Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Afew days later, Philip came to Sinclair House and struck Andrew in the shoulder with a wooden practice sword… hard.
Andrew stepped back as they sparred, more startled than hurt. “That was unnecessary, old boy.”
Philip lowered the sword. “It was entirely necessary. You were not paying attention.”
“I was paying attention.”
“You were looking toward the garden.”
Andrew adjusted his grip on his own practice sword and glanced, quite involuntarily, toward the lawn.
At a distance, Frances and Emma were walking along the gravel path beneath the early spring trees.
Emma’s bonnet ribbons fluttered in the wind, while Frances’ darker gown made a graceful line beside her.
The two women moved slowly, their heads inclined toward one another in conversation.
Frances had not looked back. Andrew told himself he had not expected her to.
Philip struck again. Andrew parried this time, listening to the sound of the wood cracking sharply against wood.
“You always were ungentlemanly,” Andrew commented playfully.
“And you always disliked being caught woolgathering.”
“I was not woolgathering,” Andrew frowned, keeping his gaze focused on Philip.
“No? What does one call staring across a lawn at one’s wife while armed with a sword?”
“Strategic observation,” Andrew offered.
Philip’s mouth twitched. “Of the shrubbery?”
“There may be weaknesses in the south hedge.”
“There are certainly weaknesses somewhere.”
Andrew laughed first, and then lunged. Philip blocked it with ease, then stepped back across the flagged terrace that served well enough for their old habit of sparring when neither wished to sit indoors and speak plainly.
The afternoon was cool but bright. A pale sun lay over the gardens, catching the damp shine upon the grass. Farther off, the ladies’ voices drifted faintly on the breeze, too distant to distinguish but near enough to disturb.
“You have grown slow,” Philip remarked.
“And you, my friend, have grown arrogant,” Andrew teased.
Philip shrugged. “I was always arrogant.”
“No,” Andrew corrected. “You were always solemn. Arrogance is an improvement.”
Philip gave a short laugh and struck again.
For several minutes, they fell into an easy rhythm.
Strike, parry, step, recover. The familiar movement steadied Andrew.
Philip had been his friend long enough that silence between them had never required explanation.
They had crossed from youth into responsibility by different roads, but each understood what it meant to carry a title like a weight rather than a decoration.
Still, Philip had become insufferably domestic in recent years. Marriage had done it. Love had made him worse.
“You know,” Philip said as their swords met again, “I still find the whole thing difficult to believe.”
“My footwork?” Andrew asked playfully.
“Your marriage.”
Andrew exhaled. “I wondered how long your restraint would last.”
“I have shown heroic restraint. Emma says I should have asked within the first ten minutes.”
“Emma has always possessed a taste for directness.”
“Frances says the same of you, though not as a compliment.”
Andrew’s sword paused half a second too long. Philip noticed, of course.
Andrew recovered and struck. “My wife says many things.”
“Your wife,” Philip repeated, with pointed satisfaction.
Andrew gave him a flat look. “Do not sound so pleased with yourself. You did not arrange it.”
“No, but I had despaired of ever seeing you suitably punished for your sins. Marriage may do what friendship failed to accomplish.”
“My sins?”
“Your avoidance, excessive competence and a near criminal fondness for ledgers, even if I do say so myself.”
“Ledgers are reliable.”
“So are dogs, yet you have not married one.”
Andrew nearly smiled. “There speaks a man who has never managed estate accounts.”
“There speaks a man who has forgotten how to enjoy dinner.”
Andrew’s grip tightened.
Dinner.
He immediately remembered Frances seated across from him, cutting her food into fragments and barely eating.
He remembered the warmth of her waist beneath his hand, the startled lift of her face to his, the way her breath had caught.
He remembered her hand against his chest, slight and trembling, though she would have denied the trembling had he named it.
Andrew struck too hard.
Philip blocked him, with his eyebrows lifting. “Ah.”
