Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
Andrew was already seated when Frances entered the dining room.
He had arrived early, though he could not have said why. Habit, perhaps. A man who managed estates, accounts, tenants, servants, lawyers, and the thousand quiet obligations attached to a title learned to arrive before he was required. Promptness was not virtue so much as defense against disorder.
Yet the moment Frances appeared in the doorway, he knew promptness had had very little to do with it. He had been waiting for her.
That knowledge irritated him.
She paused only long enough for the footman to draw back her chair.
Candlelight caught in the brown gloss of her hair, which had been pinned simply at the back of her head, with a few softer strands resting near her temples.
She wore pale green silk that made her eyes appear darker and more guarded.
She looked every inch the Duchess of Sinclair.
And yet he saw at once that something in her had withdrawn.
She thanked the footman quietly and sat.
Andrew watched as she unfolded her napkin. Her movements were composed, perhaps too composed. The sort of composure one chose because anything less might reveal too much.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Good evening, Your Grace.”
Your Grace.
He disliked the title from her mouth more each time she used it.
The soup was served, then fish, then a dish of roasted fowl with herbs, buttered carrots, and potatoes cut so precisely they might have been measured by an architect.
Carter directed the service with his usual silent authority.
The footmen moved gracefully. The silver gleamed. The candles burned without a flicker.
It was, in every visible respect, a successful dinner.
It was also intolerable.
Frances had barely looked at him since entering the room.
She answered when addressed by servants, but otherwise her attention remained on her plate.
Only, she was not eating. She was arranging the food.
She cut a piece of fowl into smaller and smaller portions until it became a collection of pale fragments beneath her knife.
Andrew tried to ignore it. He took a bite, and chewed. He tasted nothing.
Across from him, Frances lifted her fork, held it a moment, then set it down again.
He felt his patience fray.
“You have hardly eaten.”
Her knife paused.
“I am not hungry,” she replied, without looking at him.
He glanced toward Carter. The butler, being a man of rare instincts, moved at once toward the sideboard and appeared suddenly occupied with the decanter. The footmen developed an intense interest in invisibility.
Andrew returned his gaze to Frances. “Nurse Ellis tells me you spent most of the day in the nursery.”
Her fingers tightened around the handle of her knife. “Does Nurse Ellis report my movements to you?”
“No.”
“Then how did the subject arise?”
“I asked how the child was.”
At that, she looked up, though not fully. Her gaze stopped somewhere near his cravat. “How paternal of you.”
The words struck more sharply than she could have known—or perhaps she knew exactly.
Andrew set down his fork with deliberate care. “You must be tired.”
“I am perfectly well.”
“You spent the day caring for an infant. Whether or not you admit fatigue, you are likely to feel it. Eat something.”
Her eyes lifted to his then.
There was a brightness in them he did not like, although he could not see tears. Frances did not look as though she were about to weep. That might have been easier. He knew what to do with tears, or at least what distance to keep from them.
This was worse. Anger, exhaustion, and something wounded sat together in her expression with no clear division between them.
“That,” she pointed out, “is precisely the problem.”
Andrew went still. “What is?”
“I spent the day looking after a baby I am beginning to care about, and yet I still know nothing about her.”
The room seemed to grow quieter. Andrew was aware of everything at once: the faint scrape of a coal settling in the grate, the scent of wine and roasted herbs, the shine of candlelight along the rim of Frances’s glass and the way her hand lay flat beside her plate, not clenched, but held too still.
He knew this moment had been coming.
He had told himself that, if he was firm enough at the beginning, she would adapt herself to the necessary limits. Frances was clever. Frances was practical. Frances had entered this marriage knowing it was not a love match, not a confession, not an invitation into every closed chamber of his life.
But she was also compassionate.
He had underestimated the danger of that.
“You know what may be known,” he told her.
Her mouth tightened. “That is a sentence designed to end conversation without answering anything.”
