“With embroidery, it would be less legible.”
He nearly smiled. “Is it for that scandal column you used to write?”
The question altered her at once. Her gaze dropped to the notebook. For a moment, only the breeze moved between them, stirring the hem of her shawl and carrying the faint scent of grass and warm stone.
“No,” she answered.
He regretted asking. “Forgive me. I did not mean–”
“It is a fair question.” She touched the edge of the page with one finger. “But no. I do not wish to write such things any longer.”
Andrew remained standing beside the bench. “Because of what happened with your sister?”
“With Emma,” Frances agreed quietly, “and with you. And with the baby. And with every person who has ever been turned into entertainment before breakfast.”
There was no self-pity in her voice. That made the confession more striking.
“At the time,” she continued, “I thought I understood harm because I knew how sharply words could be shaped. But that was vanity. Knowing a blade is sharp is not the same as understanding what it does when it cuts.”
Andrew studied her. “You regret it.”
“Yes.”
The answer was plain. It made him appreciate it more.
“I regret the pleasure I took in it most of all,” she said. “The cleverness. The little triumph of knowing a line would be repeated. It seemed harmless if one did not stay to watch where the words landed.” Her mouth tightened faintly. “I… do not want to do that anymore.”
Andrew felt, unexpectedly, a deep respect move through him, and there was no surprise in it. He already knew she possessed a conscience, though she often disguised it as irritation. But to hear her name the fault without ornament struck him.
“And what do you want to write?” he asked.
Frances hesitated. This time, the color in her face was unmistakable.
“Nothing of consequence.”
“Well, that seems unlikely.”
“It is very possible,” she nodded. “Many people write things of no consequence.”
“Not you,” he reminded her.
She looked at him then, and whatever reply she had prepared seemed to falter.
The baby sighed in her sleep. Frances glanced down, adjusted the blanket near the child’s cheek, and then said, almost too lightly. “A novel.”
“A novel,” he echoed.
“Yes.”
Andrew sat down at the other end of the bench, leaving a careful space between them. “What sort of novel?”
Frances looked as though she regretted the entire conversation. “A romance.”
He could not quite keep the surprise from his face.
Her chin lifted at once. “You need not look so astonished.”
“I beg your pardon.”
