“I feel afraid,” he said under his breath. “Very afraid.”
“You should,” she said, with no sympathy whatsoever. “It will be a feeding frenzy, I assure you. You are fortunate that I took my mother aside this morning and made her swear not to throw Eloise or Hyacinth in your path. She would do it, too,” she added, clearly relishing the conversation.
“I seem to recall that you used to find joy in throwing your sisters in my path.”
Her lips twisted slightly. “That was years ago,” she said, swishing her hand through the air as if she could wave his words away on the wind. “You would never suit.”
He’d never had any desire to court either of her sisters, but nor could he resist the chance to give Francesca a wee verbal poke. “Eloise,” he queried, “or Hyacinth?”
“Neither,” she replied, with enough testiness to make him smile. “But I shall find you someone, do not fret.”
“Was I fretting?”
She went on as if he hadn’t spoken. “I think I shall introduce you to Eloise’s friend Penelope.”
“Miss Featherington?” he asked, vaguely recalling a slightly pudgy girl who never spoke.
“She’s my friend as well, of course,” Francesca added. “I believe you might like her.”
“Has she learned to speak?”
She glared at him. “I’m going to ignore that comment. Penelope is a perfectly lovely and highly intelligent lady once one gets past her initial shyness.”
“And how long does that take?” he muttered.
“I think she would balance you quite nicely,” Francesca declared.
“Francesca,” he said, somewhat forcefully, “you will not play matchmaker for me. Is that understood?”
“Well, some-”
“And don’t you say that someone has to,” he cut in. Really, she was the same open book she’d been years ago. She’d always wanted to manage his life.
“Michael,” she said, the word coming out as a sigh that was far more long-suffering than she had a right to be.
“I have been back in town for one day,” he said. “One day. I am tired, and I don’t care if the sun is out-I’m still bloody cold, and my belongings haven’t even been unpacked. Pray give me at least a week before you start planning my wedding.”
“A week, then?” she said slyly.
“Francesca,” he said, his voice laced with warning.
“Very well,” she said dismissively. “But don’t you dare say I didn’t warn you. Once you are out in society, and the young ladies have you backed into a corner with their mamas coming in for the kill-”
He shuddered at the image. And at the knowledge that her prediction was probably correct.
“-you will be begging for my help,” she finished, looking up at him with a rather annoyingly satisfied expression.
“I’m sure I will,” he said, giving her a paternalistic smile that he knew she’d detest. “And when that happens, I promise you that I shall be duly prostrate with regretful-ness, atonement, shamefacedness, and any other unpleasant emotion you care to assign to me.”
And then she laughed, which wanned his heart far more than he should have let it. He could always make her laugh.
She turned to him and smiled, then patted his arm. “It’s good to have you back.”
“It’s good to be back,” he said. He’d said the words automatically, but he realized he’d meant them. It was good. Difficult, but good. But even difficult wasn’t worth complaining over. It was certainly nothing he wasn’t used to.
They were fairly deep in Hyde Park now, and the grounds were growing a bit more crowded. The trees were only just beginning to bud, but the air was still nippy enough that the people out strolling weren’t looking for shade.
“I should have brought bread for the birds,” Francesca murmured.
“At the Serpentine?” Michael asked with surprise. He’d often walked in Hyde Park with Francesca, and they had tended to avoid that area of the Serpentine’s banks like the plague. It was always full of nursemaids and children, shrieking like little savages (often the nursemaids more so than the children) and Michael had at least one acquaintance who had found himself pelted in the head with a loaf of bread.
Seems no one had told the budding little cricket player that one was supposed to break the bread into more manageable-and less hazardous-segments.
“I like to toss bread in for the birds,” Francesca said, a touch defensively. “Besides, there won’t be too many children about today. It’s still a bit cold yet.”
“Never stopped John and me,” Michael offered gamely.
“Yes, well, you’re Scottish,” she returned. “Your blood circulates quite well half frozen.”
He grinned. “A hearty lot, we Scots.” It was a bit of a joke, that. With so much intermarriage, the family was at least as much English as it was Scottish, perhaps even more so, but with Kilmartin firmly situated in the border counties, the Stirlings clung to their Scottish heritage like a badge of honor.
They found a bench not too far from the Serpentine and sat, idly watching the ducks on the water.
“You’d think they’d find a warmer spot,” Michael said. “France, maybe.”
“And miss out on all the food the children toss at them?” Francesca smiled wryly. “They’re not stupid.”
He just shrugged. Far be it from him to pretend any great knowledge of avian behavior.
“How did you find the climate in India?” Francesca queried. “Is it as hot as they say?”
“More so,” he replied. “Or maybe not. I don’t know. I imagine the descriptions are perfectly accurate. The problem is, no Englishman can truly understand what they mean until he gets there.”
She looked at him quizzically.
“It’s hotter than you could ever imagine,” he said, spelling it out.
“It sounds… Well, I don’t know how it sounds,” she admitted.
“The heat isn’t nearly so difficult as the insects.”
“It sounds dreadful,” Francesca decided.
“You probably wouldn’t like it. Not for an extended stay, anyway.”
“I’d like to travel, though,” she said softly. “I’d always planned to.”
She fell silent, nodding in a rather absentminded manner, her chin tilting up and down for so long that he was quite sure she’d forgotten she was doing it. Then he realized that her eyes were fixed off in the distance. She was watching something, but for the life of him he couldn’t imagine what. There was nothing interesting in the vista, just a pinchfaced nursemaid pushing a pram.
“What are you looking at?” he finally asked.
She said nothing, just continued to stare.
“Francesca?”
She turned to him. “I want a baby.”
Chapter 7
… had hoped to have received a note from you by now, but of course the post is notoriously unreliable when it must travel so far. Just last week I heard tale of the arrival of a mail pouch that was a full two years old; many of the recipients had already returned to England. My mother writes that you are well and fully recovered from your ordeal; I am glad to hear of it. My work here continues to challenge and fulfill. I have taken up residence outside the city proper, as do most Europeans here in Madras. Nonetheless, I enjoy visiting the city; it is rather Grecian in appearance; or rather, what I must imagine is Grecian, having never visited that country myself. The sky is blue, so blue it is nearly blinding, almost the bluest thing I have ever seen.
– -from the Earl of Kilmartin to the Countess of Kilmartin, six months after his arrival in India
“I beg your pardon?”
She’d shocked him. He was sputtering, even. She hadn’t made her announcement to elicit this sort of reac-tion, but now that he was sitting there, his mouth hanging open and slack, she couldn’t help but take a small amount of pleasure from the moment.