Terms

Your father's study is the only room in the Russell Square house that looks like your father. The rest is all new silk and gilt chairs, chosen by a decorator who told him what a gentleman's house should look like. The study has a scarred oak desk he brought from Birmingham, a stove that smokes, ledgers to the ceiling and a framed sheet of the first playing cards Sowerby & Son ever printed: a whole suit of hearts, slightly crooked.

Rowland Ingleby stands in the middle of it as if he's been placed there by mistake. In daylight he's even worse. Gray morning light should make a man look ordinary. It makes him look like a painting of himself.

"Miss Sowerby." He bows. "I came to apologize properly."

"You apologized last night."

"I apologized on my knees in front of two hundred people. That was the improper kind." He glances at the crooked hearts on the wall and his mouth twitches. "Your father's?"

"The first ones he ever printed. He says he keeps them to remember that everyone starts crooked."

"I like him already. He doesn't like me."

"He wanted to set the dogs on you."

"Your butler mentioned it. I told him I'd been bitten by better." He turns his hat in his hands. "I won't waste your time. I came to ask whether you'll let me call on you. Knowing what you know. I understand if the answer is no, and I'll go quietly. I'm very good at leaving rooms."

You sit down behind your father's desk. It's an enormous desk. You hope it makes you look formidable rather than small.

"Sit," you say.

He sits.

Aunt Tabitha comes in with her workbasket, takes the chair by the smoking stove, and closes her eyes.

"Your aunt," says Rowland.

"Asleep," says Aunt Tabitha.

"Of course."

You take a sheet of paper from the drawer, your father's best, heavy and cream, with the little Sowerby watermark in the corner. You dip a pen. Your hand is perfectly steady today. You had a whole night to make it so.

"I've had nine proposals," you say. "Every one of those men lied to me. They told me I had beautiful eyes. That they'd never met a girl like me. One of them wrote me a sonnet that rhymed Sowerby with flowery."

"That's unforgivable."

"I know. The point is that you're the first man who didn't lie. You're also the first man I've caught hunting me in so many words. I find I can't decide which of those matters more." You write Articles of Agreement at the top of the page and underline it. "So I'm going to find out."

He leans forward. "How?"

"You'll court me. Properly. Drives in the park, calls, dances, whatever you like. For six weeks. Until the King's birthday ball on the fourth of June." You write it down. "On that night I'll decide. If I say yes, you'll have your fortune well before Michaelmas. If I say no, you'll walk away. No scene. No sad letters to the newspapers. No telling your club I'm cold."

"Agreed," he says, too quickly.

"I haven't told you the rules yet."

"There are rules." He looks delighted. "Of course there are rules."

You write One. "No lies. Ever. Any question I ask, you answer truthfully. You may say you'd rather not answer, but you may not lie."

His face changes. Only a little, the way the surface of water changes when a cloud goes over.

"Any question," he says.

"Any."

"That's a very dangerous rule to hand a man like me, Miss Sowerby."

"It's a very dangerous rule to hand a woman like me," you say. "I'm the one who has to hear the answers."

He's quiet. Then he nods. "One. No lies. Go on."

You write Two. "You earn every dance. I choose which. You don't get to ask for the waltz and assume."

"Do I get a vote on what counts as earning?"

"No."

"Two," he says gravely. "I'm doomed. Go on."

Three. "On the fourth of June, I decide. Whatever I decide is final, and you accept it."

"Three. And if I'm still standing after that?"

"Then we discuss the rest with my father, who will want to set the dogs on you again."

"Fair." He holds out a hand. "May I?"

You turn the paper and pass him the pen. He reads it through once, carefully, the way your father reads a contract, which surprises you. Then he writes, in a fast, elegant, slanting hand:

Four. The rules bind Miss Sowerby too.

You stare at it. "That's not how this works."

"It's exactly how this works. You want the truth from me, you give it back. If I ask you a question, you answer it. If I earn a dance, you don't pretend I didn't." He sets down the pen. "Otherwise it's not a bargain. It's an examination. And I've failed enough of those."

Aunt Tabitha, eyes closed, says, "He's right, dear."

"You're asleep."

"Profoundly."

You look at him across your father's desk, the gray light on his gold hair, the fraying cuff of his coat, the green eyes waiting. He's handed you the oddest thing: not flattery, not a promise, but the same sharp knife you handed him.

"Four," you say, and sign.

He signs under you. Hollinsby. Then, after a moment, he crosses it out and writes Rowland Ingleby instead.

"Why?"

"Rule one." He doesn't smile. "Hollinsby is the debt. Rowland's the one you're bargaining with."

Aunt Tabitha opens one eye, witnesses it in a cramped schoolroom hand, and closes it again.

You blot the page. It's done. Six weeks. You feel slightly sick and very awake.

"First question," you say.

"Already?"

"You came here at nine in the morning. You must have been up all night. Were you?"

He considers lying. You see him consider it, see the reflex rise and stop. "Yes."

"Doing what?"

"Practicing my apology in the mirror. Sedley says it was very moving. Sedley is my valet. And my groom. And my butler, on Thursdays." He spreads his hands. "Sedley is everyone, at my house."

You laugh. It surprises you so much you put your hand over your mouth.

He looks at you as if you've done something remarkable.

"Second question," you say quickly. "Will you tell me why you need the money?"

"Not today."

"Rule one."

"Rule one says I can't lie. It doesn't say I can't be a coward on a Tuesday." He stands, picks up his hat. "Ask me again in a week. I may be braver."

He bows to Aunt Tabitha, who snores, and to you.

At the door he turns. "For the record, Ava. Your eyes are perfectly ordinary. Brown. Very direct. It's what you do with them that's dangerous."

"That's a compliment."

"It's a fact. Rule one." And then he's gone, and you are laughing again, alone, in your father's smoky study, which was absolutely not in the terms.

That night the rain stops for the first time in ten days.

You're sitting up in bed with the agreement on your knees, reading it again, when someone knocks on your door. It's your maid, Moberly, in her nightcap, holding something between finger and thumb as if it might bite.

"A man in the mews, miss. Says his name's Sedley and he'll wait for an answer. He gave me this."

It's a playing card. You know it instantly; you'd know it anywhere. Sowerby's Best, the blue lattice back your father's presses have printed ten thousand times.

You turn it over. The knave of hearts, curly-haired and smug.

Across his painted face, in that fast, slanting hand, someone has written in ink.

Rule one is now in force, Miss Sowerby. I've been sitting here an hour trying to think of a lie I'm still allowed to tell.

Below it, smaller:

Ask me something, Ava. I'll wait.