Belinda spoke the words carefully, not out of respect for Sacha but out of respect for her own swollen jaw. She had not come traipsing home to tell of Javier’s proposal with a light heart, nor had she needed to. Eliza met her at the door with a fist balled so hard Belinda was certain she’d heard the other woman’s knuckles crack when the hit landed. It had been Eliza’s only comment; Belinda hadn’t seen her in the two days since, nor did she expect to for some time yet. Belinda had opted to remain at home in the interim, as much to give the city time to spread gossip as to let the bruise fade. It had been, she ungrudgingly admitted, a magnificent hit. And she should have seen it coming. That she hadn’t struck a note of discordant humour in her, and she spent entirely too much time studying the knuckle-shaped bruise along her jaw. Sacha, the lag-behind—for Marius had visited as well, expression bleak and tempered only with the faint hope Belinda realised Javier must have given him, that she could not possibly be expected to actually wed the prince—Sacha had only come around after two days, and his outrage was as plain, if less physical in nature, as Eliza’s had been.
