It Takes Two to Tangle (15 page)

“Brown,” Frances said quietly, still staring at the picture. “His hair light, his eyes dark.” She stretched out a finger to touch the ivory surface, then thought better of it. She should not smudge the lines Henry had carefully marked out.

With his left hand, he had done this. It was not a great work of art by any means, but it was almost as clear as the drawing she had made with the living man before her.

She looked up at Henry's face again, her mind locked. “I don't understand. Why have you done this?”

His eyes were the painful blue of sapphires worn by a rival. “I wanted to give you a gift. To thank you for your friendship. Caro thought this was something you might like.”

“A new picture of my dead husband that you created by stealing the old from me. That's what Caroline thought I would like.”

“Well, yes.” Caroline's voice was higher than usual. “I thought you'd prefer something more meaningful than a book, and it wouldn't be right for him to give a gift of clothing, you know.”

“I do not understand why you need give me anything at all.”

Henry looked embarrassed. His gaze flicked just to the left of Frances's, and his mouth tugged into a dent at one corner. “There was no need, but I
wanted
to give you something.”

“Why?”

His voice grew quieter, not much more than a whisper—as if he feared having Caroline hear him. “Because of the ball. The way you… when we…” His eyes slid to Caroline before finding Frances again. “Thank you for helping me.”

Help. Her every kiss and touch—he thought she had meant it as
help
. The summer heat was almost suffocating, yet Frances prickled with cold. It was just as she feared. She had drawn him aside, placed herself in his way until he could not ignore her attentions.

“You are too generous,” she said in a faint voice.

She had led him with letters and with her own body, but by leading him, she had no idea where he truly wished to go.

Frances swallowed a sigh and looked into his beautiful eyes again. “Thank you, Henry,” she said, managing the calm companion's voice he was used to. “It was not necessary, but it was very kind of you. And Caroline.”

Henry looked relieved. “She thinks the world of you.”

And
what
do
you
think? Of me? Of her?

Better not to ask any questions if she did not want to hear the answers.

“She knows that,” Caroline said, sounding breezy again. “At least, she ought to. I'm horribly reliant on her.”

Frances made the shape of a smile as she folded Charles back into his leather case. “Likewise, Caroline.” She stood, and Henry at once matched her movement. “Here, Henry. You must have the chance to finish. If you want to.”

He took the case from her. “I do. I've enjoyed working in watercolors; they're easier for me to blend than oils. And if you think you'll like having the miniature, that makes it all the better.”

She could only nod. What could she say? That he and Caroline clearly thought the only man she needed was a dead one, three inches high, composed of pencil and watercolor and an oval chopped from an elephant's tusk?

That they were wholly wrong about that?

Charles belonged in a box of keepsakes now, even as his bones lay somewhere in the Netherlands. She had loved him and grieved him, and for several years that life had been adequate. But it didn't satisfy anymore.

“I could do with a sherry,” Caroline murmured, standing and fanning herself with the inevitable ivory accessory. “Or something stronger. What would be cooling in this wretched heat?”

“Lemonade,” Frances said. “With brandy in it.” How easily she slipped into her role as Caroline's advisor.

“That sounds odd,” Caroline said. “Let's give it a try, shall we? Henry, will you have one?”

“I think I've overstayed my welcome,” he said with a rueful smile. “But I hope to see you again soon.” He waved his hand, still gripping the small leather case, and made his farewells to Caroline and France.

Frances watched the empty doorway, listening as his boots thumped down the carpeted corridor and rang on the stairs down to the front door.

She heard the murmur of a servant, the thick rustle of a liveried footman retrieving Henry's hat. The front door opened silently, but she knew he was gone when the street clatter of hooves and carriage wheels spilled into the house, then was shut out again.

Silently, she turned back to face Caroline. The countess had folded her hands behind her back; her brows were puckered under her blonde coronet of hair.

“That didn't go at all as I'd planned,” Caroline said. “I rather wish you'd stayed in your room.”

“It doesn't matter. I'd feel the same about the miniature no matter when I saw it.” She tried to force a smile, but it felt more like a grimace.

