" Will you marry me, Genevieve?” He kissed her cheek while Jenny flailed about for a response, any response at all. “The paint fumes are affecting you, Elijah, or you’ve spent too much time imbibing His Grace’s wassail.” “You affect me. I paint better when you’re near, and I was warned about His Grace’s wassail—or Her Grace’s—by the regent himself. Marry me.” She wanted to say yes, even if this declaration was not made out of an excess of romantic love. “If I marry you, I cannot go to Paris.” He leaned back, resting his head against the stones behind them, closing his eyes. “I’ll take you to bloody Paris, and you can appreciate for yourself that the cats have ruined the place. Rome isn’t much better, though I suppose you’ll want to go there and sniff it for yourself too.” He’d promise to take her there, probably to Moscow as well if she asked. “Babies put rather a cramp in one’s travel plans.” Because if she were married to him, and Windham proclivities ran true, babies would follow in the near, middle, and far terms, and all hope of painting professionally would be as dead as her late brothers. “Your siblings all managed to travel with babies. What’s the real reason, Genevieve? We’re compatible in the ways that count, and you’re dying on the vine here, trying to be your parents’ devoted spinster daughter. Marry me.” He was tired, and he felt sorry for her. Of those things, Jenny was certain, but not much else. She hadn’t foreseen an offer from him that would ambush her best intentions and be so bewilderingly hard to refuse. “You need to go home, Elijah. I need to go to Paris. Painting with you has only made me more certain of that. If I capitulate to your proposal, I will regret it for the rest of my days, and you will too. You feel sorry for me, and while I appreciate your sentiments, in Paris I will not be an object of pity. "

― Grace Burrowes