“You accepted it.”
“I accepted very little,” she shot back. “I was married into it.”
His hand closed behind his back. “This is not a subject for discussion.”
“It becomes one when strange women enter my drawing room and ask whether the baby is hidden, nameless, and tied to my marriage.”
A flicker of anger moved through him, colder than before. “Lady Ashford had no right to say any such thing.”
“No, she did not. But she did say it.” Frances stepped toward him. “Not to you… to me.”
Andrew said nothing.
Her voice lowered, but it did not soften. “You may close doors, Your Grace. You may dismiss visitors, command servants, silence scandal sheets, and stand in thresholds looking as though one more question might bring the ceiling down. But Iam the one being asked. I am the one expected to smile and answer. I am the one everyone believes has become mother, accomplice, fool, or all three.”
His chest tightened.
“Frances–”
“No.” Her eyes flashed. “Do not use my name as though that will settle me. I am your wife now. Your duchess, as you’ve already said. That was the solution you chose. And if I am to bear the consequences of this secret, then I have the right to know what it is.”
Andrew looked at her across the small distance between them, and for one dangerous moment he almost told her. It wouldn’t have been all of it. Perhaps not Mary’s name, not Carrington, not the fear in that dying woman’s eyes. But it would have been enough to soften the suspicion in Frances’ face, enough to make her understand why he kept silent, and hopefully, enough to stop her from looking at him as though he had built a wall simply to keep her out.
Then he heard Mary’s voice again, thin and desperate in the dim cottage room.
Protect the child… never say the baby is mine… let no one know.
His answer settled before tenderness could weaken it.
“No,” he said instead, unable to control the urge to keep denying until denial was no longer possible.
Frances went still.
Andrew forced himself to hold her gaze. “I… cannot explain.”
“Cannot,” she repeated. “Or will not?”
“Both,” he frowned, “if that satisfies you.”
“It does not,” she replied in that infuriating manner that both infuriated him and thrilled him in equal measure.
“I did not expect it would.”
Her face flushed. “Then what do you expect? Obedience?”
“I expect discretion.”
“Oh, how generous.”
Right now, he was leaning toward infuriating.
“I expect you to understand that silence may be the only shield I have left,” he told her, though even as the words left him, he knew they wouldn’t be enough, because she didn’t want another locked door. She wanted the key.
“Silence,” she echoed sharply.
“Yes.”
“Mine, I suppose.”
