Chapter 26
Chapter Twenty-Six
“We have been invited to a house party,” Andrew said a few days later, at breakfast.
Frances looked up from her toast. Andrew had intended to introduce the matter with more ease, something casual, perhaps, something that would make the invitation sound like an ordinary social obligation rather than precisely what it was: an opportunity for society to inspect their marriage at close range and decide whether it satisfied curiosity.
But there was very little point in softening facts for Frances. She had a way of finding the sharp edge regardless.
“A house party,” she repeated.
“At Lord and Lady Pembroke’s. It begins in two days.”
Her brows lifted slightly. “And you think we should attend?”
“I think avoiding it would draw more attention than accepting.”
“Ah,” she said, returning her gaze to the toast. “So it is not a pleasure. It is strategy.”
“At present, most pleasures are strategy.”
“That sounds like a very sad way to live.”
Andrew unfolded his newspaper, though he had no real intention of reading it. “It has proved efficient.”
Frances made a soft sound that might have been amusement or disapproval. With her, it was often both.
They were seated across from one another in the breakfast room, with pale morning light falling across the table and turning the silver coffeepot into a dazzling nuisance.
The baby had slept unusually well, according to the nurse, and the whole house seemed lighter for it.
Even the footmen moved with less caution.
Frances wore a morning gown of soft blue muslin, simple enough for breakfast, but made elegant by the line of her neck and the way her hair had been pinned loosely at the back of her head. A single curl had escaped near her cheek.
Andrew noticed it. Then wished he had not.
Frances spread marmalade over her toast with excessive attention. “Very well. We shall attend.”
He glanced at her. “That was easier than expected.”
She paused only for a moment. “I don’t see why it wouldn’t be. After all, I am capable of reason.”
“I had begun to suspect as much.”
She looked at him over the rim of her teacup. “How generous.”
“I try.”
“No, you do not.”
Despite himself, his mouth curved.
Frances set down her cup. “But if we attend, we must do so properly.”
“Meaning?” His amusement pierced through his composure.
“Meaning we must look like a united couple.”
Andrew stilled only slightly. “We are married.”
“Yes, that is the legal portion. I refer to the theatrical one.”
“Theatrical?” He lifted an inquisitive eyebrow.
“Society does not care what is true. Surely you have learned that by now. It cares what is visible. If we go to this house party, we cannot appear like two strangers who happen to share a carriage and a scandal.”
Andrew leaned back. “That should not be difficult.”
Frances tilted her head. “Should it not?”
“No.”
“You may find it challenging.”
“Why?”
“Because you often act like a stranger.”
He lowered the newspaper fully. “I live in the same house as you.”
“So do the footmen. That does not make them my intimate acquaintances.”
“Well, the footmen do not argue with me over breakfast,” he countered with more vigor than he dared admit.
“Perhaps they lack opportunity.”
“Or courage.”
“Or perhaps they are wise enough to know you would end the conversation the moment it became inconvenient.”
That struck closer than she could have known. Or perhaps, she knew precisely.
Andrew regarded her across the table. “Is this still about Lady Ashford?”
“This is about you,” Frances said pleasantly. “Lady Ashford was merely a symptom.”
“A symptom.”
“Of your tendency to become remote at precisely the moments when a normal husband might speak.”
He frowned this time. “I speak when there is something to say.”
“And at a crowded event, silence will only make people talk more.”
“People will talk regardless,” he reminded her.
“Yes, but I prefer not to hand them a full script.”
He almost laughed. “Do you plan to tell me what to say?”
“No.”
“Now, that is a relief.”
“I plan only to remind you to act like a husband.”
The word hung between them.
Husband.
It was absurd how familiar and strange it sounded at once. He had heard it from servants, from callers, from formal letters addressed to him since the wedding. Yet on Frances’ lips, it became something else, something closer to challenge.
Andrew reached for his coffee. “That role was not part of our agreement.”
“Appearances were.”
He paused. Frances held his gaze calmly, though there was a spark of triumph in her eyes because she knew she had him. That was the trouble with Frances. She made winning an argument seem less like victory and more like invitation.
Andrew took a slow sip of coffee and set the cup down. “Very well.”
Her brows rose. “Very well?”
“I will try.”
“That sounded painful,” she pointed out with delight.
“It was.”
“I appreciate the sacrifice,” she offered.
He wasn’t able to take his eyes off her.
“I am certain you do.”
She took another bite of toast, looking far too satisfied.
After a moment, she added. “And I expect you not to leave me standing alone.”
Her comment caught him slightly off guard, but he regained composure quickly.
