Andrew felt every word as a blow because too many of them were deserved.
“The child is not mine,” he told her. “Thatis the truth.”
“It is not enough.”
“It must be.”
“No.” Frances shook her head. “It cannot.”
The word settled between them. Something inside him went very still. She straightened, and it was a composure he disliked more than any anger, for it seemed to come from a place beyond his reach.
“I cannot stay in a marriage without truth,” she said.
Andrew’s chest tightened. “Frances.”
“I am leaving.”
The room altered around him. He had heard men speak of fear in war, in sickness, in the fragile hours before death. He had known fear himself, though he had spent most of his life refusing to call it by name. But nothing had ever moved through him quite like the sound of Frances saying that she would leave him.
She turned toward the door. He moved before thought could interfere, crossing the distance in two strides and placing himself between her and the way out.
“No.”
She stopped short. “Don’t.”
“You will not leave.”
Her eyes widened with fury. “You cannot forbid me.”
“I am not forbidding you.”
“You are standing in front of the door.”
“Yes,” he said, and then hated himself for the helpless stupidity of it.
Frances looked at him as though she hardly knew him. Perhaps she did not. Perhaps he had given her nothing to know but walls and commands and the occasional moment of tenderness stolen between them like contraband.
He forced himself to step aside. The instant he did, he felt as though he had opened the door upon ruin.
“You will not leave,” he whispered. “I will.”
She stilled.
Andrew made himself continue before he could reconsider. “I will take the child and return to Sinclair. You may remain here. The house is yours for as long as you wish it.”
Frances did not answer. Her gaze remained fixed on him, and for a moment he saw everything she would not say: the hurt,the disbelief, the grief she was too proud to give him. Her eyes shone, and the sight of it nearly unmade him.
He had seen her angry, amused, defiant, tender over the child when she thought no one watched. He had seen her flushed from dancing and pale from shock. But he had never seen her look as she did then, as though he had placed something precious in her hands only to tell her she had imagined possessing it.
“Frances,” he spoke her name more softly than before.
She blinked once. No tear fell. That was worse.
She moved past him without another word, opened the door, and left the study. Andrew stood where she had left him and listened to her footsteps retreat along the corridor. Each one seemed determined not to break before it reached safety. Then there was nothing.
For some time, he did not move. Then he picked up the letter again. This time, he read it not as a man defending himself, but as one searching for the shape of a trap.
The phrases were careful. Mary’s fear was there, or something close enough to it to wound. Each line was fashioned so that a woman in Frances’ position would see what she had been meant to see.
