Chapter 3
Chapter Three
“Have you any idea what they are saying?”
Her mother’s voice cut sharply across the drawing room, startling even the fire into seeming silence. She stood near the mantel with one hand pressed to her breast. Frances, seated upon the settee with far more composure than she felt, looked up from the book she had not truly been reading.
“I imagine,” Frances spoke calmly, “that they are saying exactly what society always says when it is denied certainty: something loud, ugly, and less intelligent than the truth.”
“Frances, do not be flippant,” her mother scolded her.
“I am not flippant. I am tired.”
Her mother let out a breath that trembled with exasperation. “You ought to be more than tired. Why, you ought to be ashamed.”
At that, Frances’ fingers stilled upon the page.
Across the room, her father lowered the newspaper he had been pretending to read and fixed her with the sort of stern, disappointed expression he reserved for moments when she proved most thoroughly herself.
“This was reckless, Frances,” her father said. “Utterly reckless.”
Frances closed the book in her lap. “It was necessary.”
“Necessary?” her mother repeated, as though the word itself offended her. “To attach yourself to a scandal already spreading through every drawing room in London? Necessary for whom?”
“For the truth,” Frances replied.
Her mother gave a short, incredulous laugh. “Truth has very little to do with it now.”
“That,” Frances pointed out, “is precisely the problem.”
Her mother turned away for a moment, then turned back again as though still too agitated to keep still.
“I have already had two notes this morning, each written with the most nauseating concern. Lady Pembroke wishes to know whether there is some understanding between you and the Duke of Sinclair. Lady Morton, with all the subtlety of a brick through glass, has asked whether we ought to expect an engagement. By this afternoon, half the ton will have decided that you defended him because you are secretly attached.”
Frances felt heat rise in her cheeks, though not from embarrassment, but rather, from anger.
“How industrious of them.”
“Do not mock this!” her mother cried. “Your name is being passed about like a card at a gaming table.”
Frances stood then, unable to remain seated beneath the force of her mother’s distress. “And what would you have had me do? Sit silent while they destroyed a man’s name, and a woman’s, and a child’s for that matter, simply because they found it diverting?”
Her father’s expression hardened. “I would have had you remember that you are not an anonymous scribbler free to meddle without consequence. You are my daughter.”
The words fell with more weight than his raised voice might have done.
Frances held his gaze. “Yes. I am.”
“And because you are,” he said, rising from his chair, “your actions do not belong to you alone.”
There it was, the heart of it. It was the old family creed dressed in the plain clothes of duty: that a daughter was not herself first, but a piece of a larger thing, valuable only so long as she did not crack the surface.
Her mother pressed a handkerchief between her fingers. “You may not care for your own prospects, Frances, but society cares for them on your behalf.”
Frances gave a small, humorless smile. “Society may save itself the trouble. I do not wish to marry.”
The room went still. It was not the first time she had thought it, nor even the first time she had said it aloud, but never had the words landed so directly in the center of a family quarrel.
Her mother stared at her as though she had uttered something profane.
Her father’s brows drew together at once. “What nonsense is this?”
“It is not nonsense, Father. It is the truth.”
“The truth,” he argued sharply, “is that you are five-and-twenty years old and growing more impossible by the month.”
“Three-and-twenty,” Frances corrected him.
He ignored that. “And if this gossip fixes itself to your name, you may indeed lose what little chance remains of making a respectable match.”
Frances lifted her chin. “Then I shall lose what I never particularly wanted.”
Her father moved closer, while his expression darkened with both outrage and alarm. “This is not merely about your whims.”
“My whims?” she echoed.
“Yes, your whims.” His voice grew firmer. “Your opinions, your defiance, your determination to set yourself against every sensible expectation. Marriage is not a bauble one takes up or lays aside according to mood. It is a necessity of family, position and order.”
Frances crossed her arms. “Convenient, that order should always require the sacrifice of the daughter rather than the father.”
“Frances!” her mother said sharply.