“I do not make a habit of abandoning women in drawing rooms.”
“No, you make a habit of vanishing into silence while remaining physically present. It is more difficult to explain.”
“My word,” he feigned shock, “I had no idea I possessed such variety.”
“You possess multitudes, Your Grace,” she eyes him playfully, while finding faults. “Most of them aggravating.”
He gave her a dry look. “And you give orders easily.”
Frances calmly stirred her tea.
“I beg your pardon?” she asked.
“You heard me.”
“I cannot imagine so. It sounded almost like a complaint.”
“It was an observation.”
“Then you may observe more quietly.” Her mouth curved as she lifted the cup to her lips, entirely pleased with herself.
Andrew should have returned to his newspaper.
He meant to. The invitation, the house party, the practical matter of appearing united before society…
these were all concerns that required thought.
There would be guests who watched too closely, ladies who asked delicate questions with sharpened smiles, and men who pretended indifference while measuring every glance between him and Frances.
He should have been considering all of it.
Instead, he watched her lips. It was not intentional, at least, not at first.
She had a small smear of marmalade at the corner of her lower lip. She did not notice it. She was too absorbed in buttering another piece of toast with the serene confidence of a woman who had just won three exchanges and intended to pretend she had not been keeping score.
The sunlight touched her face and warmed the curve of her cheek.
It also caught on the faint color that remained there after their banter.
She said something to the footman about more tea, but Andrew barely heard it.
His attention had narrowed to the shape of her lips as they moved, the softness of them, the quick intelligence that made every word she spoke seem alive before it had fully left her mouth.
He ought to have looked away. Yet, he did not.
The memory came without permission: the nursery, dim and hushed, Frances standing close enough that her hands rested against his chest. He remembered her breath catching and that impossible moment when he had nearly leaned in and she had not stepped back.
He wondered what she would have done if the baby had not stirred.
The thought struck him with such force that his fingers tightened around the handle of his cup.
Kiss her.
The words formed in his mind with dangerous simplicity.
He wanted to kiss her. He wanted to know whether the sharpness of her words would soften beneath his mouth, whether she would startle, then yield, whether her hand would rise to his shoulder, his jaw, the place over his heart where she had steadied him once already.
He wanted it enough that the wanting itself seemed to move through him like heat.
Frances looked up then. For one suspended second, their eyes met.
Andrew knew immediately that he had been staring too long.
Her expression changed, not greatly, but enough.
A flicker of awareness passed through her face.
Her lips parted slightly, as if she meant to speak and had forgotten the words.
The marmalade still glistened at the corner of her mouth.
He could have reached across the table and brushed it away. He imagined doing it: his thumb against her lip and her breath catching again. He imagined that startled, bright, unguarded look he had seen too rarely and wanted too much.
Then another memory rose, colder and older…
a cradle in a dim room, a child’s weak cry, his mother’s pale hand lying lifelessly in his own and the silence after.
At ten years old, he had been standing outside a closed nursery door and made himself a promise with all the fierce certainty of a child who had seen too much.
He would never be a father. He would never be a husband in any true sense.
He would never love a child so much that its loss could hollow him out.
He would never love a woman so much that grief might take her from him while she still breathed.
He would never build a life upon tenderness when tenderness could be ripped away without warning and leave only silence behind.
Yet, here he was, with a child that slept upstairs beneath his roof and a wife who sat across from him with sunlight on her hair and marmalade on her lips. And his first thought had been to kiss her.
Andrew looked away. The movement was abrupt enough that Frances must have noticed.
He reached for his knife, though there was nothing left upon his plate worth cutting.
He forced his attention to the eggs, the toast, the coffee cooling beside him.
Those were ordinary things. Those were manageable things, things that did not threaten to unmake vows sworn in childhood and hardened over twenty-one years.
“You have marmalade,” he told her, before he could stop himself.
Frances blinked. “What?”
He gestured vaguely to his own mouth, still not quite looking at hers. “There.”
Color rose swiftly in her cheeks. “Oh.”
She took up her napkin and dabbed at the corner of her lip. “There?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you.” She spoke more quietly than before.
Andrew lifted his coffee and took a drink, though it had gone lukewarm. Frances returned to her breakfast, but the earlier ease had altered. Something had passed between them, unnamed and uninvited, and now it sat at the table as surely as any guest at Pembroke’s house party would.
He opened his newspaper again. This time he did not pretend to read.
He stared at the printed page and saw only Frances’ lips, the cradle upstairs, and the long shadow of a promise he no longer trusted himself to keep.