Chapter 28
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“Keep your reins loose through that turn,” Andrew instructed as they rode with the other guests the following morning.
Frances glanced across at him. “Is that instruction or criticism?”
“Advice.”
“How convenient,” she replied playfully. “Advice always sounds better when one is not the person receiving it.”
Andrew’s mouth curved faintly. “You ride well.”
“I know.”
“Then consider it unnecessary advice.”
“That is my favorite sort. Very easy to ignore.”
He almost laughed.
The morning had begun too brightly for the mood of the house party.
Guests had gathered on the gravel sweep after breakfast in high spirits, praising the weather, the horses and one another’s habits with the sort of enthusiasm that made Andrew distrust the lot of them.
Lord Pembroke had insisted the ride through the eastern woodland was one of the estate’s finest pleasures.
Lady Pembroke had declared it perfectly safe, which immediately led Andrew to suspect otherwise.
Frances had appeared in a dark green riding habit that did nothing for his peace of mind. It fit her too well.
That was his first thought, and because it was both useless and dangerous, he had attempted to dismiss it.
The habit was modest, expertly tailored, and entirely appropriate.
None of that altered the way it emphasized the long line of her figure, the proud carriage of her shoulders, or the elegant lift of her chin when she mounted without fuss and accepted compliments as if she had been born bored by admiration.
She looked like a duchess. No, worse. She looked like herself, and Andrew had spent the first quarter hour of the ride noticing far too much.
He did not remain constantly at her side. That would have invited notice, and notice was something they had in excess already.
Instead, he kept near enough to observe without appearing to guard her.
Sometimes he rode just ahead, speaking with Pembroke or another gentleman.
Sometimes he dropped behind, watching the hem of her habit move against the flank of her mare or the quick tilt of her head when she answered some remark from Lady Morton with a dry politeness Andrew recognized as warning.
She managed society well. She smiled when required, answered when addressed, and made herself neither meek nor conspicuous. But Andrew could see the strain beneath it.
The sky changed before anyone noticed. A gray bank of cloud rolled in from the west, swallowing the clean morning light with surprising speed. The air cooled. Leaves along the path turned their pale undersides to the wind.
Pembroke looked upward and laughed. “A passing shower, I expect.”
Andrew looked at the sky and did not share his optimism.
The first drops came fat and cold. Within minutes, the rain was no longer a shower but a sudden, sweeping downpour.
Horses tossed their heads. Ladies cried out.
Someone laughed with genuine delight. Someone else cursed, less elegantly.
The neat formation of riders broke apart as people urged their mounts toward whatever shelter they imagined nearest.
Andrew’s gaze found Frances at once. She was ahead of him and to the right, separated by two riders and a bend in the path.
Her mare sidestepped at the first sharp roll of thunder, but Frances steadied her quickly, leaning low and speaking to the animal with more calm than many of the riders possessed.
Andrew reached her in seconds. “Frances.”
She looked up, with rain already darkening the brim of her hat.
He glanced past her through the sheets of rain.
The main party had split, some turning back toward the house, others following Pembroke down the wider track.
The woodland ahead offered little shelter, but Andrew knew the shape of old estates well enough to recognize the low roof just visible between the trees.
“There is a lodge nearby.” He gestured. “It is closer than the house.”
“Lead on, then.”
Andrew did not wait. They rode together through the rain, with the path narrowing beneath dripping branches.
Mud splashed up around the horses’ legs.
Frances kept pace. The rain came harder for a time, drumming against leaves and leather, and soaking through Andrew’s collar and running cold beneath his cravat.
The hunting lodge stood in a small clearing, half-hidden beneath ivy. It was old but sound, with a sloped roof, narrow windows, and a small overhang beside the door. Andrew swung down first, secured his horse, then stepped to Frances’ mare. She had already gathered her skirts to dismount.
“I can manage,” she told him.
“I know.”
He lifted his hands anyway. For the briefest second, she hesitated.
Then she let him help her down. His hands closed around her waist. Even through layers of wet fabric, he felt the shape and warmth of her.
She slid from the saddle, landing close enough that her hands came to his shoulders for balance.
Rain streamed from the brim of her hat, and one loose strand of dark hair clung to her cheek.
Andrew turned away too quickly and led the horses beneath the trees before opening the lodge door. It gave with a stiff groan. The interior was dim and dry, smelling of old wood, dust, cold ashes, and damp wool the moment they crossed the threshold.
Frances removed her hat with a small grimace.
The rain had loosened her hair from its pins, and dark strands fell against her neck and temples.
Her riding habit clung to her sleeves and bodice, the green cloth deepened almost to black.
She shivered once, visibly, before managing to conceal the next one.
Andrew was out of his coat before thought could intervene.
“Here.”
She turned. “You will be cold.”
“Please,” he urged, and that was enough.
He set the coat around her shoulders. It swallowed her somewhat, the dark fabric heavy and broad, and the sight of her in it struck him with an intimacy so sharp he had to look away.
“Thank you,” she said softly.
He nodded.
For a while, they stood listening to the rain.
It battered the roof in a steady roar and slid down the narrow windows in silver streams. The rest of the party was distant now, reduced to faint calls and hoofbeats lost beneath the weather.
The lodge held them in a strange pocket of quiet, with only the storm outside and the sound of their breathing within.
Frances pulled his coat more tightly about herself.
