The moment Neve finished speaking, most of the men in the line stepped aside.
They didn’t do it all at once.
First one quietly moved back toward the window, then two more, then a whole cluster of them, until the neat row had shrunk to almost nothing.
Fifth was the first to go.
He gave Neve a small nod of thanks on his way out.
Fourth followed close behind, looking extremely relieved.
Arthur’s face went red, then purple.
He struck the tip of his cane against the floor so hard that the teacups on the side table rattled.
These ungrateful little brats!
He would deal with every single one of them when they got home.
Did they have any idea how much face they’d just cost him?
In front of Margaret, of all people?
“Grandpa Leighton, please don’t be angry,” Neve said quickly.
She laid a hand on his arm.
“This way, they get to choose for themselves.
If I end up with one of them someday, he won’t resent me for it later.”
She gave him a small, earnest smile.
“It really is better like this.
It’s fair to everyone.
Everyone gets a say.”
Arthur looked at her for a long moment, breathing hard through his nose.
Then, like a storm cloud blowing over, his whole face changed.
He turned his back on his traitorous grandsons and beamed at her.
“The girl talks sense,” he declared.
“All right, then.
Take a look at the ones who are left.
If there’s one you like, Grandpa will take care of everything.”
Beside them, Margaret was looking over the whole crowd of Leighton grandsons, the ones who had stepped aside as well as the ones who had stayed.
She was very nearly green with envy.
There were so many of them.
And every one of them was tall, handsome, and capable, with a whole career behind him.
If she’d had even a few grandsons like these, she wouldn’t have spent the last twenty years running the entire Sinclair family on her own.
She could have handed off half her worries by now and spent her afternoons in the garden.
Instead, she had one granddaughter.
And she was about to give her away.
“All right,” Neve said softly.
She turned her attention back to the line.
Five men were still standing there.
She knew two of them by sight.
The other three were strangers to her, probably the ones who had flown in from abroad overnight.
“Would you mind introducing yourselves?” she asked.
The first man stepped forward and offered his hand.
He had a lean, bookish face, wire-rimmed glasses, and the slightly rumpled look of someone who usually forgot to eat lunch.
“Hello, Miss Sinclair.
I’m Fourteen.
I’ve been living overseas, and I work in scientific research.
I’m afraid I’m not very well known yet.”
That was modesty, and everyone in the room knew it.
In his field, his name was already on papers that people cited all over the world.
Neve took his hand and shook it.
“Hello.”
It came out a little stiff.
She didn’t know what else to say, or how she ought to introduce herself in return.
Standing in front of these men, with their companies and their ranks and their research, she suddenly felt very young.
She was a second-year university student.
What was she supposed to say?
I’m Neve, and I’m good at getting decent grades?
Fourteen seemed to understand.
His smile was kind.
“There’s no need to be nervous, Miss Sinclair.
Whatever happens today, we’ll all be family soon enough.”
He stepped back into line.
Neve turned to the second man.
His eyes were blue.
They were a bright, clear sky blue, startling against his dark Leighton hair and the sharp Leighton bone structure.
His mother must have been from somewhere far away.
“Hello, Miss Sinclair.” He spoke slowly, and his accent was thick.
“I am Tenth.
I live abroad for a very long time and I do not come home very often.
My English is not so good.
I hope you will not mind.”
He held out his hand as well.
Neve shook it.
His words were a little clumsy and his grammar wandered here and there, but she understood him perfectly well, and there was something warm in the way he tried.
“Hello!” She smiled at him.
“Your English is fine, really.”
The smile was still on her face when she turned to the third man and met his eyes.
Inside, something in her went very still.
His eyes were dark, and something cold and merciless glittered in them, like deep water in winter.
A chill slid down the back of her neck and all the way to her fingertips.
He was handsome, undeniably so.
He had a straight, high-bridged nose and a jaw that could have been carved with a chisel.
He was tall and heavily built, with broad shoulders and long legs, and even under the tailored jacket she could see that his arms were thick with muscle.
But it was his eyes that held her.
Like a beast, she thought.
Something that could tear through anything in its path and never slow down.
She had felt this before.
It was in the ruins of Solmere, facing down the high-level zombies.
It was in the men who had killed so many times that death clung to them like smoke.
She could feel that same heavy, pressing aura coming off him now, thickening the air between them.
Her heart gave a hard, frightened lurch.
Her smile didn’t move.
She had spent three years in the apocalypse learning never to show fear to anything that could smell it.
That lesson didn’t disappear just because she was wearing a sundress in her grandmother’s garden room.
“I’m Ninth,” the man said.
His voice was low and perfectly calm.
“I grew up overseas, so I don’t know much about how things work here.” He looked at her steadily, as if measuring her.
“If Miss Sinclair chooses me, she’ll have to move abroad with me and live a hard life.”
A few of the brothers along the wall shifted, and one of them coughed into his fist.
“I’m the least accomplished of all my brothers,” Ninth went on, completely unbothered.
“I’m almost thirty and I don’t have any special skills.
I help people move goods from time to time.
It’s barely enough to keep me fed.”
Zane Leighton felt nothing in particular about the young woman in front of him.
He didn’t dislike her, but he didn’t like her either.
At least she didn’t give him the instinctive urge to back away that most women did.
That was something.
Most of them either simpered at him or went pale and found somewhere else to be.
This one had looked him straight in the eye and hadn’t blinked.
Beyond that, it made no difference to him whether he married her or not.
His grandfather had ordered him home, so he had come home.
If the girl wanted him, fine.
If she didn’t, that was fine too.
Neve held his gaze.
He’s lying.
She knew it with a certainty that came from somewhere deep in her gut.
No man with eyes like that was barely scraping by.
And he’s dangerous.
Truly dangerous.
Her palms were damp.
She pressed them lightly against her skirt where no one could see.
But a man like this would never flinch when the dead came pouring through the streets.
He would never run, and he would never drop to his knees and beg.
If she could make him hers, truly hers, he would be worth a hundred ordinary men when the rain came.
And if he ever turned on her…
Well.
She had killed Sylvie with her bare hands.
She would find a way.
“That’s all right,” Neve said.
Her voice was clear and even.
It sounded, even to her own ears, completely calm.
“My family has money.
I don’t need you to provide for me.” She tilted her head slightly, studying him the same way he’d studied her.
“But I won’t be moving overseas.
So let me ask you instead, Ninth.
Would you be willing to marry into my family?
To live here, with the Sinclairs?”
For the first time, something flickered behind those cold dark eyes.
Beside her, Arthur choked on his tea.
The whole room went silent.