Chapter 24 #2
There was nothing wrong with it. Nothing Alexander could call a transgression. Henry and Frances had known each other for years, long before titles, marriages, and arrangements that existed only on paper. Their ease with each other was the comfort of old familiarity.
Alexander did not have that with her. He was not certain he had that with anyone.
I am not a man who teases. I am not a man who draws laughter from a room the way Kingswell does, as naturally as breathing.
He cut his meat, chewed, swallowed, and reached for his wine again.
She deserves that—the lightness and the laughter. Someone who does not make her measure every word before speaking.
The realization sat heavily in his chest. He set down his glass and watched Frances lean toward Henry to hear something he was saying, and the candlelight caught the line of her throat, and Alexander thought, with a clarity that was almost cruel: I may never be able to give her this.
He was still thinking it when the ladies withdrew after dinner.
The port went around. Tristan discussed his plans for the south meadow. Henry asked about Alexander’s estates with genuine interest, like a man who cared about drainage and crop yields. Alexander answered. He was polite. He was, by every observable measure, exactly as he ought to be.
The party reunited in the drawing room. Someone—Lady Montfort, Alexander thought—suggested music. Lavinia moved to the pianoforte and played a short, bright piece. Then Tristan proposed an informal dance, just a few couples, nothing elaborate, and the furniture was moved to clear a space.
Henry turned to Frances. His smile was easy, careless, the smile of a man who had never in his life weighed the cost of asking a simple question. “Well, Duchess? Shall we? For old times’ sake?”
Frances opened her mouth.
Alexander stepped forward.
“I believe she already has a partner.”
The words came out before he had fully decided to say them. They carried a quiet certainty that surprised even him—the tone of a man who had not remotely considered the possibility that he might be refused.
Frances turned to him. Her lips were still parted from the answer she had been about to give Henry, and her eyes were wide, and she was looking at him as though he had just done something entirely unexpected.
Which, he supposed, he had.
Henry raised both hands and stepped back with a grin. “Far be it from me to steal a man’s wife.”
Alexander extended his hand. Frances paused, looking at it, then at his face, then back at his hand. She placed her fingers on his palm, and even through her gloves, the contact was felt with a precision that had no right to exist.
Lavinia began to play. A slow, simple melody—something suited to a small drawing room and an informal evening. Alexander led Frances to the center of the cleared space and turned to face her.
Her hand rested in his. His other hand found her waist. The fabric of her dress was thin. He could feel the warmth of her beneath it.
They began to move.
“I confess,” Frances said, low enough that only he could hear, “I did not expect you to claim the dance, given how studiously you avoid such things.”
“How would you know that, Duchess?”
“You never danced at the masquerade.” Her cheeks warmed as she said that.
“I was occupied.”
“With what? Finding the imposter?”
Something moved at the corner of his mouth. He looked down at her. She was close—closer than they had been since the carriage, since the settee, since any of the moments he had cataloged and refused to examine—and her blue eyes held his with a directness that made the drawing room feel very small.
“You are my wife, Frances,” he said. “Who better to dance with you?”
Her cheeks flushed with color. Immediate. Vivid. A blush that traveled from her throat to her face, and she did not look away. He watched it happen and felt something tighten in his chest—something that was not discipline or restraint—and, if he was honest, something far more dangerous than either.
“You called me Frances,” she said.
“That is your name.”
“You have never used it before. To my face.”
“I used it the other night. In the library.”
“You said it to the room. That is not the same thing.”
He turned her through the steps. Her hand tightened on his shoulder. “Would you prefer I return to ‘Duchess’?”
“I would prefer you to be consistent. You cannot use my Christian name only when it suits your purposes.”
“What purposes would those be?”
“I have not yet determined, but I suspect they exist.”
He almost smiled. He caught it but not quite—something showed in his expression that made her breath change, a small catch that she covered by looking past his shoulder at the other couples.
“You dance well,” she said after a moment.
“You sound surprised.”
“I am. You are not generally known for your willingness to participate in enjoyable activities.”
“Dancing is a practical skill.”
“Of course, it is. Nothing so frivolous as pleasure is involved.”
“I did not say that.”
“You were thinking it.”
“You presume to know my thoughts now?”
“Someone must. You certainly never share them.” She looked up at him, and the challenge in her eyes was softened by something warmer, something that looked like it wanted to become a smile if only he would let it. “Tell me one thing you are thinking. Right now. This very moment.”
That you are the most infuriating woman I have ever met. That I cannot stop looking at you. That I have no idea what I am doing, and I have not felt this out of my depth since I was twenty-years-old, standing in a solicitor’s office, learning that everything I knew was gone.
“I am thinking,” he said, “that you ask a great many questions for a woman who claims to value silence.”
“I have never once claimed to value silence.”
“You were very quiet in the library the other evening.”
“I was reading. That is different.”
“Is it?”
“Entirely.” Her fingers shifted on his shoulder. The slightest adjustment. He felt it everywhere. “Silence chosen is not the same as silence imposed.”
The music slowed. Their steps slowed with it. The room had fallen away—the other couples, the candles, Lady Montfort’s watchful gaze from her chair by the fire, Henry’s easy smile from across the room. None of it reached the space between his hand on her waist and her eyes on his face.
“Are you enjoying yourself?” he asked. The question came out quieter than he intended.
She studied him. “Are you?”
“I asked first.”
“So you did.” The corner of her mouth lifted. “Yes. I am.”
At that moment, he was hit with a clarity that unsettled him that he was standing at the edge of something he did not know how to stop.