Caroline looked skeptical. “I think,” the countess granted at last, “we've both earned a brandy by now. Don't you? We needn't bother with the lemonade.”

She rang for a servant, but when the snifters arrived, Frances pleaded long-deferred fatigue and took her brandy with her. Rather than heading to her bedchamber for a rest, though, she went to her writing desk in the morning room. The letter from Henry still lay where she'd tossed it earlier today, after Caroline had discarded it.

Before she could change her mind, she gulped down the brandy. It burned her throat, fired her resolve. She found a pen and tugged her inkwell toward her.

The miniature had startled her out of her submission, such as it had been. She couldn't live in her rosewood box; she couldn't torment herself with Charles anymore. Not when her life had begun to offer new torments instead.

There would be just one more letter to Henry, and it would be their triumph.
Frances's
triumph. She would tell him everything she felt, everything she wanted, even knowing he would credit it to another woman.

He wanted the lie, she reminded herself.

Her fingers wrapped tightly around the quill, the feathered barb teasing her skin, and she began to write.

My dear Henry,

How glad I was to see you earlier today. How glad I am too that you have continued painting. You must see now that you have lost nothing of permanence. Anything can be regained, given time enough and desire enough.

I must ask you now to dwell on desire along with me, for it is often on my mind. It has been a long time since I've been with a man, but I have not hungered overmuch for a man's touch until recent days. As you and I spend more time together, my long solitude is a weight on my heart, and the days since my widowhood stretch out long and gray.

What have I lost? How can I bear it with so many years left ahead of me? Yet my loss, like yours, need not have permanence.

I have come to value your friendship greatly, yet it leaves me unsatisfied. Much as I enjoy every word we share, conversation is not enough. I think sometimes the truest, wisest, wildest, and deepest thoughts and emotions can be communicated only with the press of hand on hand, mouth on mouth, body on body.

How I should love to communicate with you ever further. I have pressed your hand in mine. But have I truly reached your heart? Do you understand me, and I you?

Let us give it time if you desire it. Heaven knows that I do.

I am yours, as always.

Henry had to sit on the floor of his bedchamber while he read this latest letter.

Even so, he still felt too unsettled. Too unprepared to take it all in. So he stretched out on his bed, flat on his back, and read it again as his body grew molten.

Ah, God. It was amazing. It was the type of letter a man fantasized about getting when he was young. The type an older man probably fantasized about getting too, for that matter, especially if the sender were young and beautiful.

The sender… that was the only part that troubled Henry. Cheerful friendliness still marked his every interaction with Caro outside of the letters; he had no idea she had grown ready for a deeper intimacy.

He held up the creamy paper again, studying the boldly incised words. They didn't seem to suit Caro, but perhaps this was part of one of her own stratagems.
Do
you
understand
me?
the letter asked. No, he really didn't. And he rather thought that was the way she preferred it, despite the heat of her letter.

A few weeks earlier, he would have snapped up her offer regardless of his opinion. Any connection with the much-desired Lady Stratton would have been proof to the
ton
that he could conquer the polite world, even though the French had sent him home in pieces.

Now he knew the polite world had changed, just as he had. He needn't be so eager to fit himself into his old life; it had moved on just as he had.

Frances had been the first to point that out, with her terrifyingly clear vision.

Pillowy damask cushioned him, a luxurious coverlet on a soft bed in his brother's house. He fisted the rich fabric in his left hand, wanting to wrinkle it, to make some mark. Leave some sign of his presence.

No, he wanted more than that. He wanted happiness, intangible and maybe unattainable. Just as Jem had advised, he wanted to be with a woman who made him feel at ease. Comfortable even in his own wounded skin.

When he thought about it that way, the choice became clear. He didn't want to spend his life looking backward, pretending three years of his life had never happened and the loss of an arm changed him not at all.

He had once hoped desperately that would be the case. But he was no longer so desperate that he couldn't see the truth. There were some things he could never get back, and there were some things he was no longer suited to pursue.

One of those was a romance with a woman who seemed to have time for everyone but true interest in no one.

