CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Frances watched the clock on the mantelpiece in the townhouse drawing room until her eyes burned, frustrated that it could just keep ticking along, marking each passing second, minute, hour that Dominic had not called upon her. Taunting her as morning had merged into afternoon, and the polite hours for receiving visitors drew nearer to their end.
Two gentlemen had called for Juliet, pleasant enough but it was likely not a good sign that Juliet had been stifling yawns through one meeting and had taken more interest in the cakes than the gentleman during the other. And one gentleman had called for Lucinda, but the moment he said he could not understand this ‘female fascination’ with novels, Frances had known it would not proceed.
“This is boring,” Juliet lamented, as she helped herself to a raspberry cake. “I should start preparing for tonight’s ball. Franny, will you help me, please?”
“Ishould prepare first,” Lucinda protested, not bothering to look up from her book. “You take longer than I do, and I do not want to be rushing. Although, in truth, I may not attend tonight at all.”
“I think that would be wise,” Juliet said. “That way, Franny does not have to split her attention.”
Lucinda sniffed. “You do not get to decide if I attend or not.”
“You clearly do not want to go,” Juliet shot back.
The quarrel ricocheted back and forth around Frances, who could not tear her focus away from the clock, her ears pricking at the sound of every carriage rattling past the house, every thud of footfalls, willing the next one to be Dominic’s.
I could not be so mistaken, could I?
He had kissed her, he had told her that he was glad she came to meet him, he had held her as if he never intended to let her go. True, she did not know much about his history, beyond what he had said to her, but he did not seem like a rake to her. Far from it, for the man rarely left his manor.
Then again, hehadalluded to the fact that he was not a good man. But she had not thought, even for a second, that he was any sort of scoundrel. She still did not, so why was he not here? Why had he kissed her and not called upon her?
He told you he did not consider you a prospect. He told you he would never remarry.Her heart dropped like a stone, angry with herself for having the arrogance to think she had changed his mind. Maybe, he liked her, but that did not mean he would break his vow to himself.
Had she really been so wrong about him? What if he had been explaining it to her all along, and she had simply refused to listen; what if he really was not a good man?
“Franny, are you not going to do something?” Juliet shrieked, red-faced with outrage.
“You should forbid her from attending the ball tonight after what she has just said to me!” Lucinda argued, though Frances did not have the faintest notion of what nastiness they had been hurling at each other.
Instead, she rose sharply to her feet and looked sternly from one sister to the other. “I am retiring to my bedchamber for an hour. I do not wish to be disturbed. Resolve your squabble yourselves, for I am too tired to mediate another silly argument.”
Picking up the scandal sheets that she had not yet had time to read, Frances headed out of the drawing room without another word, though the stunned silence of her sisters pursued her all the way up the stairs.
By the time she reached her bedchamber, her ire was tinged with guilt. It was not her sisters’ fault that Dominic had not called upon her. It was no one’s fault but her own, for thinking thatshe might not just have a taste of freedom, but the whole feast of liberty. It was her fault for thinking that a kiss and a beautiful gown meant anything more than ‘thank you.’
Muttering under her breath, she sat in the center of her bed and opened up the scandal sheets, praying that she did not see her name anywhere within its pages.
I should not have put her in such danger.
Dominic had not stopped thinking of Frances: her lips kissing him so softly, so intently; the feel of her in his arms, and how she seemed to fit perfectly; the caress of her fingertips, tingling the back of his neck; how easy and clear it had all seemed in the winter garden. But then she had gone back to her sisters, and everything had gotten so twisted and muddied again.
He had watched her from across the ballroom, catching her eye here and there. However, it was when she had not known she was being observed that he felt the greatest conflict. He wanted her to be his, but he did not trust himself to be everything she deserved, after all she had already endured in her life.
What if, like Althea, she ended up resenting him. True, there had never been any feelings between him and his previous wife, in either direction, but what if he simply was not good at being a husband. What if he came to desire his solitude again, what if his mind changed, what if it was not better than the life she already had, what if… what if… what if…
Those two words were set to drive him mad.
“Oh!” Harriet’s gasp wrenched Dominic out of his thoughts, as she stepped into the music room he had been occupying for hours. Not to play anything, but it had the best view of the garden, the greenery like medicine to his city-averse condition.
“Ah, she lives,” he said wryly. “I thought you might be planning to stay in your chambers all day.”
Harriet looked away quickly. “I was tired. These… gatherings are more exhausting than I thought.” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, I was just coming in to fetch my cloak. I left it here last night.”
“Going somewhere?”
“Just a walk,” she replied with a smile that did not quite reach her eyes.
