“If you’re only going to sit there and hum, you might as well pour out at once.” Caroline gestured toward the tea tray. “You can serenade us all quite as well while you tip that teapot on end.”
She sat up and extended her cup, and the commotion across the room finally caught her eye. “Good lord, what has Wadsworth done with all the sandwiches? Did he stumble?”
“It was a stumble of sorts.” Frances sat herself primly on the sofa next to Caroline. As she filled teacups and measured out careful slivers of lemon and lumps of sugar, she felt her poise return.
Perhaps her life would always be portioned out by teaspoons and hours for callers and the occasional bunch of violets. It was not much to be proud of, but she was useful in her way.
And life could hold its tiny triumphs nonetheless.
Across the room, she caught Wadsworth’s eye, and she raised her teacup to him for the sheer pleasure of watching him glare.
Thirteen
The callers had all gone at last; the sandwiches had been tidied from the floor by a maid. The carpet and Wadsworth’s dignity had been restored to order with equal skill—one with a few well-placed whisks of a rag, the other with a few well-chosen words from Caroline.
“Why bother appeasing him?” Frances said when she and Caroline were finally alone in the drawing room. “I know you don’t care for him.”
Caroline shrugged. “Not particularly. But why antagonize him? He might have his uses one day.”
“He could be good for sharpening your claws on, I suppose.”
Caroline laughed and agreed. “Now go have a rest. You look dreadful, and I mean that in the kindest way possible.”
So Frances went to her bedchamber as bid. It was usually a quiet haven, a long, narrow room with walls the color of a new leaf and light pinstriped curtains.
With the help of Millie, Caroline’s lady’s maid, she shed the rustling bronze-green silk, which had won entirely the wrong kind of notice today. Instead, she donned a soft blue linen day dress that made her feel much more like herself.
Not precisely at ease, though. The peaceful surroundings had little effect on her turbulent thoughts today. As soon as Millie had left, Frances folded herself onto the wide-planked wooden floor, leaning against the side of her bed.
She did feel tired, just as Caroline had suggested—tired of lying, even through omission. Maybe it was time she came face-to-face with a few truths. Namely this: if Caroline was everything Henry wanted, Frances had only herself to blame.
That was the case with her whole life, wasn’t it? Every turning was of her own choosing, every pursuit, every inevitable fall.
She lifted the white swagged bedding that draped nearly to the floor, then reached under the high bed. Her fingers found the sturdy square of a rosewood box, pulled it forward, and hefted it into her lap.
It was a fair size, a foot square, but it felt as light in Frances’s hands as if it held nothing of consequence. It seemed as though it ought to feel heavy with portent. Here lies everything left of the first twenty-three years of your life.
She ran her fingers over the lid and rubbed its ornamental brass plate. Elegant and cold, engraved with the ornate capitals IMW. Irene Malverne Ward. This had once been her mother’s jewel case. Lady Ward had been gone for a long time, and Frances had only this legacy with which to remember her mother.
Frances had given up everything else for Charles Whittier, but she’d never regretted it. Not when her family’s anger separated her from her childhood home, not even when Charles’s disappointment separated her from himself. She had always assumed their separation would be only temporary, but war had made it permanent. When he died, she had been even more glad for her deception and disobedience, for their brief marriage.
She had given herself away too cheaply, she now thought. Now she was left with only this box, a compact reminder of what she’d tossed away for love.
A reminder not to be an idiot, really.
She was beginning to think she needed that reminder again. For the second time in her life, she was allowing herself to become fascinated with a man who was too young and too good-looking. She was losing track of what was right, tricking him to keep him close. That had not ended well the first time; there was no reason to think the second would be different.
She lifted the lid of the box, and the papers within it whispered faintly. A faint floral scent wafted from the dark wood.
There were a few letters from Charles, delivered to her with titillating secrecy while they were courting by moonlight. Charles was not well educated, though he had been bright and witty, with the finest mind for figures Frances had ever encountered. As an innkeeper’s son, he had little call to practice a flowing hand, and the letters were scrawled untidily. She had never seen a worse hand from an adult, now that she thought it over—except from Henry.
Two soldiers, two casualties of war. Two, two, two. Yet they were nothing alike, except that she cared for them both.
Though even that was not the same. Charles had been the love of her youth, her feelings so ferocious that they withstood even the certainty of his waning regard. Her love might have burned out in time, but it had been snuffed by his death before that could happen. And so it lingered like smoke, pervading the very air of her world. The loss had choked her, until after long months and years, it began to dissipate, and she could breathe again.
What she felt for Henry was different. She knew him from the first time she saw him—his hidden wounds, concealed under a role. She wanted to tease out his every secret, to gain the right to bring down his guard.
Through the letters, she had come to understand Henry’s mind; now she hungered for his body. She was beginning to think she would not be satisfied until she had captured his heart, though she had no stratagem for doing so.
She was always out of step. She had grown up in wealth but married a workingman. Now she served as a companion, yet she raised her eyes to the son of an earl. She did not know for which world she was better suited. At times, both lives chafed, as though she lived in a garment cut wrongly and fitted for another’s body.
She sifted through the papers in her rosewood box, looking for her drawing of Charles. Though she wasn’t much of an artist, the likeness had been passable. No still image could have captured the things she loved best about him: the quirk of his brow when he was surprised, the slight pout of his lips when he tried to suppress a smile. He had been roguish and fun, and he had been proud of Frances, his highborn lover, once upon a time.
Of course, it was easier to be proud when one had enough to live on. It was easier to be in love too. In the end, Frances had managed it, but Charles had not.
Her fingers touched the bottom of the box. She had turned all the papers, and the drawing was not here.
She set the box on the floor and bent down again to peer under the bed. No, it had not fluttered out.
Strange. Very strange.
She straightened up and looked around her bedchamber. The only thing out of place was the box itself, where she had just set it down. She sat on the floor, leaning her head against the bed.
It was not as if she could not bring his face to mind without the picture. He had arched brows, warm eyes. His nose had been… straight, she supposed. His mouth…
She could not recall it, not right now. She could recall only the mouth that had kissed hers in the Blue Room.
She closed her eyes and pressed at them with the heels of her hands, wondering if shutting them would help her mind’s eye to open. Her fine memory was failing her. The lineaments of Charles’s face were blurring into those of Henry.