Chapter 6

CHAPTER 6

T hough she knew it was common practice for members of the gentry, Frances had always struggled with an afternoon nap. Her mind, she'd learned over the years, simply refused to turn off while the sun was high—unless, of course, she was uncommonly tired.

That afternoon, she napped, falling asleep almost the moment her head hit the pillow during the scheduled respite before dinner.

She woke after an hour or two, feeling bleary-eyed and like her head weighed a thousand pounds. This, she thought sourly, was why she hated napping, and why she was best suited to avoid events—like stupid, blasted house parties—that made her feel tired enough to need such a midday break.

It was a shame she seemed destined not to get a respite from the endless nagging and socializing, not if certain individuals in her life proved determined to persist in their bothersome antics.

All in all, the result was thus: Frances was already in a proper snit when she stumbled into the antechamber to her guest quarters and found her parents waiting for her, looking impatient.

Residual sleep and ill temper loosened her tongue.

"Oh, what now ?" she cried, exasperated.

This was, as she well knew, the wrong tactic, especially with her father, who grew instantly red in the face.

"That's quite a thing to say to your parents, especially when you've shown yourself to be so utterly inadequate in the face of a single, simple task!" he railed.

His voice was already too loud, yet Frances found herself incapable of accessing her typical demure mask.

"It has been," she said through gritted teeth, "one day. One!"

It had been, she thought viciously, far too much for one day. In one, single cursed day, she'd been lectured, forced to abide an awful dinner partner, set up to be trapped into marriage, found herself actually trapped with a half-naked stranger, trapped again by that same man just for additional rudeness, lectured by her parents again , and then, once more, followed by that same awful, awful, awful marquess.

And she had a headache.

She was not going to listen to another stupid lecture about the same stupid topic. She simply refused. For once in her life, Frances Johnson was putting her foot down.

In fact, she stamped it down.

"You tell me I must make a match, make threats, but won't follow through. And then you come in here—or follow me about all day—" This one was directed with a baleful gaze towards her mother. "—scolding me for not talking to eligible gentlemen. How am I meant to talk to them when you're sniping at me every minute? So I am only left to assume that you are either playing some foolish game and don't actually want me to make a match and that your threats are entirely toothless and that I should ignore them at my leisure."

Unlike when she'd spoken back to the Marquess of Oackley, this little tirade did not leave her feeling invigorated. No—it left her feeling shaky, drained.

Perhaps even a little afraid.

This was because, if she'd imagined her parents to be the kind of people who admired those who stood up to them, she now knew herself to have been entirely mistaken on that count. Her father, face as red and blotchy as she'd ever seen it, rose slowly to his feet.

When he spoke, it was with an even certainty that was considerably more alarming than his usual shouting and posturing.

"You doubt me, Frances? Well, let me be entirely clear. The reason you are being closely observed is because your mother and I have not the slightest bit of faith in your ability to attract a husband."

Frances felt her mouth drop open. She'd always suspected that her parents had felt as much, but they'd never said it outright.

"You have had years to find yourself even a single serious suitor. You have failed. You have failed spectacularly. We have come here this week because this is your last chance. We are sick of you embarrassing us with your spinsterhood—it reflects poorly on us, and it reflects poorly on your siblings who, frankly, do not deserved to be dragged down by your choices. They have done their duty."

Frances felt like she'd been slapped. She stood, frozen, as her father continued.

"As for my so-called toothless threat? Well. Again, I shall be clear: if you leave this party without finding yourself affianced, you are not returning to London. Instead, you will find yourself sent off to a convent in Italy, where your spot has already been secured. Then, at least, we shall be able to tell the ton that your dereliction of the one responsibility that a noblewoman must see done is due to your religious devotion, rather than to your obvious personal failings."

Frances didn't even know what to say to any of this. Inanely, what came out of her mouth was, "But I don't speak Italian."

Her father sneered. "Oh, that's not an issue at all. It's a cloistered convent—and the nuns there have taken a vow of silence. I thought, since you considered yourself too good to speak to a man who might offer for you, that you'd prefer a life in which you did not speak to anyone. At all. Ever again."

He punctuated the last of these horrifying statements with jabs of his finger into the air.

On numb legs, Frances sunk into an armchair, entirely unable to speak.

Her father looked, for the first time in Frances' recollection, pleased with something she'd done. He actually, genuinely smiled at her.

"Now," he said, his face finally returning to its normal hue. "I trust this means you are sufficiently motivated. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon, Frances—and use it well. We shall see you at dinner."

And then, with the self-satisfied air of people who knew they'd made themselves clear, her parents swept out of the room, leaving Frances to her headache and her misery.

She allowed herself—keeping an eye on the clock on the mantle—ten minutes of despair. The picture her father had painted of a silent, foreign convent where she'd be trapped inside for the remainder of her days was sufficiently bleak that she felt it merited the handful of tears she allowed to slip loose.

