It Takes Two to Tangle

Nine

The bronze eagle that spread its wings across the sky-dark ceiling of the Blue Room, clutching a chandelier in its claws, had overseen many an assignation. The wink of its eye and the sardonic curve of its beak seemed to approve of such clandestine activities.

Only a dozen yards outside of the door to this side parlor, hundreds of the rich and powerful now whirled and stamped their way through a country-dance. In the Blue Room, though, there was only Frances, and Henry, and the eagle that had seen so many of the bold seduce so many of the willing.

Frances knew she could be bold if only Henry was willing. She had only to reach him with word or touch to prove his fears misplaced.

But she wasn’t the one whose touch he wanted; her words were not the ones he craved.

“Sit, please,” she said in her most crisp, not-at-all-lust-struck voice. “In here we’ll have a bit of privacy to talk over your concerns.”

Henry’s straight brows yanked into a vee. “You sound as starchy as my brother’s butler.”

“And why not? I too am employed by the nobility.”

He gave her a searching look but said nothing. He only walked to one of the blue-velvet sofas that bordered the room, then trailed a finger over the plush upholstery. Within this room, the glitter and confusion of the ballroom were nothing but a patter of sound, as though Henry and Frances were swaddled within a cloud.

She made another venture, her voice still brisk. “So, you’re concerned about the effect of your arm on Caroline.”

Again, that searching look. “We don’t really have to talk about it.”

Left hand extended, he guided her to a seat on one of the sofas. He sat to her right, then leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes. There were fine lines at their corners, burned into his skin by long days under the sun. His scent was clean, of evergreen and soap. With the deep-blue ceiling above, she could almost fancy them outside—perhaps alone in a garden at night, with a pine tree whispering in a gentle breeze.

A swell of peace made her greedy for more, to learn what he wanted, even as her body provided its own answer. As though she were a leaf, she absorbed every bit of warmth radiating from his body. She was ready to unfurl if the time was right.

“You did say you needed to speak to me,” she reminded him. It was easier to badger him when he had his eyes closed and couldn’t look back at her as if he suspected something amiss. He cracked her careful reserve, her cool governess’s voice, when he looked at her with those ocean-deep eyes.

“You’re right,” he said, eyes still closed. “I did say that. It seemed more important before the minuet.”

“You don’t need to talk to me anymore, then? Should I—” She didn’t really want to offer to leave. She made herself stop talking.

His eyes snapped open, and he stared at the cruel-beaked eagle chandelier. “How honest do you want me to be, Frances?”

“Perfectly honest, of course.” Maybe.

“To be perfectly honest,” he said slowly, “I thought you might have been piqued after our conversation last week, in which I said I didn’t need your help. I thought perhaps you discouraged Caro from returning my letters.”

She began to protest, but he raised his hand. “Hear me out, Frances. Because then I thought, well, if Caro was so easily discouraged, perhaps she never enjoyed corresponding with me. Maybe it was the intimacy of the small dinner party that convinced her she wanted nothing more to do with me, since I can’t dance or play cards.”

He rolled his head to the side, looking at her from a scant foot away. “But when we danced the minuet together, and you were so easy-mannered and lovely, I knew you couldn’t have done anything to deceive me.”

“Oh,” Frances said, not sure whether she was struck dumb by his misapprehension or by the fact that he’d called her lovely.

“No, I realized if Caro has lost interest in me, it’s because of me. It’s some shortcoming in me that she didn’t see before. And I can’t fault her for that. The fault lies within me, and it is only by some happy accident she did not see it at first.” His mouth pulled tight and grim.

“Henry, no. That’s not—no.”

Damnation, what a tangle. She had felt piqued after their conversation, and she had put a halt to the letters. But Caroline had nothing to do with that and never had. Frances had only taken Henry at his word: as he had requested, she did nothing to advance his suit with Caroline. As Frances’s every letter seemed to coax Henry deeper into Caroline’s thrall—not that Caroline noticed or cared—Frances could almost convince herself that she was doing him a kindness by ending the deception.

But there was no way to be kind about it. Not if the letters had truly ensnared him, not if stopping the letters convinced him that the world saw him as less than whole.

No, there was no way to be kind about the truth. So Frances took a deep breath and lied her head off.

“As a matter of fact, I am in Caroline’s full confidence in the matter of the letters. I usually handle her correspondence, you know, and I asked questions when I saw her write and seal letters of her own. And I asked more questions when she stopped.”

“Of course you did,” he said drily. His mouth looked slightly less grim.

“Of course I did,” Frances agreed cheerfully. “I knew about your correspondence from the time of our writing lesson, but I didn’t know the degree to which it had flourished.”

“Ah.” Henry looked self-conscious.

