That would have been the proposal of her dreams, not the shabby, calculated kiss he’d thrust upon her in her aunt’s hallway.

But he’d had no choice. Surely, when he explained everything, she would understand that. She knew what it meant to love one’s family, to want to protect them at all costs. It was what she did each year when she played in the musicale. She didn’t want to be there; she did it for her mother, and her aunts, and even her eternal-thorn-in-the-side sister Daisy.

She’d understand. She had to.

He had been granted a one-week reprieve. Seven full days before he had to come clean and watch her face grow even more pale at his betrayal. Maybe he was a coward; maybe he should use this time to explain it all, to prepare her for what must come.

But he wanted what he could not have before the wedding. Time.

A lot could happen in seven days.

One week, he told himself as he went to collect her for their first supper together at Maycliffe Park.

One week to make her fall in love with him.

IRIS SPENT THE entire afternoon resting in her new bedchamber. She’d never quite understood how sitting in a carriage could leave a body so weary when sitting in a chair in a drawing room required no energy whatsoever, but the three-day journey to Maycliffe had left her utterly exhausted. Maybe it was the jostling of the carriage or the poor state of the roads this far north. Or maybe—probably—it had something to do with her husband.

She did not understand him.

One moment he was charming, and the next he was fleeing her presence as if she carried plague. She could not believe he had had the housekeeper show her to her room. Surely that was a new husband’s job. But she supposed she should not have been surprised. Richard had avoided her bed at all three inns they’d visited on the journey north. Why should she think he might behave differently now?

She sighed. She needed to learn to be indifferent to him. Not cruel, not unkind, just . . . unaffected. When he smiled at her—and he did smile at her, the cur—her whole being seemed to fizz with happiness. Which would have been lovely, except that it made his rejection even more puzzling.

And painful.

Honestly, it would be better if he weren’t so nice to her most of the time. If she could dislike him—

No, what was she thinking? It would not be better if he were cruel or ignored her completely. Surely a complicated marriage was better than an unpleasant one. She had to stop being melodramatic. It was not like her. She just needed to find some sort of equilibrium and maintain it.

“Good evening, Lady Kenworthy.”