It Takes Two to Tangle

Sixteen

“Come in,” Frances said in response to Henry’s knock at the half-open morning room door. “I can’t think what I did with your mistress’s bill. Do you have a copy with you?”

Her back was to Henry as she shuffled through a stack of papers atop a small saber-legged mahogany writing desk. Against the background of the rich orpiment-yellow walls, her coiled hair shone with the dark luster of Van Dyke brown pigment.

The sight of her heartened him, banishing a little of his apprehension. “Yes, mum. Seven hundred yards of silk and five thousand buttons,” he said in a nasal impression of a clerk.

Frances froze, then turned slowly to face him. “Good lord,” she said. “You’ve billed me for goods enough to dress every maiden making her come-out this year.”

“I take it you were expecting someone else?”

Her cheeks bled warm, and she hastily turned and shoved her papers beneath a blotter before facing him again. “Well, yes. Caroline’s modiste made her a very special gown for Lady Applewood’s next ball. I know it’s unfashionable to pay one’s bills promptly, but I think it the right thing to do. Only you are clearly not a modiste’s assistant.”

“Clearly not.”

She looked rather at a loss. “Ah… did you come to see Caro?”

“I’ve seen her already.”

Now she looked still more confused. “Do you need something from me, then? Tea or secret advice or… something I’m apparently not thinking of?” She trailed off, then crossed her arms as though warding off a chill.

Her gown was an unadorned Prussian blue, spare and dark. It reminded him of the Blue Room, of the quiet freedom therein. Maybe he could recapture that feeling with her.

Of course, no capture was ever easy or without casualty.

“I only need a listening ear,” he answered. “If you’ve the time.”

Lips parted, she stared at him for several seconds. “Yes. Certainly. Do come in.”

Frances spun the chair at the writing desk to face him and perched upon the end, watching him warily. And why shouldn’t she be wary of him? He walked through the doorway only to prowl around the furniture with the nervous energy of weeks of pent-up secrets, years away from intimacy with a woman.

Finally he sat on a sofa, a green scroll-armed affair that Bart would probably deem all the crack. “Look.” He stood, then sat down at the other end so he’d be closer to Frances. “Look, there’s something very particular I need to tell you, and I’m anxious that I not be interrupted. Would you be willing to lock the door?”

Her brows knit, but she nodded. Retrieving the key from a compartment in her littered desk, she went to do as he’d asked.

“You sound rather dire, Henry.” She reseated herself on the sofa with him rather than her chair, a small gesture of closeness that heartened him. “Is everything all right?”

“As much as it was the last time we saw one another.”

“That’s cryptic and not especially comforting,” she said.

He managed a smile. “I’m not here to comfort you. Nor to be cryptic. I need to tell you the truth about me.”

She blanched, the sickly pale of bismuth white pigment when exposed to sulfur. “The truth.”

This was not a good beginning; he hadn’t even told her anything yet and she looked horrified. “Yes, the truth. Perhaps you’ve heard of it,” he said a little more sharply than he’d meant to.

“Yes.” Her chin lifted, her shoulders pulled stiffly back. “Of course. I’m just surprised by the need for secrecy.”

“Ah.” His left hand found the cuff of his right sleeve and picked at the hem. “Well, I actually mean to do away with secrecy, at least with you.”

He pulled in a deep breath, feeling his chest expand within the binding layers of shirt, waistcoat, coat. “You once asked me if I wished to discuss the injury to my right arm. I think it’s time I do. You see, if you don’t know the truth about me, we’ll always be separated by it.”

This was rather a bold statement, which he amended when her eyes widened. “Everyone, I mean. I’ll be separated from everyone. Secrets separate everyone.” He pressed his lips together so he’d stop blurting things out.

She watched him with her Bossu-Wood eyes, all green and brown and still so wary. Her spine was straight as a tree, and her fingers were as tightly laced together as twigs in a nest. “Yes, I suppose you’re right,” she said at last. “If you feel you must tell me something, I’ll be honored by the confidence.”

“You’re very kind,” he murmured.

“Not really.” She managed the first real grin he’d seen since he entered the room, and her poker-stiff shoulders relaxed a bit. “Just dreadfully curious. Ah… did you already tell… whatever you’re going to tell… to Caroline?”

