Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Trying to ignore the sound of a carriage pulling into the driveway, Frances walked across the landing at Scovell Hall and went towards to her bedroom. It was five minutes early.
She already knew who would be in the carriage and why they had come. Well, she did not know the name of the caller, but she knew their intention. There was a question to be asked and Frances must decide how to answer it.
“Your mother is looking for you, Lady Frances,” said Perkins, Lady Scovell’s maid, appearing from around a corner before Frances could shut herself in her room. “Your father will be waiting in his study at noon and your mother begs you not to be late in joining him.”
“Tell my mother that I only want a few minutes peace by myself, Perkins,” Frances told the maid. “I shall be downstairs presently.”
“Very well, Lady Frances.”
With compassion in her eyes, the iron-haired maid nodded and turned back down the corridor. Perkins had been with Lady Scovell for more than twenty years and had known Frances since she was a child. She, and probably all the senior servants, were well aware of the import of the day.
Closing her bedroom door, Frances went to her dressing table and sat down before the looking glass.
In the mirror, her face looked very pale and somber, her grey eyes like a winter sea and her grandmother’s silver necklace gleaming at her throat like something frozen.
The only hint of warmth lay in the iridescence of the opal pendant above the neckline of her simple white muslin dress.
“Cold as ice,” she whispered to herself, wishing that the suitor she expected to meet shortly would feel the same and decide not to declare himself after all.
She had been surprised at how quickly matters had moved with Lady Kempleforth after the matchmaker’s first short call at the house.
Frances had been civil but short with the expert called in by Lady Scovell to resolve her daughter’s unmarried status.
When Lady Kempleforth left without suggesting a single name, Frances hoped that she might not come back and that her mother would abandon this plan.
This hope had been disappointed a few weeks later.
A note from Lady Kempleforth had thrown her mother into a state of great excitement.
Apparently, the matchmaker did have a potential husband in mind: a man of high rank who wished to negotiate a marriage of convenience with a suitable stepmother for his young daughter.
Frances liked children, didn’t she? Yes, often more than adults.
This sparse description and the mention of negotiation sparked her interest, although she knew, and wanted to know, nothing of the man himself.
Frances had decided that it would only muddle her thinking if she had to think about real people, families and places.
Her mother had presumably learned his identity but Frances had asked her not to talk about it until matters were settled.
“He seeks a marriage of convenience,” Frances repeated to herself now in the looking glass. “But why?”
A mistress, perhaps? If this widower’s heart was already given elsewhere, that would explain why he did not seek love in marriage.
If this man really only wanted a stepmother for his daughter, perhaps he would be open to what Frances wanted too – or rather what she did not want.
That was one of the things that would have to be negotiated.
How would he react, she wondered a little nervously, when she told him that she never wished to lie with a man, share her husband’s bed or even be touched by him? If he wanted more children, it should certainly send him running. Frances knew the fundamental facts of life well enough to know that.
But if a man already had a mistress and a child, might he be open to a marriage of separate bedrooms and separate lives? It was worth exploring, perhaps.
Taking a deep breath, Frances stood and summoned her courage for the interview that must now take place.
A man she had never met, and whose name she did not even know, had come to Scovell Hall to ask for her hand.
When this question was asked, Frances must answer one way or the other.
The direction of her entire future rested on this one decision.
“Ah, here is my eldest daughter, Lady Frances,” said Lord Scovell, turning a grizzled but still handsome face towards the study door with a hopeful smile as Frances entered the room. “The very person you are here to meet.”
Frances nodded coolly to her father, ignoring the flicker of hurt she always saw in his eyes when she failed to return his smiles.
They had been friends once, she and her father; companions on long romps in the woods, swims in the lake and story-telling sessions before the fire.
Then, she had learned the truth about her beloved father and never recovered from it…
In Lord Scovell’s study, another man stood with his back to the door, looking out the grounds of Scovell Hall. Tall, strongly built and dark-haired, he turned as she entered and Frances found herself lost for words on seeing her dance partner from the ball at Morgan House.
