“No.” The word fell heavily into the silent room and rippled for long seconds. “No. I regret that very much. When I admitted I was afraid of losing you, I was telling you a deeper truth than you knew.”
Oh, his ribs would surely crack if his heart thudded with any more force. For his sake, she had lied. For want of him, she had lied. She meant well—but. She. Had. Lied.
“I don’t know who you are. Who you ever were.”
Frances shook her head. “You know me better than you ever realized. You have seen letters written from my very heart.”
“Heart. Ha.” He turned his head away to stare at the hunting scene again. Red coats and snug trousers. Guns and horses. Bright, glossy. Gentlemen playing at war.
“Henry, that heart seemed real enough to you when you thought the letters were from Caroline. You all but told me once that you would never have stayed in London if she had not asked you.”
There was a snip in her voice now, a chill to the words. She was getting annoyed. Apologize and be apologized to in return; she must have thought it that simple.
Well, Henry wasn’t going to let Frances wriggle out of the situation; he’d show her no more quarter than he’d given Wadsworth earlier that day. They thought they knew his limits. They thought they could bend him, even break him. Wrong.
It was dim in the room, fast-darkening outside. He prowled around the edges of the room, making his way by feeling. Running fingers over the filigree of plasterwork, the frames of paintings, the molding of the dado. These were the contours of London life. For the first time, they felt fussy and alien under his touch.
He stalked to a carved giltwood chair. Its legs lurched and stuck in the thick carpet pile as he shoved the chair closer to the sofa on which Frances was seated.
Her brows lifted in surprise when he sat down, not in the chair, but on the floor in front of it. It slid as he rested against its fragile frame, and he tensed, catching his weight on his good arm.
“Tell me, madam,” he said lightly, already feeling clearer-headed. “Something changed in you this morning, and you seemed to feel shame. Was it after I told you the truth of what happened to my arm, or only after you saw it, that you felt the full measure of scorn for me?”
She batted his question aside with a wave of her hand, as if it were an annoying insect. “Don’t be an idiot, Henry. This has nothing to do with your arm, and I never scorned you. What shame I felt was only for myself because I knew I owed you more truth than I’d given you.”
“A sudden attack of conscience? How delightful for you. And just what truths do you owe me? Should I expect more surprises?”
Her slippered feet pulled back as if seeking protection under the hem of her gown. “You should if it surprises you to hear a few facts. Namely, I cannot undo my life. Not the choices I made ten years ago, nor the ones I’ve made since meeting you.”
“That is all obvious,” Henry said. “You’re not telling me anything of real worth.”
She gave a little sigh. “All right, then what of this? I lost everything once before. If I lose you now, I know I can bear it. But I would prefer not to. Is that plain enough for you?”
He shook his head. She did not understand. She had helped him skate over the surface of society for a while. But he had given her something much deeper.
“Tell me, Henry,” went on Frances’s relentless voice, seemingly from far away. “Did you ever care for me, even a little? Or was I always a happenstance? Was it a relief to salve your pride with a woman who was desperate for you?”
He stared at her, stunned at the gall of her questions. She had warned him at their first meeting that she could be terrifying. Her frankness was as terrible a weapon as her unforgiving recall.
This—much more than learning she wrote Caro’s letters—made him feel as if she had stood at his side only to pierce his heart more easily.
The silence stretched long and brittle as a strand of glass. “Well. There’s my answer, I suppose,” Frances said at last.
“No, it’s not. You are not permitted to think yourself wronged by me,” Henry said sharply. “I’ve never done anything I thought might wound you.”
Except use you to court another woman.
Oh, damn it.
He shook feeling into his legs and lifted himself into the dainty chair he’d been trying to lean against. There. He was face to face with Frances. Her gaze followed him as he rose, wondering what he would do.
He did not know. It was harder to be face to face with himself. He needed no glass for it, only courage in the twilight.
Were kind lies worse than unkind truths? He had begun with the hope of Caro, the woman everyone wanted. He wanted the triumph of it. Frances had been a means to an end.
In truth, Caro had been a means to an end too: the respect he wanted, the ease he sought. Instead, he’d found them in Frances, and he’d found the beginnings in himself.
But if he and Frances had built their relationship on a foundation of sand, nothing had remained safe. Not even himself. So how could he ever find his way home?
He could not ask Frances any more than himself. Neither of them had the answers.
“Yet you are willing to wound yourself. Even die,” she said after a long silence. “The Henry I thought I knew was painfully aware of the value of life.”
“If I don’t risk this, my life won’t be worth living.” He sounded pompous even to his own ears, yet it was not untrue.
“Not everything must balance on a single knife blade, Henry,” she pleaded. “You needn’t duel to prove I didn’t hurt your pride. Life is worth more than honor.”
“I’m not dueling for you,” he said. He pushed himself to his feet with a swiftness that made Frances blink.
“Oh. No.” She seemed to sag as she looked up at him. “No, I know that.”
She drew in a halting breath, as though it was an effort. “I hope you will allow yourself to understand my intention. And I hope you won’t duel.” She turned her head away from him.
Stark lamplight limned her profile: the straight line of her nose, its rounded end. Her high forehead and arching brow. Her jaw set, and her mouth inflexible.
No. Her mouth was quivering at the corner.
He wanted to sigh, to stroke his thumb over the indentation at the corner of her mouth. To tell her he didn’t know, he didn’t understand what it all meant. What it would mean if he forgave her. If he could forgive himself for being a fool.
But he had a duel at dawn. That much he understood. So he inclined his head in a silent farewell and left her, and they were both alone again.
He stepped out onto a street that was silent under a brown sky.
Just brown. Dull and ashy, from nighttime and coal dust. No artist’s pigments came to mind. Nothing exotic, nothing pleasurable to look on. It seemed all the color had bled from the world tonight.
He pulled himself up straight and wrapped the tattered shreds of his pride around him like a cloak. It was all he had left, much good might it do him.
***
After Henry left, Frances collapsed back on the sofa and allowed tears to leak from her eyes for precisely two minutes. Then she shut them off and dried her face.
She’d cared enough to lie to him. It would take more than that—all her courage, even love—to give him the truth he deserved.
And she did love him. The idea of losing him was so painful as to convince her of that. She’d been tumbling inevitably down that slope since the night of Lady Applewood’s ball, when he’d first sat next to her and asked for her help. It was irresistible, to be sought and needed. And he had been irresistible as well. If he hadn’t so much dignity and pride, she wouldn’t love him so well.
Oh, this curse of love.