“No.” His head snapped back. “No.” There was no place for Caroline in this room; he’d locked the door against her. Against the rest of the world. “I want to tell you. You have a gift for taking me as I am. That’s more important than anything Caro could write in a letter.”

Her cheeks flushed rosy, her lips parted. “You—choose me? Not the letters?”

“Not the letters,” he confirmed. “I’ve already explained things to Caro.”

Frances’s eyes widened; she looked as flushed and glowing as though she’d just been tumbled. A shaft of desire speared through the coils of tension, of worry, of lasting shame that kept Henry tightly wound. In the Blue Room, he’d touched her; he’d brought her close. Thus alone, maybe he could do that again.

Of course, that all depended on what she thought of him when he was done. But he knew it was time to tell her. It was a certainty in his gut, like knowing the right instant to pull the trigger on a pistol.

“And now I need to explain things to you.” He took a deep breath. “At Quatre Bras. That’s where my arm was hurt.” No, no sense in cloaking the truth in smooth words. “That’s where I lost the use of my arm. I won’t ever get it back.”

He studied the back of his left hand, still sun-browned from months campaigning across the Continent. Frances’s pale fingers reached for his and interlaced with them. “I know,” she said. “It doesn’t matter to me.”

“It might when I tell you how it happened. You know I was a captain at the time.”

“Yes.”

“A privilege of being an earl’s son. I was able to buy my way into the army and take a position of leadership much more quickly than if I’d been poor.”

“The son of an innkeeper, for example,” she said. “Such as my first husband. That’s no matter either, Henry. Your rank is your good fortune.”

“Your first husband was a—” He cut himself off at the sight of her startled face, returning his gaze to the slender anchors of her fingers.

He hadn’t known that about her, that she had married far below her birth. It seemed he wasn’t the only one with secrets, though judging from the expression on her face, she hadn’t meant to reveal hers.

He had vowed to bare his today; maybe in time she would return the favor.

“Well.” He cleared his throat. “As you said, my rank was my good fortune. My father died when I was just a boy, but he left money for me to purchase a commission, though my mother would not permit it while she was alive. Jem didn’t want me to go to war either, which only made me more determined. I was stubborn. I wanted to make my own way.”

He laughed, a bitter, hoarse sound. “As if being gifted with thousands of pounds to buy a lieutenancy is making one’s own way. And Jem’s connections ensured that I was promoted to captain as soon as humanly possible. I made my own way, all right.”

Frances’s hand shifted in his. “You cannot be blamed for taking advantage of… well, of your advantage. I am sure the army benefited from your good leadership.”

“You’re sure about that, are you?” Henry made himself look at her face. Her expression was worried, but her fingers tightened in his. A reassurance: she wasn’t going anywhere.

Yet.

He shook his head at her. “I had only the best of the army. The First Foot Guards. Very prestigious, you know. A fitting place for the son of an earl. We held the blockade at Bayonne for months. Over time, I earned the trust of the men who fought under me.”

He’d worked harder to earn that trust than he ever had for anything else. Despite his youth and inexperience, he had at least seen the need for that. Thus his trick of sprawling on the ground, as if nothing could scare him.

He was usually too exhausted to think of elegant phrases to inspire his men, and so he spoke plainly to them. He gave them his honesty and his own trust, and it had worked much better than if he had puffed himself off as the son of an earl. There would have been no point to such arrogance; a blue-blooded man could be killed just as easily as a red-blooded one.

Blood would tell, though. Henry’s certainly had.

A sigh tried to escape, but he swallowed it. “I did my best to deserve that trust for a time. But after Bonaparte abdicated, I grew soft during months of relative ease. I began to think there was nothing left of war but being feted and looking at art.”

“That was a wonderful time,” Frances murmured. “The festivities here went on for weeks. We never imagined Bonaparte would escape and rebuild his army.”

“None of us did either,” Henry said. He might have been able to return to England during those buoyant months of peace had he wanted to. Wellington had come back to London for a time, and honors had been heaped upon the great general. But Henry had preferred a Continental billeting. He’d been unsatisfied, feeling as though he hadn’t truly made his own way yet, and he wanted to explore further. Become an artist or a soldier or both.

Instead, he had become neither.

