It Takes Two to Tangle

Five

Frances sucked in her breath, hard, against the tight lacing of her stays. “This is completely ridiculous,” she gasped. “I can wear one of my own gowns.”

“No, that is completely ridiculous, because this gown will be perfect,” Caroline said as she and her lady’s maid gave the laces another determined yank. “There, that should do it. Goodness, Frannie, you’ve got a sweet little waist. It’s got to be some sort of crime against good society for you to wear plain clothing.”

Frances passed her hand down the smooth sweep of the stays. “The only crime is the one you just committed, suffocating your own cousin.”

“If you’d truly been suffocated, you wouldn’t be able to talk such rubbish,” Caroline said, picking up the bronze-green silk from Frances’s bed. “Besides, it’s not like this is a court dress. It’s simply more elegant than your usual.” She held it up to Frances’s chin. “Millie, I told you the color would be ravishing on her.”

“Yes, mum,” the maid agreed, and began helping Frances into the garment.

“I’ve no idea why Emily summoned you, but it must be important,” Caroline mused, sinking into a chair next to Frances’s bed. “Perhaps she needs your help recalling something.”

“Lord Tallant always wears black,” Frances replied in a singsong voice.

Caroline grinned, but Frances couldn’t manage another joke. She could barely draw breath, struck as she was by a sudden fear that squeezed her inside her stays.

It was the letter. Lady Tallant knew about the letter Frances had written to Henry, and she disapproved. She intended to warn Frances away, wanting something better than a widow of no family and means—well, not anymore—for her one and only brother-in-law.

In her distraction, she hadn’t noticed that Caroline and Millie had finished their assembly. “I knew it,” Caroline said. “Ravishing.”

“Then it’s a shame I won’t be doing any ravishing today.” Closer to the truth than it ought to have been, since a call at Tallant House was almost a call on Henry.

Maybe she would catch sight of him while she was there. Maybe he would like the way she looked in this borrowed silk.

Maybe she was letting her imagination gallivant around when it ought to tread sedately.

Caroline smirked. “You never know what the day will bring, Frannie. There might be ravishing in it yet. Look how the gown brings out the color in your cheeks. Do you see?”

As Frances knew exactly why the color in her cheeks had suddenly blazed high, she spared herself no more than a glance in the mirror. “All I see is a sow’s ear tucked into a silk purse.”

“You just feel that way because you ate an embarrassing amount of ham for breakfast,” Caroline said. “Now go find out what Emily wants, and tell me everything as soon as you come home.”

After five minutes in Tallant House, Frances was fairly sure Lady Tallant didn’t want anything at all. She had barely greeted Frances, only welcoming her into the morning room and then excusing herself in a hurry.

So, the call wasn’t about the letter to Henry. Probably.

Whatever the mysterious reason, Frances knew how to deal with the whims of the aristocracy. One waited them out. Calmly and as comfortably as possible.

She found a gold velvet chair that looked promising. The bronze-green gown’s heavy skirt rustled as she sat.

Hmm. That was rather a pleasing sound. She stood again, then sat with more force. Shussshh went the dress against the nubby golden upholstery of her chair.

Good advice; she probably ought to shush and behave with dignity. At least she had a pleasant space to mull over her social mystery. Frances loved the morning room in Caroline’s house, and this space was just as sunny. Three of the walls were stenciled, white filigree over buttery yellow, and the wall opposite the door was covered with a lush mural of the goddess Athena soothing the Ithacans and their long-lost warrior king Odysseus to peace with one another.

The old soldier returning home to such unrest and ingratitude. Poor man. Still, he had been able to return home to his family. It was more than many were able to do.

“Thank you for your call,” said a low voice behind Frances.

She had not heard the door open behind her. She would have startled at the sound of the voice had she not been so pleased to hear it.

“Henry-not-Hal.” She turned, a smile tugging at her lips. “How are you?”

He need not even answer; she could see he looked well. More than well. His eyes were crinkled from a grin; his hair was the rich shade of old gold in the coal-smudged daylight filtering through the tall windows. Surprisingly, he wore no coat, and the fine linen of his shirt and silk of his waistcoat lay lightly over the lean planes of his shoulders and chest.

She felt a little warmer within the swaddle of her borrowed gown. She’d been summoned here the day after sending a letter… he wore no coat… they were alone…

She knew the parts of a logical argument: premises, inference, conclusion. Given those premises, there was only one inference she could make… and one way to carry this encounter to its conclusion. He had read the letter; he had liked the letter; he wanted more. More what?

She felt very warm.

“I’m quite well, Frances,” he said, “though I’m also greedy and presumptuous.”

Humor rather than heat? This did not follow the same fluid line as the other premises. She tilted her head. “How delightful?”

