Chapter 11
Chapter Eleven
“She is thoroughly appealing,” Frances said.
The words escaped before she could dress them in wit or restraint. They were plain, almost foolishly plain, and for that reason she felt heat rise at once beneath her skin.
The Duke didn’t say anything. She glanced back down into the cradle, where the baby slept with one fist curled near her cheek and her little mouth pursed as though she had quite exhausted herself with her earlier indignation.
The firelight touched the child’s dark lashes and the soft curve of her brow.
Something in Frances’s chest gave an unexpected little pull.
He was standing near the door, one shoulder almost touching the frame, with his arms folded across his chest. The pose might have seemed careless in another man.
In him, it was control disguised as ease.
Even in the warm nursery, with the scent of milk and clean linen softening the air, he looked as though he had brought a draught of winter in with him.
The room seemed suddenly smaller, though it was not.
The fire gave a low crackle in the grate.
The baby slept on, innocent of the strange tightening in the air.
Frances became aware of Andrew’s height, of the breadth of his shoulders beneath his dark coat, of the pale gold of his hair where the firelight found it.
His eyes held hers for a moment too long, blue and guarded and almost unwillingly intent.
Her pulse gave one most inconvenient leap. Then he straightened.
“There are matters we must make clear,” he began.
The warmth of the moment vanished so swiftly that Frances almost smiled at the efficiency of it.
Of course. A tender scene had threatened to become human, so His Grace had found refuge in rules.
“I suspected there would be,” she replied.
“The child is my responsibility.”
His tone was colder now. Not cruel, precisely, but fixed and formal. It was the same tone a man might use when speaking of estate accounts or a difficult tenant.
Frances went still. “Yes, you mentioned that before our marriage, though without your usual abundance of detail.”
“She is not yours to be troubled with,” he added.
Frances looked from him to the cradle. The baby’s breath came in tiny, uneven sighs. One hand had slipped free of the blanket. The sight of it, impossibly small and soft, made Andrew’s words feel all the more severe.
“She is an infant,” Frances said. “Not an unpaid account.”
His mouth tightened. “You know perfectly well what I mean.”
“No. I know what you said. Those are often very different things.”
“This is not a debate.”
“That is fortunate, for you are doing rather poorly.”
His gaze sharpened. “Frances.”
It was the first time he had said her Christian name without ceremony.
The sound struck her with absurd force. Frances had heard her name spoken all her life by her family, servants, acquaintances, even gentlemen who had attempted flirtation with various degrees of skill and failure.
But from him it sounded different, more dangerous, less like a name than a hand at her wrist.
She hated that she noticed. She hated still more that she liked it.
“Andrew,” she returned, very calmly.
He stilled.
It is only fair, she thought.
If he meant to disarm her, she would return the courtesy. For an instant, his composure flickered. But it was not much. He was too practiced for that. Still, Frances saw the slight tightening at his jaw, the brief darkening of his eyes, and felt an unreasonable satisfaction.
“The child’s care,” he said, after a moment, “will remain under my direction. Nurse Ellis is competent. Mrs. Carter oversees what is necessary. You are not required to involve yourself.”
“Not required,” she repeated.
“No.”
“And if I choose to?”
He lifted an inquisitive eyebrow at that. “I would advise against it.”
She folded her hands before her, because she had discovered that when one very much wished to throw something at a duke, stillness was often the most dignified alternative.
“Do you advise,” she asked, “or command?”
“In this house, there is occasionally little distinction.”
“How convenient for you,” she scoffed.
“Frances.”
“There it is again,” she said. “My name used as punctuation. I begin to see the pattern.”
The corner of his mouth shifted as though he very nearly smiled. It did not last, but she saw it, and the sight annoyed her because it pleased her.
“You are determined to make this difficult,” he said.
“I am determined not to be arranged upon a shelf beside the porcelain.”
“No one intends to put you on a shelf.”
“I am pleased to hear it. I dislike dust.”
