“And he?” Andrew asked.
“Is maddening.”
“Naturally,” he grinned.
“And proud. Secretive. Frequently high-handed.”
He whistled in amusement. “This man sounds unbearable.”
“He is.”
The baby stirred slightly, and Frances rocked her without thinking. The motion was gentle and practiced now. Andrew watched it, and then, he watched the way Frances’ voice softened as she continued.
“But slowly,” she said, “they begin to see each other more clearly. Not all at once, and not easily, but in small moments, when one of them is afraid, when one of them says too much, or not enough, when the other sees what lies beneath the part that is shown to the world.”
Andrew’s chest tightened. Frances’ pencil rested motionless against the page.
“The woman knows it cannot last,” she told him. “That is what makes it dangerous. If something is temporary, one ought not to grow attached to it. One ought to keep one’s heart sensibly out of reach.”
She gave a small, almost soundless laugh.
“But hearts are not especially sensible, even in novels.”
Andrew looked at her. Her profile was turned slightly away, and he could see the tender curve of her mouth before she remembered to guard it. The baby slept between them, peaceful and warm, as though she had no idea she was the small living center around which so much fear, duty, and longing had gathered.
For a long moment, he could not speak. He wanted to ask whether she truly believed it could not last. He wanted to ask whether the woman in her story wished it to. He wanted to tell her that the man in it, whoever he might be, was perhaps less cold than frightened, less distant than ignorant of how to come closer without ruining everything.
He said none of it.
Instead, he asked. “How does it end?”
Frances looked down at the page. The breeze lifted the corner of the notebook, revealing only a few lines before she pressed it flat again.
“I have not decided yet,” she whispered.
Andrew heard what she did not say.
Neither have I.
The baby made a soft, contented sound in her sleep. Frances lowered her gaze to the child, and for a moment her face was so gentle that Andrew could not look away.
He sat beside her in the spring light, the work in his study forgotten, the questions between them still unanswered, and understood with a quiet, dangerous certainty that some stories did not wait for their authors to choose an ending.
Some had already begun writing themselves.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“An entire box of rubbish,” Frances murmured, “and naturally,thatis the first interesting thing I have found all morning.”
She had come to the library with the admirable intention of choosing a book and the somewhat less admirable intention of avoiding the accounts Andrew had left for her opinion upon the east sitting room curtains. The accounts were not difficult. That was the problem. They were perfectly simple, perfectly dull, and so thoroughly domestic that Frances had felt an immediate need to escape them.
The library had seemed the safest place.
It was one of the finest rooms in Sinclair House, though she had not yet said so aloud to Andrew. The shelves rose nearly to the ceiling, dark and gleaming, with brass ladders fixed to their rails and long windows overlooking the side lawn. Morning light fell in narrow panes across the carpet. The air smelled of leather,dust, and beeswax polish, with the faintest trace of smoke lingering from last night’s fire.
Frances had meant to look for a novel. Instead, she had found a wooden crate near the writing table, half-hidden behind a chair and stacked untidily with old newspapers, pamphlets, and folded scandal sheets.
It was obviously meant for removal. A length of fraying twine lay coiled on top, as though someone had begun bundling the papers and then abandoned the task. Frances knew she ought to leave them alone. She also knew, with perfect clarity, that she would not.
