The heat turned into a chill reminder of all that had changed.
“As you’ve never needed to learn to write with the left hand before,” Frances said, “I don’t suppose you could know how skilled a teacher I am.”
“But I do know,” he said, not wanting to explain how much she had helped him answer Caro’s letters. “And surely such compliments are within the bounds of friendship.”
“If you say they are, then they are.” Frances slapped her hands onto her knees, pushing herself upright. “If you say we’re friends, then we’re friends.”
So abrupt suddenly. Had he offended her? “Ah… no, you have a say in the matter as well.”
“Consider this my compliment for you,” she replied with a smile. “You may take my friendship for granted.”
“I will never take you for granted,” Henry said. When her face softened, grew warm in the firelight, he wondered if he’d said far more than he knew. She looked at him with her deep eyes, all the tumbled browns and greens of the Bossu Wood, and he felt stripped bare, known and understood, as he had not in years.
He had never thought to be stripped bare again.
Her lips had parted in surprise, and he could almost feel the warmth of her breath, the very essence of her life, pulling him closer.
“I would not take you for granted either,” she murmured, and reached out a hand to brush, so lightly, over his fingers.
Another touch, just as she’d given him when they first met and when she showed him how to write. Each time, he showed her a weakness, and she still reached out to him. That was a miracle in itself, and the sensation of her touch, forbidden and strange and sweet, woke his skin. Heat arrowed through his body: wistful desire, blessed hope.
Yes, hope. He had hope that he could rebuild his life. Though he knew he could not do it on his own. He needed Caroline for that.
It was hard to remember his carefully calculated reasons, sitting here in front of the fire.
Perhaps Frances sensed his sudden confusion; maybe he’d tensed. She pulled her hand from his, looked back at the fire again, and said in her damnably calm voice, “Doggedness.” Her tip-tilted eyes crinkled in a smile, and he knew she wasn’t annoyed. “That’s my answer to your dignity. Doggedness is probably the best quality I have, though also the worst.”
The change of subject was a relief; they’d been growing a bit too fraught. They couldn’t begin grabbing each other’s hands at every opportunity or people would talk, and that wouldn’t do either of them any good. A companion was in a precarious position in society; it wouldn’t take much to send her tumbling.
A quick tumble, that made him remember. Frances’s words about soldiers the first time they had met. It had been so long since Henry’d had a tumble, he could hardly remember the sensation. Understandable, then, how much it was on his mind; how tense his body felt, how aware of Frances’s closeness, of her every touch.
But this wasn’t the time or the place or the person for such thoughts.
“Come now, it can’t be both best and worst.” His voice came out clipped as he tried to quit thinking tumble, tumbled, tumbling. He waved a hand for a servant. “What do you care for, Frances? Tea or sherry?”
She thought for a moment. “Tea would be a wiser choice than sherry. You are always trying to get me intoxicated so you can learn secrets from me, aren’t you? One would think you’d been a spy.”
Henry snorted and asked for a tea service to be brought over, then turned back to Frances. “If I’d been a spy, I’d have much subtler methods. But I’ve never been very subtle. Not even before the war.”
“Maybe that’s your best and worst quality, then.” She smiled a quick thanks at the footman who set a tea tray down on a low table between their chairs. “Sugar for you, Henry?”
Henry considered. He’d gotten out of the habit of drinking tea sweetened—or indeed, regularly at all—during his tent-centered life in the army. “Yes,” he decided. “Two spoonfuls, please.” He had a taste for something new.
He watched her pour out the tea, her movements efficient and graceful as though they had been practiced thousands of times. And probably they had. She’d once said she was the daughter of a baronet, had she not? He wondered how she’d tumbled into the role of a companion.
Damn it. Tumbled again. His whole body felt tight and eager.
Frances held out a cup and saucer to him, and he tugged his mind back to the tea tray. The cup rattled faintly in its frail willow-patterned saucer, and he extended his hand, then paused. How to take it with one hand? If he held the saucer, he wouldn’t be able to lift the cup.
