Yet one fragment drew his eye again and again. The ink had been blurred across his name, but not wholly erased. A curveremained after the letter. Perhaps the beginning of a D. Perhaps nothing. His mind supplied what caution had, until now, refused to consider.
Daniel Carrington, the Viscount of Ravenshaw.
Andrew lowered the letter. Mary had said the father was a married viscount. She also said he was dangerous. She refused to give his name, even with death so near, because fear had held her more tightly than pain. Andrew remembered it with perfect clarity: the dim room, her white face against the pillow, her fingers twisting in the coverlet, her plea that the child be protected from anyone who would come for it.
Lady Ravenshaw had sought out Frances. Lady Ravenshaw had delivered a letter. Lady Ravenshaw, whose husband was a viscount.
The thought arrived cold and fully formed.
Could it be?
Andrew crossed to the window, though he saw nothing of the street beyond. His reflection stared back at him in the darkening glass, the very image of the man who could endure anything because he had taught himself never to need comfort.
What a magnificent lie that had been.
He could not give the baby up. That truth remained fixed in him, deeper than fear. Whatever blood had made the child, she had been placed in his keeping. He had given his word. He would not abandon her to convenience, gossip, or the cruelty of a man who had already left Mary to die afraid.
Nor would he betray Mary’s memory merely because the truth would make his own life easier. He had sworn to protect her child. He had sworn to silence when silence meant safety.
But silence had become something else now. It had become a weapon in another person’s hand. It had struck Frances.
His eyes closed briefly.
Frances, who had stood in his study with a letter trembling between them and asked him for the truth. Frances, who had trusted him farther than prudence allowed and received only barriers in return. Frances, who had said she was leaving.
He loved her.
The realization did not come like lightning. It came like the last candle in a darkened room, revealing what had been there all along. He loved her sharp tongue and her merciful heart. He loved the way she lifted her chin when wounded and the way she softened over the child when she thought herself unseen. He loved her courage, her impatience with hypocrisy, her laughter when it escaped unwillingly. He loved the woman who challenged him, unsettled him, saw too much, demanded more,and had somehow made his carefully ordered solitude feel like a punishment.
He loved Frances.
And he had nearly lost her because he had mistaken secrecy for honor and distance for safety.
Andrew opened his eyes. Losing her was not a possibility he could accept. For the first time in his life, love did not appear to him merely as ruin waiting in a cradle, a bedchamber, a grave. It appeared as a woman walking away from his study with tears she would not shed, because he had not trusted her enough to keep her.
He looked down at the letter again. He would find the truth not only to clear his name, not only to protect the child, not only to honor Mary, though he would do that too.
He would find it because Frances deserved truth, and because if there remained any path back to her, it would have to begin there.
Chapter Thirty-Three
By the second morning after Andrew’s departure, Sinclair House had become unbearable.
Frances had not expected that. She had expected anger to sustain her. Anger was clean, useful, and far more dignified than sorrow. It gave one something to do with one’s hands, something to set in the spine, something sharp enough to stand behind. She had left Andrew’s study with anger holding her upright like whalebone.
But anger, she discovered, was a poor companion in an empty house. It had a habit of tiring before grief did.
The nursery was the worst of it. Frances had not meant to go there. Indeed, she had told herself there was no reason to pass that corridor at all. The baby was gone. Nurse Ellis was gone. The little cradle had been sent down with them to Sinclair, along with the soft blankets, the small gowns, the rattles, and all theabsurdly tiny articles which had once seemed to multiply of their own accord.
Yet her feet carried her there shortly after breakfast. The room looked indecently neat. The curtains had been drawn back. The hearth had been swept. A chair sat by the window, exactly where Frances had once sat with the baby sleeping against her shoulder while London rain tapped lightly at the glass. A small white ribbon lay half-hidden beneath the edge of the rug, missed by whoever had packed the child’s things.
Frances crossed the room and picked it up. It was only a ribbon. No rational woman should be undone by a ribbon. But Frances closed her fingers around it and stood in the middle of the empty nursery while the silence pressed against her from every wall.
She had thought she was prepared for Andrew’s absence. She had not considered that the baby’s absence would have its own sound: no small restless cry from the cradle, no soft sigh against her neck, no little fist curling into the lace of her morning gown with astonishing determination. Even the air seemed altered without that warm, milky sweetness which had clung to the nursery.
Frances swallowed.
“This is foolish,” she spoke aloud to herself.
