Ben nodded. Based on what she'd said before, March was much later than he had been expecting, so this news was, if anything, good compared to what he'd been imagining. The choice of an American was... odd. Her parents certainly had some sort of reason behind it, because it wasn't as though England had run out of bachelors and widowers. Maybe he was wealthier than even she was, or had some sort of position of international prestige or power. The former would make his plan go that much smoother. The latter... shouldn't matter. Unless he was the sort of person who might be involved in Aldous' office, and unless Aldous went and got nosy where he didn't need to be. But if Ben knew his brother (and he thought he did, fairly well), he knew Aldous had plenty of reasons to be concerned about Ben's behavior already, and would not be eager to go looking for any more — particularly not if he thought, as everyone did, that the chapter of Ben's life involving Melody Finch had closed for good.

"That's fine, good," he said somewhat distractedly, as he took a seat next to her. The carpet wasn't terribly large, so he was right up against her, but given the circumstances he doubted she would mind. "So I've been thinking about this for months. And what it comes down to is this: you need to marry some bloke with money and status and everything, to keep your family happy and have a comfortable life. And you need him to stay out of your business, so you can keep doing the things you want to do and not just... you know, give up everything and be a wife all the time. Right?"

And we need to be able to keep seeing each other, he thought, but wouldn't dare to add out loud — not yet, anyway. As long as it was unspoken, he could believe they were on the same page about it (with some reason — she had kissed him initially, after all, in the shed). Putting it into words gave her an opportunity to refute it, and... well, he didn't want her to. Certainly not before he'd told her the rest of his scheme.