“Well, yes.” Caroline’s voice was higher than usual. “I thought you’d prefer something more meaningful than a book, and it wouldn’t be right for him to give a gift of clothing, you know.”
“I do not understand why you need give me anything at all.”
Henry looked embarrassed. His gaze flicked just to the left of Frances’s, and his mouth tugged into a dent at one corner. “There was no need, but I wanted to give you something.”
“Why?”
His voice grew quieter, not much more than a whisper—as if he feared having Caroline hear him. “Because of the ball. The way you… when we…” His eyes slid to Caroline before finding Frances again. “Thank you for helping me.”
Help. Her every kiss and touch—he thought she had meant it as help. The summer heat was almost suffocating, yet Frances prickled with cold. It was just as she feared. She had drawn him aside, placed herself in his way until he could not ignore her attentions.
“You are too generous,” she said in a faint voice.
She had led him with letters and with her own body, but by leading him, she had no idea where he truly wished to go.
Frances swallowed a sigh and looked into his beautiful eyes again. “Thank you, Henry,” she said, managing the calm companion’s voice he was used to. “It was not necessary, but it was very kind of you. And Caroline.”
Henry looked relieved. “She thinks the world of you.”
And what do you think? Of me? Of her?
Better not to ask any questions if she did not want to hear the answers.
“She knows that,” Caroline said, sounding breezy again. “At least, she ought to. I’m horribly reliant on her.”
Frances made the shape of a smile as she folded Charles back into his leather case. “Likewise, Caroline.” She stood, and Henry at once matched her movement. “Here, Henry. You must have the chance to finish. If you want to.”
He took the case from her. “I do. I’ve enjoyed working in watercolors; they’re easier for me to blend than oils. And if you think you’ll like having the miniature, that makes it all the better.”
She could only nod. What could she say? That he and Caroline clearly thought the only man she needed was a dead one, three inches high, composed of pencil and watercolor and an oval chopped from an elephant’s tusk?
That they were wholly wrong about that?
Charles belonged in a box of keepsakes now, even as his bones lay somewhere in the Netherlands. She had loved him and grieved him, and for several years that life had been adequate. But it didn’t satisfy anymore.
“I could do with a sherry,” Caroline murmured, standing and fanning herself with the inevitable ivory accessory. “Or something stronger. What would be cooling in this wretched heat?”
“Lemonade,” Frances said. “With brandy in it.” How easily she slipped into her role as Caroline’s advisor.
“That sounds odd,” Caroline said. “Let’s give it a try, shall we? Henry, will you have one?”
“I think I’ve overstayed my welcome,” he said with a rueful smile. “But I hope to see you again soon.” He waved his hand, still gripping the small leather case, and made his farewells to Caroline and France.
Frances watched the empty doorway, listening as his boots thumped down the carpeted corridor and rang on the stairs down to the front door.
She heard the murmur of a servant, the thick rustle of a liveried footman retrieving Henry’s hat. The front door opened silently, but she knew he was gone when the street clatter of hooves and carriage wheels spilled into the house, then was shut out again.
Silently, she turned back to face Caroline. The countess had folded her hands behind her back; her brows were puckered under her blonde coronet of hair.
“That didn’t go at all as I’d planned,” Caroline said. “I rather wish you’d stayed in your room.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’d feel the same about the miniature no matter when I saw it.” She tried to force a smile, but it felt more like a grimace.
Caroline looked skeptical. “I think,” the countess granted at last, “we’ve both earned a brandy by now. Don’t you? We needn’t bother with the lemonade.”
She rang for a servant, but when the snifters arrived, Frances pleaded long-deferred fatigue and took her brandy with her. Rather than heading to her bedchamber for a rest, though, she went to her writing desk in the morning room. The letter from Henry still lay where she’d tossed it earlier today, after Caroline had discarded it.
Before she could change her mind, she gulped down the brandy. It burned her throat, fired her resolve. She found a pen and tugged her inkwell toward her.
The miniature had startled her out of her submission, such as it had been. She couldn’t live in her rosewood box; she couldn’t torment herself with Charles anymore. Not when her life had begun to offer new torments instead.
There would be just one more letter to Henry, and it would be their triumph. Frances’s triumph. She would tell him everything she felt, everything she wanted, even knowing he would credit it to another woman.
He wanted the lie, she reminded herself.
Her fingers wrapped tightly around the quill, the feathered barb teasing her skin, and she began to write.
Fourteen
My dear Henry,
How glad I was to see you earlier today. How glad I am too that you have continued painting. You must see now that you have lost nothing of permanence. Anything can be regained, given time enough and desire enough.
I must ask you now to dwell on desire along with me, for it is often on my mind. It has been a long time since I’ve been with a man, but I have not hungered overmuch for a man’s touch until recent days. As you and I spend more time together, my long solitude is a weight on my heart, and the days since my widowhood stretch out long and gray.
What have I lost? How can I bear it with so many years left ahead of me? Yet my loss, like yours, need not have permanence.
I have come to value your friendship greatly, yet it leaves me unsatisfied. Much as I enjoy every word we share, conversation is not enough. I think sometimes the truest, wisest, wildest, and deepest thoughts and emotions can be communicated only with the press of hand on hand, mouth on mouth, body on body.
How I should love to communicate with you ever further. I have pressed your hand in mine. But have I truly reached your heart? Do you understand me, and I you?
Let us give it time if you desire it. Heaven knows that I do.
I am yours, as always.
Henry had to sit on the floor of his bedchamber while he read this latest letter.
Even so, he still felt too unsettled. Too unprepared to take it all in. So he stretched out on his bed, flat on his back, and read it again as his body grew molten.
Ah, God. It was amazing. It was the type of letter a man fantasized about getting when he was young. The type an older man probably fantasized about getting too, for that matter, especially if the sender were young and beautiful.
The sender… that was the only part that troubled Henry. Cheerful friendliness still marked his every interaction with Caro outside of the letters; he had no idea she had grown ready for a deeper intimacy.
He held up the creamy paper again, studying the boldly incised words. They didn’t seem to suit Caro, but perhaps this was part of one of her own stratagems. Do you understand me? the letter asked. No, he really didn’t. And he rather thought that was the way she preferred it, despite the heat of her letter.