The Courtship Dance (18 page)

“Do you still intend to give the man the living at St. Swithin’s?” Francesca asked.

“Probably.” He shrugged. “It would be a welcome change, I imagine, to the people of St. Swithin’s, to have a vicar who cared passionately about anything. The last one could barely keep his eyes open during his own sermons.”

“You do not think he is a trifle…impulsive?”

A grin touched Rochford’s lips. “He is that. One hopes today may have taught him a lesson. If he seems seriously unstable tomorrow, I shall not offer it to him, of course. But he is young and in love, and one does foolish things at such times.”

“Yes, one does,” Francesca agreed quietly. That was one thing she knew far too well.

She finished her tea in the best of spirits and was, frankly, tempted to linger. However, as she had plans to attend the opera that evening with Sir Alan and his daughter, she had to take her leave.

Rochford, unsurprisingly, insisted that she and her maid be driven home in his carriage rather than walking the few blocks to her house. Francesca, leaning back against the luxurious leather seats, contemplated the meaning of her discovery. Rochford had already ruled out Althea Robart and Caroline Wyatt, and now it was clear that he had no interest in Mary Calderwood, either.

Was he not serious about pursuing a wife? In that case, what was she to make of his comment regarding an engagement announcement at the ball?

It could be that one of the two choices remaining would catch his interest—or had already done so. After all, Damaris seemed the most prepared to take on the duties of a duchess, and Lady de Morgan was the most attractive of all the prospects. However, Francesca had seen little about the duke that bespoke a man in love with either prospect. He had not mentioned either of the women even once. And according to the gossip, only Lady Mary had appeared to be the object of his pursuit.

But if he was not serious about marriage, then why had he come to her and asked for her help with the ball?

And in light of the ball and its intent, why had he kissed her?

L
OST IN SUCH MUSINGS
,
Francesca went straight to her room when she returned home. It was already time to start preparing for her evening out with the Sherbournes. She bathed and ate a quick supper, which was brought to her on a tray in her room. It was often what she did when she dined at home alone in the evenings, especially when she had to dress for an evening out. It was easier on the servants, and, besides, she invariably felt a trifle foolish dining alone at the long table.

She hummed to herself as she sat down before her mirror and Maisie began the lengthy process of putting up her hair. Maisie was an artist at arranging hair, and she would not be rushed. Francesca opened her jewelry box and glanced over the earrings within. She picked up a pair of jet bobs, then set them down, and opened the small, secret drawer in the bottom. She took out the sapphire earrings Rochford had given her fifteen years ago and laid them in her palm.

She studied the rich, dark blue stones, their depth brightened by the tiny diamonds surrounding them. She had never worn them. At first she had not done so because their engagement was secret, and after that, the thought of wearing them had been too painful. Even when the years had worn away most of the pain, she had been reluctant to put them on. It had seemed somehow wrong.

However, it struck her now that it was quite foolish to hide away such lovely jewelry. Especially tonight,
when she was going to wear an evening gown of deep blue. She put the earrings in her earlobes and turned her head from side to side, studying the effect as the diamonds caught and reflected the light.

“Oh, my lady!” Maisie sucked in her breath in appreciation. “Those are beautiful, those are. And won’t they look a treat with your dress?”

“I was just thinking the same thing.” Francesca smiled at her maid in the mirror.

“Are you going to wear the bracelet, as well?”

“I don’t know.” Francesca pulled out the circlet of diamonds and sapphires.

It was not a heavy bracelet, but the work was exquisite, and the jewels were of the highest quality, exactly the epitome of taste and elegance that one would expect Rochford to choose. She slipped it on her wrist and admired it.

“You know…I believe I will.”

Maisie helped her into the blue ball gown, a gossamer voile dress of deep blue laid over a lighter blue underskirt, the contrast of colors repeated in the sleeves. Francesca had just stepped into her slippers when there was the sound of a thunderous knock downstairs.

