Chapter 10

CHAPTER 10

M aybe it was pride that convinced her, but Frances had long considered herself reasonably intelligent. Most of life's problems, she'd found, could be assembled like one of those dissected map puzzles. One only had to turn the pieces in the right direction to see where they fit in with everything else.

This skill was not always satisfying—understanding how things worked did not give her any control over those workings—but it was nevertheless typically available to her.

She could not for the life of her figure out the Marquess of Oackley.

"Are you all right, Frances?"

Lady Mary's voice startled Frances, making her realize she'd been staring at the same spool of ribbon for several minutes. Mary's expression was kind and open—and a little bit knowing.

"Yes," Frances sighed. "I suppose I am all right. Things can just be so…difficult, sometimes."

Mary turned so that she, too, was looking at ribbon with unwarranted absorption. "Things?" she asked lightly. "Or people?"

Frances supposed her little huff of laughter was clear enough, as far as answers went. So, instead, she asked, "Tell me. Being unmarried—is it how they speak of it?"

Mary shot her a wry glance from the corner of your eye. "By that vague question, I assume you really mean to ask if spinsterhood is as dreadful a cesspool of loneliness and misery as the matrons of the ton would have you believe?"

"I hadn't planned to phrase it quite like that."

Mary's laugh indicated her lack of offense. "Honestly? It's marvelous—for someone like me. I am blessed with an indulgent brother and a subset of funds guaranteed to come my way even if, God forbid, I were to lose my brother unexpectedly. And—" She wrinkled her nose. "—I have never understood the appeal of finding myself kissed under an arbor or whatever romantic nonsense they use to convince you that marriage is worth the trouble. No, all I can think when I imagine it is that it would be unpleasantly…wet."

"It's rather nice, actually," Frances muttered, then inwardly cursed herself.

"Frances, darling ," Mary said in exaggerated and delighted shock. "How wonderfully unexpected. And, alas, I think probably the information you truly wanted to know. Spinsterhood, I suspect, would not be nearly as wonderful for you as it is for me."

"Drat," said Frances with feeling.

Mary laughed again. "Oh, you poor dear. It has been quite an eventful week, has it not?"

"So, it has," Frances agreed. Given that Mary seemed blessed with the preternatural ability to understand everything without being told, she felt she didn't need to explain much more when she said, "And it is very, very confounding."

And annoying, though she did not say as much to Lady Mary. She felt that she should be able to figure things out. Surely Lord Oackley was not that complicated.

He was arrogant. And seemed to think that everyone, but most especially Frances, was utterly diverted by everything he did. And he was a very poor listener, given his refusal to accept that she intended no harm to his precious reputation or whatever it was he was always blathering about with his mistress and their encounter and all that nonsense.

Those pieces should fit together easily to make up a clear picture. He was a self-absorbed aristocrat like any other.

Except…he wasn't. Because sometimes, when they sparred, he treated it like a game, and sometimes he looked like he was a prisoner, drawn into her orbit against his will. And he'd saved her mother, pausing only long enough to save Frances first.

And, goodness, how he loved his sister. She could tell as much—whenever Grace's ghost appeared between them, he either cringed in pain or smiled in delight, as if no matter the memory, he could not remain indifferent. She had to admire that, had to understand it as something reflected in her own heart, and in the hearts of her dearest friends.

And finally there was the way he'd kissed her in a way that, for the duration of his embrace, had made her the center of the world.

Those were the pieces she could not seem to make fit, no matter how much she turned them over and over in her mind.

"You know," Mary said, a hint of mischief in her tone. "There is one very easy way to get answers."

Frances looked at her, eyes wide. "There is?"

Mary inclined her chin at the large plate glass windows in front of the shop—and at the Marquess of Oackley, who was moving past them with long strides.

"You ask questions," Mary concluded smugly.

Frances whipped her head around. Surely, Mary could not be implying… But Mary was once again positively entranced by ribbons.

So Frances did the foolish thing and left the shop entirely alone, following the marquess into the quiet village street.

"You!" she called as she hurried to catch up with him. Lord, he was tall. He moved so quickly . "What are you doing?"

He glanced over his shoulder at her words, then whirled upon her.

"Me?" he asked. "What are you doing? Why are you out here without a chaperone?"

She rolled her eyes. That was another piece of the puzzle—she could not seem to contain her instinctive reactions around him, not even after decades of practicing comportment and laboring under an innate shyness.

She did not yet know if that was a good piece or a bad one.

"Oh now you're worried about a chaperone?" she asked baldly. "What about when you barged your way into the viscount's carriage?"

He looked at her as if she'd asked an insane question. "I was the chaperone," he said. "Otherwise, you'd have been alone with Hounton."

"And so it was better to be with two of you?" she demanded. "You thought, ‘Hm, I'd best go snipe at Frances to protect her from sweet Lord Hounton?' Not very likely, my lord."

He threw up his hands. "I was protecting him from you, you little harridan! I don't know why you go along with your mother's little schemes, but Hounton doesn't deserve to be trapped as part of some plot."

"That's—I wasn't—" she sputtered. How dare he think that of her!

The marquess looked pointedly unimpressed. "Go away, Frances," he said. "I am not a minnow to be caught on your hook."

He turned and began walking away.

Frances, no longer a young gentlewoman but instead a neat ball of fury with two legs, stormed after him.

