It had been a fortnight since Mr. Blyth had received the invitation to Langmere Hall.
After sending a brief note of acceptance—his penmanship unusually tight, his language clipped with formality—he had not expected a reply. Certainly not within the hour. Yet barely thirty minutes later, another envelope arrived at Greymoor House, carried by a breathless boy who declared, with pride and a bit too much volume, that it had been written immediately upon receipt of Mr. Blyth's reply.
The note was short but unmistakably deliberate. Mr. Fitzwilliam expressed his pleasure at their forthcoming attendance and offered a gracious—if slightly belated—acknowledgment that the short notice of the ball might have caused inconvenience. It was an apology crafted with such polish that it left no room for actual reproach. The damage, however, had already been done.
The remainder of the message read less like an invitation and more like an itinerary. The Blyths were to arrive no fewer than four hours before the first guest. Tea would be served privately in the west drawing room. Rooms had been prepared should they wish to remain after the ball.
Mr. Blyth had declined this final offer—firmly, without consultation. It was a decision met with a full afternoon of pointed silence from his mother and a withering look from Margaret that might have felled a weaker man.
In the days that followed, speculation overtook the town with the force of a seasonal fever. Mr. Blyth, despite his best efforts to remain uninvolved, became the unwilling conduit for every form of curiosity. Mere acquaintances and perfect strangers alike began to treat him as though he possessed some special insight into Mr. Fitzwilliam's intentions—as if his mind were an unlocked diary for public consumption.
Would there be fireworks? Was the music to be French or Italian? Was there a dress code, or worse—a theme? Did Mr. Fitzwilliam prefer blondes? Or redheads? Or brunettes with tasteful pearl earrings and an understanding of ancient poetry? Was he partial to roses or lilies? Did he detest lace, or find it charmingly old-fashioned? Was it true he had once danced with a duchess and left her weeping?
Mr. Blyth offered nothing. He smiled tightly, redirected conversations, and walked a little faster through town. But silence, it seemed, only bred more questions.
To preserve what little peace remained to him, Mr. Blyth made the decision to close his office in the final days leading up to the ball. In its place, he resumed his work from the study at Greymoor House—a room that had once belonged to his father. It was a space of dark wood, deep quiet, and the lingering scent of old paper, untouched by the daily bustle of town or family. He granted his longtime clerk, Mr. Shepard, several days' leave to enjoy the company of his daughter and her family, who had come to visit. The arrangement suited everyone involved.
At Greymoor, however, tranquility had no place. The house had become less a residence than a bustling mercantile outpost. Seamstresses swept in and out, trailing bolts of imported fabric behind them like banners of war; cobblers lined the corridor with boxes of delicate shoes and soft leather boots; milliners arrived bearing feathers, beads, and glittering combs that scattered across the carpets like confetti. Pins turned up in the armchairs, hatboxes multiplied on the stairs, and in one particularly memorable incident, a tea tray was mistaken for a sewing kit and whisked away mid-service. Even the garden paths were not spared—one morning, Margaret could be seen striding the hedgerows with the urgency of a statesman, waving a crumpled note from a courier who claimed to know the whereabouts of a French hair ornament lost to fashion seasons past. She treated the matter as if it were a diplomatic crisis.
Mr. Blyth reached his limit shortly thereafter. Upon finding himself once again ambushed by an overzealous jeweler brandishing samples "fit for a woman of distinction," he took swift and decisive action. Retrieving his purse from his mother's drawing room with the discretion of a man liberating a hostage, he mounted his horse and rode into town with singular purpose.
He visited every prominent merchant within a two-mile radius and issued the same directive at each stop: no further credit was to be extended to his mother or sisters. No exceptions. No extensions. No indulgent interpretations of the word necessary.
The reactions ranged from theatrical to pleading. Dressmakers wrung their hands; cobblers lobbied for clemency; and one particularly impassioned milliner, fanning herself as though on the verge of collapse, declared that to deny Mrs. Blyth her rightful access to credit would be to upend the very foundations of society.
Mr. Blyth remained unmoved.
Mrs. Blyth, upon receiving the news, responded with the full force of her theatrical indignation. She clutched at her chest as though felled by some unseen calamity, gasping with such dedication that each breath seemed rehearsed for maximum effect. The volume of her exclamations rose with each passing second until Margaret, in a fit of dutiful panic, brought her a chair—which she promptly refused to sit in.
