Chapter 15
“Perhaps the yellow roses would look better by the window, Your Grace.”
Frances looked up from the vase she was arranging and considered the suggestion. Mrs. Wells stood beside the side table holding three stems of yellow roses, their petals just beginning to open, and there was something in the way she held them—careful and almost fond—that made Frances smile.
“I think you are right,” Frances said. “The light catches them there. It would be a shame to waste it.”
Mrs. Wells carried the roses to the window and set them in the smaller vase that Frances had placed there two days ago.
She adjusted one stem then another, stepping back to assess the effect with the critical eye of a woman who had opinions about flower arrangements and had been keeping them to herself until very recently.
It had been a week.
A week of small, quiet changes that Frances had undertaken to make the manor feel like a home. She had started with fresh flowers from the garden placed in rooms that had not seen a fresh bloom in what appeared to be years.
Then she had opened the curtains wider, moved a chair closer to the fire, and placed a small stack of books on the side table where before, there had been nothing but polished mahogany and silence.
None of it was revolutionary. All of it, taken together, made the room feel as though someone actually lived in it.
“These hyacinths are lovely,” Mrs. Wells said, returning to the main arrangement. She touched one of the purple stems. “I cannot remember the last time we had hyacinths in the house.”
“They were growing beautifully in the gardens. It seemed wrong to leave them all outside.”
“The Dowager Duchess used to have flowers in every room.” Mrs. Wells trimmed a stem with the small scissors Frances had brought down from her sitting room. “When she was well enough to manage the house herself, that is. She had a particular fondness for sweet peas in summer.”
“Did she?”
“Oh, yes. She would have the gardener bring armfuls of them. The whole house smelled of it.” Mrs. Wells paused, the scissors still in her hand. “That was some years ago now.”
Frances tucked a sprig of greenery between two daffodils and said nothing for a moment.
She had not yet met the Dowager Duchess.
The introduction had been delayed: first by a few days, then by the Duke’s absence, then by what Frances suspected was a combination of his mother’s fluctuating health and his own reluctance to bring the two women in his life into the same room though she could not have said which prospect troubled him more.
“I should like to meet her,” Frances said. “When she is well enough.”
“She would like that very much, Your Grace. She has said so.”
Frances looked up. “She has?”
“Several times.” Mrs. Wells set down the scissors and picked up a cloth to wipe the table where water had dripped. “She asks after you. What you have been doing, whether you are settling in. I have told her about the flowers.”
Something warm moved through Frances’s chest. A woman she had never met, confined to her rooms upstairs, asking after her. Wanting to know about the flowers.
“What did she say?”
Mrs. Wells smiled. It was a small smile, private, the kind that came from a memory rather than the present moment. “She said it was about time.”
Frances laughed. She could not help it. The sound came out before she had decided to let it, bright and sudden in the quiet room, and Mrs. Wells looked pleased in the way that people look pleased when they have caused something good without entirely meaning to.
“Now then.” Frances turned back to the arrangement and considered it with her head tilted. “Do you think the daffodils are too tall? They seem to be drowning the roses.”
“A touch, perhaps.” Mrs. Wells leaned in. “If we trim them by an inch, they will sit better.”
Frances trimmed them. The arrangement came together—yellow and purple and white, spring pressing itself into every corner of the vase—and she stepped back and looked at it and felt, for a moment, the particular satisfaction of having made something beautiful in a place that needed it.
It is not much. But it is something.
“The staff has noticed, Your Grace,” Mrs. Wells said. She was folding the cloth. “The changes, I mean. The flowers and the cushions and—well, all of it.” She paused. “It has been a long while since anyone took an interest in making the house feel like a home.”
The words settled around Frances like a shawl. But then she recalled Eleanor telling her that Alexander’s ‘oppressiveness’ had discouraged her from spending much time in the house.
“Thank you, Mrs. Wells,” she said, “for helping me with all of this. I know it is not how things were done before.”
“No, Your Grace. It is better.”
Mrs. Wells stated it plainly and without ceremony then efficiently picked up the tray of discarded stems and carried it toward the door, embodying a woman who knew her meaning and saw no need to elaborate.
Frances stood alone in the drawing room, gazing at her flowers in the light: the yellow roses by the window, the spring bouquet on the center table, and the gold cushions in the afternoon sun.
A week. It has only been a week, and the house already looks different.
She wished she could say the same for everything else.
Frances sat at the writing desk in her sitting room and pulled a fresh sheet of paper toward her.
Dearest sister, I am well and happy at Whitestone House.
She wrote the words in her neatest hand and paused with the quill hovering above the page. Well was perhaps generous. Happy was a stretch that even Lavinia, who loved her dearly and wished to believe the best, might find difficult to accept without question.
But what was the alternative?
Dearest sister, I have scarcely seen my husband in a week. He dines at his club and takes breakfast before I awake. The house is magnificent yet entirely devoid of warmth, and I have taken to rearranging furniture as it is the only activity currently permitted to me.
No. That would not do.
She wrote instead about the gardens, which were genuinely beautiful.
She wrote about Madame Beaumont’s cooking, which required no embellishment whatsoever.
She described the rooms, the library, and the view from the morning room windows.
She mentioned Mrs. Wells and the staff by name because Lavinia would want to know that Frances was being well looked after, and in that respect at least, she was.
