Chapter 23 #2
“Not if I have any say in the matter,” he replied. He would not permit it, if it lay within his power to prevent. “You will have the full weight of the Upton name behind you,” he continued, “should you wish it.”
The offer was not made lightly. It carried implications—social, political, and personal—which he did not elaborate upon, trusting that she would understand them well enough without explanation.
She studied him for a moment, as though measuring not only the words, but the intention behind them.
“Supposing I do not wish it?” she asked.
“Then we will find another way,” he said.
Something in her expression eased into relief, perhaps, or a quality closer to trust.
He became conscious of the lateness of the hour and the strangeness of the path by which they had arrived at such a moment.
A day earlier he had entered Sir Percival’s house under the guise of necessity, and a recommendation he could scarcely have delivered without irony.
Now he stood in that same house, after midnight, not to preserve a lady’s reputation by feigned devotion, but as a man forced to confront the absurd insufficiency of pretence where genuine feeling had already taken root.
The inversion would have amused him, had it not struck so near the centre of him.
He drew a breath. There were matters still unspoken.
He did not, as a rule, indulge in declarations.
He had seen too many of them made lightly, too many spoken without the weight of intention to support them, and had resolved long ago that if he were ever to speak such things, it would be with a certainty that admitted of no retreat.
To his own surprise, Arch felt that certainty now.
“I do not make a habit of involving myself in arrangements I do not intend to see through.”
Francesca looked at him, waiting.
“What began as a duty…” The words were not elegant; they were not rehearsed. They were, however, entirely true. “I find,” he went on, more quietly, “that I have very little interest in relinquishing it.”
Her breath caught slightly. He could have said more. He could have elaborated, refined, and shaped the sentiment into terms more traditionally expressed.
However, he mused, truth was preferable to ornament.
Her lips curved, despite everything. “Inconvenient, did you not call it?” she repeated.
He allowed himself the smallest hint of a smile. “Indeed. Most inconvenient.”
“It just so happens that I find that I do not wish to be relinquished.”
Something within him, long schooled to caution, gave way, and he understood that whatever claims duty might continue to make upon his hours, his future had nevertheless altered its course.
He had spent years cultivating an existence in which attachment could be postponed, redirected, or denied whenever necessity required, and had thought the sacrifice a simple one as long as it remained theoretical.
It no longer remained so. Standing before her in the half-lit quiet, with the house peaceful around them and the aftermath of danger still lingering in the air, he knew, with an assurance that no later inconvenience could diminish, that to walk away from her now—in anything but the most temporary sense—would constitute folly.
She looked at him then in a way that made any further restraint not only unnecessary, but impossible. When he kissed her again, it was no longer born of urgency alone.
There was still that underlying intensity, that awareness of what had nearly been lost, but it was tempered now by something almost tangible, something that suggested not merely the preservation of the moment, but the beginning of something that might extend beyond it.
When he drew back, he did so with considerable reluctance. “I regret,” he said, “that my duties remain inconveniently persistent.”
She met his gaze. “How very unfortunate.”
“Yes,” he agreed, “it is. I would very much prefer to remain here with you, but alas.”
“Alas.”
He stepped backwards. “I will call on you in the morning.”
Her expression shifted to amusement, and though she said only that she would expect him, the words followed him with disproportionate force, carrying with them a promise more sustaining than any rest he was likely to have before dawn.
For the first time that night, the weight of what remained to be done seemed, if not lighter, then at least more bearable.
There were still matters which could not be postponed until morning, however much he might have wished to remain where he was, and chief among them was the necessity of speaking with Sir Percival.
It would not do—indeed, it would be indefensible—that the gentleman should learn of the evening’s events second hand, or worse, through rumour, when his niece had been so nearly drawn into consequences of the gravest sort.
Arch paused only long enough to ensure that Francesca had retired before making his way towards the study.
A light still burned beneath the door. He knocked once.
“Come in.”
When Arch entered, Sir Percival stood near the hearth, one hand resting upon the mantel, his posture composed but not at ease.
It was the stance of a man who had been waiting with a patience born of long experience and not a little concern.
When he turned, the expression upon his face altered only slightly, yet Arch did not miss the quick assessment in his gaze, nor the subtle easing of tension when he saw that Arch stood before him uninjured.
“Well?” Sir Percival said.
Arch closed the door behind him. “It is done,” he replied.
Sir Percival’s brow tightened. “Franny?”
“She is safe.”
Sir Percival exhaled slowly, as though releasing a restraint he had not acknowledged until that moment. He moved to the chair near the fire but did not immediately sit down.
“You will tell me everything.”
“I will,” Arch said. He spared no details in the telling.
He spoke of Kendall’s movements, of the meeting at Cato Street, of the intervention and the arrests, of the moment at the cottage when Francesca had been recovered, and of Kendall’s attempt to persuade her to flee.
He did not embellish, nor did he omit what must be understood plainly.
When he spoke of the danger she had faced and how she had comported herself, he did so with a respect that required no emphasis.
Sir Percival listened throughout without interruption. When Arch had finished, silence settled between them, broken only by the low sound of the fire.
“Where is Kendall now?” Sir Percival asked at last.
“In custody.”
Sir Percival inclined his head slightly as though considering not only what had been said, but also what had not. “Then he will answer for his actions.”
“You place yourself in a curious position, Archibald,” he said slowly.
“I am aware of it, sir.”
“Something tells me the arrangement with Francesca may become of a more permanent nature.”
“With your permission, sir.”
Sir Percival’s expression became amused. “Yet you did not think it necessary to inform me of that at the time.”
“At the time,” Arch said, “I had not yet informed myself.”
“You had best hope she is agreeable, Archibald.”
Arch allowed himself the smallest hint of a smile.
“I could not be more pleased for you both.”