After cutting his eyes sideways to ensure that the tune of “Mr. Beveridge’s Maggot” was still issuing from the pianoforte, that Caroline and Emily were still practicing their steps with the glee of debutantes, he shook his head at Frances. “Just the cup, please.”
“Oh, of course.” She rolled her eyes at her own mistake. “Sorry about that.” She twirled the teacup so he could grip its tiny handle, then laid the unneeded saucer on the tray again.
He took a too-sweet sip, then returned to the thread of their conversation. “So. You think subtlety isn’t always necessary?”
Frances stirred milk into her own teacup as she considered. “Not for men, no. Subtlety’s probably more important for women. We’re permitted only the flimsy weapons of speech rather than anything really satisfying. Sometimes I think it would be much easier just to shoot out our troubles instead of keeping a smile pasted on all the time.”
Henry let out a low bark and wiggled his fingers against the porcelain cup, trying to keep its hot contents from burning him. “Shooting isn’t always the fun it may seem.”
Another gulp drained his tiny teacup to the dregs. It was syrupy at the bottom, with sugar grains not yet dissolved.
Well, he could use some help to sweeten his speech, because he had something difficult to say to Frances. He was getting too distracted by his alliance with her when it was secondary to his true strategy.
“Frances.” He leaned forward and set his teacup down on the tray. “Look, I’ve got to tell you something.”
Her cup clattered in her saucer. “Then tell me.”
They had just excused the male sex from the need to be subtle, yet Henry didn’t want to be too blunt. “It’s about Caroline. I—well, I’d prefer to court her on my own from this point.”
He stared at his teacup, lonely and saucer-less on the silver-plated tea tray, as though its dregs held all the mysteries of the universe. He didn’t want to watch her face change at his words; whether it was disappointed or relieved, it would be better not to know.
“You don’t care to have my help anymore?” The question sounded light enough, simply seeking information. He looked up, and her face was a sweet mask.
He sidestepped the question. “I’ve been honored by your help. But I think it would be fairest to all of us if I proceeded alone.”
“You want to be fair? How so?”
“None of the other suitors have ever received assistance from you,” he said lamely.
“I see,” she said with that careful smile on her face again. “You don’t want to give yourself an unfair advantage in winning Caroline.”
“That’s not what I meant. I’m well aware that Caro isn’t in the slightest danger of being swept off her feet by me or any other suitor.”
He turned in his chair to regard Caro. She and Emily now stood by the pianoforte, laughing as they shuffled through the sheet music, making a snowstorm of paper around Bart. In truth, Caro looked just as happy plunking sour notes on the pianoforte as she had playing cards, dancing at a ball, entertaining suitors. Her mood was constant sunshine—never a cloud, never a storm.
This was why the ton loved her and admired her and sought her company. But did Henry have any idea what lay below that sunny surface?
Yes, he did. He had the letters.
He looked back to Frances, whose odd smile had begun to unbend. “What do you mean
, then?” she asked.
“Just that… well, it’s my puffed-up dignity.” It rather magnified the indignity by having to speak of it, so he leaned forward, spoke lower. “I’d rather see whether I can court her successfully on my own.”
She picked up her teacup again, wrapping both hands around it as though pulling warmth from the tiny vessel. “So, just to be perfectly clear, you don’t want me to intercede at all.”
“Right,” Henry said, relieved when she nodded. “And I’ll tell the same to my sister-in-law.”
Frances shrugged. “All right, I understand. I won’t interfere anymore.”
Again, there was something strange about the way she spoke, as though she chose her words carefully to hide something.
He thought he could guess what she was covering up: pity. Why else would her eyes skate away from his? Why would she agree so quickly to his ungracious request to distance herself?
