Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
“Wait!” Frances yelped, shooting to her feet.
The duke rested his hand on the door handle, though he did not turn to face her. “If you cannot do it, you may leave.” He opened the door. “There will be a stagecoach in an hour.”
“Wait!” she repeated, as she hurried toward him and, with all the courage she could muster, reached out to touch his arm. To prevent him from leaving before she had even given her reply.
Goodness… It was like touching stone, the hard muscle a shock. She had not known an arm could feel so solid, and she had taken the arm of several gentlemen during the past seven years.
The duke seemed to bristle at the contact and pushed away from the door, putting a polite distance between them. “I have said all that needs to be said,” he told her. “You are either capable or you are not. I shall find out tomorrow, when you are either here or you are gone.”
“But… but I have not said all that needs to be said,” she replied, a bite in her voice.
She was no fool; he was setting her up to fail in this endeavor.
He had decided what he thought of her the moment she gave her name, suspicion in his every word, distrust in those sharp blue eyes of his.
Yet, he no doubt wished to avoid a quarrel with his daughter by pretending he had given Frances a chance.
But Frances had never backed down from a task that had been put before her, no matter how great or how impossible it might seem. That would not change today.
“Let me be certain I understand you,” she continued, breathless. “You want your daughter to debut at this Season’s debutante ball? The debutante ball that is barely five weeks from now?”
“I will decide after your month is done,” he replied, a muscle ticking in his jaw.
“You realize that will be to her disadvantage? Next Season would be better.”
He shrugged. “It is not what she wants. She will not be pleased if she must wait another year. So, as I said, either you believe you can do it or you do not.”
Harriet is beautiful enough that the rest might not matter…
After all, she was a duke’s only daughter.
The trouble was, the ‘rest’ always mattered…
and after what she had seen of Harriet’s decorum and behavior, she was already at a severe disadvantage.
The scandal sheets would relish tearing her apart.
Suddenly brimming with her own tingle of suspicion, she tilted her head and took a closer look at the duke’s handsome face.
She had assumed he had no understanding of society, especially considering there had been no recent information about him at all during her brief bout of research, but perhaps she was wrong.
Perhaps, it was because of his understanding that he clearly had so little respect for the institution. Still, he had put out that advertisement, so maybe he was making an exception to his disapproval for his daughter’s sake.
“Well… what are your objectives?” she pressed. “Do you want her to make a prosperous match or a love match? Do you want her to marry as soon as possible, or do you just want her to be in society as soon as possible?”
He stared at her as if she were speaking gibberish. “I have not thought about it.”
“Do you not think you should, as her father?” she countered, perplexed beyond measure.
If he was not interested in his daughter’s debut and did not care for society, then why place that advertisement at all?
She might have suspected that Harriet was the one who had placed the advertisement, yet the duke obviously knew about it.
So, why was he doing everything in his power to make it so difficult?
“Have you bothered to ask Lady Harriet what she might want from this?” Frances pressed, though it set her nerves jittering.
He was a duke; she should not be speaking to him so forcefully. But what choice did she have, if she was to have a hope of remaining here?
“All my daughter wants is to debut,” he replied flatly. “She is eight-and-ten. It is time for it.”
Frances dipped her head in a sharp nod. “Well then, that is something. A place to begin.” She paused.
“Fathers have all sorts of expectations when it comes to their daughters’ debut.
I… politely suggest that you consider what yours are, and inform me, so that I can bear it in mind as I prepare Lady Harriet. ”
He took a half-step toward her, assessing her as if she were some strange creature who had just appeared in his drawing room.
And when he took another half-step forward, she knew she ought to match his approach with a retreat of her own.
Yet, she remained rooted to the spot, unwilling to sacrifice an inch of the ground she had gained.
The air thinned, her head swirling with dizziness as she struggled to take a full breath.
He was so very close. Close enough that she could smell the rain and the earth on his skin, and better see the shape of the freckle in his eye: like one of the stars twinkling in the night sky.
And on his cheek, a streak of dirt that she longed to wipe away with her handkerchief.
He said nothing, a frown knitting his eyebrows.
Evidently, he had been expecting her to leave, to look at all the pitfalls and problems of fulfilling this task and decide it was not worth it. Well, he did not know the dogged determination of Frances Whitlock when she put her mind to something.
At the very least, it means a month away from my scandal. Maybe, that will be enough time for everyone to forget… And, perhaps, she might return in time to at least see Juliet head out to her debut ball.
