fact that this isn’t a dilemma you’re going to solve on your own, and that you’re ready for him to step in.”

“I thought you understood,” Lavinia said, looking up at her brother. “I thought you knew that I only wanted to marry for love.”

“I do know that,” Matthew said. “But I think you’ve allowed that idea to become too important to you, Lavinia. The most important thing is that you find a husband—it doesn’t matter so much what the connection between the two of you is built on.

“Marriages succeed for all kinds of reasons, and you mustn’t allow this romantic idea about falling in love to prevent you from finding a husband at all. I fear that is what you’ve done so far. You’re not allowing yourself to consider perfectly reasonable options simply because you don’t feel the sort of love you think you ought to.”

“I want to experience that,” Lavinia said. “I want to fall in love, Matthew. I don’t think that’s such an unreasonable thing to wish for.”

“Maybe it isn’t,” Matthew said. “But there’s a difference between wishing for something and allowing your life to be destroyed by the hope of it. If an opportunity for marriage never comes along again, what then? What if you grow old having never found this love you dream of? Won’t you wish, when that day comes, that you had tried to find a match while you had the freedom to do so?”

“I don’t know that I will,” Lavinia said truthfully. “What if I grow old in a loveless marriage? The idea of being unmarried is not one I relish, I grant you—but why would I want to be married to someone who doesn’t care for me? Just so I can say that I have a husband?”

“There’s more to it than that, and you know it,” Matthew said. “You know why it’s so important for you to marry. You know that you have a responsibility to make sure there’s someone to look after you. Father doesn’t want to do that forever. And besides, don’t you want to start a family someday? Have children?”

Lavinia hesitated. “I do want that,” she admitted.

“Well, then, I don’t see how you can even consider spending the rest of your life alone. Look, I know you have dreams of finding love, Lavinia, and maybe that will happen, but it doesn’t have to happen before your marriage is arranged, does it? Love can grow over time, and if Father says he has someone who is willing to marry you, I think that’s something you need to accept and be grateful for.”

“And so what would you have me do?”

“Go to him,” Matthew said. “Tell him you don’t need the rest of the time we’re going to be at this party to make up your mind about things. Tell him you’re ready to accept the future he’s chosen for you. You’re wasting time by pretending that things are going to happen any differently. You know this is what’s going to happen.

“No matter how hard you try, it’s not realistic to imagine that you might fall in love in the next eight days. If it was going to happen, it would have happened already. The best thing you can do now is to use the time at this party to get to know the gentleman father has chosen for you. It’s an opportunity, and you should take advantage of it. Perhaps you will even find yourself beginning to love the gentleman, if you give yourself the chance to know him.”

He looked at her as if he expected a response, but Lavinia didn’t know what to say.

She had always counted on Matthew. He had always been on her side. Or rather, he hadn’t been exactly on her side—his dismissiveness of the idea of a marriage based on love was nothing new to her.

However, he had made her believe that he understood what she wanted out of her life and supported her in her quest for it. Realizing that he had now come to the conclusion that she should just give in and do what their father wanted was a considerable blow.

Lavinia looked up to her brother. It had meant something to her that he had believed she could find love. If he no longer believed in her—maybe she was wrong to believe in herself.

But she heard the duke’s voice in the back of her mind. She knew exactly what he would say right now. Be confident .

When he’d given her that instruction, he hadn’t meant that she should never doubt herself. She understood that now. He had meant that when she felt doubt, she should choose to act as though she still believed in herself. That was what would help her succeed.

That was what Matthew was advising her not to do. He wanted her to give up.

She wasn’t going to do it.

“I have eight days left,” she told her brother. “That means there’s still a chance.”

“Lavinia, that chance is so small. You shouldn’t waste your time on it.”

“I have to try,” she said. “If I don’t try, I’ll always wonder whether or not I could have found love. And that’s the worst future of all—one in which I constantly ask myself that question and never find an answer. Whether I find love during this party or not, at least I’m going to know that I did all I could.”

A heavy certainty settled upon her as she spoke these words, for she knew what she was saying.

If she truly meant to do all she could—that meant she was going to have to return to the duke and ask him to be her instructor once more.