The Reluctant Countess

Chapter Two: Terms and Condition

The contract arrived at Wentmoor four days later, delivered by a clerk so nervous he nearly dropped the case containing it, as though he’d been warned that an Earl in financial ruin might turn violent at the sight of paperwork. James read it twice at his father’s old desk — his desk now, he reminded himself, though the study still smelled faintly of his father’s tobacco and he hadn’t yet found the will to change so much as the placement of a chair.

The terms were exactly as generous as Rao had promised. Shipping rights. Capital enough to repair the tenant cottages before winter set in. Enough, in time, to clear the mortgage on the north fields within the year. In exchange: marriage to Aniya Rao, to be solemnized within two months, and one clause set apart from the rest, pointed and deliberate, guaranteeing her independent control of her dowry regardless of what became of the marriage. James read that clause three times. He almost admired it. Rao had built a cage generous enough that no reasonable man would try the door.

His sister found him scowling at the pages as though they’d insulted their mother. Margaret was nineteen and entirely unbothered by convention, and she let herself into the study without waiting for permission, the way she had done since they were children — a habit James had never once succeeded in breaking her of. She asked if it was the marriage contract, and held out her hand before he’d even answered, and because he had never once won this particular argument with her, he gave it over.

She read in silence, her eyebrows climbing steadily, and remarked, when she finished, that Aniya kept her dowry no matter what happened to him — rather ruthless of her, wasn’t it. James found himself defending the clause before he’d fully decided to. It was sensible, he said, not ruthless — her father was protecting her from marrying into a title only to be left with nothing if the estate failed regardless. Margaret studied him with the particular patience she reserved for moments she suspected he wasn’t telling her the whole truth, and asked, lightly, whether he was starting to admire the woman he’d met for all of eleven minutes.

Eleven minutes, he reminded her, in which she’d insulted him at least four times.

Only four? Margaret said. Then she must like him.

She wanted to know what Aniya was like, and James found himself considering the question far longer than he’d meant to. Sharp, he thought. Unimpressed. Entirely unwilling to pretend at anything she didn’t feel. There had been something almost restful in that, after a year of condolence calls where every mourner recited the same hollow sympathies over his father’s death while privately calculating how long before the estate collapsed entirely. Honest, he said finally. Brutally so.

Good, Margaret said, with the certainty of a younger sister who considered the matter settled. He’d had quite enough, she thought, of people being polite at him while they waited for him to fail.

Aniya’s own conversation about the contract took place in her father’s study that same week, and it was considerably less gentle. She wanted to know why he hadn’t thought to discuss the terms with her before sending them. He didn’t look up from his correspondence to answer — she’d have approved every clause anyway, he knew how her mind worked. The independent control of her dowry, he said, that had been for her. Not for the Earl, not for himself. So that whatever happened, she would never be trapped.

That, at least, softened her, and she sat across from him, some of the fight going out of her shoulders. And if it didn’t work, she asked — if he turned out every bit as useless as the rest of them? Her father set down his pen. Then she would have a title, an independent fortune, and considerably more freedom than she had now as his unmarried daughter, fielding the same tired questions at every ball about where she was “really” from. He wasn’t asking her to love the man, he said, his voice gentling. He was asking her to survive this city on better terms than it currently offered her. If something more came of it, so be it. If nothing did, she would still have won.

She thought, sitting there, of James Ashworth’s face when she’d told him she had no interest in his title — the flash of something unguarded before he’d covered it with that dry, cutting retort. He hadn’t expected her to fight back. Most men didn’t, until she did, and then they resented her for it. He hadn’t resented her. He’d simply fought back. She didn’t know what to make of that, and it irritated her that she’d noticed it at all.

Two months, she said aloud, tapping the contract, wasn’t very long to prepare a wedding no one particularly wanted. It was exactly long enough, her father said, to make sure all of London heard of it before anyone had time to talk her out of it.

They met again a week later, at a ball neither of them wanted to attend, thrown by a hostess who had caught wind of the engagement before it was even formally announced and could not resist the chance to be first to display them both to the room.

Aniya arrived at his side with the practiced ease of a woman who had rehearsed her opening line, and told him he looked like a man being led to the gallows. He said she looked like the executioner, so perhaps they were well matched after all. She warned him, not quite smiling, that if he kept being clever at her all evening, people might start to think they got along. God forbid, he said — and offered his arm anyway, because the room was already watching, dozens of eyes cataloguing every inch of distance or closeness between the ruined Earl and the merchant’s daughter.

She took it. Her hand, he noted, was steady. His own, to his quiet irritation, was not.

She told him to relax — he was meant to look as though he’d chosen this. He had chosen it, he said. Yes, she agreed, something unreadable moving behind her voice. So had she.

Neither of them said anything further on the matter. But for the rest of the evening, as they were paraded past baronets and countesses who whispered behind their fans and smiled with too many teeth, James found himself watching her from the corner of his eye — the way she held her spine straight through every slight, the way her wit only sharpened the longer the room stared, rather than dulling under the weight of it. She was, he thought, entirely unlike anyone he had been raised to expect he’d marry.

He wasn’t yet sure if that unsettled him, or not.