Chapter 32
“You must stay,” Eleanor insisted. “Both of you. At least a few days.”
They were standing in the cottage garden while inside, the last of the village guests finished the wedding cake and spoke in loud, cheerful voices about the weather and the quality of Mrs. Campbell’s shortbread.
Eleanor had Frances by one hand and was gesturing broadly with the other, as though the force of her enthusiasm might physically prevent them from leaving.
“Eleanor—” Alexander began.
“No. You traveled four days to be here. I will not have you turn around and leave the morning after.” She looked at Malcolm, who stood beside her with his spectacles slightly crooked and the expression of a man who had learned that his wife’s determination was not a force to be reasoned with. “Tell them.”
“You are very welcome to stay,” Malcolm said. “The cottage is small, but Mrs. Campbell has prepared the spare room.”
“There.” Eleanor beamed. “It is settled.”
Alexander looked at Frances. She looked back. Neither of them asked how many beds the spare room contained. It seemed, at this point, an unnecessary question.
“We would be delighted,” Frances said.
Mrs. Campbell led them upstairs twenty minutes later.
The room was at the end of a narrow corridor—low-ceilinged, whitewashed, with a window overlooking the lane and a bed pushed against the far wall.
One bed. Not large. Not small either. Exactly the size that two people could share if they were willing to acknowledge each other’s existence.
“I’ll bring fresh linens,” Mrs. Campbell said and disappeared.
Frances stood in the doorway. Alexander stood behind her. She could feel the warmth of him at her back, close but not touching.
Frances stepped into the room and set her reticule on the washstand. “At least this bed appears to be longer than the settee at Stony Stratford.”
“Most things are longer than that settee.”
“Including your patience with it which lasted approximately forty-five seconds.”
“It lasted considerably longer than that.”
“You swore at the armrest, Alexander.”
“I did not swear.”
“You said a word I am quite certain is not in any hymnal.”
He moved past her to set his coat across the chair. The room was small enough that his shoulder brushed hers as he passed. The contact lasted half a second. She felt it for considerably longer.
That evening, the cottage was quiet.
Eleanor and Malcolm had retired early—married less than twelve hours and already glowing with the special radiance of two people who had nowhere else they wanted to be. Mrs. Campbell had banked the fire and gone to her own quarters. The house settled around Frances and Alexander like a held breath.
Frances sat at the edge of the bed in her nightgown, her hair loose around her shoulders, unpinning the last of it with careful fingers.
Alexander stood at the window. He had removed his coat and cravat.
His shirtsleeves were rolled to the elbow—she had noticed this, could not stop noticing it—and his forearms were brown from the Scottish sun they had walked through that afternoon.
“Frances.”
She looked up. He was still facing the window, but his head had turned slightly toward her.
“Would you...” He stopped then started again. “I have been considering something.”
“That sounds ominous.”
“It is not ominous.” He turned fully. Leaned against the windowsill, his arms crossed. “Eleanor and Malcolm plan to depart for Edinburgh on Monday. To visit his colleagues there.”
“Yes. She mentioned it.”
“That leaves the cottage empty. And Scotland...” He paused. His jaw worked once. “Scotland is very large.”
Frances set down her hairpin. “Are you suggesting we remain?”
“I am suggesting we might travel. Northward. The Highlands. The lochs.” His gaze held hers with that particular directness that always made her pulse do something inconvenient. “A few more days. A week, perhaps.”
A week.
“Just the two of us,” she said.
“And the coachman. And Miss Ripley of course.”
“Of course.”
“It would be...” He uncrossed his arms. Crossed them again. “A chance to see the countryside before we return to London.”
Before we return to London. Before the arrangement resumes its original shape. Before the end of whatever this is… this fragile, unnamed thing built from shared beds and loosened stays and a kiss in a storm-lit library that neither of them had mentioned since.
He was not calling it a honeymoon. The word sat between them, unspoken, large as a loch itself.
“Yes,” Frances said.
He blinked. “Yes?”
“Yes. I should like that very much.”
Something moved in his expression—surprise, perhaps, that she had not made him work harder for it.
“Good,” he said. “I will make arrangements tomorrow.”
“Good.”
They looked at each other across the small room. The candle on the washstand burned low. The bed waited between them. A place they would lie down together because they had done it before and because the doing of it had become, somehow, easy.
Frances pulled back the covers and slid beneath them. Alexander extinguished the candle. The room went dark. She felt the mattress dip as he settled on the far side. They lay in the dark. The space between them was narrow. His breathing was steady. Her heart was not.
A week. A week in Scotland. Together. Alone—or near enough to it.
She wanted to turn toward him. Wanted to close the careful inches of mattress that separated his warmth from hers.
Wanted to say something—I am glad you came.
I am glad you are here. I am glad, I am glad, I am glad—but the words sat heavy on her tongue, too large for the darkness, too dangerous for the silence.
He has not said he loves me. He may never say it. But he asked me to stay.
The bed was cold beside her.
Frances reached out before she was fully awake, her hand moving across the sheets to where his warmth should have been. Her fingers found nothing—cool linen and an empty pillow—the quiet stillness of a space recently vacated.
She opened her eyes as the morning light filtered softly and gray through the curtains. The room was silent. His coat had been taken from the chair, and his boots were no longer beside the door.
Frances sat up, got dressed, wrapped a shawl around her shoulders, and stepped outside. Her hearing improved as she went down the stairs, catching two voices—Alexander and Eleanor.
Frances was halfway down the stairs when she heard her name.
“Frances seems happy here,” Eleanor was saying. “With you. She seems genuinely happy, Alexander.”
Frances stopped. Her hand gripped the banister. The kitchen door was open at the bottom of the stairs—not fully but enough that the conversation carried with perfect clarity into the narrow stairwell.
I should not listen.
She did not move.
“She is kind,” Eleanor continued. “And patient. More patient than you deserve, frankly. The way she looked at you yesterday during the wedding breakfast... Do you not see it?”
There was a pause. Then the sound of a cup being set down on wood.
“See what?” Alexander said.
“That she cares for you. Truly cares. Not as an arrangement. Not as a duty. She looks at you the way...” Eleanor stopped. Started again. “Are you happy? That is all I am asking. Are you happy with her?”
The silence that followed was long enough for Frances to count her own heartbeats. Three. Four. Five.
“The marriage began as a practical solution to a difficult situation.”
“I know how it began. I am asking how it is now.”
“Eleanor.”
“Do not ‘Eleanor’ me. I am your sister, and I am asking you a simple question.”
Another pause. Frances pressed her back against the wall. The plaster was cold through her nightgown. Her heart was beating very hard—too hard, loud enough that she was half-certain they would hear it through the floor.
“Frances is a good woman,” Alexander said. His voice was even. Controlled. The voice of a man delivering a report rather than a confession. “She has been more than I expected. More than I deserved, perhaps. But the arrangement was clear from the beginning. We both understood the terms.”
“Terms,” Eleanor repeated. The word carried the same weight it had when Lavinia said it, months ago, on a terrace in Surrey.
“When we return to London,” Alexander continued, “we will resume our lives as planned. Separately, for the most part. That was always the intention.”
The word landed in Frances’s chest like a fist, and she closed her eyes.
Last night, he asked her to stay. Last night, they lay in this bed side by side, and the silence between them was so heavy that she thought…
I thought wrong.