Only in Caro's letters did Henry see glimpses of a deeper self: what she cared for, what bothered her. But what if they married? Would anything change? He couldn't write letters to his wife for the rest of his life, then spend his days sitting aside while she enchanted others. And he couldn't ask her to change to suit him.

Not when there was someone else who already suited him.

Henry let out a shuddering sigh. His shoulders sank deep into the mattress, his booted feet dangling from the edge of the bed. After years of training, it was impossible to be careless, to let his dirty boots touch the coverlet.

A small matter, but out of these small matters, life was built. Frances understood that. She always had.

When he first met Frances, he had seen her as only a means to an end. With a speculator's view to the main chance, he'd asked her for help, laying his schemes on her shoulders. Oh, with an artist's eye, he'd admired her beauty too. Muted, yet striking in its own way.

But in the Blue Room, artist and speculator had vanished, and he was nothing more or less than a man. And
that
, more than anything else since he'd returned to London, had shown him that he might be able to rebuild his life after all.

He'd stepped so wrongly with the portrait of Frances's late husband. In trying to give her something that would
matter
to her, he'd only raised old ghosts—at least, that was what he guessed when he saw that haunted look on her face.

Such longing for a lost one was familiar. He'd been competing with the ghost of his old self since he'd come back to London, hadn't he? But there was nothing to be gained by chasing spirits. The joy of the pursuit turned hopeless as soon as they vanished.

He hoped he could convince Frances of this. But first, he needed to convince himself.

Heavy red wax from the letter's seal softened under his fingertips. Henry lowered the letter to his side and flexed his feet in his boots, his shoulders against the yielding surface of the mattress.

He would never have to sleep on the ground again. He would never have to march for miles under a sun baked hot enough to leach the color from his uniform. And yet… he'd never really be free of the war if he always held the secret of Quatre Bras inside him.

He owed Caro an explanation first of all. And then—then he owed Frances the full truth. He must build his new life on a sturdy foundation, or it would all be flimsy and fragile.

Each society ball would be a building block, each call at Albemarle Street the mortar. If Caro had given Henry the determination to stay in London, to make something of himself again, Frances had inspired him to consider
how
he might do that. How a man with one arm could take hold in high society again. How someone who had seen the horrors of war could understand how to live in peace.

He didn't have all the answers yet, but he knew how to find them. Starting tomorrow.

Hand
on
hand, mouth on mouth, body on body
. Someday he might even experience that again if all went well.

He pressed the letter closed and let it flutter to his chest, let his hand wander downward.

He could not seize happiness alone, but as he thought of Frances, he came as close as he could.

“Henry, welcome. I've been expecting you to call.”

Caro's butler had shown Henry into the drawing room, where Caro met him after only a few minutes' wait. Caro stretched out her hand in greeting with queenly grace, as though it was perfectly normal for Henry to call at noon—an hour when the polite world was often still abed and certainly was not badgering its neighbors with surprise visits.

This ruler of fashion looked as stylish in her Pomona green silks as any portrait of the late Duchess of Devonshire, her fan hanging carelessly from a silk ribbon at her wrist. Breezy and confident, she could have passed no such fraught night as he had.

“You surprise me,” Henry admitted, surrendering his hand into hers for a tense second. “I wasn't sure after the exchange of the miniature when I might call again.”

“Or whether you ought to call at all,” Caro added smoothly. She gave him a knowing smile that made him wonder just how much she
did
know.

She sank onto the long sofa from which she'd surely hold court in a few hours. With a lift of her brows, she asked, “Clearly you have something on your mind. Will tea do for coaxing it out, or should we ring for something more bracing?”

“Nothing right now, thank you.” He found a fussy cabriole-legged chair and dragged it near her, then settled himself on the brocade seat.

“As you wish.” Nestled against the cushions littering her sofa, Caro looked completely at her ease. “To what do I owe the honor of this visit? I have a guess, but I won't say in case I'm wrong, and I do hate to be wrong.”

Henry's shoulders were knotted, his spine a brittle ramrod. “In that, you resemble your cousin greatly.”

