He felt peculiarly tense in the silence that followed.
“Francis,” she replied almost abstractedly.
“Francis?” He knew the oddest combination of relief and antipathy toward Francis, whoever he was.
Then he recalled that her sister’s fiancé had mentioned Francis in Fleegle’s Emporium of Wonders.
“He’s the third son of a duke,” she said offhandedly. “Francis Balfort.”
“Of course he is. My point exactly,” he said shortly.
Francis was not yet a member of Lucifer’s Fall. Perversely, Marchand considered this a mark in Francis’s favor. Possibly he had a few mild outdoor hobbies. Francis might hold on to his fortune and was in all likelihood not disaster-prone.
“My mother’s last wish was in fact that we all make the kind of marriages befitting the Woodville title. Grand and appropriate and titled. I vowed to her that I would make certain of it.”
“Ah.”
He didn’t know why this information should settle heavilyon his chest. Because he admired the way Miss Woodville hewed to her responsibilities as though they were commandments handed down on stone tablets.
And he also understood that her promises were, after a fashion, monuments erected to the memories of those she’d lost. A little like those heart-shaped rocks.
He understood this because he’d long held on to his own pain and loss as if it were the island he’d washed up on after a shipwreck. It anchored him even as it had stranded him.
“So what is Francis like?” he asked.
“He’s nice,” she told him.
“Sounds perfect for you,” he said dryly.
She smiled. She cleared her throat. “I’ve never heard that Francis has done anything with... ropes... for instance.”
She delivered the word “ropes” on a hush, as if she were a smuggler and it was the password.
He sighed. “I’m going to need you to translate whatever it is you keep trying to say about ropes, Miss Woodville.”
A slightly worrisome silence ensued. He suspected it was the sound of Miss Woodville gathering her nerve.
She was studiedly looking away from him now, straight ahead. “Lady Tomelty said you did, ah, things with ropes. In the same conversation where she mentioned your prowess.”
“What thedevil?”
Her eyes were lit up with wicked amusement when she pivoted toward him again. She was absolutely thrilled to have thrown him.
“I didn’t know what she meant,” she confessed. “She implied that it was depraved. And yet she made it sound like a good thing. It’s all very puzzling.”
“I couldn’t tell you what it meant if I wanted to, either.” This wasn’t true. He could definitely hazard a guess.
He cast about in his mind for memories of assignations that had gotten a bit adventurous. Some most assuredly had, but ropes had not factored in any of them, and none of the details were anyone’s business, least of all Miss Woodville’s. He told no oneanythingabout that side of his life, he was discreet, and he was not precisely promiscuous. Especially as he grew older and understood thoroughly the risks versus the satisfaction of such liaisons.
It was both disconcerting and amusing to know he’d infiltrated the London gossip stream so thoroughly. And, at least from the sound of things, flatteringly.
Perhaps because if he had any credo at all, it was that leaving a naked woman unsatisfied constituted failure.
“She said it as if it was something everyone knew,” Ginny pressed on.
“She must have me confused with someone else, as impossible as that seems.”
“Soodd that people persist in just making things up about you.” She did not sound convinced.