Maid and mistress looked at each other in surprise. It was too early for Sir Alan’s arrival, and in any case, he would not have pounded so rudely upon the door. Curious, Francesca went to the door of her bedchamber and opened it as Maisie went on about her business,
pulling out Francesca’s light evening cloak, fan and gloves, and laying them out on the bed.

A man’s voice reverberated downstairs, strident and aggressive. Francesca stiffened. She did not recognize the voice so much as the manner. What was Mr. Perkins doing here? He had promised to wait until Saturday.

Her hand tightened on the doorknob, her insides clenching. She should have known that he would not keep to his promise. She hesitated. She did not want to go down and face him, and for a short moment she was tempted to stay there and let Fenton deal with the man.

It was only a fleeting thought, however, for she knew there was no way Fenton could make Perkins leave, and Perkins was exactly the boorish sort who would refuse to go. Indeed, it would not surprise her at all if the man decided to bully his way up the stairs to find her. She had to get rid of him before Sir Alan arrived.

So, with a sigh, she started downstairs. The voices were rising in volume and heat as she approached, and as she rounded the corner of the stairway, she saw Perkins reach out and grab her butler by his shirtfront, bunching the material in his fist and giving the man a shake.

“By God, she will see me, or I’ll know why!”

Fenton’s face turned dangerously purple with rage, and Francesca ran quickly down the last few steps.

“I am here, Mr. Perkins, so you can stop your bellowing.”

He let go of Fenton and swung around. Only a few
feet from him now, Francesca could see that his eyes were bloodshot and his face puffier than the last time she had seen him. The distinct smell of alcohol hung on the air around him.

“You,” he said heavily.

“Yes. I.”

“My lady,” Fenton began, almost quivering with rage.

“Yes, Fenton, I know. You did all you could to stop him. But I think it is best that I speak to Mr. Perkins. If you will come with me…?” She gestured toward the drawing room, then strode off in that direction, and Perkins followed her.

When they reached the drawing room, she turned around to face him. “Now. What are you doing here? I have plans for this evening. I did not expect you until Saturday.”

“Maybe I don’t want to wait until Saturday,” he retorted. “After the way you tossed me out of your party last week, I decided I needn’t stand on formalities.”

With an insolent grin, he plopped down in a chair without waiting for her to sit first.

Firmly suppressing her distaste, Francesca took a seat on the couch across from him, saying evenly, “I had nothing to do with that. However, when one arrives at a party uninvited, I imagine one might expect a bit of rudeness.”

“I expect nothing else from the high and mighty duke,” he sneered. “He’s always held himself better than the rest of us. Haughston’d be spinning in his grave
if he knew Rochford was sniffing around you.” Perkins cast a baleful glance at her. “No doubt he’s hoping to set you up as his next mistress.”

Francesca drew in her breath sharply, startled by his words. Anger followed an instant later, and she jumped to her feet. “How dare you speak such lies? Rochford would never do such a thing.”

Perkins let out a short laugh. “Any man would.”

“That’s absurd,” Francesca told him stiffly. “Rochford is an honorable man.”

“Honor’s got nothing to do with it. ’Tis lust that pulls that cart.”

“You could not possibly understand a man like Rochford.”

He quirked an eyebrow at her. “A man’s a man, for all the fine airs he puts on, I can tell you that.” An ill-humored grin split his face. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking you can bring the man to marry you?”

“Of course not!” Francesca turned and walked away from him.

“Best not be,” he continued. “That one’ll marry for duty and naught else.”

She stopped and turned back, facing him with all the hauteur of which she was capable. “I am well aware of that. I can assure you that I have no intention of trying to ‘bring’ him to marry me. Nor do I have any intention of discussing my personal life with you.”

“All right, then. Let’s talk business. Do you have my money?” He crossed his arms and waited, looking at her.

Francesca, gazing back at him, felt her momentary anger drain out of her, leaving only the apprehension than had been haunting her for the past two and a half weeks. She took a step forward even though it felt more comfortable to be standing several feet away from the man. She suspected that it was important, as it was with an animal, not to let Perkins see that she was afraid.

“I—” Her voice was shaky, and she stopped, beginning again, injecting some iron into her words. The moment was upon her, and she had to try to save her house.

