Chapter Seventeen #2
It was difficult not to laugh. Not at the young woman, who was living up to her name and speaking far more frankly than half the Society in London. No, at the ridiculousness of it all.
Here she was, married to a man who was now perhaps technically missing, and his sister had arrived to see him and had instead found his temporary wife—though she did not know the whole marriage had always been meant to end—dressed in his clothing.
What on earth could happen next?
“Samuel’s left London.”
Rose’s pulse skipped a beat. “I beg your pardon?”
Frank examined her curiously, with no shame in doing so. “Why did he leave London and leave you behind?”
Leave me behind.
Yes, Rose supposed that was the politest way to say that a husband had abandoned his wife. Though was it true abandonment, if the whole marriage had been a financial arrangement?
She should say something pat and polite. She should say something comforting yet vague. She should say something. She couldn’t leave Frank to manage all the conversation.
“Do you know where he is?” Rose asked urgently, ignoring all her thoughts.
Frank raised an eyebrow. “I rather supposed that you would. The blaggard promised me a new mechanical pencil and it hasn’t arrived yet.”
It was difficult not to laugh at that. All Samuel’s big plans for his family, his hopes and dreams for them; they were all coming to fruition, and all because she had withheld information about her past and married him, anyway.
Rose swallowed through her suddenly dry sore throat. “I am sorry to hear that. Perhaps Arden will know—”
“I know, you know.”
“You… You do? Where Samuel has gone?”
Frank rolled her eyes. “No, not that.”
Silence descended over the library as Rose stared in horror at the young woman before her. Had she seen the same newspaper that had ruined her happiness? Frank did not elaborate. Eventually, there was nothing for it.
Rose cleared her throat and thrust her nose in the air. “You know something, though?”
“Oh, not the details. Not any of the details, actually. I don’t actually know, so much as know that there’s something to know that I don’t know,” Frank said calmly. “Something you’re not telling me. Not telling anyone.”
Rose’s shoulder blades relaxed as the hackles on the back of her neck subsided. Oh, well, it was easy enough to sense that something was wrong in the marriage. Newly married husbands did not tend to disappear from their wives’ company within a couple of months, after all.
“And you’re going to tell me,” said Frank.
Slowly lifting an eyebrow, Rose drew on all her years as an actress to say lightly, “Oh, I am, am I?”
Frank nodded matter-of-factly. “Yes. You are.”
Rose had never been a card player. Chess was far easier. As long as you could make the pieces do what you want, you could almost ignore the person you were playing with.
Not so with cards. In any card game, you were not just playing the cards, but the player who was holding them. Knowing what they were thinking, or trying to make you think they were thinking, was half the game.
Frank would have made an excellent poker player.
Still, it was worth hazarding an attempt. “I am sorry, Lady Francesca, but—”
“I liked you a lot better when you called me ‘Frank,’” her sister-in-law interrupted.
Raw nerves from the argument with Samuel reared their head. “And I liked you a lot better when you didn’t march into my house and demand my secrets.”
It had been the wrong thing to say. Frank’s eyes widened, her lips parting in evident astonishment.
Or perhaps it had been just the right thing to say.
Because Frank laughed. “Oh, I do like you. I hope you and Sammy can make up. There are so few people in my branch of the Chance family who speak how it is—though admittedly, Lilianna can do so a tad too much, once she gets going.”
Rose stared. Her family—those of the Dalton estate, she corrected herself—were not people to laugh. They were not people to encourage plain speaking, either, not when only the head of the household was permitted to have an opinion.
But here Frank was, chortling away at Rose’s impertinent remark, as though it were the best thing that she had heard all day.
It made no sense.
“Look, I will make no demands of you that I think are unfair,” Frank continued, her chuckles subsiding.
“Lord knows I keep enough secrets from my family. But you, Rose, are without friends here in London—true friends, I mean. You have no one else to turn to, and it doesn’t look to me like Samuel is coming back on his own. And I like you.”
A flicker of warmth spread over her shoulders that had nothing to do with Samuel’s jacket. “You do?”
Her sister-in-law nodded. “I don’t know much about you, Rose, but what I do know, I like. And if your little tiff has anything to do with that nasty gossip I read a few days ago, I hope you won’t let it upset you.”
The flicker of warmth immediately disappeared.
That nasty gossip. Oh, Frank was well meaning, Rose was sure…but she could not know that she had just described Rose’s real life as something nasty and hopefully untrue.
How could she admit to it? If even Samuel’s sister who professed to like her would consider Rose’s true life story as something to be hidden away or embarrassed by, what was the hope that her husband would ever forgive her?
The smile that had been playing about Frank’s eyes was slowly disappearing. When she spoke, it was in a low and most apologetic tone. “Oh, God. It’s true. It’s true, and I’ve offended you. Rose, I’m so sorry.”
“You have nothing to apologize for,” Rose said hastily, wishing to goodness she had thought to ring for tea. Hiding behind a teacup would have been pleasant right now. “You could not have known.”
“But why didn’t you tell us?”
Her laughter made Frank flush, but Rose could not help it. Intelligent as her sister-in-law was, Rose sometimes forgot just how young and na?ve Frank Chance was.
“‘Tell you’?” Rose said with a shake of her head. “Tell the Dowager Marquess and Marchioness of Aylesbury that their son was about to marry an actress, one who had run away from her family for a dream of acting and a foolish first marriage that was only ended by the untimely death of her husband?”