“Well, maybe. You see, I have to ask a favor of you.” His grin slipped sideways, rueful and crooked. “I need to write a letter.”

“To me?”

When he stared at her in surprise, she knew she’d blundered somehow. A new heat of embarrassment colored her cheeks. “Of course not to me. Here I sit, so there’s no need for a letter. To whom, then?”

A secret smile brightened his face. “Caro. She sent me a letter last night, and I wish to answer it. The sooner the better, before she forgets about me.”

Frances was suddenly very glad for the punishingly tight lacing of her stays. Their stiffness was the only thing that held her upright. “You got a letter… from Caro?”

He dropped into a chair across from her, then leaned forward conspiratorially. “It came under her seal. Quite a lovely note. I hadn’t realized she cared so much for my friendship.”

“Oh.” Frances’s head seemed stuffed with cotton. “Yes, she’s very kind.” She drew in a breath as deep as her lacing would permit. “But the letter—”

“In truth,” Henry broke in, left hand gripping the arm of the chair, “I’d rather lost confidence after the call at her house. The letter was just what I needed, at just the right time.”

“A letter from Caroline was just what you needed?” She was ransacking the conversation now, looking for some small shard of hope that she’d misunderstood.

He nodded, and his expression softened. “She has a gift for kindness without pity.”

Frances sank against the back of her gold-velvet chair. Shushhhhh went the dress.

Yes, what else could she do but shush? If she told him the truth—that she was the one who had reached out to him—she didn’t know whose embarrassment would be greater: hers or his.

Probably hers. And she had too much pride to watch his delight turn disappointed. If he needed a letter from Caroline so badly, it was better to let him think he’d gotten one.

She swallowed that pride, the thwarted hope, the flush of humiliation. It was a lot to choke down all at once, and it caught in her throat. She coughed, cleared her throat, and took several seconds to reply again. “I’m glad you liked the letter.”

That, at least, was true. There was no need to lie to him at all. His own enthusiasm set the tone of the conversation, and all she need do was play along.

She slipped on her companion’s mask, capable and cheerful. “So, you want to write her a letter. Or rather—oh, blast, your right arm. Do you want me to write the letter for you?”

He looked a little taken aback. “No, indeed. I must maintain some pride. I might ask for secret insights and hints about gifts, and I might inflict my first name on you, but I would never ask you to write a letter of courtship for me.” That rueful grin again. He was more at ease with it than other men were in all their puffery.

“Of course not.” Frances returned his wry tone. “I beg your pardon. I’d quite forgot the rules of assisted courtship.” Her nervous hands smoothed her bronze-green skirt again. Shhhhhhh.

Henry’s eyes flicked over the garment. “That’s an excellent color on you, if you don’t mind my saying so. It’s the precise shade of your eyes.”

There was no need for Frances to feel a squirm of warmth again. Certainly no need for it to shoot through her body from scalp to toes. It was, after all, merely an observation from an artist, who could be expected to notice color. “Thank you. It’s Caroline’s. She insisted it would be acceptable with my complexion.”

There was no way she was going to repeat the word ravishing to Henry. Not when his face had just softened a little, as though he had only required this evidence of Caroline’s thoughtfulness to fall completely in her thrall.

“So.” Frances spoke up before he could begin rhapsodizing about Caroline. “If you don’t want me to write your letter, why have you summoned me?”

He drew himself up straighter, and his withered arm sank into the cradle of his left. “My handwriting is atrocious. Infernal, really. I hoped you could help me assemble an acceptable reply with a minimum of misshapen words.”

He cleared his throat, shrugged, and looked faintly mortified. “You were right about not bringing roses, after all. So I thought you’d know what to—ah, now that I’ve said this aloud, it sounds rather… well. You know, maybe we’d better forget the whole thing.”

“No, indeed.” Perhaps it was unworthy of her to want him to fidget a little. “I understand you perfectly. You want me to write you a love letter to Caroline, and then you’ll transcribe it. And it must be very short.”

She put a hand on her chest and intoned dramatically, “‘Bed me, my sweet.’ There, we’re done. Shall I ring for tea?”

Henry’s lips bent in an expression of wicked humor. “If that’s your idea of a love letter, perhaps you had better ring for tea, and I’ll write it myself.” He shook his head. “What am I saying? I’m not even writing a love letter. It’s a reply, that’s all. It’s a possibility letter.”

Frances permitted herself another jibe. “Still, Henry. This is one of the oddest things I’ve ever been asked to do, and I once helped Hambleton and Crisp tie their cravats together.”

He rolled his eyes. “I don’t want you to compose it, only to advise. And you needn’t do anything with my cravat.”

