“Major Manners,” she replied, giving him the title with the precision of a pin.
A flicker crossed his face; she could not tell whether it was amusement or irritation.
“You remember me, then,” he remarked.
“I think the anomaly is more that you remember me.” She tried to keep the tartness from her voice, but was certain she did not succeed.
“One does not oft forget someone who abhors a man in uniform,” he rejoined with a knowing smile, as if, perhaps, she had merely been a misguided youth.
“Oh, you must be mistaken, my boy. Francesca knows to respect the King’s Men,” their godfather interjected. Sir Percival’s gaze moved between them with an air of anticipatory dread, as if he expected sparks and might need to extinguish them.
Lady Upton, oblivious or pretending so to be, smiled brightly. “How charming! You must reacquaint yourselves. I am sure you will have much to say to one another.”
Francesca wondered what Lady Upton imagined they had in common, besides a mutual acquaintance and an equal dislike of being managed.
“Indeed,” Francesca said sweetly, and meant nothing by it.
The butler announced dinner, and the company began to move towards the dining room like the tide. Francesca found herself placed, by Lady Upton’s careful arrangement, in the seat most visible to the room, with Sir Percival on one side and Arch Manners on the other.
It was, Francesca thought with humour, the social equivalent of being flanked by guards.
She sat with calm composure, though her mind was already working. A dining-table was a battlefield of sorts, and she had survived worse.
The first courses were served and the ritualistic conversation began, light and polished, as if nothing in England were more urgent than the quality of soup or the turn of the weather. Francesca listened, answered when addressed and smiled when required. She did not speak of the mill, of the tenants, of the men who worked sixteen hours a day for wages that could scarcely feed a family, because to speak of such things at dinner was considered vulgar.
“I suppose you must resign yourself to my company as my mother informs me that my assistance will be required to escort you for the Season.”
“You are to be of assistance for the Season,” she repeated coolly, meeting his gaze.
His inclination of the head was precise, almost self-mocking. “So I have been informed, though assistance is a term of generous elasticity.”
It was, she thought, an uncommonly civil way of acknowledging interference. “It sounds as though you are already resigned.”
“A poorly attempted endeavour to disguise myself, it seems,” he said, then added, with a faint edge of amusement, “I have little doubt you were cajoled, just as I was. I see your uncle and my mother for what they are.”
“Indeed. Though I hope you will not hold me immediately culpable for crimes I have not yet committed.” Against her will, the corner of her mouth lifted. She did not trust that reaction and smothered it at once. “You speak as if you expect me to be belligerent.”
“Experience suggests that young ladies with strong opinions rarely lack a prosecutorial spirit,” he replied.
She laughed then, a short sound she had not meant to give him, and recovered herself quickly. “If you refer to my opinions of soldiers, they are founded upon experience, not whim.”
“Indeed?” he asked mildly. “Then may I inquire what grievance the entire profession has earned?”
She studied him for a moment, searching for mockery and finding none. That, too, unsettled her.
“A regiment was stationed near my home,” she said at last. “They treated the land as though it were theirs by conquest rather than lease. They bullied tenants. They attempted to coerce my father into arrangements that would have ruined him. One thought he had the right… they assumed authority belonged to them simply because they wore uniforms.”
He did not interrupt her, which earned him a small mark in his favour, though she resented the fact.
“I gather,” he said evenly, “that someone in uniform has treated you yourself poorly.”
“Poorly,” she echoed.
“Thus we are all,” he continued, with infuriating calm, “to be tarnished by one man’s actions?”
Her temper stirred. “If a tailor produces one inferior coat, would you expect the next to be better?”
“Yet I believe you do not swear off coats entirely,” he replied.
