“You have no talent for humility.”
“Then I shall listen without it.”
She laughed before she could prevent it. Andrew’s expression changed at the sound. It was slight, but Frances saw the softening about his eyes, and the quiet pleasure he did not quite conceal. That look did more to disturb her composure than all of Mr. Langley’s impertinence.
The dance drew toward its close. Frances knew it by the music, by the gathering turn of the figures, by the way her hand would soon have to leave Andrew’s. She was sorry for it.
When the final notes sounded, they bowed and curtsied with all due propriety. Applause rose about them. Couples separated, laughing and flushed. Conversation resumed its careless claim upon the room. Andrew offered his arm again. Frances took it.
Across the ballroom, Mr. Langley looked quickly away.
“Do not,” Frances scolded him without any real gravity.
Andrew glanced down at her. “I have done nothing.”
“You were considering it.”
“I was considering many things.”
“All of them unnecessary.”
“Are you certain?”
“Quite.” She allowed herself one small smile. “Let him endure his embarrassment. It may improve him.”
Andrew’s gaze warmed. “You are merciless.”
“Only when provoked.”
“And was he sufficiently punished?”
Frances looked once more toward Mr. Langley, who now appeared deeply interested in a bowl of hothouse flowers.
“Yes,” she said. “I believe he has learned something.”
“What lesson?”
“That pursuit is not always rewarded.”
Andrew gave a quiet laugh, and the sound moved through her with a warmth she had no wish to examine in public.
They walked together toward the edge of the room. This time, the silence between them did not feel strained. It felt full, but gently so, like candlelight held behind glass.
Frances kept her hand on his arm. Andrew did not ask her to remove it.
Chapter Thirty
“Why were you so angry?” Andrew heard her ask.
He looked up from where he stood near the hearth, with one hand braced upon the mantel, and the other still closed too tightly around nothing at all.
The bedchamber was quiet behind them. The sounds of the ball had faded into a distant murmur belowstairs, softened by walls and carpets until the music seemed less like music than memory. Only the fire spoke clearly, shifting low in the grate, throwing gold across the bedposts, the dressing screen, the pale silk of Frances’s gown.
She was standing near the door with her gloves half drawn from her hands, watching him.
Andrew did not answer at once. He had thought the silence would be safer. Since leaving the ballroom, he had relied upon it, as he had relied upon silence in a thousand other momentswhen speech would have revealed more than he wished known. He had escorted her upstairs. He had opened the door for her. He had entered after her only because custom allowed it and because, absurdly, some part of him had not been willing to leave her yet.
Now she looked at him as though she meant to take the silence apart thread by thread.