But her father had already pressed on. “You may talk as you please in this house, but the world does not indulge such speeches. A woman who makes herself conspicuous in scandal does not merely injure herself.”
He gestured toward the door, toward the rest of the house, toward everything beyond it.
“She injures her family.”
The words struck more cleanly than the others because they were aimed where she was weakest.
Frances said nothing, and her mother seized the silence at once.
“That is exactly it. You speak as though this affects only you, but what of Sophia? What of your sister?”
At that, Frances’ expression changed.
Sophia.
Sweet, quiet Sophia, who asked so little of the world and seemed always to receive too little from it in return. Sophia, who still blushed when addressed too suddenly and preferred novels to ballrooms, and who would suffer more from whispered judgments because she had no defense against them.
Her mother’s voice lowered into urgent grief. “Do you suppose people will separate one daughter from the other? They will not. They never do. If your name is stained, hers will be touched by it as well.”
“That is unfair,” Frances said quietly.
“Yes,” her father agreed. “Society often is.”
The answer stung because it was true.
Her mother pressed on, emboldened now. “And not only Sophia. All of us. This family. Your father’s name. Your sister’s future. Our standing. Everything becomes vulnerable the moment one member invites public disgrace.”
“I did not invite disgrace.”
“You invited notice,” her father snarled. “And for a woman, that is often enough.”
The words had scarcely left him when a knock sounded at the drawing room door. All three of them turned. For one suspended instant, no one spoke. Then the butler entered.
“My lord, the Duke of Sinclair is here for Miss Frances Norton,” he announced.
Her mother and father exchanged a look so swift and meaningful it might as well have been spoken aloud.
Her mother’s spine straightened at once.
Her agitation did not disappear, but it changed shape, smoothing itself into the sort of strained eagerness she always wore before distinguished company.
Her father’s expression settled into something more formal, though the displeasure had not wholly left it.
“Show him in,” her father ordered.
The butler bowed and withdrew. Her mother turned almost frantically to the nearest table, adjusting nothing of consequence.
A vase, already straight, was turned half an inch.
A cushion was smoothed. Then she looked toward Frances, and though she said nothing, the message was plain enough: stand properly, speak carefully and do not make this worse.
Frances remained where she was, with every pulse in her body suddenly too quick.
The Duke of Sinclair entered a moment later.
He crossed the threshold with all his usual ease, tall and impeccably composed, dressed with understated elegance that only made his presence more striking.
He bowed first to her mother, then to her father, every inch the polished gentleman society expected him to be.
And yet Frances saw it at once. His charm was there, yes, but wound taut over strain.
“Lady Keswick,” he greeted with a deep bow. “I declare this room has grown so elegant since my last visit that one hardly knows whether to admire the house or the lady who gives it its grace.”
Her mother gave a pleased little laugh, as though no storm had existed in this room a moment before. “Your Grace, you are too kind.”
He turned to her father. “Lord Keswick, I hope I do not intrude too unforgivably.”
“Not at all,” her father replied, though his tone carried more caution than warmth.
Andrew smiled, and the effect was as devastating as ever. It was no wonder society found him so easy to admire and so satisfying to destroy.
“I fear I have come with little ceremony,” he said. “You must forgive the abruptness of my call.”
“Oh no, no,” her mother jumped in hastily. “You are always welcome.”
Frances might have laughed, had she not been so startled by the entire scene.
Andrew’s gaze moved to her then. It did not linger long enough to be improper, yet she felt it distinctly all the same.
There was none of the easy amusement she had seen in him at dinners and none of the teasing lightness he sometimes wore in company. He had only purpose now.
“Miss Norton,” he greeted her with a slight inclination of his head.
“Your Grace.”
He looked back to her parents. “I wonder whether I might beg a few moments of your daughter’s time.”
Her mother blinked.
Andrew continued, all courtesy. “Nothing improper, I assure you. Perhaps a short turn in the garden, if Miss Norton is agreeable to it. We need not go beyond view of the drawing room windows.”
There was a very small pause.
