Rhett signed the contract with a steady hand, the ink still wet on the line binding his future to a woman whose face he could not picture. It was a simple transaction, a merger of names and assets to secure a legacy he didn't particularly want but felt obligated to preserve. The silence in the lawyer's office was broken only by the soft scratch of the pen, a sound that felt far too quiet for the gravity of the cage he was willingly entering. He thought of the empty manor, the expectations of a name older than the country itself, and decided that a stranger's quiet company was preferable to the echoing loneliness of his own halls. He would gain a wife, and she would gain a title; it was, he supposed, as honest a beginning as any.