With the air of a tragic heroine, Mrs. Blyth declared that she was being ruined by her own son. Ruined. She informed Margaret, Eleanor, and even the unsuspecting cat (who had wandered in at precisely the wrong moment) that she had raised Mr. Blyth with love, tenderness, and unyielding sacrifice, only to be betrayed in her golden years—left barefoot, penniless, and socially humiliated.
Her performance, however, garnered less outrage than she had anticipated. Eleanor merely raised an eyebrow in polite detachment, and Margaret seemed far more concerned about whether her gloves would still arrive in time for the ball.
Declaring the household a den of ingratitude, Mrs. Blyth retired to her room in protest. She refused dinner, rattled her tea service for effect, and spent the remainder of the evening sighing at carefully spaced intervals—just loud enough to ensure the entire house was reminded that her suffering remained, as ever, unmatched.
Mr. Blyth, meanwhile, kept to his study, working in solitude as the household spun around him in frenzied orbit. He buried himself in contracts and estate ledgers, reviewing deeds and accounts with mechanical precision, but his thoughts—persistent and uninvited—continued to circle Langmere Hall like a slow-turning storm. The ball loomed ever closer, not as a passing social engagement, but with the weighted certainty of a deadline he had no power to defer.
He had long since accepted that guilt was a currency his mother spent with unmatched ease, and that if he were to preserve even a shred of his composure in the days ahead, he would need to hoard his own stores like gold. Yet, for all his practicality, for all the quiet corners he tried to disappear into, there remained a persistent unease he could not entirely banish.
This was not merely an evening of music and dancing. Not merely a gathering of familiar faces dressed in fine clothes.
He was preparing for something else—something far more difficult to name.
***
The morning of the ball arrived with an unearned calm.
Sunlight filtered lazily through the tall windows of Greymoor, casting soft stripes across the dining room rug. Outside, the grounds were deceptively serene. The trees swayed with idle grace, birds trilled without urgency, and the sky stretched overhead in a flawless blue that seemed to insist—almost mockingly—that nothing dramatic could possibly unfold.
It was a lie.
Mr. Henry Blyth entered the dining room with the reluctant gait of a man en route to a well-catered execution. His cravat felt tight, though he hadn't tied it yet. His coat hung stiff at the shoulders, as though it too objected to the day's proceedings. Even his boots—polished within an inch of their lives—managed to squeak in subtle protest.
"Good morning, Henry," came his mother's bright, polished greeting.
He responded with a sound that may have once been a word in a former life—something between a sigh and a grunt—as he slumped into his chair with the grace of a man already defeated.
Margaret and Eleanor were seated across the table, calmly buttering scones and sipping tea as though it were any other morning. But Mrs. Blyth was not reading the newspaper, nor unfolding a napkin. No—she sat straight-backed and alert, her posture too deliberate to be innocent.
Beside her on the table sat a package.
It was wrapped in thick brown paper and tied with dark twine. It looked heavy. Intentional. Silent in the way only something significant can be.
Mr. Blyth stared at it.
Then at her.
"What is that?"
Mrs. Blyth didn't even blink. "Nothing of consequence."
Which, coming from her, meant it would almost certainly upend his entire week—if not his life.
She took a dainty sip of tea, her pinky lifted with theatrical elegance. Margaret and Eleanor didn't so much as glance up. They had clearly been warned.
He turned his attention to his plate, fork in hand, but couldn't bring himself to eat. The package sat unmoving. Unlabeled. Unspoken for. But not, by any stretch of the imagination, forgotten.
Then came her next strike.
"And what, pray tell, are you planning to wear tonight?" she asked sweetly, as though she hadn't posed the very same question no fewer than five times in the past week.
He exhaled through his nose. "Black coat. Grey trousers. Cravat. Shoes."
"Mm." She dabbed at the corners of her mouth with her napkin. "So… nothing appealing."
"It's a formal event, not a parade."
"It's a ball, Henry. You'll be visible. Standing beside Mr. Fitzwilliam, no less. The least you could do is look... interesting."
He didn't dignify that with a response.
Her eyes flicked meaningfully toward the package. "Open it."
"No."
"Henry."
He closed his eyes. "Mamma, if you've spent more money—"
She didn't let him finish.
"Open. It."
There was no way out.
He leaned forward, tugging the knot loose with a tension he didn't bother to hide. The twine gave way with a snap, and the paper unfurled in a slow crackle, revealing a folded garment beneath.
He stilled.