She leaned back against the back of her chair in an undignified slump, letting herself wallow in self-pity.

And then, when the ten minutes were up, she decided to get angry.

She rose to her feet in a fury, stabbed several hairpins into her sagging coiffure, and smacked the wrinkles out of her gown.

And then she walked—or, rather, stormed—out to the garden.

"They will not get what they want," she muttered to herself as she stomped down the beautiful path, ignoring the well-manicured lawns in lieu of focusing on the pleasing crunch of gravel beneath her slippered feet. It was not as good as actually destroying something, but it was a good second best.

"They think they can bully me? They think they can coerce and trap and insult me—and I will just take it lying down? Oh no. Oh no . I will not. I will not marry on their schedule to a man of their choosing."

Despite what her parents seemed to think, she was not opposed to marriage on principle. Rather, she thought she'd quite like to marry, if she met someone with whom she could picture living the rest of her life.

The problem simply was that she had not yet met that person.

She wasn't bloody magical , after all. It wasn't as though she could simply summon such a man along the timeline that Society deemed correct.

"They think I'm powerless," she grumbled.

Though she supposed she understood where her parents got this idea—who on earth was frightened of small, meek Frances Johnson, after all?—they had neglected to account for one very important thing.

Frances had some very wonderful friends.

And things weren't like before, weren't like that dreadful night when Grace had disappeared, when her father, wild eyed and frantic, had badgered them with hours of questions, forcing themselves to repeat what they'd seen, what they'd heard, what they'd suspected—on and on into the night.

No, Frances' friends were no longer fresh-faced debutantes.

"Diana is a bleeding duchess!" she said, throwing her hands up into the air.

"Talking to ourselves, are we?"

His sardonic tone was the last straw. The very last one.

She whirled on her heel, her hand still in the air. And in that one moment, she truly intended to strike the Marquess of Oackley.

"You!" she shrieked. She was yelling. She was shouting and carrying on like some fishwife in the immaculate gardens of Winchester Manor. "For the love of God, why must you?—"

He caught her hand as it flew toward him. Her words cut off just as abruptly.

For a moment, she could see it, the mocking words that were about to fly from his mouth. She could not be held responsible for her actions when he insulted her next, she really couldn't.

Except, then, he didn't say it. Whatever quip, whatever wretched remark he had poised to fire—he held it back.

Instead, he paused. And frowned. And did not release her wrist as he said, sounding faintly baffled by it, "Frances. You're upset."

The simplicity of the comment was arresting in some ways—and in others, a blessed relief. It almost made her want to weep again, though she was not quite that far gone, thank you very much.

He was looking at her like he wanted an answer, so she said, just as simply, "Yes. I am."

His eyes were locked on hers, her arm still in his grasp. Yet, when the flicker of fierceness passed his face—and expression she'd only seen once before, on that horrible, horrible night that was forever etched in her memory—she didn't feel alarmed.

She felt, instead, oddly comforted.

This was, she told herself, clearly an aftereffect of the utter excess of incidents she'd experienced in the last day. It was, after all, well documented that suffering from too many things happening all at once could lead to delirium.

She assumed, anyway. She wasn't a physician.

"Why?" he asked, danger gleaming in his hazel eyes.

She was not so far gone in her incident-induced insanity that she felt compelled to answer him.

"That's none of your business," she retorted, but the words weren't as heated as she would have liked. She was out of fight, it seemed. She'd done a lot of it recently, and she was so very unused to it.

She thought, with a sudden fierce longing, of London, and her friends, and especially of baby Gracie, who gave the greatest cuddles in the world, her heavy, droopy baby body collapsing in on a person entirely. That was the life her parents wanted to steal from her, all because they found her embarrassing .

God, she burned with the indignity of it.

The marquess had paused at her words, considering them at face value rather than brushing them off as thoughtless lashing out.

"It might not be," he allowed, voice momentarily distant. "But I'd like to know anyway."

She hated his sincerity. Loathed it.

When her words came, they were bitter. "You were right—are you happy? Oh, not about me, you awful man," she went on when his eyebrow raised. "But about my parents. They want to be rid of me. That's why they're obsessed with foisting me off on Lord Hounton."

A flicker of something that might have been regret passed his features. "Frances—Lady Frances. I shouldn't have said that… I was out of line?—"

"Oh, don't worry," she interrupted with a mirthless laugh. "I haven't come to this conclusion on your account. They told me as much. So, you can rest assured that your victory is absolute."

He frowned in a very menacing way that, Frances was simply outraged to note, only made him seem more handsome.

"They said that to you?" he demanded. "They actually said as much?"

His incredulousness caused her anger to burn off, giving way to intense shame. What did it say about her that she had parents willing to so gravely insult her to her face?