“Ah what?”
“That one had feeling behind it.”
Andrew scoffed. “You are imagining things.”
“I often do. Emma says marriage has made me fanciful.”
“Emma is correct.”
Philip lowered his sword briefly and looked toward the garden. “They seem well enough together.”
The ladies had stopped near the fountain. Emma appeared to be speaking with animation. Frances listened with her arms folded. Then Emma said something that made Frances look away, and though Andrew could not see her face clearly, he knew the tilt of her head well enough now to recognize discomfort.
He disliked it. He disliked even more that he recognized it.
“She misses her sister,” Philip said.
Andrew looked at him. “Emma?”
“Frances.”
Andrew glanced back toward the garden. “She has not said so.”
“She likely would not.”
“No,” Andrew agreed quietly. “She likely would not.”
Philip studied him with infuriating attention. “You notice a great deal for a man who keeps insisting this is only an arrangement.”
Andrew turned away. “I never said I failed to observe what happens in my own household.”
“No. You merely behave as though observation is a substitute for participation.”
Andrew’s gaze sharpened. “We are sparring, not sermonizing.”
“Then defend yourself.”
Philip attacked. Andrew met him with more force than finesse.
Their practice swords cracked together again and again.
For a few minutes, the conversation gave way to movement.
Andrew welcomed it. Movement was honest. A strike came, one answered.
There were no secrets, no insinuations, and no green-eyed wives asking him to trust her with truths he had sworn not to speak.
But Philip, being Philip, had patience enough to wait until Andrew’s guard lowered.
“And the child?” he asked.
Andrew’s next parry landed badly.
Philip stepped back. “You still have not told me.”
“There is nothing to tell.”
“That, my friend, is an insultingly poor lie.”
Andrew’s temper flared. “Careful.”
Philip showed no remorse regarding his question. “I am careful. That is why I am asking you privately, instead of allowing Emma to do it over tea.”
Andrew shook his head. “Emma knows better.”
“Emma suspects more than she says.”
“Then she may continue the practice.”
Philip’s expression sobered. “Is she yours?”
“No.”
The answer came at once, hard and sharp.
Philip held his gaze. “I believe you.”
“How generous.”
“I believed you before. I asked because you have given everyone else reason to wonder.”
“Everyone else may go to the devil.”
“They very often do. Society is predictable in that regard.”
Andrew turned his sword once in his hand, feeling his jaw tight. “This matter is none of your business.”
“No,” Philip said evenly. “Not mine.”
Andrew narrowed his eyes.
Philip did not retreat. He rarely did. “But it is Frances’.”
A cold silence fell between them. From the garden came a brief laugh. It was Emma’s, bright and warm. Frances’ followed a moment later. It was quieter, unwilling, and therefore more affecting. Andrew felt the sound before he could defend against it.
He had heard her laugh in the dining room, softly, despite herself, after insulting his ancestors and tolerating broth at his insistence. He had heard her whispering to the baby in the corridor at night, soothing a cry with words no infant could understand and every lonely heart might.
You managed the child well, he had told her.
She had smiled as though he had given her something far finer than praise.
He looked away from the garden.
“You do not understand the risk,” Andrew dared to admit.
Philip lowered his practice sword to his side. “Then help me understand it.”
“I… cannot,” he answered through a sigh.
“Cannot or will not?”
Andrew’s eyes flashed. “Both, if you require precision.”
Philip was silent a moment. Then, with that infuriating calm that made him far more formidable than anger would have done, he continued. “I know something of marrying a woman while keeping parts of oneself locked away.”
Andrew’s expression shifted despite himself.
Philip looked toward the garden, where Emma had taken Frances’s arm. “It does not keep her safe… not for long at least.”
“This is different.”
“Yes,” Philip agreed. “Every man tells himself that. It is how we excuse our cowardice while calling it protection.”
Andrew stepped closer. “Do not call me a coward.”