She started again. “I have a proposition for you.”

“D
O YOU
?”
He leered. “And what might that be?”

“I am prepared to pay you a sum of money today—two hundred pounds, say.” Now that she had started, Francesca felt calmer. She had thought about it a great deal, and this, she had decided, was her best hope. “The money will be above and beyond the debt you claim my late husband owed you. In return, you will give me a reasonable time in which to raise the whole amount.”

“Will I? And just what is ‘a reasonable time’?”

“Six months.”

“Six months? You ask me to wait for six months to take possession of a house that is rightfully mine? My lady, I think you overestimate your powers of persuasion.” He rose to his feet.

“You cannot lose,” Francesca assured him quickly. “If I am unable to raise the money, you will keep the two hundred pounds.” Of course, she did not tell him that she had not raised the whole £200 yet. If he agreed, she would have to sell her team and carriage to reach that amount.

“And if I am able to pay you the five thousand
pounds in six months, you will get two hundred more than you asked for,” she went on. “If you will but think about it, I believe you will see the advantages for you.”

“So you are saying that I should let you live in the house free for six months.” Perkins sauntered toward her.

Francesca faced him, refusing to retreat. “Hardly free. It seems to me that two hundred pounds is a very sizable rent for that period of time. And you would not have to face the trouble and expense of taking me to court. You must be aware that it will not be as easy as you said to take my home from me in court.”

“Just how do you intend to raise the money in six months if you cannot raise it now?” he asked. “What do you think you will do—sell the house? I can sell it as soon as I take possession—and get the entire price, not just the debt your husband acquired. Why should I let you do it?”

“Because what you are doing is reprehensible!” Francesca shot back. “To take my home because of some foolish bet my husband made years ago!”

“Reprehensible, am I?” His mouth curved up again in his cocky sneer. “Seems you’ve always thought poorly of me. You never liked me dirtying your house, did you? You looked down on me from the moment I walked in the door. I wasn’t good enough for your husband.”

He was close enough now that she could again smell the alcohol on his breath, but Francesca continued to stand her ground, carefully schooling her face.

“You encouraged Andrew in his follies,” she told him. “I never said that he was superior to you.”

“You didn’t have to say it. I could see it in your face. His, too. He was a Haughston, family came over with the Conqueror, but I was just some squire’s youngest son. Well, my birth was as good as any.”

“It was not your birth that I objected to. It was what you chose to do with your life.”

“I was no worse than your esteemed husband.”

“Small compliment there!”

“Yet he was good enough for you to marry, whereas I wasn’t even worth a smile.” He closed the distance between them, and there was a dark look in his eyes that made Francesca back up a step. “If I came near you, you moved away. Just like now. If I paid you a compliment, you sneered at me. If I touched you, you shoved my hand aside.”

“What did you expect?” she retorted. “I was a married woman. I was not about to dally with you or any man. My husband was your friend. Only the basest sort would have made advances to his wife.”

“The basest sort, eh?” He took another step, and Francesca backed up again. The wall was behind her. She knew that if she retreated any more, she would come up against it, so she turned to move away.

But Perkins’ arm shot forward, his hand slapping into the wall, barring her passage. “Not so fast, my lady.
I
have a proposition for
you.
”

Francesca faced him. Her heart was pounding wildly
in her chest, and her stomach was suddenly icy, but she would not let him see that he frightened her. She was sure that was precisely the reaction he was hoping for.

“And what might that be?” She was pleased at how coolly her voice came out.

“You can continue to live here. No rent. No two hundred pounds. I’ll even forgive the debt…after a while.” He smiled coldly, and there was a look in his eyes that made Francesca’s stomach turn. He raised his other hand and stroked his forefinger down her cheek. “All you have to do is…be
mistress
of the house.”

Francesca stared at him, too stunned to speak.

“Don’t look so shocked. It’s what women like you do every day, except you like to wrap it up in fancy words and ceremonies. You sell yourselves to live like this. You did it with Haughston. You’d do it with Rochford. If you want to stay here, you will do it with me.”

