Chapter 31
Chapter Thirty-One
By the third day after their return to London, Frances had begun to believe that Sinclair House had learned the art of avoidance.
Its corridors were too wide, its staircases too obliging, its doors too ready to close between one person and another. In the country, even silence had seemed to contain Andrew. In London, silence merely announced his absence.
He spent nearly every hour in his office.
At first, Frances told herself that this was no more than duty.
Estates did not arrange themselves, tenants did not write their own replies, and stewards, she supposed, existed chiefly to require answers.
It was perfectly reasonable that Andrew should be occupied after their return.
By the second day, reason had become irritating. By the third, Frances had ceased pretending not to notice.
“He is very industrious,” she remarked one morning, as she sat in the nursery with the baby asleep in her arms.
Nurse Ellis looked up from folding a small blanket. “His Grace has always been so.”
“Yes,” Frances replied, glancing toward the window, where the pale London light lay flat upon the glass. “But one does begin to wonder whether a single estate can require quite so much staring at ledgers.”
The nurse’s mouth twitched, though she wisely said nothing. The baby shifted in Frances’s arms, making a small sound of protest before settling again. Frances looked down at once.
“There now,” she murmured. “I did not mean to disturb your opinion of dukes. You may think well of them, if you choose. You have not been acquainted with enough to know better.”
The nurse gave a quiet laugh.
Frances smiled, but it faded almost at once.
It was dangerous, this tenderness. Not merely toward the child, though that was dangerous enough.
The baby had no sense of propriety, no respect for carefully arranged emotional boundaries, and a most unfair habit of curling her small fingers around Frances’s own as though attaching herself to a heart were the easiest thing in the world.
But it was not the baby alone. It was Andrew’s absence.
It was Andrew’s office door, closed whenever Frances passed it.
It was his voice, low and controlled, speaking to his secretary.
It was the brief, formal civility of meals, where he asked whether she had slept well and she answered that she had, though neither of them believed the other.
It was the way his gaze sometimes touched her mouth and then moved away too quickly.
Worst of all, it was the kiss.
Frances had made a noble effort not to think of it.
Her efforts had been spectacularly unsuccessful.
She thought of it when she dressed in the morning, when her maid pulled the ribbons of her stays and Frances remembered instead the pressure of Andrew’s hands at her waist. She thought of it when she sat with the baby and found herself wondering, quite uselessly, whether Andrew ever came to the nursery when she was not there.
She thought of it when she opened her novel and discovered that her heroine, who had been intended to be sensible, independent, and entirely untroubled by gentlemen, had acquired a most inconvenient intensity in the matter of blue eyes.
That was when Frances decided writing had to save her.
Writing, unlike feeling, could be governed.
A sentence might misbehave, certainly, but one could strike it through.
A character might attempt to wander into sentiment, but one could pull her back by force of ink.
A plot, if properly managed, need not surprise its author at all.
Frances therefore spent her afternoons in the small sitting room overlooking the square, with paper laid before her, pen in hand, and every intention of being disciplined.
For nearly half an hour, she succeeded. Then, she set the pen down and rose abruptly. The chair scraped behind her.
“This is intolerable,” she informed the empty room.
The empty room made no apology. She glanced at the papers on her writing table.
She banished the villain from the abbey entirely and introduced instead a locked cabinet, a missing letter, and a sensible aunt who did not approve of passionate behavior in corridors.
But then, just as she was about to sit back down, a knock sounded at the door.
“Come in,” Frances called.
A footman entered and bowed. “A note for Your Grace.”
She held out her hand. “Thank you.”
The seal was unfamiliar at first glance. Frances turned it toward the light and felt, without knowing why, the first prickle of unease. She broke it open. The handwriting was elegant, composed, and feminine.
Your Grace,
I hope you will forgive the liberty of this request. There is a matter upon which I should very much like to speak with you, and I believe it would be better discussed away from crowded rooms and curious ears.
If you are willing, might you meet me tomorrow afternoon in Hyde Park, near the eastern walk at four o’clock? I shall come alone, and I ask only for a few minutes of your time.
