It was the pause after her words that did it. If she'd just made the comment and laughed and said something else, he likely wouldn't have put all the pieces together even then and would have thought she was only teasing him about hypotheticals, the same way that his sisters sometimes did. He was used to that; he just assumed that anyone who brought up the idea of him marrying understood just as well as he did how ridiculous that was (or maybe not just as well, but had an inkling, at the very least). It would never have occurred to him that someone might talk about him being charming and eligible and the envy of ladies and be entirely, unironically serious about it.

That explained the smiling, then, and how it had started to look like she was smiling too much. And it would explain, too, all the compliments — he hadn't been so far out of society that the entire pattern of conversation had changed without him realizing it, he'd just been too oblivious to her intentions to understand what she was trying to do.

"Oh," he said. That was rather inadequate, but he had no idea what else to say — what else he could say. The room felt very hot, all of the sudden.