Frances shrugged. “All right, I understand. I won’t interfere anymore.”
Again, there was something strange about the way she spoke, as though she chose her words carefully to hide something.
He thought he could guess what she was covering up: pity. Why else would her eyes skate away from his? Why would she agree so quickly to his ungracious request to distance herself?
Maybe she too had felt they’d been bound a little too closely. Or maybe distance was what she preferred. He had too much dignity and not enough bluntness to pursue an explanation from her when it was sure to end in another embarrassment. The latest in a long series since he’d returned to London.
With a dissonant crash of keys and another peal of laughter, the trio at the piano called for Henry and Frances to join them. They both stood quickly, not quite looking at one another.
“Don’t forget,” Henry said in a whisper. “It’s all up to me now.”
She gave a little sigh. “I never forget, Henry.”
***
The rest of the evening went by pleasantly. When Jem returned to the drawing room, the six took turns giving dramatic readings out of a book of plays. An aggressively safe activity, as no one could be tugged into an intimate conversation, or even an intimate glance, with anyone else.
That was all right with Henry. He had the letters to rely on, to look forward to.
Or so he thought.
But write to Caro as he might, in the week leading up to his ball, not a single letter came in response to his.
Eight
“I look like an idiot,” Frances hissed as she followed Caroline through the crowds in the Argyll Room’s lengthy ballroom.
Plentiful witnesses to Frances’s overdressed presumption were on hand, for all of London seemed to be in attendance at Lord and Lady Tallant’s ball for Henry. The ballroom was brightly lit, richly ornamented, crushingly full. Curious guests peered down from the tiers of boxes overlooking the grand room and chattered from rows of benches surrounding the dancing area. Frances felt pinned by their curious gazes, as though she were a butterfly in a glass case.
Yes, tonight she was a butterfly, or at least had the coloring of one. For this ball, Caroline had insisted in fitting Frances out in one of her own evening dresses, a deep red sarcenet with black trim to flatter Frances’s dark complexion, and she had lightly rouged Frances’s cheeks and lips.
“I told you that you looked wonderful,” Caroline tossed back over her shoulder as she waved at a friend. “My feelings will be very hurt if you continue to question my judgment.”
“I’m sorry to hurt your feelings, but I have to,” Frances muttered to her cousin’s back. “If I can’t say I look like an idiot, then what about a clown? I’ll start juggling the biscuits if you let me into the refreshment saloon.”
Caroline stopped short and turned to face her. “I’m going to pretend that I didn’t hear any of that. And you are going to pretend that you think you look lovely. Because you do.” She held up a hand against Frances’s protest. “You do, Frannie. Why won’t you believe it?”
Frances opened her mouth, waiting for an explanation to fall out. She wasn’t exactly sure how to answer Caroline, who always meant well.
“I guess it’s because I don’t feel like myself.” She made a helpless gesture at the dress. “The color, the cut. It’s so conspicuous.”
As though proving her point, a young man in starched shirt points jostled her heavily and righted himself with a grab at her waist.
Frances fixed him with a filthy glare, then turned back to Caroline. “See? Clown. That fellow certainly expected me to entertain him.”
Caroline winked. “What better mood for a ball than a willingness to entertain? Tonight, you shouldn’t hide on a chair against the wall. You ought to have a dance, and not only when my toes can’t stand Bart Crosby’s boots anymore.”
Frances’s fingers worked around the slim rectangle of her folded fan. “What if you crack your fan? Or what if you need my help with something?”
Caroline flicked open her own fan, an elaborate affair painted with an image of Venus reclining amidst a flock of Cupids. Gracefully, as though unconscious of the movement, she fluttered it in the area of her shoulder, forcing back a trout-faced man who was about to step too close for propriety. “I think,” Caroline said with a tolerant smile, “I shall be able to bear the inconvenience. I’m not completely helpless, you know.”
“I never thought that,” Frances said.
“Off with you.” Caroline wiggled the fan. “Shoo. Go. Enjoy yourself. That’s an order, Frannie. I don’t want to see you again unless it’s in the middle of a country-dance.”
She gave Frances a friendly wave before turning away, and Frances was left alone, with nothing to do but stand there in a too-red gown and pretend she belonged in the middle of a crushing ballroom.
Which she had, once. Almost a decade before.
Her stomach clenched under the fine fabric of her borrowed gown. Ah, how she would enjoy being a girl again, of whom nothing had been expected but dancing and flirtation. She hardly remembered that blithe girl anymore. Single-minded and selfish, and delighted to be so.
That was before she had learned the consequences of being single-minded and selfish.
“I’ve been looking for you.” A male voice sounded in her ear, making her jump.
“Henry.” She turned. “Why, where is your adoring throng? I saw you next to Lady Tallant not five minutes ago, smiling down a pack of rabid debutantes. Surely you can’t have escaped them so quickly in this crowd.”
He raised his left arm to the level of his eyes. “Elbow. A little trick I learned from my brother.”
“Ah. I should have known.” Frances smiled.
So he had elbowed his way out of the receiving line to join her? She looked him over from short-cropped golden hair to bright eyes, to black-clad shoulders and stark white linens and… oh, good Lord, he was a delicious sight, all elegance and nobility.
Her mind vanished in a puff of lust, and she stood there gaping at him, a crimson-gowned statue.
“I need to speak with you,” he said, and she noticed at last that he wasn’t smiling back.
Lust squirmed again before reluctantly bedding down. “As you wish. Not here, though? It’s rather loud.”
“No, not here.” He frowned. “I—”
“Oh, Hal, thank heavens.” Lady Tallant, elegant in butter-yellow silks, had come up behind her brother-in-law. “I’ve been hunting for you. It’s time to start the dancing. Did you ask Mrs. Whittier to stand up with you for the minuet? Excellent, come with me.”
She charged through the crowd, using her elbows with as much determination as her husband, and Frances and Henry could only stare at each other and shrug.
“You’re going to dance?” Frances followed Lady Tallant, walking on her toes so that her words might travel directly into Henry’s ear. “I didn’t realize you planned to…” She trailed off. No, he hadn’t come over to ask her to dance, or he would simply have done so. He had something else on his mind. Probably something to do with the letters—or lack thereof.
“You don’t have to dance with me,” she said hurriedly. “I know I was at hand, but I won’t be offended if you ask someone else.”
His eyes cut sideways for an instant. “Don’t worry yourself about that. This way I can make sure you don’t escape me, and after our dance is over, we’ll have a chance to speak.”
Her mouth fell open. “I… well, all right. I assure you, I won’t try to escape.”
That was an understatement if there ever was one. She could only hope she remembered the steps of the dance while her mind was so preoccupied with furtive longing. Her fingers tingled within their gloves, wanting to touch and hold. For a few minutes, he would be all hers.