“It is the only answer I can give.”
“No. It is the only answer you are willing to give.”
Andrew looked at her across the table. “Those are not always different.”
“They are when I am expected to build a life upon them.”
He exhaled slowly. “Frances–”
“No.” She sat back slightly, though her posture remained straight. “Do not say my name in that tone.”
“What tone?”
“The one that suggests I am a horse approaching a ditch and must be soothed before I bolt.”
Despite himself, some grim amusement stirred. “Are you about to bolt?”
“I am about to become very unreasonable.”
Despite everything, he relished these moments of bantering with her, far more than he was willing to admit.
“Then I shall take warning,” he said with composure.
“Do. It may save us both time.”
A footman shifted near the wall. Andrew did not look away from her.
“Leave us,” he ordered.
Carter bowed at once. “Your Grace.”
The servants withdrew with practiced silence, with the doors closing softly behind them.
He set his fork and knife together upon his plate, though he had eaten no more than she had. “We agreed upon rules.”
Her gaze did not waver. “You stated the rules, while I endure them.”
“You agreed not to question the servants.”
“I have not questioned them about the child’s origins.”
“You agreed not to press me,” he reminded her.
“I agreed because I had just been married, brought into a strange house, and shown a baby whose very existence has altered my life. Forgive me if I had not yet fully appreciated the absurdity of my position.”
“It is not absurd to protect a child.”
“No,” she said at once. “It is not. But it is absurd to expect me to care for her in ignorance and call that protection.”
“You are not expected to care for her at all.”
The moment the words left him, he knew they were wrong. Frances’s face changed, not with some theatrical display of injury, but with a slight inward closing that made him wish he could reach across the table and take the words back by force.
“Indeed,” she said through clenched teeth. “That has been made abundantly clear.”
“I did not mean–”
“You did.”
“No,” he told her more sharply. “I meant that I did not bring you here to burden you with responsibility for a child who was never yours to carry.”
Her eyes flashed. “And yet here she is, under my roof, in my arms, crying when she is hungry, waking when she is lonely, staring at me with those solemn eyes as if she expects me to understand a language no one has taught me.” Her voice trembled once, then steadied.
“You may decide she is not mine to carry, Andrew, but you cannot ask me to hold her and feel nothing.”
His hand tightened around the stem of his glass. She called him Andrew, not Your Grace. It should not have mattered, yet it did.
“You were warned that this marriage was for appearances,” he echoed a previous sentiment.
“Yes. Repeatedly. You have been almost admirably persistent in reminding me I am not wanted beyond my usefulness.”
His gaze snapped to hers. “That is not true.”
The words came out before caution could restrain them. Frances stilled. So did he.
The denial hung between them, too quick, too forceful, and therefore too revealing. Andrew felt heat rise beneath his collar, the discomfort of having let a truth appear without deciding whether it ought to be seen.
Frances looked at him closely. “Then what is true?”
He could not answer that, not fully. Perhaps not at all.
The truth was that he had not wanted a wife, but found himself watching for her step in corridors.
The truth was that he had not wanted her involved with the child, but the sight of her holding the baby had taken root somewhere beneath his ribs.
The truth was that he had spent the past several days retreating into work because every glimpse of Frances in the nursery threatened the entire structure of his resolve.
He could say none of it.
So, he offered the only words he had to offer. “The child is not mine.”
Frances drew a breath.
“I already told you that,” he continued. “That is proof I have not lied to you.”
“No,” she answered slowly. “Perhaps not.”
“Perhaps?”
“A withheld truth is not always so far removed from a lie.”
“It is when speaking it would endanger someone.”
“Who?”
His jaw tightened. Her questioning everything infuriated him, and thrilled him at the same time.
Her eyes softened with frustration rather than victory. “You see? There is always another locked door.”
He sighed, then raked his fingers through his hair. “Some things cannot be explained.”
“At least not to me.”
“At least not yet.”