Caro arranged a fold of her gown into a more graceful drape. “Yes, I suppose so. Frannie and I both tend to confine our opinion to areas in which we feel ourselves on solid ground.”

Her bright eyes flicked up, caught his. “Which, right now, I suppose I do.”

This was getting more awkward by the second. “I'm aware that this appears to my disadvantage, calling on you at such an unusual hour, but—”

“Actually,” Caro countered, “it appears to my advantage, not to your disadvantage. My neighbors will think I've made another conquest.”

She plucked at a tassel on one of her embroidered cushions, studying it with deliberate attention as Henry's thoughts unspooled in a giant loop of
oh, damn
. “But never mind that, Henry. Why not tell me why you're really here?”

She surprised him again; he didn't perceive the slightest bit of flirtation in her tone. If anything, she seemed… businesslike? The tone combed his thoughts into a sensible order.

“All right.” He collected his right arm into his left hand, took a deep breath, and plunged in. “I wanted to thank you for the very great honor of your letters, and also let you know that I think it prudent to put an end to the correspondence.”

She smoothed the cushion she'd been toying with and looked at him with those startling Paris Green eyes. A small smile bent her lips. “I'm not usually concerned with what's prudent, Henry, but in this case I think I can divine what you're too polite to say. You are interested in another lady, are you not?”

Henry wracked his brain for a proper response. Caro was awfully cheerful considering the bent of their conversation. Not that he had particularly wanted tears or a tantrum, but this blithe unconcern—he felt he saw only a mirror. She reflected what those around her wanted to see, but who was she really? The uncertainty made him uneasy.

And that, more than anything else, was reason enough to stop writing the letters. He needn't stop them for Frances's sake. He would stop them for his own. “My feelings for any other lady don't affect my decision, Caro. I'm truly sorry if it causes you pain.”

To his surprise, she smiled again, wide and lovely. “You have nothing to apologize for, Henry. You needed something for a short time, and I was happy to be a part of it. Now you find you need something else. Who can fault you for that? Your life has been unmade, and you are remaking it.”

Henry's mouth opened, but he could think of nothing that he ought to make it say. Finally, he managed, “You are very perceptive.”

“I am indeed.” She settled back against her long sofa again. “More than the world realizes, Henry. For example, this lady for whom you will not admit your regard. It's Frannie, yes?”

He flailed for the cool dignity he'd often sported as Captain Middlebrook of the First Foot Guards. “I'd prefer to discuss my feelings for Frances with Frances herself.”

“So you
do
have feelings for Frannie.”

Well, there was no point in denying it now. “Yes. I hope you are not offended.”

“Offended?” She propped herself up on one elbow. “I am the farthest from offended that you can possibly imagine. I am more offended that you are the first man since we came to London a year ago to see Frannie's worth.”

Her lithe figure stretched beneath the sleek fabric of her gown, and Henry again thought what a wonderful subject she would make for a portraitist. Other than an artist's admiration, her beauty roused him not at all.

She subsided onto the sofa again and shook her fan from the ribbon around her wrist. Turning it between her hands, she said, “This is Frannie's fan.” She flipped it open and displayed the painted surface.

Henry recognized it at once as a fair copy of Primaticcio's
Odysseus
and
Penelope
. The old soldier, bearded and gruff, caressed the chin of his pale and proud wife as they sat entwined in postcoital sheets, recounting their adventures to one another—passionate, like-minded.

Without thinking, he tried to reach out for the painting, but his shoulder only flexed, his right arm immobile in the grasp of his left.

Caroline flipped the fan closed, then open again, and turned the painted face toward her own countenance. “Frannie admired this painting very much. She always wanted to think that some soldiers came home and found happiness again.”

With a quick snap, she closed the fan a final time. “She gave this to me after I carelessly broke my own fan. I've forgotten to give it back to her, or maybe I just didn't want to.” Her forefinger traced the ivory guard. “That is as good a summary of Frannie's character, and mine, as any I could imagine. And that is why you are much better off choosing her.”