“I accept,” she said, in case it was not obvious. “I accept the position.”
His frown deepened, his gaze searching her face as if she were a book to be read. Her cheeks bloomed with a warmth she could not hide, though it was not the familiar heat of embarrassment or anger; it was more like shyness, without the sting of feeling awkward.
Perhaps, it was the blush of being seen, after so long stuck being invisible.
“You will teach her?” he asked, his voice carrying a dark note of distrust.
She nodded. “I will teach her as if she were one of my own sisters.”
Tension bristled through his rigid posture, the cords standing out in his neck as if he were trying to hold something back.
He folded his arms behind his back, Frances gulping quietly as it forced his chest forward, for there was barely enough room between them for propriety as it was.
He did not speak, his fascinating eyes simply fixed upon her, clearly trying to find some hint of deceit that he would not discover.
“Mrs. Farrow!” he barked suddenly, making Frances jump.
Footsteps clacked across the entrance hall, the familiar, friendly face of the housekeeper appearing a moment later. “Your Grace?” she said, bowing her head. “Are you ready for tea?”
“Find a chamber for the tutor and her companion,” he replied, as if Frances were not there. “Introduce them to the staff and show them around. I will take tea in my rooms when you are done.”
With no acknowledgement whatsoever, leaving her without the fierce gaze that she had just been getting used to, the duke walked out. But not without muttering the death knell of “one month” as he left.
One month. I can do that. Surely, I can do that. How hard can it be? She prayed that thought would not come back to bite her as she offered a weary smile to the housekeeper.
“Well then, what do you say we start in the kitchens?” the ruddy-cheeked older woman said, with a warmth in her voice that almost made Frances weep. “We’ll get you some dinner, then find you a room so you can rest. I can show you the rest tomorrow.”
That sounded heavenly, but the weight of the challenge ahead of her made Frances hesitate. “But I imagine I am supposed to start Lady Harriet’s lessons tomorrow.”
“She doesn’t come downstairs until gone noon,” the housekeeper replied with a wink. “That’ll be plenty of time. Come on, let’s get you and Miss Bright settled.”
She took Frances by the arm, and Frances did not resist, allowing the kindly woman to lead her toward a hearty meal and, with any luck, the first dreamless, restful sleep she had had in almost a week.
In a surprisingly lavish, comfortable bedchamber, just below the domed spire of the east wing, Frances sat at a well-stocked writing desk. Outside the cross-hatched windows, night had fallen across this unfamiliar part of the world, two owls hooting to one another somewhere in the darkness.
The hour was late and she knew she should be fast asleep by now, with an early morning ahead of her, but there was one final thing she needed to do. If she put it off, she would never be able to sleep, her mind stirring the task around and around until she completed it.
Sliding a freshly cut piece of paper from a small stack, she dipped the nib of her quill in ink and paused.
What to say? What to leave out?
She chewed her lip in contemplation, as her mind drifted to the memory of the duke’s rain-soaked shirt and stubbled jaw; the gleam of his forceful gaze; the sweep of his long dark hair, wet from the downpour; the tear in his trousers that she still itched to repair.
“Was he really catching livestock?” she mused aloud.
He had not smelled bad. Far from it. He had smelled of a forest after a summer storm. But he had been rather dirty, his attire disheveled, in a state she had never expected to see a duke in.
Shaking off the thought, for it kept leading her back to the way his shirt had clung to his warrior-like physique, she began to write:
Dear Father,
By now, you will have read the letter I left for you. I hope you are not too cross that I did not discuss my plan with you, as I hope you will trust me when I say that this will be the best thing for us all. The shadow of my scandal cannot smother my sisters’ shine if I am not there to cast it.
I have reached my destination and am safe and well.
I am to be a temporary sort of governess to the Duke of Alderwick’s daughter. If you need assistance with my sisters, then ask Mrs. Garstang; she knows everything I know.
I expect to return in a month, when I hope that the harsh judgment I have received will have died down.
Sincerely Yours,
Frances
Scattering powder across the ink to dry it more quickly, she folded up the letter and stamped it with her seal, brought from London.
With a lump in her throat, she held the letter for a moment, as if she might imbue the paper with everything she was feeling, every bit of anguish that had sent her away from her home and her family.
“That includes your harsh judgment, Father,” she whispered, as she set the letter down and scraped back her chair.
Maybe a month away was exactly what her family needed—her father, most of all—to realize just how necessary she was. And maybe, upon her return, she might find that they had actually missed her. But perhaps that was asking for too much.