"Who does he prefer—come on, tell us..."
Eloise tried to think of it honestly. Ryan, in conversation with Julia or Patricia. Ryan asking after them, seeking them out, steering talk in their direction.
She couldn't find it. He asked about Blissbury, about the estate, about the people who mattered to the running of things. He had asked about Mr. Severton. He asked about her, often enough that she'd stopped being surprised by it.
He had not, as far as she could recall, asked about any young woman in particular.
"I genuinely don't know," she said. "You'll have a better view of it at dinner than I will. Why don't you watch and decide?"
Disappointment moved across their faces—the particular disappointment of people who had been anticipating good gossip and received a reasonable answer instead. But one face among them did something different.
"Not *I don't know*," Sofia said, in the voice she reserved for things she wanted to land, "but *I don't want to know*. Isn't that right?"
Her friends shifted uncomfortably. One of them nudged Sofia's arm.
Eloise looked at her.
She had known Sofia since childhood—since the day the Severtons had stopped briefly in Cambon and the adults had made introductions and the children had been sent to the governess's room, and Eloise had come back from her medicine to hear a sharp voice wondering aloud whether the Severtons had fled the capital for debt, and whether the lace on Eloise's dress was even hers or borrowed from some relative.
She had looked at that girl and understood, with the clarity that children sometimes have about these things, that they would never be friends. She had been right. Twenty years of small precise cruelties, always in settings where propriety made response difficult, always deniable. On Sofia's wedding day: *Thank you for coming, even though it must have been so hard for you*—and then a pause, just long enough to make sure Eloise understood, before the elaboration: *It must be painful, for someone in your situation, to attend such events.*
Eloise had smiled and let it pass. Getting angry at Sofia was a trap. People would decide she was jealous.
She opened her mouth to say something—she wasn't sure what—when the bell rang from the dining room and her mother's voice carried over the assembled guests.
"If everyone would please make their way to the banquet hall—"
The group dissolved at once, friends returning to their husbands, Sofia turning away with a small satisfied smile.
Eloise stood still for a moment.
*Not I don't know. I don't want to know.*
Sofia's reason had been wrong—petty, as it always was. But the words themselves.
She didn't want to know. If Ryan had chosen someone—if he was even now thinking of one face across a dinner table—she didn't want to know what it was in that person that interested him. Didn't want to see his expression when he thought about her.
She bit her lip and went back to her mother.
The procession had begun. Mrs. Severton called names, couples formed, Mr. Palmer led them through, trained servants guided them to their seats. The banquet hall filled steadily while the entrance hall emptied.
Eloise stood near the door and watched, and did not watch Ryan, and watched him anyway.
This morning she had asked, casually, which of the guests he intended to escort last. He had smiled at her—the particular smile that meant he knew exactly what she was asking and found it interesting that she was asking it—and walked past without answering.
So she didn't know. Like everyone else.
The hall thinned. The curious guests entered and craned to see. Names were called, one by one, until only the unmarried women remained—and then only two.
Julia. Patricia.
Eloise became aware that her hands were closed into fists at her sides.
It meant nothing, an escort to the table. She knew this. It was a formality, a piece of ceremony, it didn't mean—
She didn't want to see it. She wanted to know and she didn't want to know and she couldn't decide which feeling was worse—
Her mother drew breath to announce the first name.
Boots on the entrance steps. Fast, loud, someone not slowing down.
A man appeared in the doorway, mud-streaked and grinning, and looked directly at Ryan with the expression of someone who had been planning this moment for some time.
"Ryan Thornton! I'm here!"