Rising to his feet, he bowed politely to both ladies and left the library.
Chapter Four
Trying to ignore the sound of a carriage pulling into the driveway, Frances walked across the landing at Scovell Hall and went towards to her bedroom. It was five minutes early.
She already knew who would be in the carriage and why they had come. Well, she did not know the name of the caller, but she knew their intention. There was a question to be asked and Frances must decide how to answer it.
“Your mother is looking for you, Lady Frances,” said Perkins, Lady Scovell’s maid, appearing from around a corner before Frances could shut herself in her room. “Your father will be waiting in his study at noon and your mother begs you not to be late in joining him.”
“Tell my mother that I only want a few minutes peace by myself, Perkins,” Frances told the maid. “I shall be downstairs presently.”
“Very well, Lady Frances.”
With compassion in her eyes, the iron-haired maid nodded and turned back down the corridor. Perkins had been with Lady Scovell for more than twenty years and had known Frances since she was a child. She, and probably all the senior servants, were well aware of the import of the day.
Closing her bedroom door, Frances went to her dressing table and sat down before the looking glass. In the mirror, her face looked very pale and somber, her grey eyes like a winter sea and her grandmother’s silver necklace gleaming at her throat like something frozen. The only hint of warmth lay in the iridescence of the opal pendant above the neckline of her simple white muslin dress.
“Cold as ice,” she whispered to herself, wishing that the suitor she expected to meet shortly would feel the same and decide not to declare himself after all.
She had been surprised at how quickly matters had moved with Lady Kempleforth after the matchmaker’s first short call at the house. Frances had been civil but short with the expert called in by Lady Scovell to resolve her daughter’s unmarried status. When Lady Kempleforth left without suggesting a single name, Frances hoped that she might not come back and that her mother would abandon this plan.
This hope had been disappointed a few weeks later. A note from Lady Kempleforth had thrown her mother into a state of great excitement. Apparently, the matchmaker did have a potentialhusband in mind: a man of high rank who wished to negotiate a marriage of convenience with a suitable stepmother for his young daughter. Frances liked children, didn’t she? Yes, often more than adults.
This sparse description and the mention of negotiation sparked her interest, although she knew, and wanted to know, nothing of the man himself. Frances had decided that it would only muddle her thinking if she had to think about real people, families and places. Her mother had presumably learned his identity but Frances had asked her not to talk about it until matters were settled.
“He seeks a marriage of convenience,” Frances repeated to herself now in the looking glass. “But why?”
A mistress, perhaps? If this widower’s heart was already given elsewhere, that would explain why he did not seek love in marriage. If this man really only wanted a stepmother for his daughter, perhaps he would be open to what Frances wanted too – or rather what she did not want. That was one of the things that would have to be negotiated.
How would he react, she wondered a little nervously, when she told him that she never wished to lie with a man, share her husband’s bed or even be touched by him? If he wanted more children, it should certainly send him running. Frances knew the fundamental facts of life well enough to know that.
But if a man already had a mistress and a child, might he be open to a marriage of separate bedrooms and separate lives? It was worth exploring, perhaps.
Taking a deep breath, Frances stood and summoned her courage for the interview that must now take place. A man she had never met, and whose name she did not even know, had come to Scovell Hall to ask for her hand. When this question was asked, Frances must answer one way or the other. The direction of her entire future rested on this one decision.
“Ah, here is my eldest daughter, Lady Frances,” said Lord Scovell, turning a grizzled but still handsome face towards the study door with a hopeful smile as Frances entered the room. “The very person you are here to meet.”
Frances nodded coolly to her father, ignoring the flicker of hurt she always saw in his eyes when she failed to return his smiles. They had been friends once, she and her father; companions on long romps in the woods, swims in the lake and story-telling sessions before the fire. Then, she had learned the truth about her beloved father and never recovered from it…
In Lord Scovell’s study, another man stood with his back to the door, looking out the grounds of Scovell Hall. Tall, strongly built and dark-haired, he turned as she entered and Frances found herself lost for words on seeing her dance partner from the ball at Morgan House.
“Frances, this is His Grace, the Duke of Westall,” began Lord Scovell, trying again to be jovial. “You mother mentioned that you have met once before, if only briefly. I am sure you must remember His Grace. Lady Kempleforth believes that you have a great deal in common.”
Hiding her utter confusion in a deep curtsy that kept her eyes on the floor, Frances tried to make sense of this coincidence. If their encounter at the ball had conveyed one impression to her, it was that this man did not wish to marry. He had also seemed to understand her own reluctance in that regard.
Yet, here he was, at Scovell Hall, seeking a wife, and on the recommendation of a matchmaker.
“Why might you want to marry me, Your Grace?” she asked without preamble, finally raising her eyes from the ground and meeting his as her heart thumped hard in her chest.
“Why, Frances, we ought to begin with lighter conversation than that,” stumbled her father, taken aback by such blunt questioning. “His Grace has not yet even had any chance to take refreshment. Why don’t you ask about Westall Park? Or His Grace’s journey here?”
“I too prefer to be direct, Lord Scovell,” stated the Duke of Westall, his deep blue eyes unwavering as they cut across Lord Scovell’s worrying and held Frances’ gaze. “It is a very natural question to ask. I wish to marry because it is my duty to marry, and I wish to marry you, Lady Frances, because I cannot think of any other lady who would understand me so well.”
If he had spoken of love, Frances would have determined to turn him down, duke or not. Love was surely ridiculous in this kind of arrangement, and only a fool or a blackguard would try to persuade a woman into marriage on such an account with so little acquaintance. The Duke of Westall was clearly neither of these things.
“I understand and respect duty,” Frances told him. “Still, I would like to know more about your ideas of duty.”
Seemingly amenable to the preliminaries of the negotiation she wished to open, the duke nodded his agreement and turned his eyes to Frances’ father.
