It is about halfway through the third hour of the fifteenth day of Lucette's attempt to reorganize her grandfather's library. The project is moving at an acceptable pace overall, though she's starting to question the wisdom of having scheduled the whole thing down to the hour during day three (hour four).
".......because I want you to myself and if he wasn't interested then the situation would be more like that."
"Huh, I suppose that would be a reasonable expectation. My impression of gay men is primarily formed based on historical sources of dubious trustworthiness, which typically cast the behavior of such individuals as particularly cruel to the women around them, as well as the men. However, I imagine you are better informed than I."
"If it helps, I cannot entirely imagine a situation where I am even a fraction as attached to any man as I am to you."
"...I do not know if reading my feelings about you is likely to help or hurt in this situation. I suspect you can, given that the link worked in the reverse direction when you so willed it."
"...I could try it? If you think it might be helpful. But it does not directly affect the thing where you have to get married."
Nod.
"You would know better than I if it would be helpful, I imagine."
"Should I prioritize matches with men who will not... care about me more than is necessary?"
"- well I don't want them to do you any harm, or like, if you're going to be stuck financially relying on them because you don't have independent finances I don't want that to be hard for you, but if they're going to be - jealous in a way where they'd kick me out or be angry at you for liking me that might be bad? I don't know how many degrees of freedom you have though."
"I think I can achieve all those things, though if I want a husband who is willing to support very significant expenditures beyond the ones necessary for our comfort, then I may need to find a husband who is particularly interested in me and my endeavors."
"If we wanted to have access to that money we'd need my husband on board? Or some other man, I suppose."
"Well, for selling an object, I imagine that someone else would need to manufacture them, in which case they might refuse that. But if you did manage to get the things to sell and sell them yourself then whatever man was responsible for you would be able to find and take the money and use it for their own ends, and even if they didn't you'd have trouble spending large quantities since it would most likely be theft or something of that nature for someone to accept the money."
"Can I have a... shell corporation... a business some guy owns, the only product of which is my magical services, and he pays himself out of the revenue, but directs the rest of the money the way I tell him to because otherwise it will stop coming?"
"The head of your household might have a legal case against the man involved, depending on how well your control was obfuscated. He could also attempt to prevent you from communicating with the man in question."
"The crown, which would choose a new Earl of York. Though they might be persuadable to wait till I had a husband and make him the next Earl, particularly if I had someone I could present as an option very soon after, who could argue my grandfather had endorsed the match."
"Am I actually unable to extricate myself from this situation and go live as a commoner spinster? Like, if hypothetically I had appeared here without being in love with you, would I have been approximately enslaved to this system immediately."
"I think if you had said you were a commoner you could have been treated as a commoner, and if you said you were a commoner now my grandfather could let you go and live as a commoner, though he could plausibly also sue you for fraud."