His eyes held hers for a moment, and Frances wondered, inconveniently, whether anyone ever spoke to him like this. Perhaps not. Perhaps dukes passed through life surrounded by nods, bows, and nervous agreement until contradiction became a novelty.
If so, she would have to be very careful. Novelty could so easily be mistaken for charm.
“You must understand,” Andrew told her more quietly now. “There are circumstances surrounding the child which cannot be discussed.”
“With me?”
“With anyone.”
“I am not anyone.”
The words left her before pride could prevent them.
A silence followed. Frances felt the foolishness of having said it, not because it was untrue.
She was not anyone. She was his wife, however inconveniently acquired.
She had stood at an altar beside him. She had entered his house.
She had taken his name. She was expected to smile before society, absorb its speculation, and become part of whatever story he had chosen to tell.
But the moment the words were spoken, she heard something else in them: a claim, a small, unwelcome claim.
Andrew looked at her with an expression she could not read. The firelight made his face all angles and restraint, but there was something beneath it. Something not unlike pain.
“No,” he admitted. “You are my wife.”
Her breath caught. It ought not to have mattered. Wife was only a word now, an arrangement made necessary by scandal, family pressure, and society’s appetite for disgrace. Yet from his mouth, in that quiet nursery, with the baby asleep beside them, it did not sound like ink upon paper.
It sounded like something alive.
Andrew continued before she could decide what to do with the feeling. “And as my wife, you will be treated with respect. You will have every protection my name, fortune, and position can provide. No one in this house will slight you. No one in society will do so without answering to me.”
Frances believed him. That was the difficulty.
She believed him so immediately that it unsettled her.
There was nothing ornamental in his promise.
There was no gallantry designed to charm, no pretty flourish meant to flatter.
He spoke as though her protection had already been entered into the ledgers of his conscience and would be honored whatever the cost.
“But?” she asked.
His face closed.
“But this marriage is for appearances. Nothing more.”
There it was. The words should not have hurt.
Frances had entered this marriage with clear eyes.
No one had promised love. No one had even hinted at tenderness.
She had not married Andrew Hill because of affection, and he had certainly not married her because his heart had overpowered his judgment.
Their union had been arranged beneath the hard light of scandal, propriety, and necessity.
Still, the words found a tender place. Perhaps because she had held the child. Perhaps because he had looked at her while she did so as if, for one moment, she had altered the whole shape of the room.
Frances drew herself straighter. “I understand.”
“You are not to ask questions regarding the child,” he ordered.
“And if questions arise naturally?”
He frowned. “They are to remain unasked.”
“How tyrannical.”
“How necessary.”
She almost smiled. “To whom?”
“To her.”
That silenced Frances. She looked back at the cradle.
The child slept without knowledge of secrecy, scandal, or the cold bargains adults made above her head.
Her tiny face was turned toward the fire, and her lips faintly parted.
She looked utterly helpless, utterly trusting.
It was almost unbearable to think how many lies had already gathered around so small a life.
“You believe silence protects her,” Frances whispered.
“I know it does.”
“No,” she replied softly. “You hope it does.”
Andrew’s jaw tightened. The reaction told her she had struck too close to something. Frances did not know what, but she felt it there, behind his refusal, behind the hard wall of command.
“I did not bring you here to investigate,” he reminded her.
“No,” she answered. “You brought me here to be your wife in public and your inconvenience in private.”
“That is not what I said.”
“It is what you meant.”
“It is what you decided I meant.”
“Then correct me.”
He did not. Frances held his gaze, and some of her anger softened into something more complicated.
He was not a simple man, whatever society thought of his smiles.
There were locked doors in him, entire corridors of them.
She had known guarded people before, being one herself, but Andrew’s reserve was not merely pride.
It was protection, a barricade built long ago and maintained at great expense.
Still, a barricade could imprison as easily as defend.
His expression eased by the smallest degree. “We have been married for less than a day. Some errors must be allowed.”
“How alarming that you admit to any.”
“Do not grow accustomed to it.”
“Too late. I shall record the occasion.”
“In one of your novels?”