“Much of the cream of European society found one another during the months of Bonaparte’s exile,” Henry continued. “It was rather like the London season, only the balls were held in palazzos and châteaux instead of crowded Town mansions. I saw paintings I’d never dreamed I’d be able to view in person. I was sure once I returned to London—someday, whenever I wanted to be—I would be reborn as a painter, mysteriously able to recreate life in oils as they had.”

“Oh.” Frances pressed a hand to her mouth. Pity.

His fingers flexed in her other hand, wanting suddenly to escape. But he would finish, no matter how her expression changed. “‘The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley.’ Isn’t that how the poet Burns described our efforts? We tried to recreate the polite world in Europe, and it was our undoing. Perhaps you have heard of the ball thrown by the Duchess of Richmond?”

Frances shook her head. “It was very grand, I suppose?”

“Very grand, indeed. The duchess’s ballroom was long and low ceilinged, but you can imagine nothing loftier. All the best people were there. Wellington and nearly all of his officers. Several foreign princes. The pinnacle of the Belgian aristocracy. We waltzed and supped. I danced twice with Lady Georgiana, Richmond’s daughter, and she teased me about causing a scandal. It was a very great joke. By this time, I had almost forgotten what war was like.”

Henry could almost hear the duchess’s merry orchestra inviting him to dance. Strings, dainty and vibrant, and layered over them, the shouts of the lancers slaughtering his men. Only a few hours apart, he could never separate them now.

It was hard to believe it had taken place mere months before. It seemed ten years ago—or only a night.

He worked his fingers free from Frances’s hand and rose to pace around the room. “As the evening turned into night, we received the sudden news that Bonaparte was mustering for battle again. We left the ball at once and prepared to fight. Wellington chose to head the French off at Quatre Bras. I would have thought it a picturesque little country crossroads, I am sure, had I not been awake all night and marched twenty miles to reach it. At least I had put my boots on. Some men still wore their dancing pumps.”

“Good lord,” Frances breathed. “I am sorry.”

Henry trailed his fingers over the smooth plaster of the wall, rubbed the heavy patterned velvet of the window draperies between his fingertips.

“Do not be sorry for me, please.” Please. “It was no more than I signed on for and no more than anyone else would have been expected to do. But I had enjoyed the softness of peace, and I wasn’t ready to return to war. My head had been turned and my eyes were tired. I should have noticed what I’d been trained for three years to notice: tall crops that could hide enemy soldiers, tall old trees that could hide still more. I noticed none of that, and so I led my men into a trap.”

“What happened?”

He stared at a painting on the wall. A hunting scene. The men wore bright red coats, the color Henry’s uniform coat had been before the sun faded it to the color of a bloody brick. They wielded guns they looked delighted to use. They held the reins of sleek horses with bobbed tails, ready to spring over walls in pursuit of a small fox. Oh, what fun, to go hunting.

He turned, impatient with himself. “I didn’t see the lancers. There were so many; I don’t know how I could have missed them. I must have thought I was home again in England. I ordered my men forward as if we were marching in a parade, and they marched right into lancers instead.” He shut his eyes, but too well did they remember the sight of man after man, skewered. Horrible.

“I myself was fortunate,” he said with dark irony. “I was able to dodge them and take a few down before several Frenchmen ripped my musket from my hands while I tried to reload. The wrong choice again. I should have drawn my sword. They dislocated my shoulder; I must have looked dead as I fell. I might as well have been. I was not much of a threat to them after that. Nor was I any help, as my men died in the woods. We lost hundreds. Those that survived went on to fight at Waterloo. They were very brave.”

“As were you,” Frances said. Henry could not see her face; his eyes were fixed on the polish of his top boots. Not Hessians. He would never wear tasseled Hessians now, like a dandy pretending to be a soldier.

“I was passable at best. A dislocated shoulder is nothing out of the common way. But I was too tired to bear the pain until a surgeon came, so I asked one of my soldiers to fix it. He was more tired than I, poor fellow, and he pulled wrongly, and far too hard. I don’t know what happened. I only know it hurt terribly, as though my arm was being ripped off, and then it went numb. And it’s been numb ever since.”

How he would have loved to come home whole, covered in glory. But he had not. For a long time, he hadn’t even been sure whether he had really come home.

