“Oh. Carlos.” Victor tilted his head, a memory I was not privy to passing like a cloud over his face. “I wonder if that is how Henry did it, too. Clever of you. I would imagine he found some simpler route. He arrived at my door all smiles and energy. I was relieved to see him. I needed a break from the intensity of my studies. But I quickly discovered he was much altered from when I left him. Prone to long silences, and distracted. After a week I could bear it no longer and demanded that he tell me what the problem was. He confessed he had come here to ask for my blessing in pursuing a betrothal. With you.”

“With me?” I frowned in feigned surprise. “But why would he ask that? I had always planned on him and Justine marrying. I had set my heart on it.”

“Henry set his heart much higher. You can doubtless imagine my response.” His eyes burned into mine. I could see his anger at just the memory of it. I could, in fact, imagine his response.

I took his hand in mine, lowering my eyes shyly. “Actually, Victor…I cannot imagine your response. It has been almost two years. Eighteen months without a letter. I feared—I feared perhaps by leaving me you realized I had no place in your life anymore. And we have never discussed our future. Not in any plain terms. I do not wish to engage you where you wish to be free, but my heart is as it ever was—”

“Elizabeth,” he said, his tone firm and chiding. He lifted my chin and fixed my eyes with his. “You are mine. You have been since the first day we met. You will be mine forever. My absence should not have caused you to doubt the firmness and steadfastness of my attachment to you. It will never fade.”

I nodded, this time the tears in my eyes bearing liquid truth as relief washed over me. I was still safe, then. I would have a place at Victor’s side, no matter his father’s wishes. No matter how much of a waste of resources I was.

He dropped his fingers from my chin, rubbed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I was neither kind nor gentle with Henry. His application for possession of you rewrote our entire history together, and I can no longer view any of his actions as friendship. They are revealed instead to be a long and subtle campaign against me.” He paused. “When he asked, I demanded to know whether you reciprocated his feelings. If you had, I would have set my own feelings aside, of course.” The twitch of his jaw told me he was lying, but I appreciated his efforts. “He told me you two had not spoken of it.”