The corners of her mouth ticked downwards for just a second, a glimmer of the doubt with which she herself wrestled. She didn't want to admit that Ozy was right - there wasn't a day in her life when she would have wanted to admit that her oldest brother was right about anything, but she had to admit that she had thought as much herself. She was almost touched that he thought enough of pending nuptials to have even thought about her relationship with her fiance.

She leaned a little closer to her brother, in an almost conspiratorial manner. 'I think you might be right' she said in a voice that sounded small and a little hollow in spite of her best efforts to keep it from showing. Victor had said many things to her, he had asked her to marry him without flowery declarations of love, he had told her that she had surprised him, that she was smart and amiable, but love - even affection had not been on the table. Not in his proposal, nor their garden interlude afterward.

What was worse, was that she thought she might love him.

'I'm not naive enough to think this is a love match Brother' she said again, her eyes never leaving the spot where her intended talked with his friends. 'I know he doesn't love me' she wanted to add something about how, Ozy wasn't as smart as he thought he was and that even know, there was nothing he knew that she didn't - but the barbed died on her tongue, and she swallowed it with the last of her champagne.

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