Chapter 29
“We shall stop within the hour,” Alexander said without looking up from the window.
Frances turned a page in her book. She had been turning pages at irregular intervals for the past thirty miles which meant she was either reading very selectively or not reading at all. Alexander suspected the latter. He had not seen her eyes move across the text once.
“There is a coaching inn at Stony Stratford,” he continued. “It will serve for a meal.”
“Very well.”
Two words. She had given him precisely two words at a time for the better part of four hours. Very well. Of course. Thank you.
The carriage rocked over a rut in the road. Frances’ shoulder pressed briefly against the squabs, and she steadied herself without looking up. Her gloved hand rested on the page. Her profile was turned toward the glass.
Say something. Ask her about… anything. The weather. The road. Whether she is comfortable.
The silence had solidified between them across the miles, hardening into something neither of them seemed willing to break first. Pride, maybe. Or self-preservation. Or the stubbornness of two people who had said too much and not enough in equal parts, unable to decide which mistake to fix first.
Alexander gazed out his window, watching the countryside unfold in shades of green and gray. Hedgerows, fields, and a distant church spire came into view—England at its most mundane and without offering any useful distraction.
I should not have come.
The thought had occurred approximately seven times since London. He dismissed it each time with the same inadequate reasoning: A duke does not allow his wife to travel unaccompanied. It was true. It was also insufficient, and they both knew it.
“Is Stony Stratford agreeable to you?” he asked. “Or would you prefer to press on further?”
Frances looked up from her book. Her eyes met his, and for a moment, the carriage felt very small.
“Stony Stratford is perfectly acceptable,” she said. “I am not particular about where I eat.”
“You are particular about a great many things.”
“Not food. Food is simple.”
Unlike everything else between us. He did not say it.
The carriage slowed as they entered the town. Stony Stratford announced itself without ceremony. The coachman pulled over in front of a tavern with a low-beamed facade and a painted sign that had seen better days.
Alexander descended first. He turned and offered his hand.
Frances took it. Her fingers were slim inside the glove, her grip light, and the contact lasted no more than two seconds before she stepped back and released him. Two seconds. He counted them.
Stop counting.
The tavern was crowded. Not fashionably full, but authentically crowded: farmers still in their work coats, merchants with ledgers beside their plates, and a group of mail-coach travelers eating hurriedly before the horn sounded.
The air smelled of roasted meat, bread, and tobacco smoke, and the noise was loud.
Alexander guided Frances to a table near the back wall. It was small, and the bench was scarred with use. He pulled out the chair for her.
“Charming,” Frances said, surveying the room.
“I did not promise charm. I promised a meal.”
“You promised Stony Stratford. The meal was implied.”
He sat across from her. The table between them was perhaps eighteen inches wide. Their knees did not touch. He was aware of exactly how much space separated them.
A serving girl appeared. Alexander ordered mutton, bread, whatever vegetables were available for both of them, and ale for himself while Frances requested tea if they had it, water if they did not. The girl disappeared.
Silence settled once more. Frances folded her hands in her lap. Alexander glanced around the room. At the beams overhead. At the group of mail-coach passengers arguing about the condition of the road north of Towcester.
This is absurd. We are husband and wife, traveling together, and we cannot manage a single sentence that is not about food or stopping times.
He opened his mouth.
The door swung wide.
A family burst through—the man, a woman, and four children ranging from about twelve to no more than four, all talking at once.
The man wore a plain wool coat with patches at the elbows.
The woman held the youngest on her hip. They were laughing about something, and the sound of it filled the doorway and spilled into the room like sunlight through a gap in curtains.
They took the table beside Alexander and Frances. The mother set the youngest in a highchair. The eldest daughter immediately began organizing her younger brothers with the efficiency of a miniature general.
One of the boys, who looked to be eight or so with a mop of brown hair and a gap where his front teeth should have been, carried a ball. He set it on the table while he shrugged off his coat, and it rolled.
It came to rest against Frances’ foot.
Frances bent, picked up the ball, and held it out to him with a smile. “I believe this belongs to you.”
The boy took it. Clutched it to his chest. “Thank you, miss.”
