It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage. ~~ Jane Austen
Her mother had told her to act surprised.
“Viscount Downton. This is such a surprise.”
His expression did not lighten. It did not smile. Instead, it hardened, like an old gold-chaser getting ready to haggle dollars and cents with the bank man.
Cora stood, awkward as a flamingo on one foot. Should she sit down again? Should she curtsy? Surely not! This was her home- well, for now. Mother was making noises about moving to the Ritz, claiming the servants attached to this rented London residence were slovenly and badly-trained. But for now it was her home.
Should she wait for the Viscount to bow? Should she curtsy then?
It was so much easier in the public light of a ball. Mother had devoured the English etiquette manuals before leaving New York. Before Cora set a slippered foot on the gangplank of the SS Majestic, she knew to an inch the depth of her curtsy for a duke as opposed to a baron, the ribbons permitted to a second-season debutante as opposed to a first and that the Scottish titles were infinitely inferior to English ones.
Irish titles were not worth the letters that made up their rank.
So, if they had been in a ball, Cora would know exactly what to do. She would be beautifully dressed, her armour pearl-and-white-silk-plated. The scouts- Mother’s quiet hints to matrons and hostess of her daughter’s fabulous dowry- would be already sent ahead. Half her dances would be promised to poor-but-titled barons, lords and knights but if it came about that a better prospect appeared, she had a tried and tested strategy to dismiss her original partner without insult or insinuation.
She knew how to laugh like a lady, how to flirt without being forward. She had perfected how to modulate her accent to sound less like the mid-western daughter of carpetbagggers and more like the rows of English debutantes who lined the walls and watched every move like cats following a piece of string.
She knew. Here, curled up with her favourite novel, dressed en déshabillé in a skirt and shirt-waist, Cora fumbled around the particulars like a green girl.
He didn’t bow. He didn’t move to sit down. He just stood there, side-whiskers bristling and blue eyes studying her like she was a dose of cod-liver oil.
He was poor. Cora had heard that much. Of course, poverty was relative. The Viscount and his parents had enough to eat, enough to dress in the full regalia required for a London Season. They maintained appearances of a title that was both old and attached to a great deal of land.
Theirs was not a poverty to equal what Cora could remember of childhood trips with her father to the plains country of Ohio. Then, she could remember barefoot children and hungry faces. Women who were twenty and looked forty; women of forty who looked a hundred.
The Countess of Grantham, that imperious matriarch of the Crawley family, was forty-six. In her diamonds and silks, with her red hair piled in a coronet on her head, she looked ten years younger.
Still, Cora herself knew how appearances could deceive. The title was dying. No number of diamonds or crumbling homes could hide it. The current earl invested unwisely, diverting funds from the home farms to cover a risky gamble in South American tobacco. When it failed to take off, he became a recluse.
There were rumours the Viscount was in the middle of quiet negotiations to sell some of his family’s masterpieces. Anything to keep the creditors from their backs until the harvest came in. If he didn’t find an immediate injection of cash, they might have to begin selling the family jewels.
It wasn’t surprising that the serious, stiff young man had solicited Cora Levinson, London’s brightest and richest American heiress, for the first waltz at every ball she attended since the beginning of the Season.
Harold, of course, was being perfectly odious. “Why won’t he work? Do a bit of hard toil for once in his life instead of slithering his way into stealing someone else’s success.”
Mother said Harold had radical tendencies. She encouraged his obsession with sailing in Hyannis Port and Rhode Island in hopes that the physical exhaustion would wear out his acid tongue. Cora sometimes wished her elder brother would be washed over board.
Viscount Downton glanced at the mantel clock, then the door. Cora, coming to with a blink, realised she had forgotten to offer the tea tray.
“Would you like a cup of-”
They stopped. Cora, blushing. The Viscount caught off guard. He glanced at the clock again. Was he waiting for an appointment?
“I have spoken to your mother.” There was something a little endearing about how awkward the Viscount seemed. Cora focussed on the stray curl of brown that escaped the waves of his pomaded hair to hang over one eyebrow. It made him look boyish, a pleasing contrast to the formality of his navy morning coat and waistcoat.
It also distracted her from the apprehensive clenching of her stomach muscles in anticipation of what was coming next.
“Miss Levinson, I am aware our acquaintance is short. Nevertheless, I trust you will allow me to say... that is, I wish to inform you that... Your...” He cleared his throat. Stopped.
Cora waited. Her heart picked up. A shallow rattle that sent tremors rippling up her throat until all words choked a premature death.
When the Viscount spoke again, the boy was gone. The mercantile hardness had returned. Dollars and cents weighed in the balance.
“I have spoken to your mother in view of contracting a marriage between us.”
The voice was cold. Like an icicle. It left Cora with a curious numbness and, with that numbness, a clarity of vision.
She studied the man in front of her, errant curl included. The cool blue gaze met her own without flinching. He understood the bargain being struck.
“I believe we will deal well together, you and I. She is in agreement. You will be Viscountess Downton and, one day, Countess of Grantham. A position of great honour.”
And you will still have a roof over your noble head come Christmas time, Cora thought. “It is, my lord.”
He nodded. “I realise our acquaintance is of a short duration. Nevertheless, on refelction, I see no reason that affect- That is to say, I am confident the marriage shall be a success.”
“That is gratifying, my lord.”
Something in her tone must have alerted the English lord to his faux pas. He stopped addressing every remark to the Fabergé clock on the mantel. When he glanced back to her- so quick, it was less than a flash before he turned away again- Cora saw the first uncertainty break through the self-assured facade. And something more.
Viscount Downton cleared his throat. “Naturally, should you accept, you would make me the happiest of men.”
Would I? For the first time in a dozen marriage proposals, every one of them made with more wit and greater arodour than this clinical bargain, Cora stopped dismissing the words at face value.
She traced the stoic face in front of her. The firm, almost pugnacious chin. The shadows that traced under the startling blue eyes. The thick wings of his eyebrows that jutted over his brow and gave him a hawkish air.
He was a proud man, she thought. The little conversation they had exchanged between dance patterns told her as much. Despite Harold’s mockery, she didn’t think Viscount Downton relished the easy money marriage to her would bestow. To sell himself and his heritage and his title like that to the highest bidder must, she thought, rankle across his skin like a iron claws.
This offer was a last resort. A decision made after countless sleepless nights spent contemplating ruin and homelessness and the desecration of three hundred years of history. She could read it in his face, in the skin that was too pale and drawn even to be fashionable, in the idle tap of his fingers against his waistcoat.
The Viscount was exposed to the winds of fortune, like a man on a cliff. All that waited was one last push to send him from everything he had known, everything he had been born to protect, into the seas of humiliation and ruin below.
It wasn’t the marriage she dreamed of as a girl. It wasn’t knights errant or bouquets or sonnets to her eyebrow. It was a business transaction but it could be something more.
Instinctively, irrationally, Cora knew she could save this proud, vulnerable man, even from himself.
A crack in the refined voice. A hesitation at the end.
Cora lifted her head. Putting on her most dazzling smile, she held out her hand.
“Yes, my lord.” The words were quiet and warm. A sanctuary all of their own. “Yes, I will make you the happiest of men.”
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