He met her eyes. “Yes.”
She gave a short breath of astonished anger. “Howconvenient.”
He ought to have resented the mockery. Instead, he found himself absurdly aware again of her nearness, of the brightness in her face, of the intelligence that made every word strike where it would do most damage. He wanted, very much, either to shake her or to pull her closer, an impulse so irrational that it restored a portion of his self-command through sheer alarm.
“This is not convenience, Miss Norton,” he warned her. “It is necessity.”
“For you, perhaps.”
“For both of us.”
She shook her head at once, though her fingers had tightened upon each other. “No.”
“Think, Miss Norton.”
“Iamthinking.”
“Then do so more usefully.”
Her lips parted in outrage. “You are insufferable.”
“And you are impossible.”
The words were spoken too quickly, too near, and for one extraordinary moment neither moved. The cold air between them felt sharpened. Andrew could hear her breathing. He could smell the faint freshness of the morning upon her hair. Her eyes, lifted to his, seemed brighter now not only with anger but with something he had no business noticing.
He stepped back first.
“You need not answer me now,” he forced himself to say, while every syllable was controlled with effort. “But do consider what I have said.”
Her expression had not lost its fire. “I shall consider how best to refuse it.”
He almost smiled despite himself. “Try, if you can, to be serious.”
“I am entirely serious.”
“As am I.” His tone hardened once more. “And I urge you to think quickly. Because whatever hopes you place in the mercy of gossip, I place none. This will worsen. And when it does, sheer sentiment will not protect you.”
She said nothing. The silence stretched. A gust of wind caught at the hem of her pelisse and sent a few loose strands of hair trembling at her temple. She lifted her hand to secure them, and Andrew, against all judgment, followed the movement.
He drew a breath.
“Consider my offer,” he urged again, as he led them back toward the house. “Before it is too late.”
Chapter Five
The door had scarcely closed behind the Duke of Sinclair before Frances’ mother turned from the window with all the force of a woman who had just witnessed disaster transform, by extraordinary good fortune, into opportunity.
“Well,” she exclaimed, pressing one hand to her breast, “this must be resolved at once.”
Frances remained where she was near the terrace doors, still cold from the garden and colder still from the conversation that had taken place there. The Duke’s words had not yet settled into any shape she could properly understand. They moved through her mind in fragments only.
Marriage. Necessity. Too late.
Her father had resumed his place near the hearth, though there was nothing at all relaxed in his posture. He looked not angry now, but decided.
“What precisely did he say?” her mother asked.
Frances turned to face them both. She had hoped that speaking the words aloud might make them sound as impossible to others as they still did to her.