“Then do not behave like one.”
The words landed cleanly. For a second, Andrew wanted to strike him and not with the wooden sword, but with the full force of the fury that had risen too quickly, because fury was easier than fear. Fury was clean. It had edges, while fear seeped everywhere.
Philip did not move. That was the trouble with old friends. They knew which blows one would not truly deliver.
Andrew turned away first, breathing hard through his nose.
The garden stretched before him. Frances and Emma had resumed walking, their skirts brushing the gravel. Frances tilted her face toward the weak sun. Wind caught at the loose ribbon of her bonnet and sent it fluttering against her cheek. She lifted one hand to secure it.
The movement took him back with brutal ease to the nursery doorway: Frances by the fire, the baby in her arms, the child’s fist caught in her sleeve.
A mother and child.
He tightened his grip on the practice sword until his fingers ached.
Philip’s voice softened. “What happened, Sinclair?”
Andrew said nothing.
“Who is the child’s mother?”
“That is precisely the question no one must ask.”
“Someone already has.”
Andrew looked back.
“Frances,” Philip said. “Perhaps not aloud. Perhaps not today. But she is not a fool. She sees what is before her, and she sees what you refuse to show.”
Andrew’s mouth hardened. “She agreed not to press me.”
“She agreed before she cared.”
The words struck deeper than Philip could have known. Andrew had seen it happening, and still he had done nothing to prevent it. She had begun to care. He had no right to be moved by it. He had no right to want it.
Philip continued. “If you let her bind herself to the child while denying her the truth, you may hurt her more cruelly than if you had pushed her away from the beginning.”
“I did push her away.”
“I know.” Philip’s tone was dry. “With all the success one might expect when pushing Frances Norton away from something she has decided matters.”
Despite himself, Andrew’s mouth twitched.
Philip saw it and seized upon it at once. “There. Proof of life.”
Andrew grinned. “Do not become tiresome.”
“I have been tiresome for years. Marriage has merely refined the talent.”
Andrew looked toward the garden again. Frances had bent to examine some early flower Emma had pointed out. Her profile was softened by distance. There was nothing in the scene that ought to have felt like longing. And yet it did.
“I cannot tell her everything,” Andrew confessed.
It was not an admission he had intended to make.
Philip heard the difference. His expression changed, and now, the teasing was gone entirely. “But there must be something you can tell her.”
Andrew did not answer.
“Enough to help her trust you,” Philip added.
“She told me trust is not so easily given,” Andrew remembered.
“She is right.”
“I know she is.”
Philip regarded him for a long moment. “Then why ask for what you will not earn?”
Andrew’s jaw tightened, but there was no anger left strong enough to answer. A gust of wind moved through the garden. Frances looked up then, as though she felt herself observed. Her gaze travelled across the lawn and found him.
For one suspended moment, distance did not matter.
Andrew held still. She was too far away for him to read her expression properly, yet he felt the look all the same.
It could have been a question, a caution, or perhaps a memory, as unwelcome to her as it was to him, of his hand at her waist and her breath uneven between them.
Then Emma touched her arm, and Frances turned away. Andrew exhaled only after she did. Philip had gone very quiet beside him.
“What?” Andrew asked, seeing that the words burned bright on Philip’s tongue, and he was just waiting for the right moment to say them.
Philip’s brows lifted slightly. “Something has changed.”
Andrew turned sharply. “Nothing has changed.”
“No?” Philip looked toward the garden, then back at him. “You used to lie better than that.”
Andrew said nothing.
Philip rested the point of his practice sword against the flagstone and studied him with the grave patience of a man who had already drawn his conclusion.
“She matters to you,” Philip revealed.
Andrew looked once more toward the garden, where Frances walked in spring light beside her sister, unaware or pretending to be.
His answer came too late. “No.”
Philip’s expression did not alter.
“That lie,” Philip grinned, “was even worse than the one before.”