Chapter 18
The windows of Sir Percival’s house admitted a clear, unforgiving light that made every polished surface gleam and every shadow seem thin.
The fire in the morning room had been built up carefully, yet the air beyond its immediate reach retained an edge sharp enough to discourage idleness.
Francesca sat with an open book before her and turned the same page three times without absorbing a word.
Even Nelly, who commonly detected restlessness as a hound detects a scent, had only looked at her once with mild surprise and asked whether she felt quite well.
Francesca had assured her that she was perfectly well.
This was not, perhaps, the whole truth.
Her uneasiness did not arise from indisposition, but from expectation; and expectation, she had lately discovered, was among the least comfortable of sensations, particularly when attached to a gentleman who was never likely to behave as other gentlemen did.
Major Manners was not a man to call merely because a morning was fine or because he had found a lady agreeable the day before.
If he came, he would come for a reason; and if he did not come, she would be left to suppose reasons still more troublesome. She disliked herself for caring.
The sound of the knocker at the front door arrived with such force to her attention that she nearly dropped her book.
Nelly glanced up. “You start as if a regiment had been announced, miss.”
“I did not start.”
“You quite flew out of your chair.”
“I merely moved to a more comfortable position.”
Nelly smiled. “Then I am happy to know movement may now produce so much colour.”
Francesca, who had indeed felt heat rise to her face, bent over her book with what she hoped was an air of grave indifference. She heard a servant cross the hall beyond; a murmur of voices followed. There was a pause, then another footstep, more decided than the first.
Sir Percival’s voice sounded from the entrance hall, followed by another which, though lower, she knew at once.
Her heart gave one absurd leap and then began to beat with a force that was wholly unreasonable.
Major Manners.
She did not look up immediately. To have done so would have been too plain.
She listened instead, with the pretence of attention to print, and from the rhythm of greeting and reply inferred what she could.
He had called upon Sir Percival. That, at least, was proper.
It ought to have reassured her. Instead it gave a solemn cast to his arrival which she found faintly alarming.
A moment later, Nelly rose. “I shall go and see whether Cook needs any help.”
Nelly was already moving towards the farther door with all the composure in the world, leaving Francesca to suspect that helping Cook had no more to do with her departure than astronomy. When the door closed behind her, the room seemed suddenly too still.
Francesca set down her book. She ought, she knew, either to leave at once or to remain so resolutely occupied that no accusation of curiosity could ever attach to her conduct.
Unfortunately, the adjoining library, where her uncle generally received gentlemen on matters of business or consequence, was separated from the morning room by nothing more substantial than a pair of doors which, though shut, did not quite exclude sound.
It was impossible not to hear something, unless one contrived to be deaf.
She had no talent for deafness.
At first, only the murmur of voices reached her and they were too indistinct to signify. She told herself that if she could not distinguish words, she was not listening. This was a very soothing piece of self-deception and lasted nearly half a minute.
Then her uncle said, distinctly, “Renforth?”
Francesca sat straighter in her chair.
Major Manners replied in a tone too low for her to catch entirely, but she heard, clearly enough, “a note,” and then, after the rustle of paper, “necessary precaution.”
Sir Percival made a brief sound which suggested neither surprise nor satisfaction, but something in between. “I see.”
There followed a longer silence, during which Francesca imagined her uncle reading.
Her fingers tightened over each other in her lap.
Renforth. A note from Colonel Renforth could not concern any ordinary civility.
She knew enough already to understand that when his name entered a room, comfort generally departed.
Sir Percival spoke again, more severely. “You believe there to be real danger, then?”
Francesca felt all the warmth of the fire recede from her at once.
Major Manners answered, and though she could not hear every word, those she did hear were sufficient to extinguish every hope of a trivial explanation.
“Kendall… watching her… if he makes the connection… risk.”
Her breath caught in her chest. Her. There was no need to wonder who was indicated.
