“I remember them perfectly.”
“Then you will remember that I am free to speak with whom I please.”
His hand flexed at his side. “Are you?”
Her eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”
The words had been a mistake. He knew it at once. Yet jealousy was a crude thing, and once awakened, it did not readily submit to refinement.
Frances came toward him now, with anger overcoming caution. “Do not take that tone with me.”
He moved closer again. “I simply asked a question.”
“And I shall answer it plainly. Yes. If this is a marriage in name only, if we are to live separately as we agreed, then I shall speak to other gentlemen exactly as I wish.”
A silence followed. It was not quiet, not to him.
The fire cracked. Somewhere in the corridor, a floorboard settled. Frances’s breathing came a little too quickly, and Andrew could hear his own pulse with humiliating force.
Other gentlemen exactly as I wish.
The words moved through him like flame along a fuse.
He knew what he ought to do. He ought to retreat. He ought to regain the polished calm he wore so well. He ought to remind her that she was free, that he had never intended to claim anything more from this marriage than propriety required.
Instead, his voice lower. “No.”
Frances stared at him. “No?”
“No.”
“You don’t get to forbid me.”
“I know.”
“And yet you just tried.”
“I know.”
The admission did not appease her. If anything, it seemed to make her more unsettled. He was close enough now to see the pulse beating at the base of her throat, close enough to catch the faint scent of rosewater in her hair, beneath the warmer notes of candle smoke and silk and woman. Her anger had colored her beautifully. That was a wicked, inconvenient thought, and it did nothing to restore his sanity.
She did not step back. That was what undid him. Frances stood her ground as she always did, proud and defiant, as though daring him to discover the limit of his own restraint.
“I am not one of your estates,” she said softly. “I am not a matter to be managed.”
“No.”
“I am not a child to be protected from every foolish man who approaches.”
“No.”
“I am not yours in that way.”
Andrew’s gaze dropped to her mouth. He should not have done it. Her lips parted, and the small movement struck him harder than any challenge she had spoken.
“Andrew,” she whispered.
The warning had changed. He heard it. He understood it. He ignored it all the same.
