“No,” Stuart agreed, “which means she will see through flattery.”
Baines laughed. “Then you are safe, Manners. You cannot flatter convincingly.”
Arch shot him a look of disdain. “I can flatter,” he said. “I simply prefer not to.”
“Try to befriend her. It sounds as though she will see through aught else,” Stuart suggested. His wife was strong-willed, so he might be better cognizant than most, Arch reflected—not that he was looking for a wife, he added grimly.
Renforth leaned back slightly. “There is another concern,” he said. “Miss Vale is tied, in part, to Sir Percival’s position.”
Arch frowned. “In what manner?”
“In the manner that they may well try to use her against him to affect Parliament. Enemies do not always strike at theman himself,” Renforth said. “Sometimes they strike at what he cannot afford to lose.”
“They would use her to threaten him,” Arch said.
“Or to influence him,” Stuart murmured.
“Or to ruin him,” Fielding added.
Arch felt the evening’s fatigue harden into resolve, which was inconvenient, because resolve made him feel less like a victim of his father’s summons and more like an active participant, and he disliked being manoeuvred into active participation.
He lifted his glass in reluctant salute. “Now, how to do this without making myself ridiculous, if such a thing is possible?” There was no response required to that question.
The talk drifted to other things. Their missing associate, Captain Cholmely—Chum—for one, who was currently off in Devonshire investigating a matter related to his own brother’s treason.
Arch left the drawing room a few minutes later and climbed the stairs to his own chamber, the house settling into a quieter rhythm behind him. As he closed his door, he stood for a moment in the dimness and tried to summon the detachment he usually wore like armour. He told himself he was only escorting an heiress for a Season. He told himself he was only observing a solicitor. He told himself this was a duty like any other, merely one dressed in silk.
Then he remembered Francesca Vale’s calm defiance at the dinner-table, and he felt, inconveniently, the first stirring of something that was not duty at all, but interest, sharp and unwilling.
In the corridor, somewhere below, O’Malley’s steps moved with quiet certainty, and Arch had the distinct impression that even the house itself was in conspiracy against his peace. He lay down at last and stared into the dark, already imagining the next encounter; already planning how to appear casually presentin Miss Vale’s orbit without seeming to be a jailer, and already suspecting that the most difficult part would not be Kendall.
The ticklish part of this commission would be convincing Francesca Vale herself.
CHAPTER 4
The next morning, Francesca sat down to her correspondence with the same determination with which she might have settled to needlework, which was to say none at all. She had slept little, and when she had finally dozed, her mind had been unpardonably busy, arranging and rearranging the previous evening. She told herself sternly that it was Lord Upton’s dinner which lingered, and her uncle’s anxious looks, and her own vexation at being nudged into a Season when she had no desire to be displayed like a piece of property in a shop-window. If Arch Manners appeared in the remembrance with inconvenient vividness, that was merely because he had been placed so obligingly in her path, and because he spoke with an aggravating mixture of civility and candour. A man might be both polite and impertinent—it was an accomplishment, though not one she wished to reward with further thought.
She arranged her blotter and her pen, drew a stack of letters towards her, and forced her attention to settle upon the sensible world. Her sitting-room in Sir Percival’s Mayfair house was bright with a pale, decisive winter light that made everythinglook clean and rational, while the fire burned with admirable heartiness.
The first letter was from her great-aunt. Aunt Mavis’ hand was shaky, her sentences full of affectionate admonition and careful direction, as if she feared Francesca might accidentally wander into ruin between breakfast and dinner. Aunt Mavis reminded her, with gentle severity, that her mourning had been respected; that her position obliged her to be seen, and her fortune obliged her to be guarded. Francesca folded the missive again with patience, because she knew her aunt meant well, and because she had loved her since she was a child.
The second letter was from a friend she had had at school in Manchester, who wanted to know whether French lace or English muslin were all the rage, and whether she might attend the latest play by Edmund Kean the following week. Francesca read it, sighed, and set it aside.
The third letter, addressed in a hand she could have recognized in the dark, made her pause with the pen hovering above the blotting-paper.
Thomas Kendall.
The name alone caused a small flutter in her chest—not of fear, but of habit. Thomas had been part of her life for so long that she sometimes forgot he was not, by blood, a relation. His father had served hers as solicitor with a gravity that had bordered upon sanctity; Thomas had inherited the position with all the confidence of a man who had inherited the right to speak freely in her presence. When she had been a girl, she had found his earnestness reassuring. When grief had made her raw and unsteady, he had been there, precise and unshaken, to tell her what forms must be signed and what bills must be paid and which relations must be answered. She had leaned upon him, and he had never once given the impression that he might not be entirely safe for her to know.
Now, after one dinner in a London house and one conversation with a too-perceptive soldier, she found herself reading Thomas’s letter more carefully than she ever had before.
My dear Miss Vale, it began, with the respectful affection he had always used, though she had told him, more than once, that she was not a widow of seventy and did not require such formality from a man who had chased her through orchards when they were children.
He wrote of her Warwickshire estates: the new looms installed at Vale Mills, the difficulty of securing good wool at a tolerable price, and the stubbornness of a particular steward who refused to adopt her improvements. He praised, in his manner, her ‘enlightened concern’ for the factory workers, and spoke approvingly of her intention to adjust wages, to shorten shifts, and to provide cleaner dormitories for those who boarded near the mills. Francesca felt her shoulders ease a fraction; there was comfort in being understood, and Thomas understood her purpose, at least in words.
Then, in the second page, he mentioned something that made her heart quicken.
There is a gathering tomorrow afternoon, he wrote,at the home of Mr. Tidd in Bloomsbury. The topic is wages and conditions in the manufactories; several men of sense will attend, and one or two ladies of uncommon courage. I believe it would suit you better than another tedious rout. You would be received with respect. If you desire to influence minds that matter, you must sometimes present yourself where minds are gathered.