Maybe she too had felt they’d been bound a little too closely. Or maybe distance was what she preferred. He had too much dignity and not enough bluntness to pursue an explanation from her when it was sure to end in another embarrassment. The latest in a long series since he’d returned to London.
With a dissonant crash of keys and another peal of laughter, the trio at the piano called for Henry and Frances to join them. They both stood quickly, not quite looking at one another.
“Don’t forget,” Henry said in a whisper. “It’s all up to me now.”
She gave a little sigh. “I never forget, Henry.”
***
The rest of the evening went by pleasantly. When Jem returned to the drawing room, the six took turns giving dramatic readings out of a book of plays. An aggressively safe activity, as no one could be tugged into an intimate conversation, or even an intimate glance, with anyone else.
That was all right with Henry. He had the letters to rely on, to look forward to.
Or so he thought.
But write to Caro as he might, in the week leading up to his ball, not a single letter came in response to his.
Eight
“I look like an idiot,” Frances hissed as she followed Caroline through the crowds in the Argyll Room’s lengthy ballroom.
Plentiful witnesses to Frances’s overdressed presumption were on hand, for all of London seemed to be in attendance at Lord and Lady Tallant’s ball for Henry. The ballroom was brightly lit, richly ornamented, crushingly full. Curious guests peered down from the tiers of boxes overlooking the grand room and chattered from rows of benches surrounding the dancing area. Frances felt pinned by their curious gazes, as though she were a butterfly in a glass case.
Yes, tonight she was a butterfly, or at least had the coloring of one. For this ball, Caroline had insisted in fitting Frances out in one of her own evening dresses, a deep red sarcenet with black trim to flatter Frances’s dark complexion, and she had lightly rouged Frances’s cheeks and lips.
“I told you that you looked wonderful,” Caroline tossed back over her shoulder as she waved at a friend. “My feelings will be very hurt if you continue to question my judgment.”
“I’m sorry to hurt your feelings, but I have to,” Frances muttered to her cousin’s back. “If I can’t say I look like an idiot, then what about a clown? I’ll start juggling the biscuits if you let me into the refreshment saloon.”
Caroline stopped short and turned to face her. “I’m going to pretend that I didn’t hear any of that. And you are going to pretend that you think you look lovely. Because you do.” She held up a hand against Frances’s protest. “You do, Frannie. Why won’t you believe it?”
Frances opened her mouth, waiting for an explanation to fall out. She wasn’t exactly sure how to answer Caroline, who always meant well.
“I guess it’s because I don’t feel like myself.” She made a helpless gesture at the dress. “The color, the cut. It’s so conspicuous.”
As though proving her point, a young man in starched shirt points jostled her heavily and righted himself with a grab at her waist.
Frances fixed him with a filthy glare, then turned back to Caroline. “See? Clown. That fellow certainly expected me to entertain him.”
Caroline winked. “What better mood for a ball than a willingness to entertain? Tonight, you shouldn’t hide on a chair against the wall. You ought to have a dance, and not only when my toes can’t stand Bart Crosby’s boots anymore.”
Frances’s fingers worked around the slim rectangle of her folded fan. “What if you crack your fan? Or what if you need my help with something?”
Caroline flicked open her own fan, an elaborate affair painted with an image of Venus reclining amidst a flock of Cupids. Gracefully, as though unconscious of the movement, she fluttered it in the area of her shoulder, forcing back a trout-faced man who was about to step too close for propriety. “I think,” Caroline said with a tolerant smile, “I shall be able to bear the inconvenience. I’m not completely helpless, you know.”
“I never thought that,” Frances said.
“Off with you.” Caroline wiggled the fan. “Shoo. Go. Enjoy yourself. That’s an order, Frannie. I don’t want to see you again unless it’s in the middle of a country-dance.”
She gave Frances a friendly wave before turning away, and Frances was left alone, with nothing to do but stand there in a too-red gown and pretend she belonged in the middle of a crushing ballroom.
Which she had, once. Almost a decade before.