The words surprised him. They surprised her, too. He saw it at once. There was a small change in her expression, a flicker of hope she tried to hide before it fully formed.
Not yet.
He had not meant to offer even that much. But there it was.
Frances leaned slightly forward. “When?”
“When I can.”
“That is no answer.”
“It is the only honest one I have.”
She studied him for a long moment. Candlelight moved across her face, deepening the faint shadows beneath her eyes.
He had noticed them earlier. He noticed them more now.
He also noticed the slight pallor beneath her color, the tiredness at the corners of her mouth, all pointing to the strain of a woman trying to be brave in a house that had given her too little reason to rest.
Guilt pressed into him. He had told himself he was protecting her by withholding the truth. Perhaps he was. But he was also leaving her to wander through consequences without a map.
“Please, just… trust me,” he urged.
Frances’s lips parted, then closed again. She looked down at the table, at the ruined little pieces of fowl she had cut and never eaten.
“Trust is not so easily given.”
“I know.”
“Do you?” She looked back at him. “Because you ask for it as though it were a handkerchief I might pass across the table.”
“I do not ask lightly.”
“But you ask blindly.” Her voice was quiet now, which made it worse.
“You ask me to believe that your silence is honorable, that your secrecy protects the child, that your distance protects me, and that none of it conceals something that may one day make me regret every soft feeling I have allowed myself.”
He said nothing. There was nothing safe to say.
Frances looked away first. For a moment, neither moved. The room around them remained elegant and still, absurdly indifferent to the dangerous intimacy of the conversation. Andrew could hear the clock on the mantel counting seconds with merciless precision.
Then Frances reached for her glass. He reached at the same moment to move the decanter aside. Their hands brushed. It was no more than the backs of their fingers touching near the base of her glass.
Still, everything stopped.
Frances’s hand stilled beside his. Her skin was warm and soft. The contact was brief, accidental, and entirely proper. There was no clasping, no impropriety, no reason at all for his breath to catch as though she had placed her palm against his heart.
She looked at their hands. So did he. Neither moved.
The fire cracked softly in the grate. Candlelight trembled. Somewhere beyond the closed doors, a servant’s footstep passed and faded.
Andrew could have drawn away. He did not.
Frances’s fingers shifted, not enough to withdraw, only enough that her knuckles brushed his again. Whether by accident or some momentary failure of will, he did not know. He only knew the contact sent a sharp, unwelcome current through him.
His gaze lifted to her face. She was looking at him now.
There was no anger in her eyes, not in that instant. Her lips parted slightly. The candlelight warmed the curve of her cheek. She looked tired, yes, and troubled, but also unbearably alive.
He wanted to turn his hand and take hers. The desire was so simple, so appalling, that it held him motionless.
Then, Frances pulled back first, but she did not do so quickly.
That was what undid him. Had she snatched her hand away, he might have retreated into propriety.
Had she laughed, he might have answered in kind.
But she withdrew slowly, almost reluctantly, gathering her fingers back into her lap while her eyes remained on his.
Andrew’s hand rested on the table where hers had been.
Empty.
He did not speak. Neither did she. Whatever had been said before seemed suddenly less dangerous than what had not been said at all.
At that moment, Frances rose.
“I find I am more tired than hungry,” she informed him.
Andrew stood at once. “Frances–”
“Good night, Andrew.”
His name, softly spoken, struck harder than anger would have done. She inclined her head, not quite a bow, not quite affection, and turned toward the door. He did not follow. He had no right to. Or rather, he had every right society would recognize, and none that mattered.
She opened the door before any servant could come, stepped into the corridor, and left him alone with the uneaten dinner, the extinguished argument, and the lingering warmth of her hand.
Andrew remained standing long after the door closed.
At last, he looked down at his plate. She had hardly eaten. Neither had he.
The house settled around him with all its old, disciplined silence, but the silence no longer felt like order. It felt like failure.