He could not keep his fist from tapping a jittery tattoo against his thigh as the countess’s smile slipped. She nodded, laid a quick encouraging hand on Frances’s shoulder, and left the room, shutting the door behind her.
Now they were alone.
Frances spoke first. “I’m sorry you found out this way, Henry. But I’m glad you’ve figured everything out.”
She tried a smile, probably hoping it would help, but there was no help for it. He stalked away from her to the far side of the room and found himself staring at the framed hunting scene, as he had only the day before.
The poor fox was just going about his business. He had no idea what awaited him.
“I don’t think,” Henry finally said in a clipped voice, “that I have figured everything out at all. I have not figured out why these letters were sent to me, or why I was led to believe they were from Lady Stratton. The only thing I have figured out, Mrs. Whittier, is that you and your lovely employer have been lying to me since almost the first moment we met.”
He whirled, facing her. Wondering if she dared face him.
She dared. She straightened her back and stared him straight in the eyes. “I didn’t lie to you, Henry.” She stopped when he snorted, a sharp exhale of disbelief. “Fine, I did lie. But only by omission, and only because you wanted it.”
“I—” This was too much. He could only sputter.
She was all shadows and darks, her eyes fathomless pools as she picked up the thread of his sentence. “Did anyone sign the first letter you received, Henry? No—it was sent from a friend. I didn’t think it proper to sign my name on a letter to a bachelor, but I assumed my identity would be clear to you, considering we’d teased one another about forming an alliance. And considering,” she finished in an acid tone, “that you scarcely exchanged a dozen words with Caroline when you called.”
Henry’s head felt as though it were full of black powder; his thoughts shifting and incendiary, ready to explode with just a spark. So this whole tangle had begun as his mistake?
“Impossible,” he said in a cracked voice.
“It’s not impossible,” Frances said. The rustle of her gown told him she was fidgeting, though she sounded fiercely calm. “I recall the situation perfectly. You summoned me to Tallant House through your sister; I assumed it was because you wished to tell me what you thought of my letter, for good or ill. But no, in your infatuation with Caroline”—she spoke louder to cover Henry’s bark of protest—“you saw what you wished for. A letter from a woman who could give you everything you wanted. I tried to correct you, but you wouldn’t hear it, so I let it pass. Can you blame me for wishing to spare us both the humiliation?”
This, he could seize upon. “Yes. I do blame you. If you lacked the will to end the deception then, you could have signed your own name to the next letter. Instead, you chose to continue lying to me.”
He started to pace. The beat of his feet fell into the perfect regularity of ordinary march time: seventy-five paces to the minute. Fast as a heartbeat.
Too fast. His steps ate the length of the room in a few seconds. He forced himself to slow down, turn back to her. “It would have been a small matter, surely, for you to tell me one truth of your own amidst so many of my revelations. ‘I wrote Caro’s letters.’ There, it took me only four words.”
“For me to tell, yes. But how long for you to accept after hearing the truth?”
Henry’s mouth pinched into a tight line, and his gaze dropped to the floor. He watched his feet tread on the carpet, elaborately patterned with squares and vines. The movement was dizzying and he stopped. Stood still. He had to think.
“I don’t know if I can accept it. But it is always better to know the truth than let a lie fester.”
“Yes.” She sighed, an exhalation as long and sad as an echo. “I’ve known that for a long time.”
Henry froze. Whether he had received a blow or had been given the chance to deliver one, he did not know. “Explain yourself.”
Her hands fluttered through the air. “I lied to Charles so he’d marry me. He found out. He went to war. He died. It’s a simple story.” She lowered her eyes. “I suppose ours is too. Two people who meant well. A friendly misunderstanding. An act of love that makes it all unbearable. The end.”
She laced her fingers in her lap so tightly they looked bloodless.
It was a magnificent speech. Every word perfect. The quaver in her voice when she’d said “love” gave just the right ring of authenticity.
His whole self had been naked before her inside and out, in this very room. She had seen his every weakness. He had suspected it was too much for one person to bear, yet he told her all the same, hoping to tie her to himself. But now he was the one who could not bear it, and the ties between them felt like bindings against which he struggled.
“I trusted you.” It was an accusation, as much toward himself as her. Stupid, to trust so much and so soon.
“And I was grateful for that trust. I always have been.”
“But you did not repay it.”
“No.” The word fell heavily into the silent room and rippled for long seconds. “No. I regret that very much. When I admitted I was afraid of losing you, I was telling you a deeper truth than you knew.”
Oh, his ribs would surely crack if his heart thudded with any more force. For his sake, she had lied. For want of him, she had lied. She meant well—but. She. Had. Lied.
“I don’t know who you are. Who you ever were.”
Frances shook her head. “You know me better than you ever realized. You have seen letters written from my very heart.”
“Heart. Ha.” He turned his head away to stare at the hunting scene again. Red coats and snug trousers. Guns and horses. Bright, glossy. Gentlemen playing at war.
“Henry, that heart seemed real enough to you when you thought the letters were from Caroline. You all but told me once that you would never have stayed in London if she had not asked you.”
