She felt annoyance stir at once. “Would you rather no one had done so?”
Andrew looked away for a moment, across the clipped hedges and damp gravel, as though gathering patience. When he looked back, the strain she had sensed indoors was clearer now.
“You made it worse.”
The words hit with the force of a slap.
Frances stared at him. “Worse?”
“Yes.”
“But… I defended you.”
“Yes, publicly,” he reminded her of what she herself already knew.
She opened her mouth, then shut it again.
He continued before she could answer. “You attached your name to mine in the middle of an active scandal. Do you truly not see what that has done?”
Frances felt the first cold stirrings of alarm. “It has done exactly what I intended. It has challenged a lie.”
Andrew’s jaw tightened. “It has also convinced half the ton that we are having an affair.”
For one ridiculous instant, she thought she must have misheard him.
“What?”
His expression remained grim. “That is the newest version.”
“That is absurd.”
“I know.”
She shook her head at once. “That is not true.”
His gaze met hers steadily. “No. It is not.”
The certainty in his voice ought to have relieved her. Instead, it only made the humiliation sharper, because he spoke not as a man flattered by the implication, but as one already calculating its damage.
Frances folded her arms against the chill. “How can they leap to such a conclusion?”
He gave her a look that was almost weary. “Miss Norton, you are intelligent enough that I cannot believe you need that answered.”
She flushed.
“I know how gossip works,” he said.
The words landed more heavily because they were true. Of course he did not need to explain it to her. She knew precisely how easily rumor grew once given fresh material. She had given it material herself. Not intentionally this time, but that would matter very little to society.
She looked toward the windows of the house, where faint movement confirmed that her mother was indeed watching. “This is madness.”
“Yes,” he agreed once more. “But it is now our madness.”
Our.
The word unsettled her more than it ought to have done.
She turned back to him. “Surely it will pass.”
