Chapter 17
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Frances had never realized how loud the sound of crunching an apple slice could be until she tried to eat one in the awkward silence of Harriet’s departure.
Each bite seemed to echo all the way across the lake, as if she were trying to crunch through a slab of rock instead of a very juicy, perfectly tart fruit.
Why is he not saying anything?
She was beginning to wish she had insisted on going after the girl, even if it would have only made things worse.
“I do not know much about your father,” Dominic said suddenly, with no context to help her respond.
Frances swallowed her mouthful of apple too soon and almost choked. “What do you want to know about him?”
“I am not sure.” Dominic cleared his throat as if he were the one who had some fruit stuck. “You have not mentioned a mother, though I can only assume you have one.”
“Had,” Frances said quietly, as she reached for a glass of cloudy lemonade and sipped away the discomfort. Both the literal and the figurative.
“Ah…” He nodded slowly. “And that is why you have been the one to care for your sisters?”
“It is.”
His brow furrowed at that, his gaze fixed upon the ripples that disturbed the lake’s surface. “Your father did not employ governesses?”
“I was twelve when she passed,” Frances explained, a different sort of lump lodged in her throat. “We had tutors and governesses for our education, but my father saw no need to employ anyone else to take care of us. I was old enough to take that role.”
Dominic turned abruptly, his frown deepening. “At twelve? That is no more than a child.”
She had no choice but to shrug, her mind drifting back to the first months after her mother was gone. She too had waited for someone more capable, more mature, to take over, but no one came. And she had soon realized that it was up to her, or they would all flounder.
“I did not think about that at the time,” she replied.
“Juliet, she is the youngest; she did not fully understand the situation, for she was but five years old. Lucinda was seven. She mostly just missed our mother and, though she understood what had happened, she struggled with the… permanence of it. All children, I think, struggle to comprehend how something, someone, can just be gone.”
Dominic averted his gaze. “Not just children.”
“No…” She saw the furrowing of his brow and wondered if he was thinking of her. The wife he had lost. The mother Harriet still mourned. The woman who had left such an obvious void in her wake: her husband a relative hermit, her daughter woefully unprepared and untrained for a life in society.
“But you were a child,” he repeated, his body turning toward her, that expression of sharp memory gone from his face. “That is too great a burden for one so young.”
Frances picked up another apple slice, just to give her hands something to do.
“But I got more time with our mama. I suppose I felt I… owed something in exchange for that. And there was no one else to play mother to my sisters, so it had to be me.” She nibbled the apple and swallowed, taking a moment to settle her thoughts.
“My father could not do it, and he did not want anyone replacing my mother, so he refused to consider nannies or anything like that.”
Another silence stretched between them, less awkward but more weighted than the first. There was more that Frances could have said but she held her tongue, hoping that Dominic might fill the quiet with a similar story about his daughter’s mother.
His wife. The ghost who seemed to haunt these grounds.
Did you love her so much that she could never be replaced in your heart or home? Is that why you will never remarry?
They were questions she both wanted the answers to and was apprehensive to hear.
Although, she did not know why. Why should she be anxious about hearing how much he had loved his wife?
Why did she feel a faint tremor of dismay that he just might have loved his wife that much, and may love her still? What business was it of hers?
“He must have loved your mother,” Dominic said, his tone flat.
An unexpected laugh found its way to Frances’ lips and her hand moved to cover it, to hide her smile.
“It is strange, but I cannot say for certain. I think they were dear to one another, and I think they had a wonderful friendship, but love? Romantic love?” She shook her head.
“If you did know him, you would understand my doubts.”
“Then, he felt obliged to her.”
Frances’ laughter faded, her hand falling back down to her lap. “Was that a question?”
“A theory,” he replied.
Is that what your situation was? Obligation? She did not dare to hope, and he was too unreadable to know with any certainty. Of course, she could have asked, but to muster the nerve to utter those words to him… No, it was impossible; they were not familiar enough for that sort of candor.
She ignored the fact that they had been familiar enough for him to put his arm around her in his study and stay, mostly alone, with her at a picnic. If she thought about that too hard, she would not be able to speak at all.
“Oh… well, I do not know if it was that, exactly, but he certainly had no desire to marry again. My mother made his life very easy, and I suppose he did not want to risk disruption. And he was five-and-forty; he probably could not stomach the effort it would take to court, marry, rebuild again,” she said instead, with a theory of her own.
“I have a cousin who will inherit, and my father seems perfectly content with that. All he needs to do now is get at least one of us married off.”
She snorted involuntarily, her hand rushing to cover her mouth again. As the eldest, she knew she should have been the one to lead the marital charge, but all she could do was laugh about the hopelessness of that particular outcome. Still, to snort like that was most unladylike.
“Do not do that,” he said softly. Strangely.
Embarrassment threatened to turn her cheeks as red as the strawberry tart that Harriet had gobbled down. “I did not mean to. It just… came out. I do not usually make such… um… uncivilized sounds.”
“That is not what I meant,” he said, a twinkle in his eyes. “I meant, do not cover your mouth when you laugh.”
“Oh…”
Her heart fluttered as if one of the dragonflies flitting across the lake were trapped inside her chest.