“Frances, this is His Grace, the Duke of Westall,” began Lord Scovell, trying again to be jovial. “You mother mentioned that you have met once before, if only briefly. I am sure you must remember His Grace. Lady Kempleforth believes that you have a great deal in common.”
Hiding her utter confusion in a deep curtsy that kept her eyes on the floor, Frances tried to make sense of this coincidence.
If their encounter at the ball had conveyed one impression to her, it was that this man did not wish to marry.
He had also seemed to understand her own reluctance in that regard.
Yet, here he was, at Scovell Hall, seeking a wife, and on the recommendation of a matchmaker.
“Why might you want to marry me, Your Grace?” she asked without preamble, finally raising her eyes from the ground and meeting his as her heart thumped hard in her chest.
“Why, Frances, we ought to begin with lighter conversation than that,” stumbled her father, taken aback by such blunt questioning. “His Grace has not yet even had any chance to take refreshment. Why don’t you ask about Westall Park? Or His Grace’s journey here?”
“I too prefer to be direct, Lord Scovell,” stated the Duke of Westall, his deep blue eyes unwavering as they cut across Lord Scovell’s worrying and held Frances’ gaze.
“It is a very natural question to ask. I wish to marry because it is my duty to marry, and I wish to marry you, Lady Frances, because I cannot think of any other lady who would understand me so well.”
If he had spoken of love, Frances would have determined to turn him down, duke or not.
Love was surely ridiculous in this kind of arrangement, and only a fool or a blackguard would try to persuade a woman into marriage on such an account with so little acquaintance.
The Duke of Westall was clearly neither of these things.
“I understand and respect duty,” Frances told him. “Still, I would like to know more about your ideas of duty.”
Seemingly amenable to the preliminaries of the negotiation she wished to open, the duke nodded his agreement and turned his eyes to Frances’ father.
“Lord Scovell, might I beg a few minutes with Lady Frances in private? If our minds are as alike as Lady Kempleforth supposes, I believe we can reach an agreement very quickly.”
“Oh, yes, I see,” replied Lord Scovell, swallowing, seemingly still struggling with the speed at which the conversation seemed to be moving. “Well, then. You young people talk together and then we can reconvene. I shall be in the hallway if you need me.”
Looking baffled, he ambled from the room, nodded to Frances in what she supposed was intended to be a reassuring manner, and then closed the door behind him.
“What is this, Your Grace?” Frances asked the duke as soon as they were alone. “You were the last man on earth I expected to be seeking a wife.”
“But not the last man you might consider marrying?” he returned, his midnight-blue eyes inquiring just as much as his words.
As he spoke, the Duke of Westall walked across the study and stopped a few steps away from Frances. Close enough that she could smell the faint cologne he wore, but not so close that she felt any need to shrink back from him.
“No, you are far from the last man I would marry,” she conceded, thinking of Oswald Keeton with a shudder, and also of how different it had felt to dance with this man after Oswald that night at the Morgan ball. “You dance very well, Your Grace. That cannot be said of all men, you know.”
“I enjoyed our waltz very much, Lady Frances. At first it was only an escape, but you dance very well too.”
While it did not seem that these words were spoken in deliberate jest, they did make Frances laugh and hearing her laughter seemed to bring a smile to the duke’s face too.
“You cannot possibly decide to marry someone on the basis of a single waltz!” she told him, shaking her head.
“Why not?” the Duke of Westall returned with an amused shrug. “I shall do as I please. People marry for far more foolish reasons every day. Love at first sight, for instance, or status, or sheer desperation.”
“None of those things apply to you,” Frances stated very surely, and still smiling. “No more do they apply to me.”
“Exactly. So, why not marry only because I liked holding you in my arms and waltzing together, and you enjoyed it too?”
Frances had no answer to this and could not deny that she had enjoyed dancing with the duke and even being in his arms. Perhaps this was because he had been solicitous of her comfort in how he held and touched her, and apologetic for his initial impropriety in seizing hold of her.