So of course, she had to look at his cravat when he said that. The starch-white points against his tanned skin, his blue eyes, the sun-golden of his hair. He was a bright palette, all stark colors and clean lines, and his faint scent of soap and evergreen woke something eager within her. She wanted to draw closer to him, breathe deeply, and remember how it felt to be near a man.

He began tapping his knuckles against the arm of his chair, a pillowed pat that pulled her attention back to his words. “I’ve never written with my left hand before, and I hoped you could help me learn how. My first foray was not a success. I didn’t manage a single legible letter, though I did spoil a very nice desk and cuff with ink.”

Frances chuckled, and he added, “Ah… that’s why I’ve taken the liberty of removing my coat. I hope you are not offended.”

“No, certainly not.” Not at all. Her eyes wanted to rove over his form again, but she fastened them to his face with admirable tact. “It wouldn’t do for formal company, of course, but we’re in your home and we’re quite alone.”

He seemed to become aware of that fact as well. “I apologize if this is not an appropriate request. I thought since you help Caro in so many ways, that this would not be wrong. To help her receive her reply.”

She relented at last. It wasn’t his fault he had misinterpreted the letter. It wasn’t his fault that he wanted Caroline. As Frances truly did like him, she ought to give him the friendship he seemed to want so keenly.

Even if she would rather be selfish.

“No, no. I was only teasing. I always deal with Caroline’s correspondence, so there’s nothing wrong with this, Henry.” Frances savored the taste of his name, of the intimacy he had granted her.

But that wasn’t why she’d been summoned here. Apparently.

She drew two chairs over to a graceful tambour writing desk positioned near a window to catch daylight. It held pens, ink, paper, and sand for blotting. Everything they needed.

“Do sit,” she said, sinking into a chair. “Take this pen in your hand and see how it feels.”

He hefted it sharply in a clenched fist. “It feels wrong.”

Frances pressed her lips together to hide a smile. “It’s not a riding crop, you know. Just wrap your fingers around it the same way you always did with your right.”

She slid the quill between his second and third fingers. He looked surprised at the contact, and Frances drew her fingers back. “It would be easier if we had a quill from the right wing of the goose, for those fit the left hand better. But these will work well enough until you can lay in a supply. Try forming some letters—very large, at first, just to get accustomed to the movement.”

He didn’t move; he only stared at his left arm.

“What is it?” Frances asked.

A sideways flick of his eyes. “I’m sorry to ask this, but would you roll back the left sleeve? This is my brother’s shirt, and…” He trailed off, ruddy from chagrin under his tan.

“Oh, of course,” Frances blurted. “Writing with the left hand does tend to make a muck of one’s hand and wrist. How thoughtful of you to consider the fate of your brother’s garment.”

“It’s a kindness to his valet, actually. The man almost wept when he saw what had happened to the shirt I wore last time I wrote. To say I ruined it is an understatement; I don’t think it’ll even be suitable for dustcloths.”

As nimbly and dispassionately as a maid or valet, Frances slipped his cufflink from its moorings and turned back the light fabric of the sleeve, once, twice, to the middle of his forearm. Tendons played under his skin as he flexed his hand at the wrist. The back of his hand grazed hers, and she pulled away a little too quickly, self-conscious.

A second of awkward silence followed. Henry broke it by saying, “Thank you.”

Frances only nodded, her throat closed on a reply. Where his bare hand had grazed hers, the skin tingled, eager.

Gingerly, Henry dipped the pen and began to scrawl the alphabet in large, untidy capitals. The edge of his hand slid through the ink of the first letter he drew, smudging paper and skin.

“Try angling the paper to the right,” Frances suggested. “Your hand will travel down in a line, rather than across what you’ve just written. Yes, exactly. That will save your cuffs from now on.”

His hand flexed on the pen as he drew another letter, almost sideways. The hairs of his arm were fine, bleached gold against his sun-darkened complexion.

“How is it you know so much about writing with the left hand, Frances?”

“In the likeliest way you can imagine. I was inclined to use my left hand as a girl.”

“You don’t anymore?”

“No, my governess was adamant that I use my right. I resisted making the change, but she triumphed in the end. She had the ruler, and I the lashings, you see.”

Henry’s hand stilled, and he stared at her. Frances smiled. “Don’t feel bad for me. I assure you, I made her job as difficult as I possibly could. I can be quite stubborn.”

“I believe your determination, but you don’t strike me as the disobedient type,” he said, studying her face. “Or as someone who once favored her left hand. So you were sinister as a girl, were you?”

“I am still sinister,” she said. “I frighten everyone I meet. You must be extraordinarily brave to sit so close to me.”