Midnight blue wool, rich and finely woven, caught the morning light in quiet gleams. The suit was clearly custom-tailored—elegant without being ostentatious. Subtle embroidery traced the collar and cuffs, not enough to draw notice but impossible to ignore once seen. The buttons gleamed with silvered polish, and the stitching was so precise it looked nearly invisible.
It was, without question, the most sophisticated item of clothing he had ever owned. And he hated that he liked it.
Atop the folded fabric rested a thick square of parchment, sealed in deep blue wax. He broke it open. Inside, in a hand both familiar and maddeningly composed, were five words:
To Mr. Henry Blyth.
No explanation. No signature. But the handwriting needed no introduction.
Mr. Fitzwilliam.
Henry's fingers stiffened. "What is this?"
Mrs. Blyth beamed. "Well," she began, in a tone that suggested she had just performed a miracle with little effort, "I had the distinct sense that you were going to show up tonight looking like a man in mourning. So I wrote to Mr. Fitzwilliam. Just a polite inquiry, really. Asked him what was fashionable in London these days."
Henry turned slowly toward her, incredulous. "You wrote to him?"
"Oh, don't look so scandalized. I knew you wouldn't take this seriously—and I was right."
"You went behind my back."
"I went around your stubbornness, dear. There's a difference," she replied, taking another sip of her tea as though that settled the matter entirely.
"And he just—what? Bought it?"
"He was delighted to hear from me!" she said, far too cheerfully. "Said it was a marvelous idea. Said you deserved something fine. He handled everything and had it delivered directly."
Henry stared at the suit, the note, the quiet gleam of silver thread catching in the morning sun, unsure which unsettled him more: that his mother had involved herself so shamelessly—or that Mr. Fitzwilliam had agreed.
"You're shocked I went so far," she said, reading him as easily as always. "But really, Henry, it's not as if I did it for myself. You'll be standing beside him tonight. You'll be the first face people see. It's your name—your presence—that will be remembered. Would you have them remember a man dressed like an undertaker?"
He opened his mouth to protest, but she carried on without pause.
"And," she added lightly, with the air of a woman dropping an afterthought that had, in fact, been perfectly rehearsed, "you never know who you might meet. Someone you might find yourself fancying. Someone like... Miss Bennett."
The name slipped out with practiced ease, too quickly to be accidental, too casually to be innocent.
He blinked. "What?"
She waved him off with a flick of her wrist. "You're being paranoid, Henry."
"You just said—"
"Henry, really."
He glanced down at the suit again, his fingers brushing the edge of the fabric, the silver thread catching once more in the morning light.
"…It's my exact size?"
Mrs. Blyth, mid-sip, paused just long enough to seem entirely too casual. "Of course it is. I assume the tailor guessed well."
He looked up sharply. "You didn't give him my measurements?"
"No," she said, setting her cup down with deliberate grace. "I thought you'd be difficult, so I didn't want to go through the trouble. I assumed Mr. Fitzwilliam would inquire if he needed them."
Henry stared at her. "But he didn't…"
"Well—no."
A short, quiet beat passed between them.
They both looked at the suit again.
Mrs. Blyth blinked, cleared her throat, and reached for the marmalade as though they'd simply been discussing tea. "Well. London tailors are frightfully talented these days, aren't they?"
He didn't answer.
Something about it sat strangely with him. Not alarming, exactly—just slightly off, like a painting tilted by a few degrees. The weight of the suit. The elegant handwriting. The insistence that he arrive early. The ease with which Mr. Fitzwilliam had assumed his presence, tailored a suit, sent it without ceremony. The way his mother had orchestrated the entire exchange like a duet he hadn't realized he was part of.
He stared at the note again. Then at the suit. Then at the floor.
"…I feel like I'm being wooed."
The words left him before he could pull them back. There was a silence at the table—not tense, merely still, as though the room itself was considering how best to respond. Then, inevitably, came a single, amused chortle from his mother, followed by the unmistakable sound of Margaret failing to stifle a laugh.
"Oh, Henry. Don't be absurd."
He stood abruptly, the legs of his chair scraping against the floor with more force than necessary. "I'm going upstairs."
"Don't wrinkle the suit!" she called after him, far too pleased with herself.
He didn't answer. His cravat was slightly askew, and his footsteps echoed a little too loudly on the stairs. But the suit remained draped carefully over his arm, and even as his mother's triumphant voice floated upward—"You'll thank me for it later!"—he said nothing.
He doubted that very much.
And yet, he didn't put the suit down.