Frances’s fingers tightened around the ribbon. “That is unkind.”
“It is relevant.”
“It is also unkind.”
Emma’s eyes gentled. “You wrote something that caused me pain.”
Frances closed her eyes briefly. “Yes.”
“And afterward, when everything seemed impossible, you tried to repair what you had done.”
“I tried very badly.”
“You tried fiercely,” Emma corrected. “And not all of it could be explained at once. Not to Mama, not to Father, not even to me. You acted from guilt, yes, but also from love and from protection.”
Frances opened her eyes.
Emma held her gaze. “If someone had judged only the secrecy, they might have thought the worst of you.”
Frances had no answer. The room seemed suddenly full of old ghosts: printed words, careless wit, Emma’s distress, the awful knowledge that harm once done could not be gathered back. She had known then what it was to be misunderstood and yet guilty, protective and yet wrong, silent because explanation would only wound others further.
Sophia spoke softly. “I am not saying His Grace is right to keep things from you. Only… perhaps do not give up too quickly.”
Frances turned the ribbon between her fingers. “And if the letter was true?”
Emma’s expression sharpened. “Do you believe it was?”
“I don’t know.”
“That isn’t the same as yes.”
“No,” Frances admitted.
“Did you trust Lady Ravenshaw?”
Frances gave a short, humorless laugh. “I have more trust in damp gunpowder.”
Sophia blinked. “Then why–”
“Because she had proof,” Frances interrupted. “Or something that looked enough like proof when placed in one’s hand at the proper moment.”
Emma’s gaze did not leave her. “And Andrew?”
Frances’s throat tightened. Andrew had looked at the letter and said at once that it was a lie. And then he had refused her the rest.
“I don’t know how to trust half a truth,” Frances whispered.
Emma rose and came around the writing table, crouching a little beside her chair in a manner entirely unsuited to a duchess and entirely like a sister.
“Then don’t. Ask for the whole of it. Demand it, if you must. But be certain you are walking away from him, Frances, and not only from the hurt.”
That was the cruelest advice yet, because it was the truest. Frances looked down at the little ribbon in her hand, soft and useless and impossibly dear.
“I thought I knew what I could bear,” she confessed.
Sophia came to her other side and touched her shoulder. “And now?”
Frances’s eyes burned.
