Chapter 27
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“My dear Duchess, what an honor! What an absolute honor!” Lady Pembroke greeted Frances, who smiled with all the serenity expected of a woman being welcomed by people who would have been equally delighted to see her trip over the threshold.
“Lady Pembroke, you are too kind.”
“Nonsense. We are delighted. Are we not, my dear?”
Lord Pembroke, standing beside his wife with a smile polished to uselessness, bowed low. “Beyond delighted. Your Graces, you honor us.”
Andrew inclined his head. “You are gracious to invite us.”
His voice was perfectly calm and his posture relaxed enough to suggest he had not noticed the dozen curious gazes already fastened upon them from the great hall.
He noticed, of course. Frances knew because she noticed, too.
They had scarcely crossed the threshold, and already the house had gone strangely alert.
Conversation continued, but with that particular rhythm of people trying very hard to sound as though they were not listening.
A lady near the staircase tilted her head too far.
Two young women standing beside a marble-topped table whispered with the speed of conspirators and the discretion of geese.
Frances kept her hand lightly upon Andrew’s arm.
United couple, she reminded herself.
Lady Pembroke’s smile widened. “You must be fatigued from the journey.”
“Not at all,” Frances replied. “The roads were very kind.”
“How fortunate. And how well you look, Duchess. Marriage agrees with you.”
There it was, the first dart, wrapped in silk.
Frances smiled more sweetly. “Does it? I shall have to inform marriage. I am sure it will be pleased.”
Andrew made the faintest sound beside her, enough to warm her more than it ought. Lady Pembroke blinked, then laughed as though Frances had been charming rather than mildly insubordinate.
“Delightful,” she declared. “Quite delightful.”
They were then led through the inevitable procession of greetings. Frances offered her hand, smiled, answered questions, received compliments, and returned them with enough grace to satisfy propriety and enough edge to amuse herself. Andrew remained at her side.
When Lady Morton asked whether Frances had found Sinclair House much altered by her arrival, Andrew answered before Frances could.
“Entirely,” he said. “And much improved.”
Lady Morton gave a pleased little gasp. By the time they had crossed the length of the drawing room, Frances’ cheeks ached from smiling.
Andrew must have noticed, because he leaned closer and said quietly, “Come.”
“Where?”
“To rescue you from felicitations.”
Before she could reply, he guided her toward a small alcove near a tall window, half-screened by a potted palm and a table arranged with lemonade, ratafia, and tiny iced cakes that looked far too delicate to satisfy anyone.
For the first time since entering the house, Frances could breathe.
She accepted the glass he offered. “Thank you.”
“For the lemonade?”
“For the moment of respite.”
His gaze moved past her shoulder. “It is not much of one.”
Frances followed his glance. Several pairs of eyes turned away too quickly.
“No,” she admitted. “They are still staring.”
“Let them stare.”
She looked back at him.
Andrew lifted his glass with infuriating ease. “It is in human nature to stare at beauty.”
For a moment, Frances did not understand him. Then, she did. Heat rose at once beneath her skin, swift and mortifying. She looked down at her lemonade as if it had suddenly become fascinating.
“That was very smoothly done.”
“Was it?”
“Do not pretend innocence,” she smiled. “It does not suit you.”
“I have never made any claim to innocence.”
“No. I imagine it would be rejected at once.”
His mouth curved. “By you?”
“Certainly by me. I am a severe judge of character.”
“I had noticed.”
She took a sip of lemonade to steady herself and found it too sweet.
She lifted her gaze and looked at Andrew.
He was dressed in dark blue, the cut severe enough to make every line of him seem deliberate.
His fair hair caught the light from the window.
His expression held the sort of controlled amusement that made him appear untouchable, though Frances knew better now.
“You do not look that bad yourself,” she murmured.
His brows lifted. “That… bad?”
“I would not wish to overstate matters.”
“Naturally.”
“It might encourage you.”
He pressed his hand to his chest. “A danger to us all.”
“Precisely.”
He leaned slightly nearer, enough that his voice lowered beneath the surrounding hum of conversation. “And what would constitute better than that bad?”
Frances’ pulse gave an inconvenient little leap. “Do not fish for compliments, Your Grace. It is unbecoming.”
“I was merely gathering information.”
“For what purpose?”
“Future improvement.”
