Chapter Twenty-Six #2
While Frances watched, he knelt before the fireplace, dashing the flint against the striker with powerful strokes until it sparked. This he applied to the linen tinder and a few spills besides, tucking them between the pieces of wood when they caught fire.
“You’re rather skilled at that.” The words came from her with reluctance.
“Had we left it to that poor maid, I daresay we would have been ‘stiff and stark and cold’ in ‘likeness of shrunk death’ before she managed it,” he replied, replacing the lid to the tinder box and rising to stare at his handiwork to ensure the flame was catching.
“As for the skill, I’ve been at Oxford a long time, and one can’t always be dependent on the scouts. ”
But Frances was frowning in thought. “Stiff and stark and cold…in likeness of shrunk death,” she murmured. “I know that one.” And, with a snap of her fingers, “It’s ‘borrowed likeness,’ isn’t it? ‘Borrowed likeness of shrunk death.’”
“The apothecary in Romeo and Juliet,” they said in unison, though in quite different tones.
“Did I ever tell you, that was the first time I met Miss Eveleigh?” Frances asked with the eagerness of a happy memory. “Mrs. Dere took me to Oxford to visit the Eveleighs, and we went to see the students perform Romeo and Juliet at the tennis courts! It was delightful.”
Something unreadable fleeted across his face, though she could only see his profile in the flickering firelight. “No, you never told me,” he said.
“Oh.” She shrank sheepishly in her chair, now regretting her burst of fervor. “Well, so it was.” There must be a thousand things they hadn’t told each other. Why had she put it like that?
“I was in that play,” he said, his voice low. Restoring the tinder box to its place on the mantel, he turned slowly to regard her. “That production.”
Another shiver rippled through her, though this one had nothing to do with the chill of the room and everything to do with the look in his eyes.
“Y-You were? Why, how remarkable. You must have been younger then.” She closed her eyes briefly, wondering how many more idiotic things she might say. Of course he had been younger then. They had both been younger! That, after all, was how time worked.
Clearing her throat, she could not prevent a nervous hum. “Who did you play in the play? That is, who were you?”
Taking a step nearer, he rested his hands along the back of the Hepplewhite chair, his eyes never leaving her. “Guess.”
If she hadn’t been so addled by his wolfish aspect, she might have teased him and named the Nurse or Lady Capulet, but instead she stared back, immobilized. If he had been Romeo, she would never have forgotten.
“Er—”
He tapped his temple, and Frances had a gasp of recognition. “Once something goes in, it never goes out,” she exclaimed. “You were the apothecary!”
“You’ve hit the nail right on the head,” he answered.
“I should have guessed it that very first time in the library at Greenwood Hall because you quoted the apothecary then as well.” She tilted her head, considering him.
“Which means I’ve seen you in three roles.
The apothecary, Simple Summer Mr. Hearne, and Bottom.
And now I have only to discover who is the one behind all the masks. ”
“Is that something you wish to discover?”
“It doesn’t matter what I wish,” she retorted. “The question is, rather, is that something you intend to reveal?”
“Miss Barstow, I would not have accepted this invitation to dinner and asked to speak apart with you, if it was not something I wished above all things.”
At such an admission, such an unexpected concession, something which had been wound too tightly within her slackened. Her eyes dropped to the blotter on the desk before her, and she rubbed her finger along its soft surface.
“I hardly know how to begin,” he said, shaking his head ruefully, “or I would not have wasted all the time I already have.” With a sigh he sank into the chair. The wolf look was vanished, but Frances found it equally disconcerting to find him now on her level.
“I knew from my correspondence with Mrs. Barstow and Lord Dere that I had received their pardon for my deception, but neither mentioned your response. And when I cravenly asked your mother if she thought you were still angry with me, she very kindly but firmly told me that was a question I must put to you, and that it would probably be better done in person.”
“You wrote to Mama again? But I had thought—”
“I did so only last week.”
“Ah. So here you are,” she supplied tersely. He wrote again last week? Only months later did it finally occur to him to wonder how I took it? Clearly the anxiety and curiosity which had consumed her had been no more than a prickle—and quite a tolerable one—to him.
“Yes. But—no. Miss Barstow, I wanted to come much sooner, but my brother’s reappearance and illness—”
A wave of dismay swamped her. That was right. His dying brother! If this was not an excuse for his delay, what would be? She was being unreasonable and cruel. And self-centered. Her fingernail dug into the blotter, opening a little tear in the soft paper.
Mr. Hearne did not appear troubled by her callousness, however. He was chewing his own fingernail. “No,” he said, “I must go back further. Miss Barstow, I do not deny that your family has known its share of hardships—I speak of the loss of your father and brother some years ago—”
They had suffered more even than that, Frances thought, if he only knew it. He had just dined with the Egertons, after all, having no idea of poor Jane’s earlier difficulties or what she and Philip endured before they married!
“—But throughout your trials, you have had each other.”
“Yes, we have,” she agreed quietly.
“You have had a close, large, loving family, and when I hear of their joy in the impending return of Mrs. Langworthy’s husband, and when I make the acquaintance of the Egertons and witness their—almost idolatry—of Baby Pippa, I find myself more and more at a loss.
More and more regretful of my own family’s poverty in this regard. ”
“Poverty?”
“There is no other word for it.”
He had his elbows on the desk by this juncture, his forehead in his hands, and to her alarm Frances found herself resisting the urge to comfort him, to caress his shoulder and draw fingers through his dark hair and say, “There, there.”
“I said earlier that my late brother Reginald and I were estranged,” he went on, his voice heavy with effort.
“But it goes beyond that. In even my earliest memories, my parents were never happy together, and when I was still very young, they separated. There was no decree, no articles involved, but my father kept Reginald, and my mother departed with a generous allowance and…with me.”
Then Frances’ hand did creep halfway across the desk dividing them, but she managed to catch it before it clutched at his sleeve. Balling both hands into fists, she tucked them around herself for safekeeping.
“I’m sorry for it,” she whispered.
He lifted his head, his dark eyes surveying her, but not without a faint gleam. “Thank you, Miss Barstow. You see I was right about you ‘dropping balm into the wounds’ and ‘binding up the hearts’ which were broken, yet you were cross as two sticks about it.”
“F-Fiddlestick,” squeaked Frances, “that was Pity doing all the balm-dropping.” Still, the turnabout in his mood caught her off guard. He was leaning across the desk toward her now, despair forgotten, and she was retreating in kind.
“Go—go on with your story,” she croaked.
“Thank you. I intend to, but—Miss Barstow—do you suppose you might be persuaded to hear the rest of it while sitting on my lap?”
“What? I-I most certainly may not—will not! I mean, no, I won’t!”
“Because you are a reformed coquette, I suppose.”
“Because I am not a coquette at all!” she retorted with a blush.
“More’s the pity.” He smiled at her as cheerfully as ever Simple Summer Mr. Hearne did.
“I am setting the cart before the horse, however. It’s only that you’re so very tempting there, when I have been away from you for so long.
It makes me want to steal a kiss, as I did when we were playing Pyramus and Thisby. ”
“Which you oughtn’t to have done either,” Frances rebuked him, but her acting skills were failing her. How could she sound stern when warmth and joy were threatening to break her down? Because surely he would not say such things if he did not love her, would he?