“Why do you do that?” he asked. “Should a laugh not be seen and heard? Joy itself, for that matter?”
Frances touched the back of her hand to her cheeks, their heat warming her cool skin. “It is a habit, I suppose.”
“Who taught it to you?”
“Myself,” she said quietly. “Those books I asked Harriet to read. I read them when I was much younger than her, to learn how to be a lady.”
He dusted a crumb of something from his trousers and his gaze returned to the still waters of the small lake.
“I may not have taught Harriet much about that, but I am glad she does not hide her laughter. And you are teaching her well, better than I expected, but do not instruct her to make herself so small that she disappears.” He cleared his throat. “Please.”
There was no rebuke in his words, just a simple request.
Does this mean he might allow me to stay beyond four weeks? A companion, perhaps, for Harriet? A chaperone?
She shook off the thought, for that was surely asking too much.
The rest of the month would suffice. Then, if there was still no place for her in London, she would ask him to provide her with a recommendation so she might teach more young women like Harriet how to be ladies.
Without diminishing the character that made them all so special, so unique.
“I have no desire for her to make herself small,” she said. “I will heed your request… and perhaps draw a line through some of the rules and demands from those dusty old books that no longer serve their purpose.”
He nodded slowly and glanced back at her. “Thank you.” He paused. “And thank you for warning my daughter about the ton’s judgment. I think she will listen to you, in a way she would not listen to me.”
“Let us both hope she does not decide to disregard the advice,” Frances said with a shy smile.
It was clear to her that he, too, must have missed some lessons in etiquette and conduct, for no duke that she knew of would have looked at an unmarried woman so directly, so intensely.
Not to mention the fleeting embrace that she could still feel if she just thought of it for a moment, and how he had leaned in, as if he had wanted to kiss her.
Her breath caught as he suddenly leaned in again, his hand on the blanket just an inch away from her knee, while his other hand reached for her.
She stared at him, her heart about to leap from her chest, her mind faltering completely as he slowly wound his fingertips through the lock of hair that framed her face.
What is he doing? My goodness… There are servants watching!
“A cherry blossom,” he said in that low, rumbling voice of his, as he held out his hand to her. There, in the center of his callused palm, sat a somewhat dented, pale pink petal. “It must have come from the gardens.”
She swallowed thickly, her fingertips shaking slightly as she plucked the petal from his hand. “Yes, I noticed that they are… just blooming,” she managed to rasp. “Very… um… beautiful.”
Had it been in her hair all this time? Why had no one said anything? Why had he not told her about its presence instead of… plucking it from her hair himself, with no warning? Did he not understand that her nerves were not sturdy enough for something like that?
“I am sorry that society has been so unkind to you, Lady Frances,” he said.
“I truly believe that Lord Sherbourne deserved it. It is a pity that he will not be punished. Any gentleman who puts his hand upon a lady, who frightens a lady, who has ill-intent toward a lady, ought to have some honor beaten into him.”
Lady Frances… The formality had returned, as had the distance, as he moved back to his position on the picnic blankets.
“I tried to,” she said, with forced lightness in her voice.
A quiet chuckle rumbled in his chest. “Yes, I daresay you did.” His eyes narrowed. “Do teach my daughter how to defend herself, but do it discreetly, and do not let her know that I have given my permission.”
“Your Grace, I am afraid I do not know much in that regard, only instinct,” Frances replied urgently.
She was no tutor of strength or violence. Surely, Dominic was the one who had greater knowledge of that, if he was wrangling livestock regularly.
“Then, teach her to trust her instincts,” he replied.
“Is that not your role?” she blurted out before she could remember her manners.
He looked at her once more, a sadness in his eyes. “She will heed it more if it comes from you, for she does not trust me as a daughter should.” His throat bobbed. “And I do not blame her.”
“What do you mean?”
She had not witnessed anything between Harriet and Dominic that she had not seen a hundred times in her own household, with her father and Juliet and, to a lesser extent, Lucinda. The push and pull between a father and his daughters. The quarrels, the squabbles, the perceived injustices.
“You asked me to trust you,” he replied vaguely, “and that is what I am endeavoring to do.”
Confusion pushed her eyebrows into a frown. What did that have to do with the question she had asked? It was no answer at all, just an evasion of one. Before she could persist, as if sensing that she might, Dominic got up and dusted himself off.
“I believe it is going to rain. We should return to the house before it begins.”
He offered his hand to help her up and she hurried to put her gloves back on, realizing with a shock that she had touched him with her bare hand earlier, when she had moved to stop him from halting Harriet.
With everything I teach that girl, I seem to be losing manners and courtesies of my own.
Mortified that she had done such a thing without realizing or apologizing, she jumped to her feet without his help, blushing furiously. He did not offer his assistance again as he began to walk toward the manor, with the expectation, no doubt, that she would follow.
After all, she was not going to sit and enjoy a picnic by herself.
They did not speak as they wended through the gardens, Dominic a polite few paces ahead, but as they reached the manor and silently parted ways, Frances paused to look back.
“What rain?” she whispered, for the sky was perfectly blue, the sun shining so brightly.
Evidently, he had been so eager to avoid her question that he had fabricated bad weather. Either that, or the dark clouds had been of the metaphorical kind.