She laid her roses at the feet of Mars and took Henry’s hand. “Then come upstairs with me,” she said, looking relieved, “for there’s something I must tell you too.”
***
The last time she’d said such a thing to Henry, Frances had pulled him to the Blue Room, pinned under an eagle’s stare. She’d been unsure of what to say; she only knew that she needed to give him comfort and comfort herself.
She was slightly better off this time. She knew what she needed to say. It was just so damnably difficult.
It should be easy. Quick. Henry, I wrote the letters. But she did not want to say the words. She couldn’t take the risk.
So she brought him to her bedchamber instead.
“It’s private here,” she excused herself. “I thought we would be able to say whatever we needed to one another without being disturbed.”
Henry booted the door shut behind him with his heel. His mouth was grave, but his eyes were wicked and merry. “Very private, indeed. I shall do my best not to disturb you if that is what you wish.”
Frances watched his lips move, but she barely heard his words. She could think only of how they had pressed at her mouth, her neck, her breasts.
Henry suddenly seemed very tall and the room very small. There was nowhere to sit where she would not be close to him, nowhere to stand where she would not be within his reach. Nowhere in the world she could go and not remember his body within hers, filling her, joining with her, making her realize how alone she had become.
“It does not matter what I wish,” she said faintly, pressing her knees together. “Would you care for a chair?”
“I’ll sit on the bed,” he said cheerfully, and sank onto the coverlet, his long legs stretched out before him. “Would you care to join me?”
“I would,” Frances said, enjoying the way his eyebrows shot up. “But I think it best we say what we need to first.” How admirable. How wholly against her inclination.
“Fine. I’ll speak, then.” Henry cleared his throat. “Ah—I wanted to tell you that I’d like to court you.”
Oh.
It was everything she had longed for. Yet rather than glee, the statement evoked a sick feeling of guilt. “You… want to court me.”
“Yes.” He hitched one foot across the other thigh, and Frances drank in the long lines of his body. “Maybe it seems a little anticlimactic after we—well.”
“‘After we—well?’” Frances teased, stalling. “I think that was quite climactic. Twice climactic, wasn’t it?”
He grinned. “You’re trying to terrify me again.”
“I never have managed to terrify you yet.” She gave in and sat next to him on the bed. “So, you want to court me.”
“Yes, and not just because of the sex.” His voice fell on the last word, and his high cheekbones flushed darker.
“You are completely darling.” Frances ran a finger down his profile, letting him nip at her fingertip playfully. God, she wanted this man. Already, desire was wide-awake and thrumming hotly through her blood, despite the nagging awareness of secrets untold.
“Darling?” Henry sounded incredulous. “What a dishwater endearment. I’m going to assume that’s the current London cant for virile and masculine and overpoweringly passionate.”
“Of course. That’s exactly what I meant. It’s all those things.”
He shot her a sideways look. “I’m glad you agree. So, will you allow me to court you?”
A blush of shame heated her, and she looked at her lap as she replied, “I’ll allow anything from you, Henry. Anything at all.”
He choked. “That’s a statement full of intriguing possibility if I ever heard one.”
She could feel him relax, the mattress shifting as he leaned back on one elbow, started to swing his booted feet up onto the bed before thinking better of it. Up his legs swung, then down, and he was left at an odd angle with his torso twisted to one side behind her, supported on his left arm. His right arm subsided onto the bed, out of the way.
“Does this mean you agree to my suit?” he pressed.
“So it’s become a suit already, rather than a courtship. Much more formal, isn’t that?” Frances curled her toes in her slippers. The big toe on her left foot snagged on a hole in her stocking. If this were a dream, surely her stockings would be perfectly darned.
And surely he would allow her to stall, to find a way to draw out their pleasure again, instead of watching her with those bright blue eyes and waiting for her to reply.
“All right, yes. I agree to your suit.” She felt somehow dimmed as she replied, her words casting a shadow over the room that only she could see. “I’m honored, Henry. I care for you greatly.”
This was the truth cut down to its very heart, though she was beginning to think she felt far more than she dared admit. This man who judged his own courage so harshly, yet interpreted her every kindness so generously.
She could become very, very foolish about him, indeed.
Instead of saying more, she busied her hands. With no quills to trim, nothing to sew, she twined her fingers in Henry’s hair, rubbed his scalp, tugged at the roots. His short-cropped hair was a metalworker’s ecstasy of bronze and gold and copper, but fine and smooth as embroidery floss. She liked the look and feel of it.
He leaned his head into her hand and closed his eyes. “I am very glad you said that. You’ve no idea how uncertain I was.”
“About asking to court me?”
He opened his clear eyes. “No. About what you would say in return.”
Frances stilled her hand on his head. Silly of her. It was not as if he could read her thoughts through her fingertips. “You must have known how I felt about you.”
“I hoped. But I wasn’t certain.”
“You weren’t certain.” She could almost laugh. “Well, it seems I am good at keeping secrets.” How close she skated to the edge of disaster. He had no idea.
In one fluid movement, he sat upright. The ropes under the mattress creaked a faint protest. “You are, Frances. I’ve known that about you ever since we met. You kept a smile on your face though your toes hurt; you handed over your fan to Caro; you let a complete stranger bother you with impertinent requests.”
“Oh. Well. That was—”
“That was Applewood House, the day we met. You show a pleasant face to the world because you feel that’s your duty.”
Frances shoved herself against the headboard and wrapped her arms around her folded knees. “I’ve never been pleasant to you out of a feeling of duty.” She frowned. “Actually, I haven’t even always been pleasant to you. I was quite horrible about that fireplace screen you painted.”
“No more horrible than the screen itself.” He shrugged, his expression rueful. “But never mind that. I love your teasing, your wicked humor. That’s how you show me who you really are.”
“Of course,” she said faintly, wishing she could wad herself up more tightly. Love, he’d said. Not I love you, but I love something about you. It was close—dangerously close. And farther than he knew, for how could he love anything about her when she hadn’t told him everything?
He looked at her with eyes of trust, and his words stacked upon her like stones.
She could not take that trust from him. She could not take away his hope, and hers, for the slightest possibility that he would change his mind. She wanted him too badly to betray his trust by letting him know it had already been betrayed.
And surely it was a very small matter to have sent a few letters under someone else’s name. Or to have lived a different life once, which had by now been left quite behind.
Surely that was so.
“What did you want to tell me when we came in here?” Henry’s voice was gentle. His fingers roamed the curves of her face, exploring her contours with an artist’s worshipful attention. Each faint touch plucked a cord of wistful desire, resonating through her whole body.