Her expression changed again, and this time he knew he had struck home. She didn’t care about herself or her ownreputation, but her sister’sdidmatter, and it mattered a lot. He saw it in the sudden tension of her mouth.
She recovered quickly. “That depends upon whether your original scandal is false.”
Andrew suspected with valid reason, that at some point, the conversation would be steered in those waters. Still, he said nothing.
She watched him too closely. “Is it?”
“That is not the issue,” he tried to deflect the question, although he knew her to be far too clever for that.
“It is exactly the issue,” she countered. “If I am to be lectured on consequences, I should at least know the truth of what I defended.”
He looked away toward the hedgerow, then back again. He could feel the weight of Mary’s voice as distinctly as if he stood once more in that dim cottage room.
You must protect the child. Let no one know.
The truth hovered at the edge of his restraint, unwelcome and dangerous. To speak of the child was to invite questions he could not answer, to loosen a thread he had sworn would remain tightly held.
And yet, Frances Norton was not the sort to accept silence. She would question, observe and pursue relentlessly. And if she did not hear it from him, she would hear it from society, distorted beyond recognition. That, he thought, would be worse. It would be better to offer a measured truth than a reckless invention.
“I… am the guardian of a child,” he admitted, carefully selecting his words.
Her eyes widened. For a moment, the wind seemed to fall still around them. Even the distant rustle of branches faded beneath the importance of those words.
“So… thereisa child?” she gasped.
He inclined his head once.
She stared at him, while her astonishment was plain and unguarded. “Then the story–”
“Is not true as printed,” he was quick to add.
“But thereisa child.”
“Yes.”
Her gaze searched his face as if she might extract from it what he refused to say. “Yourchild?”
“No.”
The answer came sharp enough that she believed it at once. He saw belief and confusion arrive together.
“Then whose child is it?”
He did not reply.
“Your Grace.”
“I cannot say more.”
Her disbelief returned at once, now mixed with frustration. “You ask me to marry you and yet you expect me to accept mysteries in place of explanation?”
She was right, but he knew better than to admit that.
“I expect you to understand that there are matters I will not betray.”
She frowned, and yet, it made her even more lovely. He banished the thought, and focused instead on the tension that grew with each passing moment.
“And I am simply to trust you?” she demanded.
