Henry had seen a hot air balloon launched in France. It had been punctured by a vandal after its thrilling flight. The hollow bag writhed and twisted as the heated air escaped, and it was left a sad ruin of fabric on the ground, unwieldy and useless.
It just came to mind, all of a sudden.
“If you think it best,” he said over a roaring in his ears as loud as a balloon turning itself inside out. “We won’t make an announcement until you’re ready.”
“It will be soon, I hope.” Her hands knotted together. A foolish use for fingers when one had ten at one’s command.
“You don’t know, though?” Henry’s near-sleepless night suddenly weighed on him. “Frances. Do you regret it?” Me?
“No!” Her eyes flew wide open, and she reached a hand toward him. “Oh, he is coming.”
She pushed past Henry and fled down the stairs toward the drawing room. Heavy footsteps pounded within the room, and the door slammed open just before Frances reached for its handle.
Wadsworth flung himself through the doorway and almost walked into Frances. He caught himself in midstride just outside of the drawing room and stared at her, dumbfounded.
She froze, blinking back at him.
Henry must have made a noise, for the viscount’s eyes flicked up toward the stairway. Henry realized at once that he had blundered; he should either have drawn back out of sight or followed immediately behind Frances as if he’d just come to call. Instead, it was abundantly clear that he’d been admitted into the personal apartments.
Damn it. This was exactly the type of “announcement” Frances wanted to avoid.
Wadsworth’s face was red over the high starched points of his cravat. His eyes narrowed, flicking from Henry back to Frances, and Henry recognized the signs of a baited animal ready to lash out.
He was more than willing to lash back right now. Spoiling for it, actually. Too little rest and too much uncertainty would roughen any man’s edges, and it hadn’t been long since Henry had stopped fighting for his life.
He knew just how to get the fight he wanted from Wadsworth.
He imagined that he was strolling down Piccadilly, a malacca cane in his hand, as his feet found the stairs and carried him to the doorway of the drawing room to stand at Frances’s side. He assumed an expression of delight, as of one old friend encountering another in an unexpected place. Such nonchalance would infuriate Wadsworth.
“Wadsworth,” he said as smoothly as if they were meeting at the counter of a tobacconist’s. “Good afternoon to you. And how go your affairs today?”
Twenty
Henry was not wrong in comparing Wadsworth to a wounded animal. The man’s nostrils were flaring. He looked like a beast that had lost a very hard race—and a bit of blood too.
“Eavesdropping, Middlebrook? Perhaps all those years in the army stripped you of your good breeding.”
Henry ignored this clumsy sally and replied with maddening cheer. “Oh, you do recognize good breeding when you see it? Judging by your own actions, I didn’t realize that about you.”
“I suspect there’s much you don’t realize about good society.” Wadsworth’s eyes narrowed. “For example, you must not know that a gentleman doesn’t accompany a lady upstairs into her private apartments.” His breathing still came a bit fast, but save for the dishevelment of his carefully pomaded hair, he was shrugging back into his sharp, ambiguous urbanity. “Unless you do know that, and you are not a gentleman. Or this person is not a lady. Which is it?”
Frances lifted her chin and glared at Wadsworth, looking as though she was preparing to stomp on a rodent.
What a tableau they must make, the three of them standing in the doorway of the drawing room. If Wadsworth would but put a shawl over his head, they could perform an amateur theatrical for the other… Henry counted… seven men, plus Caro, who were watching them, transfixed.
They were all getting a dramatic performance today, though they had probably expected nothing but the usual pleasantries and flowers and dainty sandwiches. Already they had seen a vase thrown. Shards of majolica and scattered daisies lay before the drawing room’s marble fireplace, and the carpet was dark with water.
Henry was very aware of the stillness of his right arm—the arm that ought to draw Frances within its cradle, the arm that made Wadsworth think him weak. But he could fight with society’s tiny, barbed sentences as well as he had once handled a bayonet. “I’m unsure who you would call a lady or gentleman, Wadsworth. For your own sake, I hope you define a gentleman by blood rather than behavior. Otherwise, by all rights, you ought to relinquish your title to someone more deserving.”
He raised an eyebrow, calculating just the right insouciant lift as a spring within him began to coil up tight and tense. Eager energy began to flood him—the desire to fight and wound, to vanquish, to prove himself. Frances was unsure of him for some unknown reason. She need not be. He’d prove it.
“And how do you define a gentleman, Middlebrook?” Wadsworth’s face had turned a dark violet. “I should say it was one who knew his betters.”
Whispers broke out in the drawing room, nothing but a distant buzz in Henry’s ears. He peered closely at Wadsworth’s face, then tilted his head and stepped back. With a nod, he held his thumb up to the side of the viscount’s face.
“What?” Wadsworth’s livid color had begun to drain, and his lips looked oddly bloodless. “You have no reply?”
“Oh, don’t.” Henry let his posture sag, his face transform into a portrait of misery. “Don’t let yourself calm down, please. Why, you had turned the exact shade of Tyrian purple; it was a marvelous effect. That’s the color that used to be worn by all the Caesars of Rome. Ah, there you go—you’ve taken on that rare shade again. Hambleton? Crisp? Have you seen Wadsworth’s face? You ought to have waistcoats made in this color.”
Wadsworth’s brows yanked into an angry vee. When he opened his mouth to speak, Henry smiled pleasantly. “Since Tyrian purple used to be saved for royalty, Wadsworth, I suppose you’d consider it an appropriate shade for yourself. Did you know the dye comes from the mucous of snails?” He turned from the sputtering Wadsworth to Frances. “Did you know that? You do know the oddest things about people.”
Her eyes caught his, and she managed a faint smile. “I did not know that, Mr. Middlebrook. But I admit that nothing you tell me about Lord Wadsworth would surprise me.”
“The kitten has claws,” Wadsworth murmured.
“Heaven save us from such manners.” A woman’s voice. Through the drawing room doorway, Henry saw Caro stand from her flower-caged seat and thread through the room toward them. “You three are excellent at attempting courtesy without succeeding at it. But I suggest you either come in to the drawing room and be genuinely polite or take a little time to drown your prickly tempers in a brandy bottle.”
To Henry’s surprise, Wadsworth shot Caroline a cool look. “And who are you, madam, to dictate my behavior? Naught but the daughter of a vicar, aren’t you?”
Clearly some wall of courtesy had been broken along with the majolica, but Wadsworth was no tactician. This was fratricide: hurting one’s own allies.
Caroline straightened her shoulders. “I am the widow of an earl and the owner of this house. You can’t possibly require any further authority. But if you are so presumptuous as to request more, I will remind you that I am the woman who has refused your suit, and I can’t see what further we have to say to one another.”
“Look, Frances,” Henry said ruthlessly. “Wadsworth has turned the color of snail mucous again.”