Frank’s eyes were wide. “And did…did you kill him?”
Rose’s snort echoed around the library. “What sort of actress do you think I was?”
It was such a ridiculous suggestion that it made her quite howl with laughter, and somehow, that managed to release a great deal of tension that had been trapped within her for days and days.
Her—kill Luke? Frankly, she was lucky it hadn’t been the other way around…
Her guest’s expression was rueful. “Sorry. Got carried away there.”
“Oh, I don’t blame you. My life has been so packed full of melodrama, I am almost surprised there is not a murder in there somewhere,” Rose said dryly.
“Wait, though,” said Frank, cocking her head. “You said, ‘about to marry’? But you didn’t meet my parents until you’d been married for several weeks.”
Rose swallowed, not realizing until just then she’d let that detail slip. “Yes, about that…”
Frank grinned devilishly. She’d make a good Iago on the stage, tempting Othello into doubting his wife and all he’d believed to be true.
“I knew it! I think we all did. Well, maybe not Mama. She has to believe her precious baby. But he married only after learning about the terms of the will, didn’t he? ”
“Yes, well…” Rose did not want to get into the details of that arrangement. “The solicitor is quite aware, so it’s all to the good. Look. I am flattered that you came over here to see how I was doing and find out if your…your mechanizing—”
“Mechanical,” Frank corrected her, a frown furrowing her brow. “I do hope Samuel ordered the right thing.”
“I am sure he did.” Even speaking of him was painful, Rose was surprised to discover. A sharp stab in her gut each time his name was spoken, a curling twist of pain in her stomach whenever he was referenced. Would it ever lessen? “My point is—”
“The Chance family is one of the noblest, most respected, and most admired in the whole of Society you know,” Frank said quietly, as though her response made any sense.
Rose waited for more, but none seemed forthcoming. “Yes, I know.”
“We’re very good at keeping up appearances,” her guest said slowly and meaningfully. “We’re even known for breaking the rules. Without suffering any consequences.”
Whatever meaning she wanted to convey, Rose was unable to capture it.
She knew the Chances were considered eccentric for passing on titles prematurely as they did.
But ‘keeping up appearances’? Well, she knew all about that.
Her father—Lord Dalton had always been focused on impressing the locals in their native Northumbria.
Frank rolled her eyes and leaned back in her armchair. “Land’s sakes, Rose! I’m saying that we’re good at covering up little escapades and smoothing over little issues! There’s absolutely no reason why you and Samuel can’t recover from this.”
“It’s not a little escapade.” Not unless obscuring who she was and allowing half-truths to take positions as full-truths could be described as a little escapade. “Frank, I appreciate you are trying to help, but you can’t. No one can.”
“There’s something else, isn’t there?”
It was most irritating to have someone in the family so intensely clever. Rose had never realized it until now, but it was the clever ones you had to watch out for.
Benjamin? Oh, he had happily accepted that Samuel was married and that was that.
No further questions needed. Lilianna had been occupied with her coming child and the Dowager Marquess and Marchioness of Aylesbury had clearly been so astonished and delighted that their eldest son had wed, they did not think to question it.
Frank had said they’d almost all guessed at the truth, that Samuel had lied about the circumstances of their marriage, but no one had seemed fit to pry further until now.
But Frank? Frank needed to know things. She needed to take them apart and see how they ticked, Rose was beginning to see with a sinking sensation. And she wouldn’t let go of a line of thinking until she had entirely explored it.
Bother.
“There is something else, and you should tell me what it is.” Frank nodded, as though agreeing with herself meant it was two votes for truth against Rose’s vote for secrecy. “Besides, I’ll find out anyway.”
Rose’s breath caught in her throat. “You… You will?”
“You think that someone won’t find out eventually?
You’re a member of High Society now,” her sister-in-law said, with almost a sympathetic expression.
“It’ll be Lady Romeril, or someone of her ilk, and they won’t be kind about it.
It’ll be everywhere, trust me. Whether it’s in a year, or two years, or five—”
“I wasn’t even supposed to be Samuel’s wife next year,” Rose blurted out.
The words had never been meant to be released from her lips and yet the need to confide in someone, anyone, had finally overpowered her.
She and Frank sat in complete silence for what felt like forever. All that could be heard was the ticking of the longcase clock in the corner of the library, and the soft, sudden fall of snow just visible through the large bay windows.
Frank uncrossed her legs and leaned forward, looking at her sister-in-law closely. “You love him.”
It would have been childish to disagree. Rose nodded.
“And he loves you.”
“I don’t know about that,” Rose began.
“No, I know Samuel. He only runs away from the things that really matter to him—when his heart is truly engaged. Trust me,” Frank said warningly. “Both my brothers are complete idiots, but Sammy is usually the less idiotic. The fact that he’s run away tells me that he cares too much for you.”
It was flattering, indeed, to hear, but Rose could not believe it. Who ran away from the thing they loved?
“So whatever… Whatever scheme it was that the two of you thought up, and honestly, at this point, I don’t even care about the details,” Frank said darkly, “if you both love each other… I don’t see the problem.”
Rose’s lips curled into a tired smile. “Frank, you—you see the world as a puzzle. As an engineering problem to fix. But you can’t fix this.”
Her sister-in-law brought her palms together in front of her, her fingertips brushing her lips. “But you can.”