She rose involuntarily, then stood where she was, one hand on the table beside her as though strength might be borrowed from mahogany.
A peculiar sensation came over her; not exactly fear, though fear was in it, but rather the sudden conviction that the walls of one’s life, long assumed secure, were, in truth, thinner than paper.
She had known there was hazard in what she had done.
She had acknowledged it, even embraced it in a spirit which, at the time, had seemed more courageous than reckless.
Yet to hear her danger discussed in a gentleman’s voice, gravely, before her uncle, rendered it new and more disturbing.
One might feel oneself bold in one’s own imagination; it was another thing entirely to discover that gentlemen who understood danger professionally believed one endangered indeed.
Sir Percival said something she could not distinguish. Major Manners’ answer came clearer to Francesca’s ears.
“She must not go out alone.”
She lifted her chin at once, despite the cold sensation creeping under her ribs.
There was something so intolerably masculine in the phrase must not, that her first emotion, even before alarm, was resistance.
She was not a child to be sent nowhere unaccompanied because gentlemen had, between them, managed the nation into chaos.
She had gone where she pleased for years; she had paid calls, attended salons, visited charities, inspected manufactories, and crossed half of London, all without waiting for some gentleman’s permission to enter a carriage.
Then the rest of the sentence reached her through the doors.
“…no more salons unattended.”
Her indignation faltered. The words were not speculative. They had the sound of settled judgement. Sir Percival’s reply came after a pause. “How do you propose I preserve her reputation?”
There was another rustle of paper, perhaps the note being set aside. Major Manners spoke more quietly now, but the room had gone so still that she could hear enough.
“It may be necessary… appearance of courtship.”
Francesca stared at the doors. For one breath, two, perhaps three, she ceased to understand language at all. The absurdity of it struck her first, then the humiliation. Then, most disconcerting of all, she felt the violent beat of her heart at the very notion. She sank slowly back into her chair.
It was everything she ought to despise and everything, in some secret and traitorous recess of her spirit, she had once been foolish enough to wish from him, freely offered and freely meant. She ought not to listen another instant. She listened all the same.
Sir Percival said, with a dryness she knew well, “You are proposing to attach yourself conspicuously to my niece.”
“To protect her,” said Major Manners.
His voice had altered. She could not define in what manner, only that its tone now carried something more personal than duty. Whether that consoled or disturbed her, she could not yet decide.
Sir Percival answered, “Do you think she will consent?”
There was, to Francesca’s astonishment, the faintest pause before Major Manners replied.
“I think she may well object.”
For the first time since the conversation had begun, she nearly smiled.
It was a poor, trembling smile and gone at once, but it eased something in her nevertheless, to know that he did not imagine her to be meekly acquiescent.
Sir Percival gave a short huff of breath which might have been amusement.
Francesca pressed her fingers together hard enough to pain herself. She did not wish her uncle to agree too easily. Neither did she wish him to disagree. In truth, she did not know what she wished, beyond an impossible alternative in which none of this had become necessary.
Her uncle’s next words came with cruel clarity. “If there is a risk to her person,” said Sir Percival, “I shall not oppose it.”
Francesca shut her eyes. In a matter of moments, her future was determined—
—Although not entirely, of course. She had not been bartered like a bale of wool and handed over without reference to her feelings.
Yet in one respect, the essential matter had already been decided by the two gentlemen beyond the doors: there existed danger; there existed a remedy; and she, being the danger’s object, was now to be informed of the remedy rather than consulted as to its invention.
She ought to have been angry, but her anger would not remain pure.
It was crowded by too many other sensations: mortification that her name had been spoken so; gratitude that Major Manners had come at once; the fear, still unwelcome and yet impossible to dismiss, that Kendall might indeed suspect more than she had imagined; and beneath all these, shamefully alive, a softer agitation at the thought of being daily in Major Manners’ company under circumstances which would oblige him to look attentive, solicitous, and perhaps even tender.
He would be pretending, she told herself fiercely—entirely pretending.