Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

F rances was not a violent woman. She could scarcely raise her voice in most situations, after all. And not even to shouting—half the time she struggled to get above a whisper.

But as the stupid Marquess of bloody Oackley decided to grab her, and threaten her over something that had not been her blasted fault in the first place …

Well.

Frances lost her temper a bit.

With the echoes of his so-called promise still hanging in the air, she lifted up her left knee as high as it would go and then slammed her heel down, using all the force she could manage, directly on top of his foot.

She knew she couldn't hurt him, not really. She was wearing ladylike slippers, and he was wearing gentlemanly boots. Not to mention that she was slight and he strong. And the position he'd held her in was not suited for stomping on people.

But goodness was it satisfying when he yelped in surprise and released her.

She seized the moment, stepping out of his reach and then, deciding she had not spent all her ire, as it happened, turned around and shoved him.

He didn't budge.

Well, that had been a little less satisfying than the yelp. To avoid an anticlimax, she put her hands on her hips (ignoring the echoes of his touch she could still feel there) and glared up at him.

"You," she said, practically trembling with indignation, "are horrid."

The last traces of surprise left his face as he looked down at her, a fierce scowl drawing his expression tight, anger in his hazel eyes.

"Don't think this little act works on me, Lady Frances," he sneered. "I see right through your tricks."

She was going to scream. "Tricks?" she hissed instead, barely managing to remember that it would not do to be overheard. "What tricks? You think I contrived some grand manipulation to stumble upon you while you were lurking for some illicit tryst? And then, what? I contrived, by my wicked ways, to get you to corner me amidst Earls of Winchester past?" She flung a hand out towards the art on the walls, not even sorry when she nearly smacked him straight in his hooked nose.

His eyes narrowed and she felt another little thrill. She'd like to see what he had to say about that .

"Just because I haven't yet figured out your little game doesn't mean that I won't," he said after a moment.

Frances balled up her fists and cursed that she didn't know how to throw a proper punch. Why hadn't her lazy brothers taught her how to punch annoying men?

"Do you hear yourself?" she asked. "You are making no sense . I am not playing a game with you, you utter nuisance."

"You followed me into the dark?—"

"I was avoiding someone else , you self-obsessed little wretch!" She was pleased to find that insults leapt easily to her mind. She'd have to thank Diana for lending her all those melodramatic novels over the years. "And maybe you oughtn't worry about me. Maybe you should worry more about however you meant to be meeting in that little room."

He looked as though he thought he could solve this puzzle if only given one more clue and that, maybe more than anything else, drove Frances to distraction.

All these years, she'd fretted over her shyness, worried it would prevent her from growing close to anyone except her two dearest friends—worrying that it meant she could never find companionship like they'd found in their husbands.

But now, she'd learned that even when she spoke her mind, still nobody listened .

The problem, she decided in that moment, was men. They were idiots , the lot of them.

She could hear people approaching in the main hallway; if they peeked inside the portrait gallery, they'd see Frances and the marquess. It was time to make her escape.

Fortunately, however, the marquess did not seem to pay any heed to the approaching footsteps (Frances mentally marked this another demerit in the idiocy column), so Frances seized the moment to make her final remark.

She drew herself up to her full (unimpressive, alas) height.

"Keep your threats, sir. For I should rather be ruined than have to deal even a moment longer with the likes of you ."

And then she stalked away, feeling a surge of satisfaction that finally— finally —she'd gotten to have the last word.

Evan was—well, stalking seemed like a bit too aggressive a term.

But he was, he could admit, keeping an eye on Lady Frances. There was nothing nefarious about keeping an eye on the little harridan, was there? After all, she seemed to have everyone else fooled with this little demure, shy country mouse act of hers.

So he watched. Because, for all her protestations about not wanting anything to do with him, this was very clearly a highly dangerous woman.

How else could she have gotten so close to his secrets in such a short period of time? Why else did his instincts insist that he keep her within eyeshot as often as possible?

It was honestly ridiculous that everyone else couldn't see what he saw.

The incompetence staggered, truly.

And since he was the only one keeping track of her machinations, he really had no choice but to listen in on her conversations.

"Frances," Lady Reed hissed. She used her daughter's name an awful lot, Evan had noticed, and always with the tone that suggested she was discussing something unpleasant. For all that he was suspicious of Lady Frances' motives, he found this to be a touch unkind. She was, after all, the woman's mother.

"Yes, Mother?" Lady Frances sounded tired. This was, very likely, another trick. Who knew how many layers of deceit she could manage at once?

"Why are you just sitting here?" Lady Reed accused.

From the corner of his eye, Evan saw the slight frown on Lady Frances' face as she looked down at her own lap, then out across the room, where other members of the party were, indeed, sitting.

"I—" she began, sounding at a loss for words.

Her mother did not suffer the same affliction. "For goodness' sake, Frances, go speak to a gentleman! Lord Hounton is over there speaking to the Earl of Southgate—and he is not likely to make an admiral viscountess, is he?" Lady Reed's laughter was sharp and nasty. "Go. Now."

Goodness, but that woman was awful. Despite himself, Evan could not help glancing over in the Johnsons' direction.

Lady Frances' beguiling blue green eyes met his.

Hastily, he looked away.

He wondered if he was deluding himself that there was more of an edge in Lady Frances' next response.

"Fine, Mother," she said. "I'll go."

Once again, Evan found himself getting to his feet before he'd consciously decided to do so.

This was for Hounton, he told himself. Poor Hounton didn't deserve to be a pawn in some matchmaker's snare. And he didn't need to get drawn in by Lady Frances' pixielike looks and pretty blushes only to learn, far too late, that there was a snake beneath that innocent exterior.