“She admitted to me that she wished she hadn’t begun a secret correspondence. That she… well, she admires you greatly, but she can’t give you more than she already has.”

“Because of my arm.”

“No. Because she can’t give more to any man. She enjoys having suitors, but she doesn’t plan to remarry. It was only a mark of her great regard for your family, and for you, that led her to write to you in the first place.”

There. That was a decent enough explanation. Frances vowed she would keep silent until Henry was ready to reply, even if it took minutes on end.

He turned his fine head back up to the gloating eagle. His shoulders shrugged and he tucked his left arm across his body, annoyance creasing his eyebrows. Frances realized he was trying to cross his arms across his chest, the memory of an old protective gesture he could no longer make.

“I would welcome her letters if she would consider sending them again,” he said at last. “They kept me in London when I had almost decided to leave, and they’ve been a tremendous comfort since.”

He had told her he’d lost confidence after his first call on Caroline, but she had no idea he’d been wounded so deeply as to beat a retreat. “Caroline’s letters have helped you that much, then?”

“Yes.”

“And you want them still, even if she can never give you more than friendship?”

“She might say that,” he said, “but she might not mean it. Perhaps she hasn’t met the right man yet.”

“And you believe you are that man.”

“That’s for her to decide.” He stretched out long legs and crossed his ankles. “Without the letters, though, she’ll never decide in my favor. There are too many other men cluttering up her life. The letters are the only way I may capture her alone.”

“So you do want an unfair advantage, after all.” She must have sounded bitter, for this seemed to needle him.

“It’s only unfair if no one else has the ability to write her a damn letter. Which they all do.” He sounded cross now, gathering his right arm into a white-knuckled grip. “Pardon my language, but her choice in correspondents really is up to her, Frances. Not you.”

If you only knew.

No, it would be cruelty to tell him the truth now—cruelty to both of them. She couldn’t watch him grow angry and disappointed at losing not only his would-be lover but a supposed friend.

She couldn’t disappoint him. And she didn’t want to admit her wrongdoing.

Just as she’d done with Charles so long ago, wasn’t it? She hadn’t learned her lesson; she didn’t want to. Maybe there was still a little of the younger, selfish Frances in her after all.

“You’re right,” she said smoothly. “We don’t have to discuss it anymore.”

No. She hadn’t learned her lesson.

“I’m sorry; I was too harsh.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I must be on edge from the ball.”

A good choice of topic. Frances could prolong a conversation about social matters infinitely. And as long as he permitted it, she would be here. With him. Alone.

She settled back against the wall, wondering if the Prussian-blue plaster would leave a dusty mark on her gown. For tonight, Caroline had entrusted the costly garment to her.

She was entrusted with many responsibilities she’d just as soon abdicate. But she shouldn’t. Wouldn’t.

“A ball is often enough to set one on edge,” she answered. “The heat and the noise, maybe.”

“Being made to dance with one arm.” He gave a choked laugh.

“Well, yes. That too.”

They sat in silence for a few seconds, close enough on the velvety blue sofa that Frances could sense the coiled tension of his muscles. He was all stark angles and lines, yet his mood was so many subtle shades. Unwilling humor, unbearable pride.

She knew him, because she was the same way. And oh, how she wanted to close the distance between them, to tug off his austere black and white clothing, and reveal the man beneath. Her skin prickled under kidskin gloves, linen and sarcenet fabrics. She longed for the touch of this man, not just the luxurious barriers of her clothes.

Henry pinched the bridge of his nose again, then let his arm fall to his side. “Had Jem and Emily truly consulted my wishes, they would not have arranged a ball in this way. But I don’t blame them. They didn’t get back the same brother they sent away, and so there is not as much to celebrate as they had hoped. Thankfully, they are too generous to acknowledge their disappointment.”

“No one could be disappointed by you,” Frances said, hoping the words did not sound rote and trite. “Your brother and sister-in-law love you deeply.”

“I must sound ungrateful to you.”

“Well… yes, a bit.” Frances smiled to lessen the sting of her words. “But it is entirely understandable. Just because a person goes to great lengths to help, it does not follow that such efforts were welcomed.”

“Exactly. I appreciate their intent, but not the way they’ve carried it out. Don’t let that be known, though. They mean so well. I can’t bring myself to tell them their efforts are wasted.”

“Are you sure it’s a waste? I thought you had an excellent time at the Applewood House ball. Maybe it’s only the conspicuousness of your role in this ball that’s left you unsettled.”

His forehead creased in thought. “I had more hope at the Applewood House ball. I hadn’t yet seen much of the ton, and I could hold to the illusion that they would welcome me back as if I’d never left.”

“They did welcome you back, though.”

“But not as if I’d never left.”

