Chapter 22
Francesca had not imagined that waiting could so entirely unnerve her.
It was not the sort of trial she had been trained to endure with composure, for it offered no clear enemy against which to marshal one’s courage.
Instead, it demanded that the mind remain suspended in uncertainty, drawing from its own dark recesses every possible misfortune and examining each in turn with a dreadful, unwilling thoroughness.
Had she been required to act—to decide, to intervene, to oppose—she believed she might have acquitted herself with tolerable composure; but, to remain still, to know nothing and yet suspect everything, was a far more exacting test of fortitude than any she had previously encountered.
The cottage, though modestly appointed, afforded her no refuge from such thoughts.
On the contrary, its very adequacy rendered it intolerable.
There was warmth enough, and food enough, and space sufficient for comfort, and yet no occupation that demanded her full attention, no necessity that might compel her to think of anything beyond what might even now be unfolding in London.
The fire burned in the hearth, its glow casting soft light dancing across the narrow room, while the winter evening gathered beyond the small window with a quiet inevitability that seemed wholly indifferent to human anxiety.
Nelly moved about with a practical diligence, tending to small tasks that scarcely required tending, as though she, too, understood that stillness was the enemy of composure.
Francesca found herself unable either to sit or to move for long without feeling equally constrained by both.
She had tried, at first, to apply herself sensibly to the examination of their surroundings, persuading herself that knowledge—even of so small a domain—might provide some measure of control.
Together, she and Nelly had inspected each room and considered with care the extent of their provisions, yet such efforts could not disguise the truth that they were isolated.
The door, it was true, was not locked, as Kendall had been at pains to assure her; but the absence of a lock did not equate to freedom when the distance to London was unknown and the means of traversing it equally so.
In thus unprofitable fashion, the hours stretched, and with them, her thoughts.
She had not meant to dwell upon what had passed with Major Manners, yet the memory returned with a persistence that no effort of discipline could entirely dispel.
Indeed, it seemed to her now that the events in the garden had taken on a quality almost unreal, as though they belonged not to the present, but to some earlier and more innocent chapter of her life, before she had been brought face to face with the consequences of misplaced trust and dangerous ambition.
What had happened between them?
Outwardly, she understood it perfectly well. She had been warned and instructed. Measures had been proposed, and she had eventually agreed to them. There was nothing in that which could not be accounted for by reason. Yet reason had very little to do with the matter that troubled her most.
For although her rational mind insisted that everything she had experienced must be understood as part of a carefully constructed illusion, something within her—something far less obedient to logic—refused to accept so tidy a conclusion.
The memory of his voice, low and unguarded when he spoke her name, lingered with a force she could neither explain nor resist; the warmth of his hand upon hers seemed still present, though hours had passed since the contact; and worst of all, the recollection of that brief, astonishing moment when his lips had touched her wrist returned again and again, not as a stratagem, but as a sensation.
It had been a performance. Every element of it had been designed for observation, for effect, for the benefit of unseen watchers whose suspicions required careful management.
The knowledge did nothing to diminish the feeling. Had it been only one-sided?
If it had been wholly genuine, she might have known how to guard against it; if wholly false, she might have dismissed it as such.
This, however—this mingling of necessity and sincerity, of calculated action and unguarded response—left her without defence, uncertain of what to believe and more uncertain still of what to desire.
Without conscious thought, her hands pressed together, as though physical pressure might contain the turmoil within.
She was not a girl to be carried away by the first attentions of a gentleman, however compelling. She had seen enough of the world to understand the difference between appearance and reality, between politeness and feeling.
Well, she would not long have to pretend a courtship if tonight produced a resolution.
Supposing he had been hurt? Supposing the plan had failed—or the conspirators had not been taken, but had struck first?
Then she saw the scene, vividly and against her will: a crowded room, confusion, violence, the sharp report of pistols, the clash of steel.
She saw Arch among them—not as a distant observer, but engaged, exposed, and vulnerable in a way she had not allowed herself to consider before.
He was not invulnerable. He was a man, and however capable, was subject to the same brutal uncertainties as any other. Supposing he were killed?
The possibility struck her with such force that she rose abruptly, crossing the room as if movement alone might drive it away. She could not remain seated beneath that thought. It seemed to alter the very air she breathed, to render everything unstable.
She had no claim upon him. The truth came at once, clear and undeniable.
Yet the absence she imagined—the sudden removal of his presence from the world—felt like a loss she could not endure. She closed her eyes. No, she would not think thus.
Her thoughts drifted, unwillingly, to Thomas. Supposing he had been taken? If he stood under guard even now, his confidence stripped away, his future reduced to the narrow confines of accusation and judgement—to treason?
The word no longer held the distant abstraction it once had.
It carried weight now—real, immediate, and terrible.
She understood, perhaps for the first time, the full consequence of what he had attempted.
This was no mere scheme of influence or profit.
This was an act that, if successful, would have plunged the nation into chaos—and if a failure, would bring upon its participants the severest punishment the law could inflict.
Francesca shuddered. She had misjudged him. That truth settled slowly and inexorably. Never had she thought Thomas to be a man who would align himself with violence of such scale, who would speak so fervently of remaking England that he would countenance treason as a means to that end.
In spite of this, she did not understand why he had brought her here.
A knock at the door broke through her thoughts. With a start, she turned at once.
Nelly looked at her. “Miss—?”
“Wait.”
They listened. The knock came again. Francesca crossed the room and opened the door.
A man stood there, his bearing unmistakably military despite the plainness of his dress. “Miss Vale?”
“Yes.”
“Sergeant Lucas Webb.”
Relief flooded her, though she did not permit it to show fully.
“A note for you,” he said.
She took it, breaking the seal with hands she could not entirely still.
The message was brief, and yet it was enough.
He had not forgotten her. The tension she had held within her loosened, though it did not disappear.
“You must come in,” she said.
“I am not supposed to—”
“Well, everyone is in London now,” she replied, with a firmness that surprised even herself. “I think we have time.”
He hesitated, then stepped inside.
They spoke, though he knew little—only that there had been talk of a dinner and that the operation should be happening soon.
“I hate waiting here like some helpless maiden in a tower,” she said at last.
Nelly looked at her. “What do you propose, miss?”
Francesca considered. Then, quietly, she said, “Perhaps we should hide—and see what he does.”
“Where? It is not a large place.”
“There is a loft above the stable. I found it when I arrived and left my horse there,” the Sergeant said.
“I suppose that would give us a little time to observe.”
It was still some time before anything happened.
The quiet soon proved itself another form of trial.
Francesca could not sit long without rising, nor stand long without returning again to the settle, as though no position of her body might satisfy the restlessness of her mind.
At length, in an effort at usefulness if not calm, she assisted Nelly in preparing a light meal from the provisions Kendall had left, though she scarcely tasted what she ate.
The act itself—the cutting of bread, the arranging of plates, the pouring of tea—afforded her hands some occupation, yet did nothing to restrain the forceful march of her thoughts.
When they had finished, Nelly and Sergeant Webb set about restoring the small kitchen to order, while Francesca withdrew once more into herself, pacing slowly from hearth to window and back again.
Every possible outcome presented itself to her imagination with an unwelcome clarity, and in none of them did she find relief.
In one, Arch was wounded or worse, struck down in the execution of his duty; in another, Kendall was taken, exposed, and condemned, his fervour extinguished beneath the weight of the law; and in all of them she found herself entangled, whether by association or by knowledge, in consequences she could neither predict nor escape.
There seemed to be no arrangement of events in which both men emerged unscathed, nor any in which she herself remained entirely untouched.