“Andrew,” she called out. “Why?”
He straightened slowly. “Because he spoke to you improperly.”
“That is not what I asked.”
His jaw tightened.
Frances took one step farther into the room. The firelight caught the green silk of her gown and made it seem warmer, deeper, nearly alive. A curl had escaped near her ear during the dancing. He noticed it with an irritation that was not directed at her. He noticed everything about her now, and each discovery seemed to threaten his composure more than the last.
“What did you ask, then?” he inquired.
“I asked why you were so angry.”
His gaze held hers. “You are my wife.”
Something flickered in her expression. “In name.”
The correction struck more sharply than it ought.
Andrew turned from the fire. “That distinction would not have mattered to him.”
“It matters to me.”
“Yes,” he spoke too quickly. “So you have made clear.”
Her brows drew together. “Have I?”
“You wished me to remember the rules.”
“I still do.”
He gave a short, humorless breath. “Of course.”
The room seemed to grow smaller around him. Perhaps it was the heat of the fire. Perhaps it was the lateness of the hour. Perhaps it was Frances standing so near his bed, looking at him with flushed cheeks and wounded pride, as though he had been the one to overstep.
She crossed to the dressing table and laid her gloves upon it with careful precision.
“We agreed,” she reminded him, “that this marriage was not to be a true one. We agreed it was an arrangement. We agreed that, once the scandal settled and matters could be managed, we would live separately.”
“Yes.”
The word came out flat. He hated it at once.
Frances turned back to him. “Then you cannot behave as though I have committed some offense by speaking with another gentleman.”
“He was not merely speaking.”
“He did not touch me.”
Andrew’s eyes sharpened. “He wanted to.”
Her lips parted, then closed again. There it was, the thing he ought not to have said, because it sounded mad, primitive and ungentlemanly. Yet the memory returned with unwelcome force: Langley leaning too near, his gaze lowering, his smile shaped by liberties he had not earned. Andrew had felt it in his body before he had formed the thought in cold, clean certainty that the man must be removed from her presence.
Frances stared at him. “You cannot know that.”
“I know men.”
“And do you know me?”