“No, of course they didn’t. They couldn’t.” At his sharp look, Frances explained, “The ton’s changed in the last three years, just as you have. Even if you had lived in an icehouse for three years and didn’t alter a bit, you wouldn’t have come back to the same world you left. Different paintings hang in the National Gallery; different maidens make their come-out each year. There are new scandals. People lose face or gain fortunes. They topple in and out of love. Some of them leave; some die. That’s just… normal.”

Her throat closed on the word, and she fell silent. He didn’t need to hear everything she thought and felt. He only wanted a bit of perspective, not History of Frances’s Wrongdoing and Fall.

Which was hardly a story she wanted to retell.

After an endless few seconds, his mouth twisted unwillingly up. “You really are terrifying, Frances. You put me very decisively in my place.”

“I only seek to help you find it again.”

“Yes, I realize that.” He studied the deep blue ceiling as if it were the night sky, full of constellations to guide him. “I am coming to realize how much has changed every time I try to repeat an old pleasure. They cannot be recaptured, whether they are as simple as a dance or as elaborate as greeting a ballroom full of people I once thought of as friends.”

The war, of course. It had changed Frances just as much, stripping pleasures from her like a forester slicing unwanted branches from a trunk. For her, the war had been a capstone to an old life. For Henry, it must serve as the foundation for a new one.

“Not all pleasures are lost, surely.” The words stumbled from Frances’s mouth. “You may not regain the old ones, but new ones will present themselves instead.”

Look at me, she wanted to say. I’ll help you find them; we’ll find them together.

“I suppose you’re right,” he said, his brows knit as he held out his left hand, studied its form. He flipped it over and flexed his fingers, then let it sink to his side again. “I’ve found new joys different from the old.”

Joys such as writing letters. Better yet, receiving them. “I think I understand,” Frances said.

“Yes, I suppose you do.” He cut his eyes toward her. “What about you? What joys does your life hold? It must be an endless round of pleasures for you.”

“My life is never dull, I can promise you that. Every day is different, as is every one of our daily challenges.”

“And what are those?”

“Oh.” Frances waved a hand. “You’d think them silly, probably. All the tiny, everyday mysteries that make up life in high society for women. But they do require a certain ingenuity.”

“Having lived with Emily, I completely believe you about the cunning needed to succeed in society. Do you like life in London, then?”

“You can think of a better question than that, Henry. Good God, you don’t have to act as if we’ve only just met.”

He grinned. “Maybe it’s a dull question, but I do wonder about the answer. Caro—and you—came from the country in a burst of fashion and charm a year ago, but what was your life like before then?”

Frances coughed. “Any bursts of fashion and charm are and always have been Caroline’s doing.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that. Didn’t you just hint at your own cunning?”

“You make it sound sordid.”

“Oh, probably.” He made an impatient gesture with his arm. “I didn’t say it correctly because it was meant to be a compliment, and instead it turned you into a hedgehog. All prickles.”

She snorted. “All right, I take your meaning. Yes, I like London, though I preferred the country. And now we may find a new topic of conversation or even return to the ballroom. Only please do not speak of my prickles.”

Just… smooth them.

She must keep her thoughts more tightly leashed; Henry was more perceptive than most. His eyes were sky and sea and every unfathomable thing watching her, and she feared he could sense the heat in her, the wistful want.

“I don’t want to return to the ballroom yet,” he said. “Do you?”

She swallowed. “No, I suppose not. But I probably should.”

“They’re getting along quite well without us. Emily and Jem didn’t really expect me to dance beyond the opening minuet, and I’d rather be in here than out in the grand saloon entertaining a pack of impertinent questions about my arm.”

“I could manage a few impertinent questions if you think that would give you the full experience of the Argyll Rooms.”

“There is no doubt in my mind that you could.” His smile was faint, nothing but the specter of his bright grin. “If you put your mind to it, you could probably convince me to reveal my every secret.”

“I’d never ask for a confidence you didn’t want to give.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” he said. “And I wouldn’t tell you unless I wanted to.”

“I know you wouldn’t,” she repeated. “You’re an artist and a soldier. You see the underpinnings of every scene and strategy.”

Except for the letters, of course. Hope could blind anyone.

She fairly ached, feeling such a distance between them. She had brought him to the Blue Room to comfort them both, to hammer out a few truths. But she’d only given him more lies.

“I like the way you see me,” Henry said at last. “You may be the only one who sees me thus.” She was pinned by his eyes, as stark as memory itself.

“What did you want to tell me, by the way?” he asked. “When we came in here. Was it something about—”

“I wanted to give you the truth.” In deed, if not in words, she could do this much.

The air seemed close and portentous, and Henry too far. She must pull him back to her, to the cool nightfall of this dim room. She shifted closer until she could feel the bone of his hip pressing into hers.

His eyes widened, and she caught his face in her hands and moored him with her body.