“This.” Philip tossed the paper onto the desk between them.
The title flashed at him:Nobility in Name Only: The Sinclair Scandal Breaks.
“And why,” Philip added, “is my sister-in-law’s name now entangled in it?”
Andrew stared at him. “What have Frances or Sophia to do with any of this?”
Philip’s jaw tightened. “Read it.”
With growing irritation, Andrew picked up the paper. It was not the same scandal sheet as before, though the style was instantly familiar. It was sharp and clever. His gaze moved over the opening lines, and then, despite himself, he slowed.
The writer did not deny the rumor outright. Instead, she dismantled it. She questioned the convenience of society’s sudden moral outrage, observed that men of true vice were rarely those most hastily condemned, and pointed out that a gentleman’s willingness to shield the vulnerable might easily be twisted by idle minds into proof of guilt. She asked whether the ton had become so desperate for spectacle that charity itself must now be counted as seduction. She remarked, with a dryness Andrew recognized at once, that those who most enjoyed shredding reputations were often those with the most to fear from scrutiny themselves.
It was expertly done.
He read one line again, silently.
Perhaps the greater scandal is not what society imagines the Duke of Sinclair has done, but how eagerly society demands a woman and child be sacrificed to make the story pleasing.
Andrew’s fingers tightened around the page.
He could hear Frances’ voice in the sentences, not merely the intelligence, but the sharpness she kept tucked behind civility, the cool disdain for hypocrisy and the refusal to let injustice pass unchallenged once it had properly caught her attention.
Philip’s voice cut across his thoughts. “Well?”
Andrew looked up. “Frances wrote this?”
“She did.”
“Why would she involve herself?” he asked.
“That,” Philip said, “is a question I came here hoping you could answer.”
Andrew set the page down. “I cannot.”
Philip watched him for a long moment. “The original story is already circulating everywhere. This piece has only fed it.”
“She is defending me.”
“She is,” Philip agreed flatly. “And the ton has decided a lady does not defend a gentleman so publicly unless there is something personal behind it.”
Andrew’s expression hardened. “That is ridiculous.”
“Yes,” Philip concurred. “But that has never once prevented society from embracing it.”
A brief silence fell. Andrew glanced again at the paper on his writing table: clever, composed, dangerous in its own way.Frances had not written like a lovestruck fool trying to rescue a man’s name. She had written like someone offended by cruelty and determined to expose it. It ought to have helped.
Instead, all it managed to do was attach her to the matter.
He felt a flicker of annoyance, unfair perhaps, but real. “She should have left it alone.”
Philip’s gaze sharpened. “On that, at least, we agree.”
Andrew let out a breath. “I did not ask for her assistance.”
“No. But she has given it, and now people are talking.”
Andrew frowned. “What precisely are they saying?”
