Chapter 30
“Is something wrong?” Frances asked when she descended from the carriage and found Alexander’s scowl deepening as he released her hand.
“There is only one room available,” he announced.
“Here as well?”
He nodded, and her stomach tightened. They had been to The Cock earlier, and the inn had no rooms at all. Hoping for better luck, they had ventured here. It would seem that luck was as evasive as ever.
“I suppose it will do,” she murmured.
“I shall remain outside briefly,” Alexander said. He stood beside the carriage, one hand on the door. “Instructions for the driver for our route tomorrow.”
“Of course.”
“The room is the third on the right. First floor. Miss Ripley should already be there. The innkeeper found space for the servants downstairs.”
“Thank you.”
He nodded. Frances turned and went inside.
Miss Ripley was waiting in the corridor, having arrived in the second carriage with the luggage. She fell into step beside Frances as they climbed the narrow staircase.
“Shall I help you undress, Your Grace?”
Frances looked at her maid. The woman’s eyes were shadowed. She had been traveling just as long, in considerably less comfort, and her cap was listing to one side in the way it only did when exhaustion had overtaken propriety.
“No. Go and rest. I can manage perfectly well.”
“Your Grace, the stays—”
“I have managed stays before.”
“Not these stays, Your Grace. The laces are—”
“Miss Ripley,” Frances stopped at the door and turned, “you have been traveling since dawn. Go to bed. That is not a suggestion.”
The maid pressed her lips together. “Yes, Your Grace. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight.”
Frances let herself into the room. It was small with a bed, a washstand, a single window overlooking the yard, and a settee pushed against the far wall that appeared to have been designed for someone considerably shorter than a grown man.
A fire burned low in the grate. Her trunk had been brought up already.
She took off her pelisse, her bonnet, and her gloves. She unpinned her hair and let it fall free, feeling almost physically relieved by the weight lifting from her temples and the cool air brushing against her scalp.
Then she reached for her stays.
The laces were at her back. She twisted her right arm over her shoulder.
Her fingers found the top of the bow, tugged, and…
nothing. The knot held. She tried the left hand.
Same result. She bent forward, reached behind, and managed to graze the laces with the tips of her fingers without actually loosening anything.
Miss Ripley tied these with the strength of a sailor.
She twisted once more. Her shoulder ached. She arched her back, reached higher, and her fingers slipped completely off the silk.
“Oh, for heaven’s—”
She did not hear the door opening or footsteps crossing the floor. Instead, she felt hands at her back—warm and confident, pressing against the fabric with such steadiness that her whole body froze.
“I cannot fathom,” Alexander said, close behind her, “why women insist on wearing such nonsense.”
Her breath caught. Every nerve along her spine came alive at once—a rush of heat that started where his fingers worked and spread outward in all directions. She gripped the bedpost.
“The stays lend a woman a fine form,” she explained. Her voice came out remarkably even, all things considered.
“Nonsense.” His fingers moved, pulling and loosening the laces. They gave way one by one, and with each freed inch, she felt the stays loosen their grip on her ribs. “Nothing that alters the feminine form does it any justice whatsoever.”
The last lace came free, the stays fell open, and Alexander turned her to face him.
He was nearly close. His hands gently rested on her shoulders, barely touching, and his gaze shifted downward. Not lingering or inappropriate—just a quick, subtle glance that moved from her collarbones to her waist and back to her face with such directness that it made her knees feel weak.
“Especially yours.”
The heat in her face was immediate. She could feel it flooding her cheeks, her throat, spreading down past the loosened stays like something she could not contain. She turned away.
Do not look at him. Do not look at him. Do not—
“I shall take the sofa,” he said. “If you prefer.”
Her heart was hammering. She pressed a hand to her chest as though that might contain it. “Yes. That would be… yes.”
She heard him move away. She did not turn around.
Frances changed behind the screen, and her hands trembled as she did while her heart raced. When she had pulled on her nightgown, she extinguished the candle nearest the bed and climbed beneath the cool covers that smelled faintly of lavender and soap.
Pulling the blanket to her chin, she closed her eyes. From across the room came the sound of Alexander settling onto the settee. The wood creaked as he shifted his weight. Then silence.
A muffled grunt came, and Frances opened one eye.
Then the sound of him shifting around came as he was rearranging himself on a surface that was clearly not cooperating.
Alexander let out a low mutter she could not quite make out but which carried the distinct flavor of profanity.
Frances closed her eyes.
The settee creaked once more. A boot hit the floor with a thud then the other. More shifting noises followed. A muttered comment. The sound of an elbow bumping against what was likely the armrest then a word she was quite sure no duke would ever utter in polite society.
She pressed her lips together.
Do not laugh. He will hear you.
A prolonged creak echoed, followed by a nearly theatrical sigh. Then, total silence fell, lasting about fourteen seconds. Afterward, the shifting resumed, now with the sound of a very tall man straining to fit his legs into a space meant for someone half his height.
Frances sat up.
“Would the bed help?”
Silence. Absolute silence—the kind that only someone who was fully awake and intentionally not answering could create.
“Alexander.”
Nothing.
“I know you are not asleep. No one is asleep who was five seconds ago swearing at an armrest.”
“I am perfectly comfortable.”
“You are perfectly ridiculous. Come to bed.”
