It didn’t help matters at all that the scent of her lingered in his bed.
“Do you ever do anything with Frannie?” she asked.
The change in subject seemed abrupt, strange, but he was grateful to turn attention away from his acting badly. “What do you mean?”
“Do you ever take her to the theater or the park or boating? Do you know her outside of Dodger’s?”
“Well, yes, of course.”
“What’s something you’ve done together?”
“When we were children—”
“Not when you were children. Recently. Since you’ve been adults.”
He considered her question. Everything always seemed to involve Dodger’s. And before that Feagan.
“I can’t remember the last time we did anything.”
“You should do something together, don’t you think?”
It was embarrassing to admit that he’d never done anything with a lady that wasn’t questionable. “What would you suggest?”
“Have you been to the Great Exhibition?”
He could hardly fathom that she was speaking to him with enthusiasm about an outing with Frannie, as though he’d never kissed Catherine. He realized that she was putting up a wall. After all, she was the daughter of a duke, a woman with noble blood. And they both knew nothing about him was noble.
Frannie was the woman he’d marry. He needed to concentrate on winning her over.
“I’ve not been,” he told Catherine.
“Neither have I. They say Queen Victoria has gone five times already. Can you imagine?
I’m hoping to go tomorrow. Perhaps you could take Frannie there sometime. It would be a nice outing.”
“I’ll consider it.”
She nodded, her tongue darting out to lick her lip the way it did after she drank wine. He wondered if she was tasting him. She cleared her throat. “We should probably return to our guests.”
“Probably.” Only he didn’t want to. Dinners were tedious.
“We shall forget what happened earlier, and I won’t allow it to happen again,” she said.
He studied her in the shadows of his library. “Do you mean the kiss?”
She nodded, and so he nodded as well. She might be able to forget it, but he doubted that he ever would, that he would ever forget the smallest detail about her.
“Have you ever known anyone to stand up to him like she does?” Bill asked, before sipping his wine.
Frannie smiled. “No. And I don’t think he quite knows what to make of her.”
“He’s always loved you, Frannie. Why are you making it so blasted difficult for him?
You’re not meek, you’re not cowardly. I daresay if you wanted all this, nothing would stop you from acquiring it.”
“That’s the thing, Bill. I don’t want all this. It’s too grand, it’s too…well, it’s simply too much.”
“Think of all the good things you could do.”