She closed her eyes for a moment. She had had quite enough of feeling so many feelings . What she wouldn't give for a nice, peaceful spate of boredom.

Then she thought about the future her father had promised and decided that no, she didn't fancy boredom, either.

"I am," she admitted, "having quite a day."

When she opened her eyes again, the marquess' expression was soft, though he hardened it in an instant.

"Just because they're willing to be awful doesn't mean you have to stoop to their level," he said, words full of scorn that, if Frances didn't know better, she might have thought was forced.

Genuine or not, she was grateful for that scorn, since it let her grow angry again.

"I am doing no such thing," she insisted. She tugged on her wrist. Why was he still holding her wrist? And why on earth did he refuse to let go?

"You played right into your mother's machinations last night at dinner," he accused, ignoring her tugging.

" You were being rude to my mother!" she shot back. " I was just showing basic family loyalty."

"So you're loyal to people who treat you so poorly?" he returned. "Come on, Frances. I know you have more backbone than that."

It was so oddly pleasing to be seen as someone with backbone that she decided to overlook his repeated use of her Christian name.

"What does it matter to you?" she demanded. Tug. Tug. Tug. No movement. "And why won't you let go of my dratted arm?"

Maybe it was the question or maybe it was her relentless yanking, but he grew thunderous again.

"Why do I—?" He cut himself off. And then he returned her tugs with one of his own.

Only, unlike her ineffectual movements, his force sent her careening into his chest. She caught herself against him with her free hand and looked up at him in surprise?—

Just as his mouth landed on hers.

This was, Frances could not help but recognize, another thing happening to her. Yet, unlike all the other things that had happened to her over this mad house party…

Well, she didn't necessarily find this one entirely unpleasant.

Or perhaps not even unpleasant at all.

She did, however, find it shocking. Shocking enough that she gasped which, in effect, opened her lips.

To which this mad scoundrel of a marquess responded by licking her lower lip.

This was, alas, the moment in which Frances lost all semblance of rational thought.

By contrast, she was awash in feeling, her senses reeling under the contrasts of his soft lips and his bruising kiss, of his strong arms and the tender way he wove his fingers through her hair.

At some point he'd dropped her wrist, at long last. And at some point after that, she'd wrapped her arms around his neck, pulling him down to her with the same force as he was crushing her in towards him.

"You should not be this bloody gorgeous," he murmured against her mouth, her cheek, her jaw. "And you should not smell this bloody good."

Frances made a humming sort of sound that was agreement or argument—she didn't know. She was too entranced by the way his nose was skimming down her neck, the touch ticklish in a way that she found utterly delightful.

But she had words in there somewhere, she was sure.

"You're mad," she groaned back. There, that was good enough, certainly. She could not do better, not when her whole body was prickling with a strange, delightful awareness.

He nipped at her jaw, making her gasp again, before returning to her mouth to drink deeply from her lips once more, his tongue flicking and toying with hers.

"No doubt," he agreed. He tugged her closer, the arm about her waist lifting up slightly, pulling her on her tiptoes, sending her briefly off balance.

She dropped her hands against his chest to steady herself entirely on instinct?—

And then froze as, like a bucket of ice water dumped over her, the memory of the last time she'd touched him like this came back to her.

"You're not Beatrice ."

Frances gathered every ounce of her strength and used it to shove back against his chest, wrenching herself out of his grasp so forcefully she nearly fell backward onto the ground.

The marquess blinked at her, confused by her sudden shift in demeanor.

Frances, meanwhile, felt confused and horrified by her previous shift in demeanor. What had she been thinking ? Not only had this man been simply awful to her, but he had a mistress .

And now she knew it was even worse than that. He wasn't just a philanderer; he was the kind of man who went around kissing women willy nilly. And she, with her stupid senses and her foolish tingling, had almost fallen for it!

No, she had fallen for it. She'd let him take liberties she'd never allowed anyone else.

"What—?" he asked, sounding dazed.

He looked at her like she was a strange puzzle, something he could solve if he only tilted his head the right way. It stung her in someplace tender.

She was so very sick of being treated like a problem, or a nuisance, or an oddity. She hated this stupid party; she hated everyone here. She wanted to flee back to London and hide with her friends and never, ever come out.

"You are," she said, voice trembling, "the most horrible person I've ever met."

He frowned. "Wait, Frances?—"

But she couldn't let him keep speaking, couldn't hear whatever he was going to say, and especially couldn't tolerate his using her given name in that soft, befuddled tone.

Because if she did, she would cry. And then her shame would be complete.

"I never want to speak to you again," she said, backing up a step, and then another. His frown deepened and he stretched out a hand like he meant to reach for her. She retreated further. "I mean it. Stay away from me, and after this party, we shall never cross paths again."

And then, before he could say anything that would break the last, tattered threads of her composure, she turned and fled.