Sir Percival made a sound of warning. “Francesca…”
She could not keep herself in check. Some proud and foolish part of her recoiled from being offered an imitation of what every young woman is taught to prize. To be escorted because danger required it was one thing; to be thought worthy of a counterfeit tenderness for convenience was another.
“I understand the expediency perfectly,” she said. “It is the elegance of the arrangement which overwhelms me.”
Major Manners’ expression changed then, just enough to betray that he felt distaste. She immediately regretted having inflicted it, which did not improve her temper in the least.
Sir Percival, with the practical wisdom of uncles who know when ladies must be left to exhaust themselves upon less yielding material, said, “Perhaps you had better settle the particulars between yourselves. I have no desire to stand between youth and stratagems—” He looked from one to the other. “—and it is, I trust, a stratagem?”
Francesca nearly laughed despite herself. “You may trust that no one is in danger of forgetting it, sir.”
Her uncle kissed her brow and turned back to his desk with studied unconcern. The interview was dismissed.
The hall felt cooler after the firelit library, and by the time they reached the glass doors opening on to the terrace, Francesca had recovered enough to be conscious of the absurdity of her situation. She was about to walk in the winter garden with a gentleman who must pretend to court her in order to protect her from her childhood friend. If such a circumstance had occurred in one of the novels she had secretly borrowed in schoolroom days, she would have condemned it at once as too extravagant for belief.
She paused at the threshold. “If it is not too cold for you,” she said, because some form of civility was still possible, “we might walk outside. I prefer to speak openly.”
They gathered their cloaks and put them on.
The morning air was brisk. The terrace stones were dry, but the lawns beyond bore a delicate silvering of frost where the sun had not yet dissolved it. The winter garden of the house, never grand in the severe manner of the great estates, possessed instead a thoughtful, cultivated beauty that suited the season. The borders, though stripped of summer prodigality, retained their structure in clipped yew and holly, the dark leavesgleaming wherever red berries persisted. Bare rose canes were tied neatly against the south wall, promising future beauty but at present the foliage was all restraint. A few hellebores nodded close to the gravel path, as pale as secret thoughts. The air smelt of earth, cold stone, and the faint resin of evergreen.
“It is not too cold for me,” replied Major Manners.
He offered his arm. She took it, because refusing now would have been childish, and because the contact, slight though it was, sent an altogether unreasonable warmth through her that she would have been ridiculous to deny.
They descended the terrace steps and turned onto the principal path. For a few moments, neither spoke. Gravel crunched beneath their feet with crisp precision. Somewhere beyond the wall, a rook called harshly. The stillness of the place, far from soothing her, only made her more conscious of her own agitation.
At last, she said, “You may speak openly now. There is no one here to overhear us but a frozen rosemary bush.”
He did not answer immediately. Then, bending slightly as though to observe a branch she had not noticed, he leaned nearer and said, in a very low voice beside her ear, “I think not. I have a strong suspicion we are being watched. Perhaps now is the time to practise courting.”
The warmth of his breath against the cold air caressing her cheek was so startling that she very nearly missed the words themselves.
She turned her head towards him in astonishment. “Here, in the garden?”
Before she could shape either protest or question, however, he had altered their course from the straight walk into the narrower path by the wall, where the espaliered pear trees made a kind of broken screen. He looked, to any observer, not secretive but intimate.
“Do not look about,” he murmured. “Continue exactly as you are.”
Her pulse began to race.
“Do you mean someone is watching from the street?”
“Perhaps, or from a neighbouring window; or a man has been paid to note who comes and goes. I do not know which. I know only that if you are under observation, we should give them something harmless to report.”
“Harmless?” she repeated faintly.
He glanced down at her then, and there was, to her confusion, the smallest shade of humour in his piercing blue eyes.
It was also impossible not to feel. Every nerve in her seemed newly alive to the fact of his closeness, the firm line of his sleeve beneath her gloved hand, the measured pace he had adopted to suit hers, the attention with which he appeared to regard her and which she now knew must be partly for display and partly—oh, she dared not guess how much he truly meant.
“How, precisely, is one to practise courting?” she asked, keeping her lips scarcely parted.
“Badly at first, I imagine.”
The answer was so unexpected that a laugh escaped her before she could stop it. The sound seemed strange in the winter air, being both bright and fragile.
“That,” he said, “is already better.”
