“I believe someone may wish they had.”
Their mother gave her a look. “Frances.”
“Yes, Mama.” Frances glanced back at the sheet and began again, though after the first line her voice changed without her willing it.
The jest in it drained away. The paper seemed suddenly heavier in her hands.
“The duke whose smile has long persuaded society that charm may be mistaken for character,” she read slowly, “has at last been caught in conduct far beneath even the most forgiving estimations of masculine folly.”
Sophia blinked. “A duke?”
Their mother’s needle stilled above her embroidery. “Which duke?”
Frances did not answer at once. Her eyes had already found the name farther down the paragraph, and a cold unease moved through her.
She hesitated before the revelation. “Sinclair.”
Silence gathered in the room. The clock still ticked upon the mantel and the fire still shifted softly in the grate, but there was enough silence that the space between them changed.
Sophia’s expression turned curious. “The Duke of Sinclair? Emma’s friend?”
“The Duke of Thorne’s friend,” their mother corrected, though she looked no less startled. “Are you certain?”
Frances wished, absurdly, that she had misread it. But the letters remained the same however many times she looked at them.
“Yes.”
She continued reading, because stopping now would only make it worse. The article did not accuse gently. It accused with relish.
“The gentleman in question is said to have fathered a child in secret, an illegitimate consequence concealed from society with all the care one might devote to hiding a stain upon fine linen.’”
Their mother drew in a sharp breath. “How shocking!”
Frances kept reading, though her voice had lost all lightness now.
“The mother and infant, rather than being acknowledged with honor or even ordinary decency, have reportedly been tucked away in the country, far from London scrutiny, where arrangements of a private sort may be managed without inconvenience to the nobleman’s reputation.”
Sophia sat up straighter. “Tucked away?”
Frances’ mouth tightened. “Yes.”
She looked back to the page.
“One hears whispers of hush money, discreet lodgings, and servants too loyal, or too well-paid, to speak plainly of what has passed. Such measures may preserve appearances for a time,but they cannot alter the truth of a man’s character. Beneath so agreeable an exterior, it seems, lies a disposition no less careless, selfish, and immoral than that of the worst libertines in drawing-room history.’”
Sophia looked appalled. Their mother looked equally shocked, though her shock was sharpened by fascination. “He has always seemed like such a proper gentleman.”
Frances hardly heard them. Her gaze had gone farther down the column, and with every line her unease deepened into something darker.
“But the gentleman’s conduct does not end with his own disgrace,” she read. “There is, as always in such unfortunate circumstances, a woman at the center of the affair, though not one whose name has yet been spoken aloud.’”
Sophia leaned forward. “They mean to reveal her.”
“They mean to suggest her,” Frances corrected.
She looked back at the page. “She is said to be young and of no particular standing, indeed, a commoner of the most unremarkable sort, with neither family nor fortune to recommend her.”
Their mother’s lips pressed together. “How merciless.”