She tried not to smile and failed. The trouble was that Andrew understood banter, not in the dull way some men did, where every jest became either flirtation too heavy to bear or condescension badly disguised.
He met her precisely where she stood, with dry amusement and enough restraint that she could still breathe.
It made her forget, at intervals, that they were performing.
Then she noticed Lady Pembroke looking toward them from across the room with a satisfied gleam. Frances’ smile thinned.
Andrew followed her gaze. “What is it?”
“Our hostess appears pleased.”
“That is usually considered a success.”
“With herself, I mean, not us.”
“Ah.”
“I suspect she believes she has acquired the season’s most interesting entertainment.”
Andrew’s expression cooled. “Then let us disappoint her by being dull.”
“You? Dull? That would require tremendous effort.”
“I am prepared to sacrifice.”
“Very well,” Frances agreed with a nod. “For the remainder of the afternoon, we shall be dull, devoted, and entirely unremarkable.”
Andrew lifted his glass. “An ambitious program.”
They failed almost immediately. When Andrew offered her his arm before dinner, three ladies noticed.
When Frances accepted a dish from him at table, Lord Pembroke smiled as though he had witnessed a declaration of undying affection.
When Andrew quietly removed a sprig of parsley from the edge of her plate because she had been avoiding it with obvious disdain, Frances nearly laughed, and the woman across from her looked as if she might faint from delight.
Dinner was long. Frances survived it by sheer will, two glasses of wine, and a private game of identifying which guests were listening most shamelessly whenever Andrew spoke to her.
Afterward, when tea had been served and the gentlemen had rejoined the ladies, Lord Pembroke approached them with an air of genial authority.
“I trust everything has been arranged to your comfort,” he informed them.
“I am certain it has,” Andrew replied.
“Excellent, excellent.” Lord Pembroke beamed. “You will find your chamber in the east wing. Lady Pembroke chose it herself. Fine view over the park.”
Frances’ smile remained in place.
Chamber… singular.
She waited for the correction. None came.
Andrew did not so much as blink. “You are very kind.”
Lord Pembroke looked pleased. “Think nothing of it. Newly married couples ought to have the best rooms in the house.”
Frances felt her heartbeat strike once, hard. Of course they had prepared one room. Why should they not? No true married couple would require separate chambers at a house party, at least not so early in marriage.
When they finally went upstairs, accompanied by a maid who carried a lamp and chattered about the house’s drafty corners, Frances felt the silence between herself and Andrew growing heavier with each step.
The east wing chamber was beautiful. A large fire had been lit.
Heavy curtains framed tall windows overlooking the dark parkland.
The bed stood at the center of the room, vast and canopied, with crisp white linens turned down and pillows arranged as though the bed itself were eager to remind them of propriety’s assumptions.
A sofa sat near the hearth, elegant, narrow, and wholly inadequate for a man of Andrew’s height.
The maid set the lamp down, curtsied, and left them.
Frances stood near the dressing table. Andrew remained by the door a moment longer, as though he too required time to accept the shape of the room. Then he stepped inside. The latch clicked softly behind him.
Frances moved first. She drew off her gloves, finger by finger, and placed them upon the dressing table with more care than such small items deserved.
“Well,” she murmured. “This is inconvenient.”
Andrew glanced toward the bed, then away. “Yes.”
She kept her distance. “I assume I need not remind you of our agreement.”
“No,” he replied. “I will take the sofa.”
Frances looked toward it.
“That sofa is not built for sleeping. It is built to suggest that sleep may be possible in theory.”
“I have survived worse.”
They fell silent. This silence was different from the ones downstairs. There, silence had been performance. Here, it had a fire, a bed and a closed door.
Frances turned away and began to unfasten the clasp at her throat. The cloak slipped from her shoulders, and she folded it over the chair. Behind her, Andrew moved as well. She heard him remove his coat, the faint slide of fabric, followed by the soft clink of a cufflink placed upon a table.
Every small sound seemed too intimate.
She focused on her own tasks. Earrings first, then the pins in her hair, though she removed only enough to loosen the weight of it.
Her maid would ordinarily have helped with the gown, but sending for one now felt unbearable.
It would require opening the door, admitting another person, acknowledging that the duchess of Sinclair stood alone in a chamber with her husband and could not manage her own laces.
She reached behind her. The first hook came free. The second did not.