Frances could almost hear her mother’s heart begin beating faster at the opportunity.
A duke requesting a private walk, however carefully contained, was precisely the kind of thing her mother would once have called promising, had the circumstances been different.
Her father, however, considered the matter more heavily, his gaze moving from Andrew to Frances and back again.
“Within sight of the house,” he demanded.
“Entirely,” Andrew replied.
“And not long.”
“Of course.”
Her mother managed a gracious smile. “I see no objection.”
Frances did, or thought she ought to. Yet, curiosity rose too strongly to ignore, mingled with something far less comfortable. She wanted to know why he had come, but she feared that she knew.
Andrew crossed to her and offered his arm. She hesitated only a fraction of a second before placing her hand upon it. His sleeve was warm beneath her fingers. Together they left the drawing room, passed through the terrace doors, and stepped out into the pale chill of the morning garden.
The air struck cool against Frances’s skin after the heat of the room.
The lawns still carried the dampness of early spring, and the gravel path curved neatly beneath bare branches just beginning to show the first signs of green.
Behind them, the drawing room windows gleamed, and she had no doubt her mother was already positioning herself discreetly nearby.
Andrew led her only a little way before stopping. The moment they were alone enough to speak without being overheard, he turned to her.
“Why on earth did you do it?”
There was no preamble and no softening politeness now.
Frances lifted her chin. “If you mean the article, I did it because the scandal was unfair.”
His expression did not change. “Unfair.”
“Yes.”
He gave a short breath that might almost have been a laugh, had it held any humor. “That is a generous word for it.”
“It was cruel,” she pointed out. “And calculated. Someone ought to have answered it.”
“And that someone had to be you?”
She felt annoyance stir at once. “Would you rather no one had done so?”
Andrew looked away for a moment, across the clipped hedges and damp gravel, as though gathering patience. When he looked back, the strain she had sensed indoors was clearer now.
“You made it worse.”
The words hit with the force of a slap.
Frances stared at him. “Worse?”
“Yes.”
“But… I defended you.”
“Yes, publicly,” he reminded her of what she herself already knew.
She opened her mouth, then shut it again.
He continued before she could answer. “You attached your name to mine in the middle of an active scandal. Do you truly not see what that has done?”
Frances felt the first cold stirrings of alarm. “It has done exactly what I intended. It has challenged a lie.”
Andrew’s jaw tightened. “It has also convinced half the ton that we are having an affair.”
For one ridiculous instant, she thought she must have misheard him.
“What?”
His expression remained grim. “That is the newest version.”
“That is absurd.”
“I know.”
She shook her head at once. “That is not true.”
His gaze met hers steadily. “No. It is not.”
The certainty in his voice ought to have relieved her. Instead, it only made the humiliation sharper, because he spoke not as a man flattered by the implication, but as one already calculating its damage.
Frances folded her arms against the chill. “How can they leap to such a conclusion?”
He gave her a look that was almost weary. “Miss Norton, you are intelligent enough that I cannot believe you need that answered.”
She flushed.
“I know how gossip works,” he said.
The words landed more heavily because they were true. Of course he did not need to explain it to her. She knew precisely how easily rumor grew once given fresh material. She had given it material herself. Not intentionally this time, but that would matter very little to society.
She looked toward the windows of the house, where faint movement confirmed that her mother was indeed watching. “This is madness.”
“Yes,” he agreed once more. “But it is now our madness.”
Our.
The word unsettled her more than it ought to have done.
She turned back to him. “Surely it will pass.”
His expression told her at once that he did not believe so.
“Our names are tied together now,” he repeated.
Frances went still. All she could hear in his voice was a hard practicality that made everything suddenly feel more dangerous than it had a moment before.
“What are you saying?” she asked.
Andrew held her gaze. “I am saying that the situation requires a solution.”
Something in his voice made her pulse falter. She stared at him, and for the first time since he had entered the house, genuine unease moved through her.
“And there is only one.” He paused. Then, with the same calm certainty he might have used to announce the weather, he continued. “Marriage.”