Andrew recovered and struck. “My wife says many things.”
“Your wife,” Philip repeated, with pointed satisfaction.
Andrew gave him a flat look. “Do not sound so pleased with yourself. You did not arrange it.”
“No, but I had despaired of ever seeing you suitably punished for your sins. Marriage may do what friendship failed to accomplish.”
“My sins?”
“Your avoidance, excessive competence and a near criminal fondness for ledgers, even if I do say so myself.”
“Ledgers are reliable.”
“So are dogs, yet you have not married one.”
Andrew nearly smiled. “There speaks a man who has never managed estate accounts.”
“There speaks a man who has forgotten how to enjoy dinner.”
Andrew’s grip tightened.
Dinner.
He immediately remembered Frances seated across from him, cutting her food into fragments and barely eating. He remembered the warmth of her waist beneath his hand, the startled lift of her face to his, the way her breath had caught. He remembered her hand against his chest, slight and trembling, though she would have denied the trembling had he named it.
Andrew struck too hard.
Philip blocked him, with his eyebrows lifting. “Ah.”
“Ah what?”
“That one had feeling behind it.”
Andrew scoffed. “You are imagining things.”
“I often do. Emma says marriage has made me fanciful.”
“Emma is correct.”
Philip lowered his sword briefly and looked toward the garden. “They seem well enough together.”
The ladies had stopped near the fountain. Emma appeared to be speaking with animation. Frances listened with her arms folded. Then Emma said something that made Frances look away, and though Andrew could not see her face clearly, he knew the tilt of her head well enough now to recognize discomfort.
He disliked it. He disliked even more that he recognized it.
“She misses her sister,” Philip said.
Andrew looked at him. “Emma?”
“Frances.”
Andrew glanced back toward the garden. “She has not said so.”
“She likely would not.”
“No,” Andrew agreed quietly. “She likely would not.”
Philip studied him with infuriating attention. “You notice a great deal for a man who keeps insisting this is only an arrangement.”