There was a snip in her voice now, a chill to the words. She was getting annoyed. Apologize and be apologized to in return; she must have thought it that simple.
Well, Henry wasn’t going to let Frances wriggle out of the situation; he’d show her no more quarter than he’d given Wadsworth earlier that day. They thought they knew his limits. They thought they could bend him, even break him. Wrong.
It was dim in the room, fast-darkening outside. He prowled around the edges of the room, making his way by feeling. Running fingers over the filigree of plasterwork, the frames of paintings, the molding of the dado. These were the contours of London life. For the first time, they felt fussy and alien under his touch.
He stalked to a carved giltwood chair. Its legs lurched and stuck in the thick carpet pile as he shoved the chair closer to the sofa on which Frances was seated.
Her brows lifted in surprise when he sat down, not in the chair, but on the floor in front of it. It slid as he rested against its fragile frame, and he tensed, catching his weight on his good arm.
“Tell me, madam,” he said lightly, already feeling clearer-headed. “Something changed in you this morning, and you seemed to feel shame. Was it after I told you the truth of what happened to my arm, or only after you saw it, that you felt the full measure of scorn for me?”
She batted his question aside with a wave of her hand, as if it were an annoying insect. “Don’t be an idiot, Henry. This has nothing to do with your arm, and I never scorned you. What shame I felt was only for myself because I knew I owed you more truth than I’d given you.”
“A sudden attack of conscience? How delightful for you. And just what truths do you owe me? Should I expect more surprises?”
Her slippered feet pulled back as if seeking protection under the hem of her gown. “You should if it surprises you to hear a few facts. Namely, I cannot undo my life. Not the choices I made ten years ago, nor the ones I’ve made since meeting you.”
“That is all obvious,” Henry said. “You’re not
telling me anything of real worth.”
She gave a little sigh. “All right, then what of this? I lost everything once before. If I lose you now, I know I can bear it. But I would prefer not to. Is that plain enough for you?”
He shook his head. She did not understand. She had helped him skate over the surface of society for a while. But he had given her something much deeper.
“Tell me, Henry,” went on Frances’s relentless voice, seemingly from far away. “Did you ever care for me, even a little? Or was I always a happenstance? Was it a relief to salve your pride with a woman who was desperate for you?”
He stared at her, stunned at the gall of her questions. She had warned him at their first meeting that she could be terrifying. Her frankness was as terrible a weapon as her unforgiving recall.
This—much more than learning she wrote Caro’s letters—made him feel as if she had stood at his side only to pierce his heart more easily.
The silence stretched long and brittle as a strand of glass. “Well. There’s my answer, I suppose,” Frances said at last.
“No, it’s not. You are not permitted to think yourself wronged by me,” Henry said sharply. “I’ve never done anything I thought might wound you.”
Except use you to court another woman.
Oh, damn it.
He shook feeling into his legs and lifted himself into the dainty chair he’d been trying to lean against. There. He was face to face with Frances. Her gaze followed him as he rose, wondering what he would do.
He did not know. It was harder to be face to face with himself. He needed no glass for it, only courage in the twilight.
Were kind lies worse than unkind truths? He had begun with the hope of Caro, the woman everyone wanted. He wanted the triumph of it. Frances had been a means to an end.
In truth, Caro had been a means to an end too: the respect he wanted, the ease he sought. Instead, he’d found them in Frances, and he’d found the beginnings in himself.
But if he and Frances had built their relationship on a foundation of sand, nothing had remained safe. Not even himself. So how could he ever find his way home?
He could not ask Frances any more than himself. Neither of them had the answers.
“Yet you are willing to wound yourself. Even die,” she said after a long silence. “The Henry I thought I knew was painfully aware of the value of life.”
“If I don’t risk this, my life won’t be worth living.” He sounded pompous even to his own ears, yet it was not untrue.
“Not everything must balance on a single knife blade, Henry,” she pleaded. “You needn’t duel to prove I didn’t hurt your pride. Life is worth more than honor.”
“I’m not dueling for you,” he said. He pushed himself to his feet with a swiftness that made Frances blink.
“Oh. No.” She seemed to sag as she looked up at him. “No, I know that.”
She drew in a halting breath, as though it was an effort. “I hope you will allow yourself to understand my intention. And I hope you won’t duel.” She turned her head away from him.
Stark lamplight limned her profile: the straight line of her nose, its rounded end. Her high forehead and arching brow. Her jaw set, and her mouth inflexible.
No. Her mouth was quivering at the corner.
He wanted to sigh, to stroke his thumb over the indentation at the corner of her mouth. To tell her he didn’t know, he didn’t understand what it all meant. What it would mean if he forgave her. If he could forgive himself for being a fool.
But he had a duel at dawn. That much he understood. So he inclined his head in a silent farewell and left her, and they were both alone again.
He stepped out onto a street that was silent under a brown sky.
Just brown. Dull and ashy, from nighttime and coal dust. No artist’s pigments came to mind. Nothing exotic, nothing pleasurable to look on. It seemed all the color had bled from the world tonight.