So he followed her. In a normal, sensible way. Not stalking.

Lady Frances did not agree it seemed, as they'd scarcely made it out of the parlor before she whirled on her heel and—proving, once again, that she had nefarious powers beyond his ken, likely including mind-reading—demanded, "Why are you stalking me?"

Wily, wily woman.

He narrowed his eyes. "I'm not stalking you; don't be absurd. I am merely walking in this direction." He took a step closer to her, annoyed that she seemed not at all impressed by his superior height. "Why, are you going somewhere you wish to not be observed? Going to accost any more unsuspecting gentlemen, perhaps?"

He could still feel where she'd stomped on his bloody foot, the little lunatic.

She was a rude little lunatic, too, because she had the audacity to roll her eyes at that comment.

He suppressed the thought that this behavior, at least, Grace would have found entertaining.

"What a fine reversal," she said sardonically. "You seize me in a hallway and suddenly I am the accoster for freeing myself."

"I'm not sure ‘accoster' is a word," he said with excessive reasonableness.

Her eyes widened and she gave an infuriated little shriek in the back of her throat. He was man enough to admit that he enjoyed that.

She took a deep slow breath, apparently to steady her nerves, for when she spoke, her voice was tight but level.

"I truly, truly do not know what I have done to offend you, my lord," she said, sounding like it physically pained her to show him the respect of his title. "Would you feel better if I promised that I did not intend to stumble upon your little…spectacle last night and assured you that I, furthermore, have no intention of spilling your tawdry little affair in front of anyone. You will no doubt be shocked to hear this, as you seem to think I live to annoy you, but I have my own problems and therefore do not have any time to worry about yours."

To cover up the fact that the phrase tawdry little affair had stung, just a little bit, Evan returned fire.

"Ah, yes," he said. "Problems like entrapping poor Lord Hounton, was it?"

Her cheeks bloomed red. It was an oddly fetching look. He'd always heard that redheads were easy blushes, though he hadn't imagined the quality to be a positive one, not until now.

"Were you listening to my conversations ?" she accused. She stumbled a few steps toward him, as if her rage necessitated she approach. If she meant to make a threatening figure, however, she'd failed. The closer she came, the more he loomed over her. She was such a tiny little pixie of a thing, after all.

He shrugged an unconcerned shoulder, certain it would annoy her. Pleasingly, she made the angry sound again.

"One overhears things," he said mildly. "And, by the by, do allow me to compliment your parents. They seem a truly lovely pair of people…you know, for fortune hunters. Tell me, are the Reed coffers really so desperate that they need to throw you at any titled man who crosses your path? Or are they perhaps simply so desperate to be rid of you ?"

It was too far. He knew it even before he saw the way she blanched, rosy cheeks going bone white in an instant. An apology nearly leapt to his lips before his pride shouted it down. His hand nearly reached up to touch her cheek—Lord only knew she was standing close enough for it to be easy—before he forced it back to his side.

Her voice trembled with anger as she responded, and he felt oddly grateful—if she was that angry, perhaps his comment and not been excessively cruel.

"Far be it from me," she said, words icy and jagged, "to take advice on loveliness from a man who blackmails people over revealing his affair. You will forgive me if I don't take your words to heart."

Except…something about the gleam in her eyes made him think she did take the words to heart. Just not in the way he'd expected.

He fumbled for a response, though he didn't know what he wished to say. He was close enough to her that one movement forward would change everything. For a foolish instant, it seemed like a very good idea to just reach out and touch her.

Luckily—or perhaps unluckily; Evan didn't quite know anymore—Winchester chose that moment to waltz out of the parlor, his characteristic charm rolling off him in waves, instantly reducing the temperature of the conversation by several much-needed degrees.

"There you both are," he said cheerfully, elegantly avoiding making such an observation into an accusation, as anyone else might have done had they found an unmarried lady and a gentleman alone and practically at one another's throats.

And their position really was remarkably inappropriate, he realized, looking at it from Winchester's perspective. What must their host be thinking, to find him looming over Lady Frances, with her glaring up at him defiantly?

Her eyes flickered to Winchester, and she took a step back in the same movement. Evan might not have been impressed by her in a general sense, but he had to admire how she did so without making it seem the action of a guilty person.

She gave their approaching host one of those small, shy smiles he'd seen her offer to others.

"Good afternoon, my lord," she said, bobbing a curtsey. "Were you looking for us?"

Winchester waved off the question with an unconcerned hand. "Not in any particular sense, Lady Frances. No, I was merely rallying the troops for teatime." He offered her his arm with a gallant gesture that, somehow, did not seem over the top. "Might I accompany you?"

Her smile was a little bigger and a little less shy as she accepted. Something about it irritated Evan in a way he could not name.

"I'd be delighted, my lord," she said softly. She never used that soft voice with him , Evan noted.

In fact, she'd all but dismissed Evan the moment Winchester had arrived—another sign she was a fortune hunter, he told himself to cover his curious pang of disappointment. He'd not be telling her that she was barking up the wrong tree with Winchester; if anyone was destined for lifelong bachelorhood, it was their jovial host.

No, he wouldn't tell her, not even if he felt oddly compelled to steal her attention back from the earl.

Indeed, it was more like Frances had entirely stolen Winchester's attention; the pair, arm in arm, had proceeded a few steps before they even noticed that Evan hadn't followed them.

Winchester, unperturbed, looked back over his shoulder. Lady Frances kept her gaze fixed ahead.

"Coming?" their host asked him.

Evan risked a single glance at Lady Frances' gleaming coiffure before shaking his head.

"No," he said. "No. You go ahead. I'll be along later."

Winchester nodded amiably, and Evan told himself that he was not bothered in the least as they left him behind.