Chapter Thirty-One
By the third day after their return to London, Frances had begun to believe that Sinclair House had learned the art of avoidance.
Its corridors were too wide, its staircases too obliging, its doors too ready to close between one person and another. In the country, even silence had seemed to contain Andrew. In London, silence merely announced his absence.
He spent nearly every hour in his office. At first, Frances told herself that this was no more than duty. Estates did not arrange themselves, tenants did not write their own replies, and stewards, she supposed, existed chiefly to require answers. It was perfectly reasonable that Andrew should be occupied after their return.
By the second day, reason had become irritating. By the third, Frances had ceased pretending not to notice.
“He is very industrious,” she remarked one morning, as she sat in the nursery with the baby asleep in her arms.
Nurse Ellis looked up from folding a small blanket. “His Grace has always been so.”
“Yes,” Frances replied, glancing toward the window, where the pale London light lay flat upon the glass. “But one does begin to wonder whether a single estate can require quite so much staring at ledgers.”
The nurse’s mouth twitched, though she wisely said nothing. The baby shifted in Frances’s arms, making a small sound of protest before settling again. Frances looked down at once.
“There now,” she murmured. “I did not mean to disturb your opinion of dukes. You may think well of them, if you choose. You have not been acquainted with enough to know better.”
The nurse gave a quiet laugh.
Frances smiled, but it faded almost at once. It was dangerous, this tenderness. Not merely toward the child, though that was dangerous enough. The baby had no sense of propriety, no respect for carefully arranged emotional boundaries, and a most unfair habit of curling her small fingers around Frances’s own as though attaching herself to a heart were the easiest thing in the world.
But it was not the baby alone. It was Andrew’s absence. It was Andrew’s office door, closed whenever Frances passed it. It was his voice, low and controlled, speaking to his secretary. It was the brief, formal civility of meals, where he asked whether she had slept well and she answered that she had, though neither of them believed the other. It was the way his gaze sometimes touched her mouth and then moved away too quickly.
Worst of all, it was the kiss.
Frances had made a noble effort not to think of it. Her efforts had been spectacularly unsuccessful. She thought of it when she dressed in the morning, when her maid pulled the ribbons of her stays and Frances remembered instead the pressure of Andrew’s hands at her waist. She thought of it when she sat with the baby and found herself wondering, quite uselessly, whether Andrew ever came to the nursery when she was not there. She thought of it when she opened her novel and discovered that her heroine, who had been intended to be sensible, independent, and entirely untroubled by gentlemen, had acquired a most inconvenient intensity in the matter of blue eyes.
That was when Frances decided writing had to save her. Writing, unlike feeling, could be governed. A sentence might misbehave, certainly, but one could strike it through. A character might attempt to wander into sentiment, but one could pull her back by force of ink. A plot, if properly managed, need not surprise its author at all.
Frances therefore spent her afternoons in the small sitting room overlooking the square, with paper laid before her, pen in hand, and every intention of being disciplined.
For nearly half an hour, she succeeded. Then, she set the pen down and rose abruptly. The chair scraped behind her.
“This is intolerable,” she informed the empty room.
The empty room made no apology. She glanced at the papers on her writing table. She banished the villain from the abbey entirely and introduced instead a locked cabinet, a missing letter, and a sensible aunt who did not approve of passionate behavior in corridors. But then, just as she was about to sit back down, a knock sounded at the door.
“Come in,” Frances called.
A footman entered and bowed. “A note for Your Grace.”
She held out her hand. “Thank you.”
The seal was unfamiliar at first glance. Frances turned it toward the light and felt, without knowing why, the first prickle of unease. She broke it open. The handwriting was elegant, composed, and feminine.
Your Grace,
I hope you will forgive the liberty of this request. There is a matter upon which I should very much like to speak with you, and I believe it would be better discussed away from crowded rooms and curious ears.
If you are willing, might you meet me tomorrow afternoon in Hyde Park, near the eastern walk at four o’clock? I shall come alone, and I ask only for a few minutes of your time.
Yours sincerely,
Caroline Ravenshaw
Frances read it once, then again. The name settled heavily upon the room.