“You were at war, Henry,” Frances said at last. “Your soldiers knew the risks just as you did.”

Henry pressed on. “But they trusted me.”

“Then you must have been a good captain to them.”

Henry looked up at her, and she managed a little smile. “Henry, we can never know how our actions will turn out. We can only guess.”

“But I made such terrible mistakes,” he faltered. She could not have understood the significance of what he told her.

“We all make mistakes, Henry,” she said quietly, her eyes downcast. The thumb of one hand rubbed over the third finger of the other, precisely where she would wear a wedding ring. “If you knew my own past errors—well, I hope you know that I’d never think less of you for what you see as your faults.”

“But my arm…” He stepped close to her again, within reach, but he did not touch her.

“Yes, your arm,” she repeated. Her eyes flicked up and met his, suddenly hard. “What of it? If you could have waited in agony for heaven knows how long on the chance a surgeon would turn up, then your arm might be fine today. Or maybe it would not.”

He stared at her, stony. She didn’t understand; he’d disappointed himself. The army was his, not his brother’s. Not anyone else’s. His captaincy was his responsibility alone, and he had ended his stint in failure. His arm was a daily reminder of that.

Maybe that was why he’d been so determined to make a success of his life in London. He needed something to make him feel whole again.

“Well,” he said quietly. “Thank you for listening to my sordid little tale. I do appreciate your time.” At least she hadn’t been horrified. Only pitying.

Though maybe that was worse.

He turned toward the doorway, ready to leave.

“Henry, wait. Please.”

Reluctantly, he pivoted toward her. Her olive-tinted face was pale, her cheeks a hectic pink. Those lips, the dark rose of a madder pigment he could never again mix and mill with ease, were slightly curved. The expression looked sad somehow.

“Please, listen to me, Henry. I don’t mean to belittle your loss. Only to say—such things happen during war. Terrible things happen to good men, and there’s not always any way to prevent them. Even Wellington lost soldiers. It’s not right, and it’s not easy. It just… is.”

“Yes,” he said dully. “I know all of that. But don’t you see, it wasn’t chance. It was because of my own carelessness that they were killed. It was my fault.”

“So you’ve said. If you’d noticed the lancers and called for your men to retreat, don’t you think the French would have pursued?”

He stilled. The stone block of his body began to soften, deep inside. “I don’t know. I suppose… they might have.”

She nodded. “They might have. We can’t know. Or if you hadn’t gone to the ball, maybe things wouldn’t have gone differently after all. Maybe the lancers were very well hidden. Or maybe you did the best you could with the orders you were given. Maybe if Wellington hadn’t gone to the ball and danced his feet off, he would have found a stronger place to make a stand than Quatre Bras.”

Maybe. Maybe. Something inside the stone-Henry crumbled at the sound of that word. It was a possibility word; a possibility that simple accident, simple bad luck, had killed his men. He would give his right arm to think that was true, that their deaths weren’t his fault.

He had already given his right arm—another accident, more bad luck. Maybe… it was nothing worse than that. The loss would be bearable if it was not a reminder of lives thrown away, if it was his loss alone to bear and overcome.

Frances spoke on, her voice as quiet as a morning birdsong. “All through the war, Henry, terrible things happened, and lives were lost or saved on the slimmest of chances. Maybe if my late husband, Charles, had simply been able to slog through a swamp day after summer day without coming down with Walcheren fever, he would never have sickened and died. Or a bullet might have killed him instead. Or if I had been different myself, he need never have left me at all. He would never have wanted to.”

She turned her face toward the window, as though the outside world held some answers for all her unknowns. The high-slanting remnants of morning sun found her profile, gilded her skin, and picked out bright tints in her hair. Henry forgot to think in colors; he only let himself look at her—proud as ever, and limned like an earthy angel.

Somehow, it lessened his pain to know he wasn’t the only one who hurt.

Inappropriately, this talk of her long-dead husband made him want to touch her, stroke her, kiss her until she forgot the man.

He settled for a bit of comfort. “You cannot think that your husband went to war because he did not love you enough to stay.”

“Maybe.” That word again. Frances’s mouth twisted up at one corner, though it was not a smile. “No, I suppose he went because he felt he had to. Because we are all human, and we must all eat and drink and have the means to live. And we cannot live in agony.”