“This is not how I expected the day to go.”
Andrew looked at her then. “No?”
“I expected more forced cheer, perhaps one or two pointed remarks, and at least three ladies pretending not to ask about our marriage.”
He grinned. “That sounds like a full morning.”
“Very nearly ambitious.”
“Then the rain has been merciful.”
Her mouth curved, but the smile faded too quickly. “I am not certain mercy is the word I would choose.”
Andrew watched her. The dim light softened the sharpness she so often used as armor.
Wet hair clung near her throat. A raindrop slid from one dark strand to the edge of her jaw, and Andrew watched it longer than he should have.
She looked younger in that moment, tired of carrying certainty before an audience.
“Nothing between us has been simple so far,” he said with a sigh.
Her gaze lifted to his.
“No,” she agreed. “It has not.”
The rain filled the silence again.
Frances looked toward the window, where the world beyond had blurred into gray and green. “They are still watching us, even when they pretend not to. If I move away from you, I am unhappy. If I stand too near, I am hiding something. If I smile, I am triumphant. If I do not, I am trapped.”
Andrew’s jaw tightened. “And you?”
She gave a small laugh without amusement. “I am always trapped in some story or other. Society is generous that way. It writes women into whatever role it most enjoys punishing.”
The words settled heavily in him. He thought of the drawing room at Sinclair House and Lady Ashford’s questions.
He thought of the breakfast table, of her insistence that appearances mattered because she was the one forced to answer for them.
He had understood it then, but not fully. Perhaps he still did not.
“You should not have to face it alone,” he admitted.
Frances turned to him. For once, she had no quick reply.
Andrew stepped closer without deciding to. It simply happened, as though the words had pulled him toward her and the storm had made the rest of the world irrelevant. He saw her fingers tighten slightly in the lapels of his coat. She did not move away.
“I know I have made it difficult,” he murmured.
Her eyes searched his. “You have.”
The honesty should have stung. It did, but less than it ought. He preferred it from her. Frances did not soothe merely to be kind, and therefore her gentleness, when it came, mattered all the more.
“I am trying,” he told her.
“I know.”
That was all. Two words, softly spoken, and they did more to unmake him than accusation.
Andrew looked down at her. She was very close now, close enough that he could see rain caught in her lashes, the faint color in her cheeks and the softness of her mouth when she was not preparing to use it against him.
He remembered the nursery. He remembered breakfast. He remembered wanting to kiss her and turning away.
This time, he did not turn.
His hand lifted slowly, giving her time to refuse, to step back, to summon some cutting remark that would return them both to safety. She did none of those things. When his fingers touched the damp strand of hair near her cheek, her eyes lowered for the smallest moment.
Andrew brushed it back. His knuckles grazed her skin. Frances inhaled. The sound nearly finished him.
He leaned closer, but not as a man taking what had not been offered. He did it slowly, almost carefully, as though the space between them were something sacred and fragile. Frances tipped her face up by the slightest degree.
Their lips met… barely. It was a brush, no more than warmth and breath and the rain loud around them. It was so slight that he might have called it an accident if every part of him had not gone still with wanting.
Frances did not pull away. For one impossible second, her lips softened beneath his, and Andrew felt the world narrow to that single, trembling contact.
Tenderness moved through him with startling force.
It wasn’t hunger alone, though that was there, too, waiting beneath the surface.
This was gentler, and therefore more dangerous, a question asked without words and an answer almost given.
Then, the door burst open and laughter spilled in with the rain.
“Good Lord, this weather!” a gentleman exclaimed.
Frances stepped back at once. Andrew straightened so sharply he nearly struck his shoulder against a beam.
Lord Everley and Miss Harcourt stumbled inside, soaked through and laughing, their faces flushed with the thrill of weather and impropriety narrowly avoided.
They were too absorbed in shaking rain from their gloves to notice the charged silence they had interrupted, or perhaps they noticed and possessed enough self-preservation to pretend otherwise.
“Sinclair!” Everley cried. “You found the lodge too, then.”
“So it seems,” Andrew replied.
Frances had moved to the side window, one hand still clutching his coat closed at her throat. Her face was turned away, but Andrew could see the color rising along her cheek. She did not look at him.
He did not blame her. He scarcely trusted himself to look at her either.
Miss Harcourt laughed and wrung rain from one ribbon. “What an adventure. Lady Pembroke will be in fits.”
“I imagine so,” Frances agreed.
They waited there until the storm softened from downpour to steady rain. More riders passed along the path, calling to one another, and Pembroke himself appeared with assurances that the house was not far.
Andrew retrieved the horses. When Frances emerged from the lodge, she held his coat out to him.
“Thank you,” she said.
Their eyes met only for a moment. That was enough. He took the coat, though it was warm from her and felt somehow altered in his hands.
The ride back was conducted among the others. Once, when the path narrowed, her mare drew close enough that the hem of her habit brushed his boot. Neither of them spoke.
By the time they reached the house, the rain had slowed to mist, and the guests were already turning the mishap into a story.
Andrew dismounted and looked across the courtyard at Frances. She was wet, composed, flushed, and refusing to look at him for too long.
The kiss had been almost nothing, a moment interrupted before it could become a choice. Yet Andrew knew, with a certainty that unsettled him more than the storm, that something between them had changed.
And unlike the rain, it would not simply pass.