There was a pause. “Frances—”
“I need to sleep. You need to sleep. We have another full day of travel tomorrow, and I refuse to spend it in a carriage with a man who has been awake all night fighting furniture.” She pulled the blanket back on the far side.
“There is more than enough room. You will stay on your side. I will stay on mine. It is a practical matter.”
The settee creaked one final time. Footsteps crossed the room. The mattress dipped.
Frances lay back down. She stared at the ceiling. Her heart was beating very fast, faster than the situation warranted given that he was a full foot away from her, lying on his back with his hands folded across his chest like a man in a sarcophagus.
This is fine. This is perfectly fine. People share beds. It is an inn. The bed is large. He is over there. I am over here. There is a great deal of mattress between us.
Within three minutes, he was snoring.
Frances blinked at the ceiling. She had spent fourteen days agonizing over a single kiss, and this man could fall asleep in three minutes while sharing a bed with the woman he had kissed.
Infuriating.
But the sound was steady. Low and even, the rhythm of a body that had finally found enough space to let go of its tension. The bed was warm where he lay. Not touching her—not close to touching her—but warm all the same.
Frances closed her eyes. The snoring continued. Her heartbeat slowed. And she slept.
Frances opened her eyes to find him watching her.
Alexander lay on his side, one arm bent beneath the pillow, and his gaze was on her face with an openness that belonged to someone who thought himself unobserved.
Tender. Conflicted. Something in the blue of his eyes that looked almost like longing before it shuttered—quick and complete, like a book snapped closed.
He looked away.
“Good morning,” he said to the ceiling.
“Good morning.”
Neither of them moved. The space between them on the mattress was the same distance as it had been when she fell asleep, but the air above it felt different. Charged with the shared knowledge of a night spent side by side and the strange, fragile intimacy of sleeping beside someone.
Alexander rose first. He dressed behind the screen without speaking. When he emerged, his cravat was tied, his coat was buttoned, and the man who had watched her with unguarded eyes was gone.
Frances dressed in silence. Miss Ripley appeared to help with the stays, and Frances kept her gaze on the wall, not thinking about warm hands or loosened laces.
They were in the carriage within the hour.
The road north stretched gray and long before them.
Frances watched Alexander through the first miles—the way he spoke to innkeepers with authority, the way he checked the harness himself before they departed, the way he handed her into the carriage with a grip that was firm and brief and careful.
He managed the world around them with the same precision he brought to everything: efficiently, completely, without asking whether anyone wished him to.
He cannot help it. He was born to command, and everything in his life has confirmed the instinct.
They stopped at midday at a smaller inn, further north. Frances was tired. Her back ached from the carriage. She took the seat Alexander pulled out for her and unfolded her napkin.
The man at the next table was staring at her.
She noticed it at the edge of her vision—a gaze that lingered too long, too openly. A broad-shouldered man in a coat that had seen better years, his eyes fixed on her with an appraising boldness that made her skin prickle.
She looked down at her plate.
Alexander’s chair scraped back as he stood.
The movement was calm, reflecting the careful thought of a man who had weighed the situation and chosen his response.
He shifted sideways and positioned himself directly between Frances and the man’s line of sight.
His back was turned to her, and his shoulders blocked everything.
“You will not look at my wife again.”
The words were quiet, but they carried the message clearly, for the man lowered his eyes and did not raise them toward her again.
Alexander sat back down and picked up his fork. “The mutton looks tolerable.”
Frances stared at him. Her pulse was dancing in a peculiar rhythm. His possessiveness excited her, and it also stoked her curiosity.
“That is strange,” she said.
“What is?”
“You did not react as you did just now when I conversed with the sailor.”
He looked at her. Brief. The corner of his mouth moved a fraction. “Eat your lunch, Frances.”
She ate her lunch.
They returned to the carriage. The road continued north. The countryside changed—flatter, wilder, the hedgerows giving way to open fields and the distant suggestion of hills on the horizon.
Alexander sat across from her with his eyes fixed on the window, his jaw set, his hands resting on his knees. The ease of yesterday, the warmth of the tavern, the laughter that had flowed between them were gone. In its place sat a tension she could not read.
What changed? The man at the inn? Something else?
Frances observed his profile: the sharp line of his nose, the way his brow furrowed when his thoughts drifted into darkness. The particular set of his shoulders indicated he was holding something back, trying to keep it in, refusing to let it come out.
I do not know what he is thinking. I never know what he is thinking. He gives me these moments—the dance, the kiss, the way he said my name, the way he looked at me this morning—and then he retreats.
She looked away.
Last night...
The memory arrived unbidden. The warmth of him beside her in bed.
The sound of his breathing, low and steady, like an anchor dropped in deep water.
Her body had released its tension within minutes of him settling beside her, as if it recognized his proximity as safety and did not need to be told twice.
She had slept deeply and completely, without the restless tossing that had troubled her for months—since the masquerade, the engagement, the morning she stood at an altar and promised herself to a man she neither knew nor loved.
I wish this were real.
Alexander turned from the window. His eyes found hers. His brows drew together, and Frances arranged her face into something she hoped was neutral.
“Are you well?” he asked.
“Perfectly.”
He watched her for a moment longer then he turned back to the glass.
Her thoughts spiraled once more.
Frances gripped the edge of the seat. Her heart pounded against her ribs, and the countryside blurred beyond the glass as the carriage carried her toward a future she suddenly did not want.