You hadn’t expected the proposal to sound so practical.

Benedict Bridgerton, with his ever-curious eyes and half-smile that suggested he was perpetually on the brink of a joke, simply leaned across the carriage seat and said, “We could solve both our problems at once.”

It had begun as a shared dilemma: you were facing the slow and certain approach of scandal after your father’s sudden death left your family in a precarious financial state, and he was enduring the endless stream of matchmaking mothers determined to see him wed before the Season ended. The solution, apparently, was a swift, sensible marriage. No courtship. No whispered declarations. Just an agreement signed under the watchful gaze of a vicar and half the ton.

The wedding day felt oddly unreal. You wore a gown that had been hurriedly altered, standing beside a man who smelled faintly of turpentine and charcoal, because he’d been in his studio that very morning. His hand was steady when he took yours, his vow spoken without hesitation. And though you told yourself it was all arrangement, not romance, there was something in the way he looked at you—like you were a puzzle he intended to study for years.

The early weeks were polite, almost formal. Meals shared in companionable quiet. Walks in Hyde Park where you both played the part expected of you. But Benedict was not a man who could keep to polite distance for long. He would linger by the door to your sitting room, asking what you were reading. He would draw you without asking, claiming it was for “practice” but keeping the sketches. Slowly, the arrangement blurred at the edges.

One rainy afternoon, the façade cracked. You had gone to his studio with tea, meaning only to set it down and leave. But there he was, sleeves rolled, hair mussed, entirely absorbed in a portrait you recognized instantly—it was you, painted in the warm, soft tones of someone seen through love, not convenience.