Francesca finally broke free of her paralysis, and she jerked away. “You must be joking!”

“No, that I’m not.” His voice was laced with amusement as he added mockingly, “If you will but think about it, I am sure that you will see the advantages for you.”

“I would never be your mistress,” Francesca spat back, the revulsion she felt written so clearly on her face that even in his inebriated state, he could see it. “I would rather starve than sleep with you!”

“Is that right?” His face went cold and hard, all the amusement leaving it, as his hand lashed out and grabbed her arm. “Why don’t we just see about that?”

He jerked her toward him so suddenly and roughly that Francesca stumbled and fell forward, coming up heavily against his chest. He let go of her, but only to wrap his arm around her and crush her to him. His other hand clamped down on her face, turning it up toward him.

Terror rushed through her, and she stamped down as hard as she could on his instep, grateful that she had worn slippers with a bit of a heel. His arm loosened automatically as he let out a small cry of pain, and she wrenched away from him.

She ran to the fireplace and grabbed the poker, swinging around to face him, her improvised weapon brandished in the air. “Get out of here or I’ll have you thrown out!”

“Really?” he sneered, starting toward her. “You think that old fool can throw me out? I’d like to see him try.”

“Stop! If you touch me, I shall have you thrown in gaol. Do you want to run for the Continent again?”

“You won’t be talking much once I’m done with you,” he told her, and the smile that spread across his face was cold with menace. He took another step toward her. “I’m going to enjoy taking you down a peg.”

He rushed at her then, and Francesca shrieked, swinging at him with all her strength. To her surprise, she managed to land a blow on his upper arm hard enough to make a satisfying
thwack.
But as she pulled back to strike again, he wrapped his fist around the
poker and jerked it out of her grasp, tossing it behind him, where it crashed into a small table.

She screamed again and turned to run, and he lunged after her. However, the five glasses of blue ruin he had consumed before he came to see her impaired his judgment of distance, and he hooked a foot in the leg of a chair and stumbled, falling heavily to his knees. He struggled to his feet, but stopped short at the distinctive sound of a pistol cocking.

“Do not take another step unless you want a hole through you,” came Fenton’s voice, rather less calm than normal.

Both Francesca and her attacker swung around to face the speaker. Had she been less afraid, Francesca might have laughed at the sight of her aged butler standing there, crisp as ever, not a hair out of place, holding one of Andrew’s dueling pistols. Beside him, the cook wielded an iron skillet.

As they stood there, locked in a silent tableau, there came the sound of running footsteps on the stairs. A moment later, Maisie and the parlor-maid burst into the room. Maisie carried a pair of scissors, and the parlor-maid held a broom at ready. And last, there was the pot boy running in, gripping the cook’s cleaver in both hands.

Francesca’s eyes filled with tears at the sight of her loyal servants. “Thank you, Fenton. Everyone. I think Mr. Perkins is leaving now.”

Perkins shot her a look filled with hatred. “You think you’ve won? You think I’m going to quietly fade away?
You made your choice, and now you have to live with it. I withdraw my offer. You’ll have to beg me to service you now.”

“That will never happen!”

“You think not?” His face contorted with rage. “We’ll see how fine a tune you’re talking after I’ve tossed you out into the street. Humiliated in front of all your fine friends. Penniless, homeless, facing debtors’ prison…or worse.” He let out a bitter laugh. “I can see you now, trying to scrape by, living in a garret, freezing, hungry. What do you think you’ll do? Become a seam-stress, squinting your eyes out over your stitches, hands so cold you’ll get chilblains, because you can’t afford to heat your bare room? Or maybe you think you’ll turn to selling hats to the women who were once your friends.

“They won’t hire you, you know. Even for such lowly tasks. You can swallow your pride, mayhap, and go looking for work, but no one will take you. You aren’t smart enough to be a governess, and no sane wife would hire you anyway. You can’t sew well enough to do that, either. Scrub floors? Cook? Wash dishes?” He sneered. “You haven’t got any skills, my lady. The only way you could make a living is on your back.”

“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.