Henry made himself smile, knowing that she expected him to feel relief and certainty. But doubt shadowed his thoughts:
Even
if
I
choose
her, she might not choose me.

As a younger son rather than an heir, Henry had never commanded the money or influence that Jem held in an effortless grip. He had little enough responsibility either, until he went into the army. Even there, for too long, he'd made his way on charm and his brother's connections. Now he must make his way on his own, just as he was. No secrets; no hiding.

The thought terrified him, perhaps even more than pity did.

“Don't you agree?” Caro prodded. “I assume you do, or you wouldn't have come here today.”

“I'm sorry, I didn't follow.” Henry frowned, distracted by his own confusion.

A carefully arched brow lifted. “I wondered if you agreed that Frannie was eminently worth the pursuit. I considered it merely a rhetorical question, but then you worried me with your lack of response.”

“Again, then, I must apologize.” Henry rolled his shoulders, trying to relieve the tension that yanked at them. “Your cousin's appeal could never be in doubt. I'm only wondering about my own.”

“That's for her to decide, isn't it?” She smiled, superior and sly as the
Mona
Lisa
. Then a thought seemed to strike her, and her expression turned sharp. “You're not asking for my blessing, are you?”

Henry considered. “Not exactly. I'm asking for your understanding. And for a bit of solitude with the lady. There's rather a lot that I need to explain.”

This was, apparently, the right thing to say, for Caro beamed at him. “That, you may have. I don't have the right to give you my blessing. But if you're ready to speak with Frannie now, we can see what she has to say.”

“Yes,” Henry said. He nodded to underscore his words. To give the appearance of a courage that was lacking.

Oh, he was certain of Frances, of her worthiness of his trust. But was he ready to repose it? To reveal his secrets, his shame, his weaknesses old and new?

He must, or he could never be sure of her. He would not court under false pretenses again.

“Yes,” he said again. “Thank you, Caro.”

“You are very welcome.” She rose to her feet, and he stood too. “Let us go find her. She'll probably be in the morning room.”

***

After Caroline left Henry at the doorway of the morning room, she mounted the steps to her bedchamber. This was her haven, quiet and luxurious in its dark woods, delicate plasterwork, green damask.

She invited men to share her bed sometimes, but just now, she was happy to be alone.

If a month ago, someone had told her she would be delighted to hear that a man had no interest in her, she would have been surprised.

If a month ago, though, someone had revealed that Caroline would soon engage in an elaborate plot to marry off her cousin, that would have surprised her less.

The man who could choose Frances over Caroline was a man who could see all the way to their hearts. The
ton
was quite sure that Caroline had none; perhaps that was why it had taken to her so well this season. She was blithe and careless and amusing, and as long as she was very amusing, very blithe, and very, very expensive—that was all most men in London were looking for.

It was enough for Caroline for now. She had nine years of marriage, of quiet patience and solitary nursemaiding, to put behind her. The chaotic, empty amusements of London were exactly what she wanted.

But they were not enough for Frances. They were not enough for Henry. Thus the secret letters.

The letters had been hazardous to begin with; secret correspondences simply weren't
done
by ladies of quality. They'd become still more dangerous once Frances confided that Henry thought they were from Caro.

It had seemed ridiculous to Caroline at first, because she knew quite well she could never ensnare anyone with words on a page. Her weapons were flicking fans and practiced smiles. Eventually, Caro was sure, Henry would figure out the truth: that it was Frances's vivid soul to which he responded.

Caro had always muted her own reactions to Henry; she made sure to give him as many hints as she could without spoiling her cousin's secret. Talked with him alone only when he wanted to fashion a gift for Frannie, and even then only within a room full of people. Hoped that the deception would be at an end, and Frances would find her way to happiness as Caro had not.

Maybe Frances would; maybe even today. Maybe even now happiness had marched into the morning room, all abashed pride, and laid itself at her feet.

The idea of such devotion was as bewitching and unlikely as borrowing the Crown jewels for a breakfast at home.

As Caroline stretched out on her bed and let the cool solitude soothe her, she could almost feel that she really was happy for her cousin and not envious at all.