“You are quite certain?” Sir Percival murmured, so quietly that only she could hear.
“Quite,” she answered with a smile.
“Very well,” he replied, and though his tone remained even, there was a depth of feeling beneath it that required no elaboration.
He placed her hand in Arch’s, and the rest seemed to unfold with a quiet inevitability, as though the path to that moment had been determined long before either of them had understood it. The words were spoken, the vows made, and though Francesca was aware, in some distant and orderly part of her mind, of the responses required of her, of the cadence and structure of the ceremony, what she felt most keenly was the unyielding certainty in his voice as Arch spoke, and the answering assurance within herself as she replied.
When it was over, there was a subtle easing of tension within, and the unmistakable sense that something which had begun under the most improbable of circumstances had now been rendered irrevocable.
“Well, that was disappointingly respectable,”Baines said as he congratulated them before they departed.
Renforth gave the faintest inclination of his head. “Welcome to our little troop, Mrs. Manners. If it is not already apparent, you have acquired a family of the most inconvenient description.”
“I begin to suspect it,” she said.
Arch turned to her. “Allow me to make the introductions properly.”
Captain Edmund Cholmely—Chum, as they called him—stood among them, and though she had been told he was the most jovial of the group, little of that quality was in evidence that morning. There was a restraint about him, a shadow where levity ought to have been, as though some private grief had not yet relinquished its hold. Had something happened to him in Devonshire? When he bowed to her, it was with warmth, but also with a quiet gravity that made her instinctively return it with equal sincerity.
Arch led her first to him. “Captain Edmund Cholmely, now Lord Ormond.”
“Chum will do, thank you.” Chum bowed over her hand, his expression brightening just slightly. “I regret I was not here to meet you sooner.”
“I am glad to meet you at last,” she said.
He smiled then, faint but genuine. “Then I shall endeavour to deserve the sentiment.”
Stuart stood with his wife, Patience, whose warmth of manner contrasted pleasantly with her husband’s dry humour.
“I shall expect you to call upon me,” Patience said with genuine enthusiasm. “We must establish a proper society of wives who are never told anything.”
“It sounds exclusive,” Francesca remarked.
“There are but three members so far,” Stuart added.
Nearby, Fielding stood with his wife, Merry, both quieter in their welcome but no less sincere. Merry’s smile, though gentle, carried an understanding that required no explanation. Francesca liked her at once.
“I believe,” Merry said softly, “we shall all contrive to manage them.”
“I am full of good suggestions,” Patience added.
Francesca glanced towards Arch. “I have no doubt of it.”
“We are glad of you,” Merry said simply.
Francesca smiled. “As am I of you.”
As they stepped out into the pale light beyond the church, with the quiet murmur of their small assembly behind them and the future—unexpected, inconvenient, and entirely welcome—before them, Francesca found that she did not regret, in the least, the haste with which everything had been arranged.
For once, it seemed, urgency had been entirely in her favour.
In contrast,the trial, when it came, was anything but quiet.
London, which had already begun to tire of speculation, revived its interest with remarkable vigour once the proceedings were made public. The conspiracy, which had existed in rumour and fragments of intelligence, was now laid out in full: the plan to attack the Cabinet, the intended assassinations, the capture of the conspirators in the loft on Cato Street. Names were spoken openly. Evidence was presented with a thoroughness that left little room for doubt.
Francesca attended court on one day only. She had not been required to do so, and she found it exceedingly painful.
Indeed, it had been determined that her presence would serve no useful purpose, as there was already sufficient testimony to establish her lack of involvement. Kendall’s own statements, together with those of the informant and the men taken with him, had made it abundantly clear that whatever role she had played in his affairs had been entirely incidental, and, more importantly, unwitting.
