Page 41 of The Courtship Dance

On the other hand, she had to admit with a blush, a lady would not have come down to secretly open the door to a gentleman so late at night. Nor would she have slipped him past the servants and closed herself in a room alone with him.

Not only that, she had imbibed brandy in his company—she had even been the one to suggest it. Worst of all, she had thoughtlessly run down to meet him wearing only her dressing gown, under which she had on only her undergarments. No doubt any man might be forgiven for thinking that she was not averse to seduction.

When she looked at it in that light, it was enough to make her cringe with embarrassment. Widows were often considered to be more lax about their morals than a maiden; they were, at least, far more knowledgeable. Widows were not closely chaperoned, and when a woman was childless throughout years of marriage, as she had been, then there was unlikely to be the scandal of a child born out of wedlock. And in the sophisticated world of the ton, once a woman had married it was not unusual for her to engage in affairs without being ostracized for it, so long as she kept the matter discreet. However, Francesca had always been extremely careful not to give anyone even the slightest reason to believe that she was loose in her behavior.

Whatever had possessed her to act as she had last night? Had Rochford assumed that, given how she was dressed, she was open to seduction, perhaps even inviting it?

How could she face him again if he had thought that about her?

Yet she could not help but wonder—if he had thought her open to seduction, then why had he stopped? She had certainly done nothing to make him think she was unwilling. And that, she realized, was the most lowering thought of all: that he had grown uninterested in her.

Perhaps he had not felt the same excitement that she had. Maybe, even at that early stage, he had sensed in her the coldness that had so frustrated and angered Andrew. Tears sprang into her eyes at the thought. She had long ago stopped crying over her husband’s disappointment in her. In truth, she had been glad that it had at least caused him to seek her bed less and less often. She had hated knowing that she was inferior to other women, but it had stopped causing her sorrow that Haughston was disappointed in her.

But now, thinking that Rochford might have realized the true coldness of her nature, she wanted to cry. And as one day passed and turned into another, she could not help but think that his absence was due to the same reason that had made him cease kissing her and leave.

It should not make her feel so dejected, she knew. She would not have gone to bed with him if he had stayed—surely she would not have. She did not want an affair with him or any other man. Fortunately, the part of her life where she had to submit to a man’s pleasure was over. So there was absolutely no reason to feel downhearted because the man she had once loved had not tried to complete the seduction he had started.

And she would not dwell on it any longer.

She forced herself to turn to her neglected correspondence, but…within five minutes, her thoughts were going over the same well-trodden path.

When she did manage to put the matter of Rochford and their kisses from her mind, it was only to replace it with worry over Perkins. She had feared that he would appear at her door again to rage about Rochford’s treatment of him, but he had not. That fact should have been a relief, but it was not. Knowing that he might pop up at any moment kept her nerves on edge, and her anxiety only increased as the days crept along toward her day of reckoning with him.

Francesca had no idea what she would do, what she would say to the man when he came again to demand her payment. She racked her brain to think of some argument that would convince him not to go through with his plan, some way to disprove what he said, some schedule by which she could pay off the debt that he claimed she owed him. But her thoughts were scattered and disjointed, and nothing she could offer seemed adequate. He would know as well as she that she could not pay off that much money in her lifetime, and he certainly would not want to wait. Perkins was not a man to display any kindness.

Two days after the party, Francesca was in the sitting room, trying to add up all her assets in the hope of making them amount to something close to the figure Perkins was demanding, when she heard Callie’s voice in the hallway.

She jumped to her feet, thinking Rochford would be there, as well.

But it turned out that Callie had come alone, and Francesca chided herself for the faint spurt of disappointment she felt. Putting that aside with a smile, she stepped forward and took her visitor’s hands, squeezing them affectionately.

“Callie, I was just thinking of you. I was going to call on you this very afternoon.”

“Then I am glad that I arrived before you left to see me,” Callie responded with an answering smile.

Francesca rang for tea, and the two of them sat down for a good cozy chat. The night at the party, they had barely scratched the surface of conversation. Unfortunately, Francesca learned, her friend was departing the next day for her husband’s estate in the country.

“No, you must not! You have just gotten home,” Francesca protested.

“I know. But Brom has been away from his estate far too long already. He says he has neglected it dreadfully. He went back to it only briefly before our wedding.”

Francesca grinned at her friend. “Yes, I remember. He said he was going back for the whole two months of your engagement, but he could not stay away from you longer than two weeks.”

Callie laughed in a throaty, self-satisfied way. “True. Of course, at the time he claimed that there was less to do than he had thought.”

“I shall miss you terribly.”

“You must come visit me,” Callie told her. “I shan’t know a soul there. It will be terribly lonely. You should come as soon as the Season is over.”

“You will have Bromwell,” Francesca reminded her. “And somehow, I suspect that he will be enough. I don’t want to intrude on a newly married couple.”

“It will not be an intrusion. Why, I will be an old married woman by then. And Brom will be busy. It will be harvest time.”

“Well, perhaps for a little while.”

“At least a month,” Callie insisted, and Francesca, laughing, gave in.

They went on to talk of other things, chief among them the gowns that Callie had purchased in Paris. She was wearing one of them today, a lilac silk day dress with short petal sleeves overlying puffed sleeves of lilac net. This topic occupied them quite happily until Fenton entered to inform them that Lady Mannering had come to call.