He pulled himself up straight and wrapped the tattered shreds of his pride around him like a cloak. It was all he had left, much good might it do him.
***
After Henry left, Frances collapsed back on the sofa and allowed tears to leak from her eyes for precisely two minutes. Then she shut them off and dried her face.
She’d cared enough to lie to him. It would take more than that—all her courage, even love—to give him the truth he deserved.
And she did love him. The idea of losing him was so painful as to convince her of that. She’d been tumbling inevitably down that slope since the night of Lady Applewood’s ball, when he’d first sat next to her and asked for her help. It was irresistible, to be sought and needed. And he had been irresistible as well. If he hadn’t so much dignity and pride, she wouldn’t love him so well.
Oh, this curse of love.
For love, she would tell him all her secrets. For love, she would admit her failings. She would do this to help him understand her, even knowing that it might kill his regard for her.
If he lived through the duel, he deserved the chance to decide for himself. He’d already given her that chance.
She pressed her fingers against her eyes for a long moment. Then she stood, picked up a lamp, and carried it to the writing desk at which she so often worked.
It was likely that he would live. Most duels were settled bloodlessly, with a symbolic shot into the ground. But she couldn’t be sure; both Henry and Wadsworth were in deadly earnest about proving their honor.
All she could do was wait, and write, and hope that the truth would help Henry find her again someday.
She pulled paper, pen, and inkwell close to her. Tapping the quill on the blank sheet, she thought for a minute, then plunged in. She wrote for hours, her hand traveling over page after page, until her fingers ached from holding the pen and her eyes felt crammed with sand.
When she finished, she signed the letter, at last, with her own name.
By that time, the sun was already clawing faint scratches in the night sky. Frances found a tired-eyed maid just beginning her morning rounds. She had a footman woken, had the letter taken to Tallant House.
She did not know if it would arrive soon enough to reach Henry before the duel. Or if he would read it. Or if it would make any difference.
For that, it might have been too late before she wrote a single word.
Twenty-Three
The blackness just before dawn was a beautiful time of day.
This in-between time lingered only a sliver of an hour, yet Henry knew it well from his years in the army, from early rising to ready for battle or siege, or simply preparing for another long slogging march. It was a time of exhaustion, when it seemed the night would never end. But it was a time of promise too, just before everything changed, before the sun washed away the darkness and made the impossible seem possible. This darkness felt different from that of the grimy night.
Chalk Farm was stark and silent in the dim. Henry was unfamiliar with the field at the edge of Town, but Jem had assured him that Wadsworth chose the location well. More isolated than Hyde Park, it was deserted at this hour. Not even animals lowed. Only a breeze whispered through the chilly damp.
As Henry stepped out of Jem’s carriage, he could vaguely make out the shapes of trees studding the field, of men with covered lanterns milling around. He’d been sure he would beat Wadsworth to the dueling ground, but he had underestimated the viscount’s courage.
He wouldn’t do so again.
His boots rustled through the grass, eating up distance with great speed. He was ready. More than ready. A little too ready. A cool head was a necessary asset during battle, but Henry had too little sleep and too much to prove to feel cool-headed right now.
A hand seized his arm, jerking him to a halt in midstep.
Jem, of course. Henry squinted at his brother in the faint light cast by Jem’s carriage lanterns. “What? Let’s get started. Everyone else is already here.”
Jem’s head turned in the direction of the shadowy figu
res beneath the trees, but there was not enough light for Henry to see his expression. “Hal. Please think again. Reconsider this duel. If you would only apologize to Wadsworth, we could settle this whole affair and neither one of you need risk your life.”
Henry shook his arm free. “I’m not going to apologize.”
Jem sighed. “Hal, you must see reason. You could be killed. Wadsworth will shoot you—or even if he doesn’t, you won’t be able to fire back at him without your right hand.”
“You should have more faith in your own brother, Jem. Perhaps I’ll shoot him instead.” A jittery bubble of mirth rose up in his chest and tried to force its way out.
“No. No, you mustn’t do that. I don’t much like the man, Hal. But please, think of the scandal of it. The coroner. I might be tried along with you, you know, if he dies. For my sake, reconsider, if not for your own.” Jem’s voice grew quieter as he spoke. “For my sake, Hal. Don’t do this. Please. Don’t do this to yourself.”
Jem turned his face back to Henry, and the glow from the carriage lanterns etched deep lines in his face. He looked as though he had lost all hope.
Henry was breaking his unbreakable brother. The look on Jem’s face, more than anything else Henry had seen or thought in the last twenty-four hours, shamed him.
And that was a day that included a failed attempt to seduce Frances, a botched proposal, his public argument with Wadsworth, his challenge to a duel, and the revelation about the letters. Frances’s trickery. The betrayal of his trust. The betrayal of… himself, really.
It was a day that had unmade Henry in every way, but not until this moment had he felt himself crumble.
He and Jem were separated by nearly a decade, by a title, by years apart. By temperament. By certainty. Jem was certain Henry was going to die or be disgraced, and he was certain there was nothing he could do about it. And he could not bear it.
It was a brother’s love, pure and simple, and as painful and fruitless as any other type of love.
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