"You cannot just walk away from me," she seethed.

He was trying, though; it was only his own poor luck that led him to duck into a side road that was closed off on the other end by a high fence. He froze and turned like a man facing the executioner.

"Frances," he said, shaking his head. A lock of black hair fell against his brow, shadowing his keen hazel eyes before he flicked it away. "What do you want from me?"

The question didn't come with his usual brusque tone, nor with his occasional flashes of disorienting kindness. Instead, he sounded as helpless as Frances felt.

And that brought her up short.

"I—" The same unruly piece of hair fell forward again, and she remembered his comment that he'd decided to come to the village at the last moment. He'd apparently not even had enough time for his valet to set his hair to rights. The idea caused something in her chest to twist in a way that was not at all unpleasant.

It was no explanation for why she reached out to brush his hair aside, but she did so anyway, without even thinking about it.

She never made contact with his hair, however, for he seized her wrist in a punishing grasp. Frances' stomach lurched—this time, in an entirely unpleasant way.

"Oh, goodness, I?—"

"Hush!" he hissed before she could choke out a mortified apology. He used his grip on her arm to tug her behind a stack of tall crates that seemed to be filled primarily with cabbages.

"What—?" Frances tried again. This time, the marquess did not use his words to silence her, instead pressing his hand firmly over her mouth.

Frances eyes went wide.

And then she heard the approaching voices.

Her parents.

"—frankly unbelievable, Harry! The girl is useless. We've all but dragged her straight to the altar and she still manages to botch it every time."

The marquess held her gaze until he saw that she'd heard them, too, and then slowly lowered his hand away from her mouth.

"You assume ineptitude, but I say she's just willful," her father scoffed. "Though I can't say what she thinks she has to offer that merits her putting her nose up at a viscount."

Frances felt her cheeks heat in shame. She looked away from the marquess' probing gaze, studiously regarding the cabbages visible through the slats of the crates. This was, she thought miserably, even more pathetic than feigning interest in the stupid ribbons.

"Perversity, I call it," her mother pronounced. "We never had this sort of trouble with the rest of them, and they at least had some sort of talent. She is merely a nuisance, and she knows it. Likes it, I daresay."

Her father guffawed. "Practically makes you pity Hounton, eh?"

Frances' eyes burned but she positively refused to cry. She stared at the cabbages with an intensity that should have set them aflame.

Her mother did not share in Lord Reed's mirth. "I would pity Hounton if I had any faith that Frances could successfully seduce anyone cleverer than a potted plant. As it is, it seems likely the viscount shall enjoy his freedom forevermore."

"Perhaps the idiot girl will have enough sense to raise her skirts for him on the trip back…"

Their voices were fading now as they continued walking, but the damage was done. Frances had heard everything, had heard that the way her parents truly felt was even crueler and more hateful than the cruel and hateful things they said to her face.

And worse, the marquess had heard it all, too.

"Frances," he murmured when the street grew quiet again, pronouncing them alone.

She shook her head silently. She blinked angrily as the weathered grain of the wooden crates began to blur before her eyes. No. No . She would not cry .

"Frances." His voice was low and kind and, God, could he not see how much worse that made it? He lifted her chin with a finger, forcing her to look up at him. His expression was soft, too, and the obvious pity felt like a blow to the gut.

She was, apparently, so utterly pathetic that even people who openly avowed that they disliked her saw her as deserving their sympathy.

She tried to turn her head, but he didn't let her.

"It's not true, what they said," he told her, voice unwavering. "It isn't true."

She sucked in a ragged breath, only inches away from a sob, and her chest brushed against his. He was so close to her, his warmth at her front and the solid brick wall at her back. She felt certain that their dual support was the only thing keeping her on her feet.

"Frances," he said, this time more sharply. "Listen to me."

The command solicited her obedience in the way that his softness had not. Her eyes leapt to his. He was unyielding.

"Repeat it," he said, grasping her chin firmly, though not hard enough to cause her any pain.

"It's not true," she answered, the words falling mechanically from her mouth.

He searched her face. His eyes dipped to her mouth and suddenly Frances was no longer standing in an alley next to a tower of produce. Instead, she was back in the Earl of Winchester's lush gardens, again kissing this man who stood before her.

He was there, too. She could sense it, could tell from the way his gaze grew heavier, from the way his fingers moved from her chin to trail across her jaw.

He was going to kiss her again.

He was going to kiss her again and this time she welcomed it, because when he kissed her, she could not think of anything else, could not be anyone or anything else except the woman he'd chosen to pull into his arms.

He braced his arm against the brick above her head. "Frances," he said, leaning closer. Only a hairsbreadth separated them now; one movement from either of them and his mouth would be on hers and her mind would be blissfully, blissfully free.

He did not move quickly enough. The voices in her head were faster.

Her mother's voice. She is merely a nuisance.

Her father's voice. Practically makes you pity Hounton .

His voice. I am not a minnow to be caught on your hook .

If he kissed her now, she would confirm everything he'd suspected about her. And if she had to face the censure in his gaze after that…

She wasn't certain how she would go on.

"No," she gasped, ducking under his arm and away, away, before he could react. "No, no, I can't."

And then like the coward she was—like the woman who was every bit as pathetic as her parents deemed her to be—Frances fled without a backward glance.