“This conversation is finished,” he told her.
For a moment, she could only stare.
Finished.
The word landed like a lock turning. She had been dismissed before in her life, by her father, by society, by men who mistook wit for impertinence and intelligence for inconvenience. She knew the sensation well: that polite, suffocating closure that told a woman she had spoken too far and must now be returned to the proper boundaries of obedience.
But she had not expected it to feel like this from Andrew. That was the most humiliating part.
“You cannot simply end it because it no longer suits you,” she urged, fighting the onslaught of tears.
“I can when nothing more may be said.”
Her temper flared so swiftly it nearly steadied her. “Nothing more may be said by you, perhaps.”
His hand tightened once at his side. She saw it. She saw the anger, the restraint, the cost of whatever he was holding back. But he did not yield. He did not soften. He did not even have the decency to look uncertain.
“Good afternoon, Your Grace.”
The title struck harder than her name would have.
A moment ago, she had been Frances; now she was Her Grace, returned to rank, formality, distance. She was not a wife, not even an ally. She was his duchess, when he wished to defend her. She was Her Grace, when he wished to leave her.
Andrew turned and walked out. The door closed behind him with a quiet click.
Frances remained where she was. For several seconds, she did not move at all. She listened until the last echo of him had vanished. But the silence he left behind was not empty. It contained Lady Ashford’s careful questions, Andrew’s cold refusal, and her own voice saying trust must be earned as though she had not already wanted, foolishly, dangerously, to give him some part of it.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Andrew returned to Sinclair House long after the lamps had been lowered. The hour was late enough that the household had settled into its night silence, the kind that made every sound seem deliberate. Carter appeared at once, as Carter always did, though Andrew had given no notice of his return.
“Your Grace,” the butler said, taking his hat and gloves.
Andrew gave only a nod. “All quiet?”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
It ought to have satisfied him. It did not.
Andrew moved toward the staircase, weariness sitting heavily in his shoulders. He had spent the evening at his club and remembered almost none of it. Men had spoken. Cards had been played. Someone had laughed too loudly near the fire. Through it all, Andrew had been thinking of Frances standing in thedrawing room, her face pale with anger, and her words cutting through every defense he had built.
Trust must be earned.
He had told himself she did not understand. He had told himself she could not understand, because understanding required knowledge he could not give. The explanation had not comforted him.
At the top of the stairs, he turned toward his own rooms, then stopped. The nursery lay in the opposite direction. It was an old habit already, though he disliked admitting it. Before sleep, before undressing, before allowing the day to end, he wanted to hear for himself that the child was breathing easily.
He told himself it was responsibility. He had made a promise, and a promise required vigilance. Nothing more.
He had just turned down the nursery corridor when a figure moved from the shadows near the far end.
“Andrew.” Frances’ voice was not sharp this time.
She was frightened. He stopped at once. She came toward him quickly, with her hair partially loosened from its pins and a shawl drawn hastily around her shoulders. Whatever remained between them from the afternoon, all anger, pride, and accusation, vanished before she even reached him.
“Thank goodness you are here,” she breathed.
His blood went cold. “What is it?”