His strength had felt more like defense than threat when they were close.
The Duke of Westall could not know that she had grown up horrified at the idea of touching or being touched by a man.
Thankfully, as an unmarried woman, well-protected by her family and society, very few men ever came so close to her, except when dancing.
Still, such slight physical contacts often repelled her, especially when her dance partner was Oswald Keeton.
In her continued thoughtful silence, he spoke again.
“If we must each marry someone, and it seems neither of us will get any peace until we do, then let us marry each other, Lady Frances. If you need any more reason, know that my daughter needs a stepmother and that she is the sweetest child in the world.”
“Doubtless you are biased,” Frances commented with another smile, touched by the duke’s affection for the girl. “But that is indeed a very good reason to marry. I should like very much to be a stepmother, far more than I would like to be a mother, in fact.”
Now Frances’ face was serious again. She must make her main point before they went any further in this negotiation, or risk some fundamental misunderstanding.
“You like children, but you do not want any of your own?” the duke asked her, curious rather than judgmental, just as he had been when she told him at the Morgan ball that she did not wish to marry.
“I would prefer a marriage in form only,” said Frances. “Lady Kempleforth said that you too sought a marriage of convenience.”
“In form only?” the Duke of Westall queried, an interested glint in his deep blue eyes. “I wonder if we mean quite the same thing. A marriage of convenience is a broad term, I know.”
Frances took a breath and considered her next words carefully.
“I do not wish to share a bedroom,” she told him.
“The Duchess of Westall would have her own suite, adjoining that of the Duke of Westall,” the duke responded. “It contains bedroom, dressing room and private sitting room. You would have all the space you required.”
There was too much ambiguity still in this. An adjoining suite suggested that a married couple could pass easily and frequently between one another’s rooms. This was the last thing Frances wanted.
“I do not wish to share a bed,” she clarified.
“Never?” asked the Duke of Westall softly, puzzlement and interest both evident in the expression on his ruggedly handsome features.
“Never,” Frances whispered although the word seemed to catch in her throat as she met those eyes that were like two pieces of the midnight sky.
Had he moved nearer? Or had she only become more conscious of his proximity as they broached this very intimate topic? A strange tension had come from nowhere and now permitted the atmosphere of the room.
“Are you entirely sure that you never wish to share that experience with me, Lady Frances?” he asked in a low voice that seemed to make something deep inside her vibrate.
Abruptly, Frances recalled that moment when the Duke of Westall had touched his lips to her glove in farewell, ever so lightly and swiftly that her mother had not noticed. It had sent a shock through her body at the time, and the sensation was repeated again now, leaving her breathless.
His eyes were watching her intently but she could form no response to his question. Why was he looking at her like that? Out of nowhere, it suddenly occurred to Frances that this man might kiss her. Worse, she might kiss him back.
After a few moments, however, the Duke of Westall smiled again, seeming satisfied with something he saw in her despite her silence. This certainty infuriated Frances for a moment. Did he think she was not in earnest?
“I think we understand one another,” he said, stepping back from Frances and seeming to break the spell that had fallen on them. “Rest assured, Lady Frances, that I would never do anything that you did not want.”
Frances nodded, still trying to master her surging blood and tremulous mind. His words were reassuring, but could she trust them? How could she be sure?
“Do you promise?” she asked him and the Duke of Westall put his hand over his heart.
“I am a man of my word, Lady Frances. I promise never to do anything that you do not want. I also promise to do everything that you do want.”
A strange, involuntary shiver passed through Frances’ whole body at these vows The duke seemed to be saying that he would leave her alone, and free of intimate attentions, as long as she wished it. She had always wished it and always would, wouldn’t she?
“Shall we call your father back in and tell him to prepare the marriage contract?”
To her own surprise, Frances found the answer very simple, part of her already feeling betrothed to this man, despite her doubts and fears.
“Yes.”