Yours sincerely,
Caroline Ravenshaw
Frances read it once, then again. The name settled heavily upon the room.
Caroline Carrington, the Viscountess of Ravenshaw.
Frances looked down at her unfinished novel, at the sensible aunt, the locked cabinet, the missing letter. Then she looked again at Lady Ravenshaw’s note.
For several days, she had tried to write herself into fiction because life had become too unruly. It seemed life had taken offense and answered in kind.
“You came,” Frances heard the woman address her even before she approached.
She halted upon the gravel path and found Lady Caroline Ravenshaw waiting beneath the thin shade of a plane tree.
Hyde Park stretched around them in all its civilized openness: carriages rolling at a decorous pace along the drive, nursemaids steering children away from puddles, gentlemen on horseback pretending not to observe ladies who pretended not to notice them.
It was a public place, and therefore proper.
It was also, Frances thought, quite private enough for mischief.
Lady Ravenshaw stood a little apart from the usual stream of walkers.
Her dark cloak was drawn close about her figure, and the veil of her bonnet softened her features without concealing the gravity upon them.
Frances knew her only as one knew many ladies of rank: by sight, by reputation, by the occasional exchanged bow across a crowded room. They had never spoken properly before.
“I received your note,” Frances returned.
“Yes.” Lady Ravenshaw’s gloved hands tightened around the handle of her reticule. “I feared you might not.”
“I nearly did not.”
The viscountess looked at her more closely. “But curiosity prevailed?”
Frances lifted her brows. “Prudence, I hope.”
A faint, sad smile touched Lady Ravenshaw’s mouth and vanished. “Then I shall be grateful for prudence.”
Frances waited for the ordinary civilities: the weather, the pleasure of seeing her, some delicate reference to the season. None came. Lady Ravenshaw glanced once toward the passing carriages, then stepped nearer, lowering her voice.
“I will not waste your time with false pleasantries, Your Grace. I asked you here because I am concerned for you.”
“For me?” Frances repeated.
“Yes.”
It was very prettily said. Concern from strangers was a curious article, often offered with one hand while the other searched for a knife.
Frances inclined her head. “That is generous, considering we are scarcely acquainted.”
“I know.” Lady Ravenshaw’s eyes softened. “And perhaps that is precisely why I may speak where others will not. Those closest to a situation are not always those most willing to tell the truth.”
Something cold and quiet passed through Frances.
“The truth about what?”
Lady Ravenshaw drew in a breath, as though the answer pained her.
“The child in your husband’s household.”
Frances held herself very still. A gust of wind moved through the trees above them, stirring the dry branches until they whispered together.
“What of the child?” she asked.
Lady Ravenshaw’s expression became almost pitying.
“She is his.”
Frances did not speak.
The viscountess continued, softly and with dreadful care. “There was an affair with a maid in his household. A young woman, unprotected, dependent upon his goodwill. When she found herself with child, His Grace hid her away. After the birth, he refused to acknowledge the truth publicly.”
“No.” The word came at once, instinctive and low.
Lady Ravenshaw’s gaze did not waver. “I am sorry.”
“You are mistaken.”
“I wish I were.”
Frances felt her fingers tighten inside her muff. She had expected many things from this meeting: some piece of gossip, some hint, some veiled request or warning. She had not expected this. Or perhaps she had feared it, which was far worse.
Andrew’s silence rose before her. She remembered his evasions whenever the child’s origins were mentioned, the careful arrangements and the haste with which he had offered her his name when scandal attached itself to them both.
No.
She would not allow the pieces to arrange themselves merely because a stranger had placed them before her.
“Such an accusation,” Frances spoke calmly, “requires more than concern.”
“I know.”
“Then why bring it to me?”
Lady Ravenshaw looked away toward the Serpentine, where the grey water lay smooth beneath the weak sun. When she spoke again, her voice trembled faintly, though whether from feeling or artistry Frances could not tell.
“Because I have watched too many women suffer from the selfishness of men who are never made to answer for it. Because society will pity a duke before it protects a wife. Because, if what I have learned is true, then you have been used shamefully.”
Frances’s stomach tightened. “Used?”