“You are very welcome.” Her smile widened. “It is a fine ball. Do you play often?”
“Every day.” He straightened, emboldened. “I’m the best bowler in our lane. Everyone says so.”
“The best! That is high praise.”
“Not everyone says so,” the eldest sister corrected from the next table. “Tom Harding says he’s better.”
“Tom Harding is a liar,” the boy said with the conviction of someone who had tested this claim extensively.
Frances laughed. “I am sure you could beat any Tom Harding.”
“Where are you from?” the boy asked. He had not moved from beside their table. His mother was calling him back, but he ignored her with the selective deafness of all eight-year-olds. “You talk like a London lady.”
“I am from London,” Frances said. “More or less.”
“What’s it like?”
“Noisy. Crowded. Rather a lot of carriages.”
“I should like to see it. Pa says it’s too big.”
“It is very big. But the parks are lovely.”
The boy’s mother appeared behind him, one hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, ma’am. He’ll talk the ear off anyone who’ll listen.”
“Please, do not apologize.” Frances turned to the woman with that particular openness Alexander had seen her give Emily. “He is delightful. And he has excellent taste in balls.”
The woman laughed. “That one’s his pride and joy. Won it off a sailor down in Northampton.”
“A sailor in Northampton?” Frances tilted her head. “That seems rather far from the sea.”
“My brother,” the father called from the next table. He had a broad, weathered face and the ease of a man comfortable in any company. “Sailed merchant ships for ten years. Just come home this spring. He’s the one who gave Tommy the ball. Said he got it in Madras.”
“Madras!” Frances leaned forward. “How extraordinary.”
The man grinned. “He’ll tell you all about it if you let him. Won’t shut up about it, truth be told. Oi, Will!”
A third man appeared from the bar—younger than the father, thinner, with a deep tan that spoke of years under a foreign sun. He carried two tankards and a grin that was missing the same tooth as his nephew’s.
“Someone’s asking about Madras,” the father said.
“Are they now?” The sailor—Will—set down his tankards and looked at Frances with the pleased surprise of a man who had found an audience. “What would you like to know?”
“Everything,” Frances said.
Alexander watched her turn fully in her chair to face the sailor.
Watched her ask questions—Was it very hot?
What did the markets look like? Were the spices truly as vivid as she’d read?
—with an eagerness that had nothing to do with politeness and everything to do with genuine curiosity.
He watched the sailor settle into his tale with the confidence of a born storyteller, his hands moving through the air to describe the size of the trading vessels, the color of the water, the monkeys that stole fruit from the dock workers.
He watched the mother pull her chair closer. Watched the eldest daughter lean in. Watched the boy with the ball sit cross-legged on the floor beside Frances’ chair as though he had known her all his life.
She is entirely at ease. How does she do that?
It was not a skill he possessed. The ability to enter a room and simply belong. To take the measure of the people around her and match herself to them without diminishing either party.
“—and the water was so clear you could see straight down to the coral,” Will was saying. “Pink and white like a lady’s garden, only underwater.”
“That sounds beautiful,” Frances said.
“It was. Nearly made up for the seasickness.”
“Were you very ill?”
“First month, I thought I’d die. Second month, I wished I would.” He grinned. “Third month, I got my sea legs and never lost ‘em.”
Frances laughed again. The sound drew something loose in Alexander’s chest—something he had been holding tight for hours, for days, since the morning he had left the house before breakfast and spent the day with his bailiff rather than face her across the toast.
“And you, sir?” The father had turned to Alexander. “You’re a quiet one. Does she do all the talking for both of you?”
The question was friendly and teasing, the kind of thing one man said to another about his wife in a room full of strangers. It carried no weight of formality or deference because this man had no idea who was sitting three feet from him.
“Generally, yes,” he said.
Frances turned. She looked at him, and something moved in her expression. Not quite a smile. The shape of one, waiting.
“He is being modest,” she said. “He has opinions about everything. He simply keeps them locked away where no one can find them.”
“A wise man,” the father said. “My wife says I give mine away too freely.”
“You do,” the wife confirmed, without looking up from settling the baby.
The table laughed. Alexander found himself smiling.