She did not mention the Duke. She did not mention the silence at meals, the closed study door, or the careful choreography by which two people could occupy the same house and see each other almost never.
She signed the letter, sanded it, and sealed it with wax.
There. A perfectly pleasant letter from a perfectly contented duchess. Lavinia would read it and feel reassured, and Frances would not have lied, exactly. She would simply have omitted things.
She rose from the desk and carried the letter to the hall table for the post then turned back toward the drawing room. She wanted to check the arrangement one more time—the daffodils had been slightly uneven, and it would bother her if she did not fix it.
She was reaching for the vase when she heard the footsteps.
Measured and deliberate, his stride resembled that of a man inspecting his own house, a perception Frances had come to realize was largely correct, the Duke appeared in the doorway.
His gaze moved across the room—the flowers on the center table, the yellow roses by the window, the gold and cream cushions where the dark ones had been, and the chair she had moved closer to the fire.
Frances watched his brow furrow into a line she was growing intimately familiar with, the line that often came before either a comment or a correction and was seldom followed by anything that could be called agreeable.
“I do not recall authorizing these alterations to the house.”
Frances straightened her shoulders. She had been expecting this. In truth, she was surprised it had taken a full week.
“As duchess, I believe some matters fall under my authority.”
His jaw tightened. He opened his mouth—and then closed it.
His gaze swept the room again, this time more slowly.
The afternoon sun streamed through the windows, illuminating the yellow roses and casting soft, warm shadows across the carpet and walls.
The hyacinths added a splash of color that the room had never seen before in Frances’ experience.
The overall effect, she thought, was quite lovely.
Something in Whitestone’s expression shifted.
Not dramatically. Not in any way that an observer might have called a transformation.
But the hard line between his brows eased, just slightly, and his shoulders dropped by a fraction of an inch, and he stood there looking at the flowers in the light with an expression that was no longer disapproval.
“It is...” He paused. “… not unpleasant.”
Frances pressed her lips together to keep from smiling. Not unpleasant. High praise indeed from the Duke of Whitestone.
She watched his face in that unguarded moment—the way the tension left his jaw, the way the light caught the sharp line of his cheekbone, the way his eyes moved over the room with something that was almost, if she squinted, appreciation.
His features were striking when not arranged in their usual severity. More than striking. He looked...
Oh.
Heat climbed her cheeks. She looked away, quickly, toward the roses by the window, toward anything that was not his face.
Temporary. This is temporary. Do not forget that.
“You may keep the changes,” the Duke said, and his tone carried the weight of a man granting a significant concession and expecting it to be recognized as such. “However, I expect to be consulted before any further alterations.”
“Of course,” Frances said. She folded her hands before her and inclined her head, and if there was a note of victory in the gesture, she trusted it was subtle enough to pass without comment.
A pause settled between them. Whitestone clasped his hands behind his back.
“There is another matter. We are expected this evening at Lord and Lady Halford’s for dinner.”
Frances’s stomach tightened. “This evening?”
“At eight o’clock. It is a formal engagement. Several families of consequence will be in attendance.” He looked at her steadily. “I trust you will conduct yourself with the utmost propriety.”
“I always conduct myself with propriety.”
“I am simply making certain.”
“Are you concerned I might stand on the table and recite poetry?”
The corner of his mouth moved. Just barely. Just enough.
“I would prefer you did not,” he said.
“Then I shall restrain myself.” She met his gaze and held it. “Though I make no promises about the pudding course.”
He looked at her for a moment that lasted one beat too long, and something crackled in the air between them—not hostility, not warmth, but something alive and unnamed that made the room feel smaller than it was.
He cleared his throat. “There is one more thing.”
“And what is that?” Frances asked.
“My mother.” His hands shifted behind his back. “She has been feeling stronger these past few days. She wishes to meet you tomorrow.”
The words had a different tone compared to everything else he had said.
They were not cooler or more formal—in fact, the opposite.
There was a gentle quality in how he mentioned his mother—a loosening, a softness that subtly appeared around his usually careful composure—that Frances had never before observed in his speech.
“She has asked for you several times,” he added.
Frances’s pulse quickened. “Why did you not tell me?”
“Neither of you was ready for an introduction.”
“Is that so?” She resisted the urge to cross her arms and challenge him.
“I waited until Mother’s health was much improved.”
She could not argue with that, and so she conceded, “I would be honored to meet her.”
“She is not as she once was. Her health limits her considerably. But her mind is sharp, and she...” He stopped. Gathered himself. “She is looking forward to it.”
“As am I.”
He gave a brief nod, turned toward the door. Frances stood among her flowers and new cushions, watching him go, and she felt the nervousness bloom through her chest like ink dropping in water.
The Dowager Duchess. She thought of what Mrs. Wells had said. She asks after you. What you have been doing. Whether you are settling in.
A woman who cared enough to ask. She had raised the man now walking away from her down the hallway—the man who spoke of duty as if it were his only language but visibly softened at the mention of his mother’s name.
Will she approve of me?
Frances crossed to the window and looked out at the garden below. The question turned over in her mind, pressing at her from angles she had not expected.
Would she see what her son saw—a situation to be managed? Or would she perceive something completely different? Would she be cold or kind? Did it matter?
Why should she care what the Dowager thought of her? Frances sighed. In less than two months, none of this would mean anything.
But why did she feel a strange sort of anxiety grip her when she ought to look forward to her freedom?