Page 60 of The Courtship Dance

“Shut up!” Francesca cried, trembling with fury. “Just stop it. Get out of my house and never come here again. Do you understand me?”

“Oh, aye, I understand you well enough,” he replied. “Now you understand me. If you aren’t out of this house by tomorrow evening, I am taking it from you. And none of your…defenders—” he cast a contemptuous look at the servants clustered in the doorway “—will be able to stop me.”

With that, he turned and strode off. The cluster of people in the doorway moved back quickly to let him pass, Fenton carefully staying beyond the other man’s reach and keeping the pistol trained steadily on him.

Francesca sank into a chair, her legs suddenly too weak to stand. The servants trailed after Perkins, except for Maisie, who scurried over to Francesca and knelt beside her chair, gazing worriedly into her face.

“Are you all right, ma’am?”

Francesca nodded. She was still trembling, and her thoughts were scattered. She wanted to burst into tears, and only the sense of decorum ingrained in her since childhood kept her functioning.

“Yes, of course,” she managed to say, though she had to swallow back the tears before she could continue. “I—I think that I shall go up to my room.”

She rose to her feet, hoping they would support her as far as her bedchamber, and Maisie popped up with her. “Shall I help you?”

Francesca shook her head and summoned up a faint smile. “No. I am fine. I just…need some time alone to think.”

She walked out of the room, Maisie trailing uncertainly behind her. The other servants were clustered in the entryway, speaking in hushed urgency, but they broke off immediately when she emerged from the drawing room. Fenton stepped forward, and the others remained behind him, all gazing at Francesca with mingled anxiety and sympathy.

“My lady, if there is any way in which I can be of service to you…” Fenton began in his measured tones, his face tight with concern.

“Thank you, Fenton. If you would inform Sir Alan when he arrives that I am indisposed…”

“Of course, my lady.” Fenton bowed gravely.

Francesca nodded and started upstairs. She climbed on shaky legs, hand on the banister to help pull herself up. Emotions were boiling and bubbling in her chest, threatening to burst out of her in shrieks or tears—she was not sure which, perhaps both. She could feel all the servants’ concerned gazes on her back as she climbed, and it was all she could do to hold back her tears.

She barely made it to her room and closed the door before she burst into sobs. She collapsed on the floor, laying her head on her arms on the seat of a chair, and cried. Fury and fear and shame swirled within her, tangling and warring and blending into a cataclysmic outpouring.

What was she to do? How would she live? Perkins’ words battered at her, ripping through the barricades she had constructed over the past few weeks. She knew that her brother would take her in; she would not have to live on the streets as Perkins had pictured. But she burned with the humiliation, the utter defeat, of spending the rest of her life as a dependent relative.

She would have no home of her own, nothing that belonged to her, other than the clothes on her back. She would be living always on another’s kindness, hovering at the edges of Dominic and Constance’s life—observing their children, their marriage, their happiness. She would have to give up the life she had struggled so hard to keep since Andrew’s death. All her cleverness, all her scrambling to find enough money to keep herself and her little family of servants afloat, would now be for naught.

Not only would she be displaced, but Fenton and the others would be turned out, as well. She could hardly expect her brother to absorb the cost of several more servants, even if any of them wished to uproot their lives and remove to the country to live. She had failed them, and she knew that mixed in with their concern for her was a very real fear for themselves. Cook would have little problem, of course, but what about Fenton? He was growing rather old now to find a new position.

Almost worse than anything else, though, was the knowledge that everyone in the ton would know of her plight. She would be an object of pity to some and a subject of scorn to others. Whatever any of them felt for her, there would be a certain condescension laced through it. Everyone would know that she had failed. Everyone would know what sort of husband Haughston had been, how little he had cared for her, how foolishly he had thrown away both their lives. No matter how little love she held for Andrew, it shamed her unbearably to have others know what a pitiful wreck her marriage had been. Even if she were to survive a battle in court with Perkins, her life would have been splashed all over the gossip circuit for everyone to pick over.

Her skin crawled at the thought. She felt almost physically ill at the idea of Perkins living in her house—walking through her rooms, owning her beloved little sitting room or sleeping here in her bedchamber.

Desperately, she tried to think of some way to save herself, but her brain skittered about wildly, unable to focus on anything.

Downstairs she heard the sound of a man’s voice, and she knew that Sir Alan must have arrived. He was a good, kind man, and he was a little entranced, even dazzled, by her. If she gave him any encouragement, he would fall in love with her. She could marry him and escape the bleak life before her. She was sure that most women would offer him that encouragement.

But she could not. She could not bring herself to marry a man she did not love simply to make the rest of her life secure.

But what other path was open to her? She had been trying to find a way to escape this mess for over two weeks, and still she had discovered no way out.

She jumped to her feet and began to pace the room, wiping at the tears that streaked her face. Her nerves vibrated wildly, and she could not keep still. In fits and starts, tears continued to come, and now and then she could not hold back a little hiccuping sob.

In her despair, she could think of nothing. Only one thought penetrated the fog; only one word sent any ease through her: Sinclair.

She turned and grabbed up the light evening cloak that Maisie had laid out for her. Flinging it around her shoulders, she went out her door and lightly down the stairs. Peering carefully around the corner of the staircase, she was relieved to see that the servants had apparently retreated to the kitchen to discuss the evening’s events.

On tiptoe, she slipped down the last few steps and out the front door, closing it softly behind her. Pulling up the hood of her cloak to hide her face, she hurried off down the street.

A FOOTMAN IN ELEGANT blue-and-white livery opened the door. He frowned at the sight of a woman on his doorstep.

“Go on, get away from here! What do you think you’re doing?” he told her bluntly, starting to close the door.