Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
“Iowe you an apology,” she suddenly heard him say.
Frances looked up from the cradle. The nursery had settled into that hushed, fragile calm that followed fear, as if the walls themselves were afraid to make a sound too loud. She was tired enough that his words took a moment to arrange themselves into meaning.
“For…?” she asked.
His mouth tightened faintly. “For earlier.”
She remembered the drawing room, Lady Ashford’s visit, his refusal, the door closing behind him and her anger settling into resolve. It seemed impossibly distant now, as though it had happened to other people.
Andrew looked toward the cradle, where the baby slept at last, restless but no longer crying. “I… overreacted.”
Frances let out a quiet breath. “That is one word for it.”
He glanced at her, and something almost like amusement touched his face before vanishing. “A generous one?”
She resisted a smile. “An inadequate one.”
“Yes.” He accepted that with a small nod. “Likely so.”
Frances folded her hands in her lap. She had taken the chair nearest the cradle once the baby had been settled, telling herself she would rise in a moment, that she would go to her room, that she had no reason to remain now that the danger had passed. Yet, she had not moved.
Andrew’s gaze returned to her. “You handled tonight very well.”
She lowered her eyes. “I did very little.”
“That is not true.”
“I fetched you.”
“You steadied me,” he told her, and the words were too quiet for the weight they carried.
Frances looked down at her hands, remembering the feel of his between hers: cold despite the warmth of the nursery, unsteady despite all his strength.
She remembered the shock of it more than the fear.
Andrew, who seemed so immovable in every other circumstance, had trembled while holding the child.
“You were frightened,” she said.
“Yes.”
There was no deflection in the word, no pride and no attempt to polish it into something more dignified. It was all she ever wanted of him: the truth.
Frances lifted her gaze. Andrew stood very still, and now, his face was turned partly toward the fire. In its low light, he looked less like the Duke of Sinclair than the man beneath him, tired and drawn and too alone with whatever memory the night had stirred.
“For a moment,” he murmured, and she wasn’t certain if he was talking to her or to himself, “I was not entirely here.”
Frances did not speak.
He seemed to gather himself before continuing. “When I was a boy, my mother had a baby.”
The words were so unexpected that Frances scarcely breathed.
“A girl,” he added. “My sister.”
The baby shifted softly in the cradle, and both of them looked toward her at once. She did not wake. After a moment, Andrew continued, though his voice had changed, growing lower and more distant.
“She lived only a few days.”
Frances’ throat tightened.
“I was ten,” he revealed. “Old enough to understand more than anyone wished me to, and not old enough to be told anything plainly. The house went silent. My mother recovered, in the way people said women recovered, but she was never quite the same afterward. My father withdrew. The cradle vanished. No one spoke of the child again.”
Frances watched him, unable to look away.
“So, I learned to do the same,” Andrew sighed. “Not speak of it, not ask, not remember where anyone could see.” His gaze rested on the sleeping baby. “But when a child is unwell, I find I am ten years old again, standing in a corridor, listening for a cry and terrified it will stop.”
There was no sharpness left in Frances. All the anger from earlier, all the hard certainty she had clung to, softened painfully inside her.
The questions still existed and the same secrets still stood between them.
But now there was this, too: a boy in a silent house, a baby sister who had lived only long enough to leave a wound no one had allowed him to name.
“Oh, Andrew,” she whispered.
He looked at her then, and the guardedness in his face wavered.
Frances did not think. Thinking would have stopped her.
Thinking would have reminded her that their marriage was an arrangement, that they had argued only hours ago, that he had secrets he still refused to share, that she had meant to find the truth herself.
Instead, she rose. She crossed the small distance between them and put her arms around him.
Andrew went utterly still. For one suspended moment, Frances thought she had made a terrible mistake.
His body was rigid beneath her hands, and his arms unmoving at his sides.
Heat rushed to her face, and she almost stepped back at once.
Then, slowly and carefully, as though surrender cost him something, his arms came around her.
He did not hold her tightly. His hands settled at her back with an almost hesitant restraint, as if he feared she might vanish if he moved too suddenly.
But then his breath left him, long and uneven, and his hold changed enough that Frances felt the weight of it everywhere.
She closed her eyes. The room was dim and warm. The baby slept nearby, making small, congested sounds now and then. The fire shifted softly in the grate. Andrew’s shirt smelled faintly of cold night air and sandalwood, and beneath it, something that was simply him.
Frances had meant the embrace as comfort. She had not expected to need it herself.
For several quiet seconds, neither of them moved. Andrew’s cheek rested near her hair. His breathing slowed by degrees. Frances felt it happen, felt the tension leave him in small, reluctant increments, and something inside her answered it with a tenderness so sudden that it frightened her.
At last, sense returned. She drew back, but not far enough. That was the second mistake.
She intended to step away entirely, but Andrew’s hands loosened only enough to let her move, not enough to separate them.
