So. She had two hours to wrap her mind around the knowledge that Henry wanted a private interview with Caroline. The secrecy alone made it improper—just as was his supposed correspondence with Caroline.
Yet Frances was the one he had kissed and touched. Frances was the one who had made his breathing rush, who had roused his body.
Or had he only kissed her back? He was the one who had pulled away first, though he pretended it was for her own good.
She creased Caroline’s delicate handkerchief into a tiny square and crammed it into her sewing basket.
“A secret scheme,” Caroline murmured. She cast the letter onto the floor with her usual carelessness, and Frances snapped it up and tossed it onto the morning room’s small writing desk. “I can’t imagine what it could be.”
“Are you going to oblige him?” The tone of Frances’s voice rang falsely bright even to her own ears.
“I’ll see what he has in mind.” Caroline frowned. “You don’t think this is one of Emily’s matchmaking schemes, do you?”
“I really can’t say.”
Caroline chuckled. “No, I really can’t say what goes through Emily’s head either. But still, this doesn’t sound like one of her plots. If she had dictated the letter, I’m sure she would have been much more effusive about her ball.”
“No doubt.” Frances returned to her chair and folded her hands neatly, facing her cousin. “So. Violets. A secret scheme. Are you still willing to say he’s not besotted with you?”
Caroline clambered back onto her scroll-armed sofa, Lady’s Magazine again in hand. “I’m willing to hear him out. It might be something quite innocent. It could even be a surprise for Emily and Jem.”
She leaned back and flipped open the magazine, then laid it over her face. “Now do let me rest for an hour,” came her muffled voice. “If we’re to have a roomful of callers this afternoon, I need to prepare myself.”
She tugged the paper down for a second. “Have Millie lace you into that ravishable bronze-green gown again, won’t you? Just in case.”
And with a roguish wink, she vanished again under the pages of fashion, leaving Frances with Henry’s letter and far too many questions.
***
Frances fully expected to see some change in Henry’s face when he entered Caroline’s drawing room that afternoon.
From her customary seat in the corner, she could read each arriving man like a book. Bart Crosby was a sweeping romance, all courtly admiration and puppy love. Lord Wadsworth was rather gothic in the way he squinted at everyone else, as though they were family skeletons he’d intended to shove back in the closet. Hambleton and Crisp were a farce, as always, dressed in identical high-starched cravats and waggling ivory-headed swordsticks.
But when Henry was shown into the drawing room at last, he looked annoyingly normal considering he was plotting a secret. Which made him a mystery.
There were no such shadows under his eyes as there were under Frances’s: horrible gray-yellow circles that not even the bewitching bronze-green dress could banish. Henry’s smile was bright and confident too, nothing of self-consciousness in it. He strode into the room with his left arm crooked around a bouquet of violets and swept into a bow before Caroline, straightening before his stiffened right arm could swing out of place.
“For me?” the countess asked—rather obtusely, in Frances’s opinion.
“Somewhat.” Henry tumbled the violets into her lap, then retrieved what Frances now realized was one of two bouquets he’d been holding. “If you’ll excuse me?”
Caroline’s smile widened to a positive sunbeam. “Be off with you.”
As seemingly everyone in the room stopped talking, Henry strode over to Frances.
To her, he handed the violets with an entirely different gesture. There was nothing theatrical about the half smile, the simply outstretched hand. Frances sat dumbly, watching, as he waited for her to take the flowers.
“You deserve blooms of your own,” he finally said. “I would like you to accept these, if you’re willing.”
“If I’m willing?” She gave a little bark of laughter. “I’m shamefully willing. No one’s ever brought me flowers before. Thank you.” She took the bunch from him with a clumsy, overeager gesture.
He gave her a searching look, suddenly a strategist. “Consider this an appeasement, to keep you from ripping my head off in the middle of the drawing room.”
Her fingers tightened on the ribbon-bound stems. “Why? Have you done something unforgivable?”
His mouth kicked up on one side. “I hope you don’t think so,” he said in a quiet voice.
Under the armor of the bronze-green silk, Frances felt suddenly conscious of every inch of her skin. “No, I suppose I don’t.”
The grin he shot her was pure mischief. “I am relieved to hear it.”
“I’m not relieved in the slightest,” she muttered, too low for him to hear. The tight, sweet tension of unfulfilled desire rippled through her belly at the sight of him, making her nipples harden.
Settle down, she told herself. These violets were meant to atone, their frail little blooms covering over a furtive interlude that should never have happened. He was too stubborn in pursuit of his countess, and she was too proud to throw herself at someone who didn’t truly want her.
Probably. She was probably too proud for that.
“Is that all, then?” Her voice sounded brisk, as if she were truly the teacher she’d once pretended to be. And why not? If he thought to buy her off with violets, he must not know how glad she was for even this sign of his regard. Which was really a dismissal.
“For now.” And with that brilliant grin that wiped her mind blank and muddled her thoughts into a froth of longing, he inclined his head to Frances and strode back to Caroline.
Only a few feet away, yet far enough that she had no idea where she stood with him.
Caroline had piled up cushions next to her to save a spot on the sofa for Henry. All the better to scheme with you, my dear. Wadsworth tried in vain to shoulder his way into their conversation, but every time he interjected something, Caroline found another small task for him to perform—a vase to relocate, a tray of dainties to pass among the guests.
Caroline was using him as a footman. It made a welcome distraction from Frances’s own uncertainty.
The viscount grew distinctly sour as Caroline’s indifference persisted through minute after minute. His courtly veneer thinned, then dissolved entirely as the other men ignored him, chatting about horses and boots and the cut of their coats, plucking sandwiches from the tray he held, granting him as little attention as they’d give a servant.
Finally, Wadsworth stalked over to Frances’s chair, tray still in hand, and leaned against the blue-plastered wall.
“So you’ve learned one of the cardinal rules of good society,” she said. “With the simple addition of a tray or a duster to one’s hand, anyone can become invisible.”
“You underestimate me, Mrs. Whittier,” he said with a lazy smile, leaning so close that she could smell the floral-citrus of the bergamot with which he evidently anointed his hair.
“I’m sure I don’t,” Frances muttered, clutching her violets more tightly.
Wadsworth pretended he hadn’t heard. “You know I am scrupulously conscious of manners. For example, I’m aware that I ought more properly to allow you to hold this tray. Since you are a servant.”
He held out the platter of tiny sandwiches at arm’s length. Before Frances could decide whether or not to take it from him, he released it.
Thump. The silver tray fell to the floor, sandwiches rolling every which way.