With a swift, decisive shake of her skirts, she stood and grasped both of his hands across the swooping back of the sofa. “Henry, you enjoyed the familiar pleasure of a ball during war. This does not mean you should never have pleasure again. And you asked the soldier to help with your arm because you could not imagine living in pain.”

She rubbed her fingers over his right hand, and he almost thought he could feel it, so starved was he for touch. “I’m glad you did. I could not wish for you to live in pain either.”

“And I would not wish it for you,” he said hoarsely.

“So we do the best with what we have,” she said. “We carry on even though our lives alter.”

“Simple as that,” he murmured.

“Oh, there’s nothing simple about it.” She dropped his hands and pressed hers together tightly in front of her chest. “Sometimes it seems like the hardest thing in the world. But what else is there to do?”

Now it was her turn to move about the room, fidgeting with the blotter on the desk, giving vases of flowers a little twist so the brightest blooms would face forward.

Just think of who makes you happy.

That’s what there was to do.

Two steps brought him behind her, only a breath away from her tall body. She faced the orpiment-yellow wall, seemingly studying the painting of the hunting scene, but she knew he had drawn close. He could tell by the way her shoulders tensed, her head turned a fraction to the side.

“Frances.” His voice still sounded hoarse, as though the name itself was weighty on his lips. A few loose strands of her hair danced in the heat of his exhale. He rested his left hand on the wall, circling her as much as he could with his body.

His right arm hung motionless, of course; he couldn’t encircle her completely. She could escape if she wished.

But she didn’t even try. She simply turned around and tilted her face up to him, so they were almost nose-to-nose. “Henry.”

The movement of her lips as she spoke his name, the quick sweep of her lashes as she blinked only inches away—these were bits of everyday magic, wrapping him in a spell of peace. The whisper of her breath was warm on his face, the slight movement of air a promise. A beginning.

It was easy, within the spell, to lower his head, to brush her lips with his own. It was a gentle question.

Her answer was immediate. Her mouth was hot on his, her hands swift as they slid up his chest and gripped his shoulders.

“Mmmm.” A sudden nervous laugh tried to escape his throat, and he lifted his mouth from hers.

He breathed deeply, trying to banish the sudden weakness in his knees. She fidgeted, so he slid his left hand to her upper arm and rested his forehead atop her dark hair.

Inhaling the clean scent of her hair, all sweet citrus and soap, and the warmer smell of a woman’s skin. One breath at a time.

“What is it?” She wiggled her head so she could fix him with those clear eyes, so true and honest. He would not hurt her with an excuse, making her feel as if she were not good enough.

“I’m afraid,” he whispered.

She didn’t press him further; she only nodded and ran her thumb along his jawline. “I am too.”

“What do you have to be afraid of?”

She gave her own little mmm of a suppressed laugh. “You are golden,” she said. “You are young and noble. I do not know why you should choose me for your company and your confidence.” Her hand slipped over his body from jaw to neck to chest, and it felt like a blessing.

“You truly think that of me.”

“I do.”

I do. She spoke the words from the deepest of vows. She wanted him when he thought he would never be wanted again.

He chuckled at the marvel of it. “I think you do not see me accurately, but I cannot wish you to be less generous than you are.” Again, that startled warmth within his body of frozen stone. She had taken hold of his heart with her words. How glad he was that it still beat, that it still yearned for a women’s passion and thudded in response to her touch.

Her hands were roaming now, pressing the planes of his chest, sliding beneath the heavy superfine of his coat, tugging at the fabric until they found their way beneath the barrier of his clothing. Ten fingers—beautiful fingers, Frances’s fingers—touched his sides, slid up his ribs until his close-fitting waistcoat stopped her.

They stood face to face, her hands halted. She raised her eyebrows, wicked and gleeful, asking.

The worry vanished from his body, burned off in a swift fire of hunger. He wasn’t stone anymore, but skin and bone and muscle and sinew, all eager man. Her wanted her hands moving over his body; he wanted her body moving over his. He wanted to touch and wake her most secret places, now that he’d told her his most secret truths.

“Yes,” he said, in answer to the words she hadn’t said. “God, yes.” His thumb traced the straight, sweet line of her jaw.

“Then we are agreed,” she said with a smile. “How glad I am that you asked me to lock the door.”