Frances found herself standing close before him, so close she could see the faint shadow of exhaustion beneath his eyes, the slight roughness at his jaw, and the place where his self-command had not quite been restored.
His hands remained at her waist. Hers rested against his chest. Neither of them seemed to know what to do with that fact.
“Frances,” he whispered.
Her name was scarcely more than breath. It did not sound like a warning now.
She looked up at him. That was another mistake, perhaps the worst of all.
His expression had changed. He looked at her as though something had opened before him that he had not known how to want until it was there.
Frances’ pulse became unsteady. She should have moved.
She knew that. She was a sensible woman.
Or at least she had once considered herself one.
Sensible women did not stand in nurseries at midnight with their hands on their husbands’ chest, gazing up at him as though the entire world had narrowed to the warmth of his palms and the question in his eyes. But she did not move.
Andrew’s gaze dropped to her mouth. The movement was small, barely anything. Frances felt it like a touch.
He leaned in the slightest degree. It was not enough to kiss her, only enough for the air between them to change. Her breath caught, and she knew he heard it, because his hands tightened at her waist.
She could have stepped back then. She did not.
She thought of every reason she ought to, such as the arrangement, the secret, her own resolve and the danger of mistaking grief for tenderness and tenderness for something far more difficult to survive.
Still, she remained.
His face was very near now. It was close enough that she could feel the warmth of his breath, close enough that the next moment, had it come, would have changed something between them neither could easily pretend away.
Then, the baby made a small, unhappy sound from the cradle.
Frances startled. Andrew stopped at once.
The spell broke so suddenly that Frances felt almost cold without it.
She stepped back, more quickly than she intended, and pressed one hand to her waist, where his fingers had been only a moment before.
“I should see–”
“She is asleep,” Andrew said, though his voice was rough.
Frances looked toward the cradle. The baby had turned her head and made another soft, snuffling noise, but she had not woken.
“Yes,” Frances murmured. “Of course.”
Her face felt warm. She hoped the room was dim enough to conceal it. Andrew cleared his throat and stepped away from her in a movement that was formal enough to wound and protect them both.
“You should rest,” he urged.
“So should you.”
“I will stay with her.”
Frances turned back to him. “You cannot remain awake all night.”
“I can.”
“That was not an invitation to boast.”
“It was a statement of fact.”
She almost smiled, but the emotion of the last few minutes still trembled too close to the surface. “I can stay, too.”
“You are exhausted.”
“I am not.”
He gave her a look.
Frances straightened. “I am a little tired.”
“You nearly fell asleep in that chair ten minutes ago.”
“That was contemplation.”
“It was not.”
She opened her mouth to argue, then found she had not the strength. Her limbs had grown heavy. Her eyes burned from the strain of the evening, and now that fear had loosened its grip, weariness pressed in from every side.
Still, she looked toward the baby. “I do not want to leave her.”
Andrew’s face softened, though only barely. “Then don’t.”
Frances glanced at him.
“Rest a moment. I will wake you if she stirs.”
“I am not going to sleep.”
“Of course not.”
She narrowed her eyes at him, but there was no bite in it. “You are very smug for a man who lost all command over a blanket earlier.”
His mouth curved faintly. “Pick your battles, Frances.”
She nestled into the chair, allowing a smile. Andrew was still seated on the opposite side of the cradle, with one hand resting lightly on the rail, watching the baby sleep.
For a time, Frances watched, too. The baby’s breathing was still not entirely easy, but it was steady. Every small sigh seemed to loosen another knot of fear inside her. Frances rested her head against the chair back for only a moment, meaning merely to ease the ache in her neck.
Andrew remained by the cradle. He was quiet now. The firelight touched the side of his face and caught in his fair hair, softening him in a way daylight never did. He looked tired, terribly so, but calmer. His gaze moved from the child to Frances and back again.
“You will wake me if she needs anything,” Frances murmured.
“Yes.”
“And if the fever rises.”
“Yes.”
“And if she cries.”
“I promise.”
Frances should have objected to the tenderness in that word.
Promise.
He had made too many of them, perhaps, and kept too many hidden. But tonight, in the dim nursery, she was too tired to guard herself against it.
Her eyelids lowered only for a moment. She heard the fire crackle. The baby breathed. Andrew shifted softly nearby. The house around them was quiet. Frances felt herself drifting and tried to pull back.
“I am still awake,” she whispered.
“I know,” Andrew murmured.
She had the vague impression that he was closer now.
Something brushed her temple, light as breath.
She might have imagined it, had the touch not been so careful.
Andrew’s fingers moved a loose strand of hair away from her face, tucking it gently back as though he feared even that might disturb her.
Frances did not open her eyes.
She should have. She knew she should have.
Instead, she let herself remain still, held between sleep and waking, with the last of her awareness fixed on the warmth of his hand, the quiet cradle beside them, and the strange, fragile comfort of Andrew keeping watch.