That was the cruelty of it. Not the accusation alone, nor even the letter, but that final, soft blow: when your heart is more deeply engaged. It was as though Lady Ravenshaw had looked inside her and found the very place Frances had been trying to keep hidden from herself.
The park moved around them. Wheels turned. Horses stepped. Ladies laughed beneath their bonnets. The world remained orderly while Frances felt something in hers tilt.
She gave one small nod. It was all she could manage.
Then she turned from Lady Ravenshaw, with the folded letter held tightly in her hand, and walked away without another word.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“Is it true?” Frances demanded the moment she barged in through the door to his study.
Andrew looked up from the papers spread across his writing table. She was standing in the doorway of his study, pale and very still, with one hand closed around a folded sheet of paper. The sight of her there, so composed in outline and so plainly shaken beneath it, struck him with immediate unease.
He rose at once. “Frances?”
She came into the room and shut the door behind her.
The sound was soft. It might as well have been a pistol cocking.
“Is it true?” she asked again.
Andrew’s gaze dropped to the paper in her hand. “What have you there?”
“A letter.” Her voice was calm in a way that made him distrust every inch of it. “Given to me by Lady Ravenshaw.”
At that, something cold moved through him.
“Lady Ravenshaw?”
“Yes.” Frances crossed the room and held the letter out. “She asked me to meet her in the park. She said she was concerned for me.”
Andrew did not take the letter immediately.
He was looking at Frances’ face: the set mouth, the colorlessness beneath her eyes, the effort it cost her not to tremble. There was anger there, certainly. He knew her anger well enough now to recognize it. But beneath it lay something worse.
Hurt.
He took the letter. The paper was worn, folded and refolded, the ink faded in certain places. He did not sit to read it. He remained standing behind his desk, his eyes moving quickly over the lines. The line with his name had been smudged.
Not by age, he thought.The damage is too convenient.
He read it once, then again, and with every word his blood cooled further.
“It is a lie,” he said at once.
Frances flinched, though she covered it quickly. “All of it?”
His fingers tightened around the paper. “Enough of it.”
“Enough?” she repeated.
He looked up. “This has been arranged to deceive you.”
“Then tell me how.”
He said nothing.
Her eyes searched his face, fierce now in their desperation. “Tell me what part is false.”