Her stomach clenched under the fine fabric of her borrowed gown. Ah, how she would enjoy being a girl again, of whom nothing had been expected but dancing and flirtation. She hardly remembered that blithe girl anymore. Single-minded and selfish, and delighted to be so.
That was before she had learned the consequences of being single-minded and selfish.
“I’ve been looking for you.” A male voice sounded in her ear, making her jump.
“Henry.” She turned. “Why, where is your adoring throng? I saw you next to Lady Tallant not five minutes ago, smiling down a pack of rabid debutantes. Surely you can’t have escaped them so quickly in this crowd.”
He raised his left arm to the level of his eyes. “Elbow. A little trick I learned from my brother.”
“Ah. I should have known.” Frances smiled.
So he had elbowed his way out of the receiving line to join her? She looked him over from short-cropped golden hair to bright eyes, to black-clad shoulders and stark white linens and… oh, good Lord, he was a delicious sight, all elegance and nobility.
Her mind vanished in a puff of lust, and she stood there gaping at him, a crimson-gowned statue.
“I need to speak with you,” he said, and she noticed at last that he wasn’t smiling back.
Lust squirmed again before reluctantly bedding down. “As you wish. Not here, though? It’s rather loud.”
“No, not here.” He frowned. “I—”
“Oh, Hal, thank heavens.” Lady Tallant, elegant in butter-yellow silks, had come up behind her brother-in-law. “I’ve been hunting for you. It’s time to start the dancing. Did you ask Mrs. Whittier to stand up with you for the minuet? Excellent, come with me.”
She charged through the crowd, using her elbows with as much determination as her husband, and Frances and Henry could only stare at each other and shrug.
“You’re going to dance?” Frances followed Lady Tallant, walking on her toes so that her words might travel directly into Henry’s ear. “I didn’t realize you planned to…” She trailed off. No, he hadn’t come over to ask her to dance, or he would simply have done so. He had something else on his mind. Probably something to do with the letters—or lack thereof.
“You don’t have to dance with me,” she said hurriedly. “I know I was at hand, but I won’t be offended if you ask someone else.”
His eyes cut sideways for an instant. “Don’t worry yourself about that. This way I can make sure you don’t escape me, and after our dance is over, we’ll have a chance to speak.”
H
er mouth fell open. “I… well, all right. I assure you, I won’t try to escape.”
That was an understatement if there ever was one. She could only hope she remembered the steps of the dance while her mind was so preoccupied with furtive longing. Her fingers tingled within their gloves, wanting to touch and hold. For a few minutes, he would be all hers.
The violins scratched the warning that the minuet was about to begin, and Henry threaded through the crowd a step ahead of Frances. The crush was, if anything, intensifying as the polite world pressed against the edges of the immense room to clear a large oblong for dancing. Couple after couple fought free from the crowd and took the floor, waiting for the guest of honor so they might begin the music.
At the edge of the crowd, Henry and Frances passed a tall figure that shot out an arm to arrest Henry’s progress. “Middlebrook,” said a silky voice.
Henry halted and turned his head slowly. “Lord Wadsworth. Ah, Caro. You intend to dance together?”
Caroline stood at Wadsworth’s side, wearing her favorite ballroom smile. Frances recognized the expression, useful for crowded rooms in which Caroline wished to appear friendly but not inviting.
“As you see,” Frances said to her cousin, “we are meeting on the dance floor, just as you ordered in that dictatorial way.”
“I’m delighted by your obedience,” Caroline answered. “Good girl, Frannie.”
“I hope you don’t intend to be a good girl, Caro,” Wadsworth said in the oily voice that Frances had come to mistrust. “What pleasure would there be in that?”
“I’m always a pleasure to be around, Wadsworth. Whether I behave myself or not. But in a ballroom, I rather think I shall behave myself. Don’t you?” Her fan hung from its loop at her wrist, and she shook it, setting it to swinging.
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