Then there was the girl herself to be considered.
Francesca Vale was no simpering creature to be guided by raised brows and gentle suggestions. Arch remembered her only too clearly: the set of her jaw, the directness of her stare, the air of a person who had decided she would not be treated like an agreeable object. If she detested soldiers, she would detest him doubly—first for being one, and second for being assigned to her like a leash disguised as a ribbon.
He could imagine the first exchange already. She would not be charmed. She would not be grateful. She would not be quiet.
Her resistance would not be because he meant her harm, but because he represented the very machine that sought to control her: fathers, godfathers, guardians, Parliament, propriety, the Crown. A man could be perfectly honourable and still serve an arrangement that was not.
Arch rode on, letting the winter air cool his temper into something more useful.
He must decide what role to play. Perhaps the only tolerable position was to behave like a reluctant ally: to give her the dignity of truth, to admit his orders without grovelling, to offer her his eyes rather than his authority.
Even that, though, would require a delicacy he was not certain he possessed. He turned the corner towards the main road, the horse’s hooves striking cleanly against the damp stones, and felt resigned. “God help me,” he said at last.
CHAPTER 2
Francesca Vale had long suspected that grief, like rain, did not so much pass as merely alter its manner of falling. It had once been a downpour, sudden and merciless, the sort that drenched one through. Now it came more quietly, as a persistent damp that settled in the seams of every day and made things feel slightly chilled. She stood before the glass in her bedchamber and watched her maid fasten the last hook at the back of her gown with practised fingers, and thought, not for the first time, that Society had an inhuman talent for requiring a young woman to look radiant at the very instant she felt least inclined to it.
“You will do exceedingly well, miss,” said Nelly, stepping back to survey her work with the satisfied air of an artist who has brought order out of chaos. Francesca’s maid was not much older than her mistress, though she had the advantage of having been born without a fortune and therefore had learned early that other people’s comfort was a trade. She was small, neat, and possessed of an expression which conveyed both innocence and the precise opposite. Francesca trusted her more than she trusted most of the gentlemen who professed themselves devoted to her welfare.
“I should prefer to do tolerably,” Francesca replied, meeting her own gaze in the glass. Tolerably was a state less likely to provoke ambition in other people.
Nelly’s mouth twitched. “That is because you have sense, miss, but sense is not what they will reward in London. They will reward a pretty smile and demure gratitude.”
“Demure gratitude,” Francesca repeated, with mild scorn, “for what? For being invited to dine by people who will speak of my fortune as if it were a charming anecdote?”
“For being invited at all,” Nelly said matter-of-factly, reaching for the ribbon that would finish the coiffure she had constructed with patient tyranny. “You may not like it, but that is the way of things.”
Francesca narrowed her eyes a little. “You have been to London no more than I. I have lived upon an estate surrounded by tenants, clergy, magistrates, manufacturers, and gentlemen who spoke of ‘the common good’ while increasing their rents, yet here I am considered too naïve to make my own way about.”
“I merely wish you to survive the evening with your temper intact,” Nelly returned, unruffled.
“My temper will be perfectly intact,” Francesca said, and knew as she said it that she had just surrendered the argument.
Nelly, who was never deceived by a surrender, tied the ribbon with a final decisive tug. “There. That will do. Lady Upton will be pleased that you do not look like a reform pamphlet in human form.”
Francesca gave a short laugh. “Do not be absurd. I am quite capable of being a reform pamphlet and a lady at the same time.”
“That is what I am afraid of,” Nelly said sweetly. Francesca regarded herself again. The gown was mourning’s cousin rather than its child: a deep silvery grey which flattered her complexion without announcing tragedy, boasted a modesty of cut to satisfy any stickler, and a quality of silk that would satisfy the sharpest-eyed dowager. It was, in short, respectable enough to disarm and costly enough to attract notice, which meant it was precisely what she would not choose for herself.
“I detest it,” Francesca said quietly.
“You detest the reason,” Nelly corrected. “The gown is innocent.”
“It colludes,” Francesca murmured.
Nelly’s hands paused a moment at Francesca’s hair. “Miss… you could refuse to go.”
Francesca parted her lips, for the notion was tempting in the way that throwing oneself into a river was tempting when one was hot and angry and tired of propriety. Then she shook her head. “No. I cannot.”
“Because of Sir Percival?”
She barely inclined her head—because of Sir Percival, and because of the polite, immovable net he had cast around her in the name of duty and affection. She had been cajoled into this Season with the gentlest cruelty imaginable; which was to say, with appeals that she consider her late mother’s wishes, her father’s ‘intentions’, the responsibility attached to so considerable a fortune, and the necessity of appearing in Town to secure her future.
“My uncle thinks,” Francesca said, “that if I am not exhibited, I shall wither on the vine.”
Nelly finished inserting a pin and stepped back again. “Do you have any intention of making a match?”
“I mean,” Francesca replied, “to do precisely as I please.”