Teasing to cover the import of the moment. Not since Charles was alive had a man chosen her company. Yet here she sat in a chair pulled as close to Henry’s as space would permit, their hands bare, not even inches apart. It might have been miles, though, for all that she could not bring herself closer. He had only chosen her company for the sake of another.

Her hands became busy trimming a pen, shaving away bits of the quill with a penknife until the nib point was whittled so fine as to be useless.

“You know,” Henry said, sitting back and holding up his work to the window light, “I think that’s a bit better. The angle of the paper helped. Here, see what you think.”

His fingers brushed hers as he stuffed the paper into Frances’s hand. She bobbled it, grazing her skirt. “Damn it.”

Henry lifted his eyebrows. “Good thing you’re my fellow soldier, or I’d be shocked by your language.”

“Oh, stop,” Frances muttered. “I told you, it’s a borrowed gown, and I mustn’t get ink on it.” She laid the paper down on the desk and smoothed the fabric tightly over her thighs. “No, I don’t think I did.”

She looked up to see him studying her oddly. “What? Did I?”

“No,” he said, still looking at her in that strange way. “You look very well.” He shook his head, then gave her the paper again, holding it tight at the edge until she grasped it.

She could see on the paper the effect of her hard-won, palms-being-smacked experience. Though Henry’s letters were still large and unformed, they grew tidier and less blotchy as they marched down the page.

“I think you’ve got the idea,” she said. “Only lay in the right kind of quill, and you’ll find it much easier.”

He nodded and took back the paper, laying it on the desk again. “I’m glad to know it. You’re a good teacher.”

“Oh.” She waved a hand. “Well, thank you. I actually was a teacher once, during my scandalous youth.”

“A palm-smacking governess?” His head tilted, as though he were trying to imagine it.

“Nothing so formal as that. My good memory meant I was just the girl to help the squire’s young son brush up on his Latin or teach the village children the names of every flower in the field.”

Henry looked surprised, and Frances added, “Don’t credit me with any great charity. I thought it my duty to help, yes, but I also dearly loved to be right.”

His mouth made a wry curve. “Loved, past tense? I think not.”

He bent his fair head over the paper and skkkriiiikkked another line. A fine spray of ink dotted his face, and he squinted, dropping his pen to grope in his waistcoat pocket for a handkerchief. “Right now, for example, you are perishing to tell me why I can’t draw a neat line for anything.” He rubbed at his face. “Go ahead. I’m ready to hear it.”

Frances pursed her lips. “You’re quite wrong.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. I first wanted to tell you that cotton rag would clean your skin much more effectively than that slippery silk.”

He emerged from the handkerchief, face still smudged. “My apologies, then.”

“Not necessary.” A grin broke across Frances’s face. “The writing was a close second.”

Henry snorted, crushing the ruined silk square in his hand, and she took out her own handkerchief of cotton lawn. “May I try this?”

He shrugged. “All right. I’d rather not look like I’ve been splashing in ink, even if that’s the case.”

Frances smiled, but his words were dim in her ears. She might touch him again. She held her breath, wondering why it should seem so important. Maybe because it was so rare, actually being invited to touch another person. She watched her hand, feeling as though it belonged to someone else, someone with the right to learn the shape of this intriguing man.

The hand reached up, stroked the frail fabric across Henry’s forehead, down the strong bone of his cheek. Over the bridge of his nose, then down, to rub over the stern curve of his mouth, work it into softness. Then his chin, with its stubborn point. His neck, and just a slight rub under the edge of his cravat. She could feel the faint catch of stubble against the light fabric, the leap of muscle and tendon as he shifted under her touch. Beautiful as a statue, yet beautifully warm and human.

By the time she was done, her breath came a little faster. At the nape of her neck, between her breasts, a faint sheen of perspiration had formed. Underneath her stays, her skin felt sensitive and abraded, her nipples hard.

Henry’s throat worked, and he turned his head away. “Thank you,” he said in a choked voice. His skin looked flushed.

Frances folded the ruined handkerchief. “You’re quite clean now.” A brisk voice to banish the trespass of the honey-slow moment.

“Thank you,” he said again, more quietly. He turned back to look at her, those vivid blue eyes searching her expression. “It seems you were right again, just as you love to be.”

She stilled under his scrutiny, and after a few endless seconds, he pulled in a deep breath and picked up his quill again. “You’ll probably be right about my abysmal handwriting too, then.”

Back to normal, then. She shrugged, trying to dispel shivers of want. “I’m sure I will be,” she said crisply.

He stopped in the middle of drawing a ramshackle letter K. “Is your own writing clear, Frances? Is it possible to learn to write well with the hand that feels wrong?”

“Yes, with enough practice. Probably you won’t even have to be slapped across the hand, since you have a more pleasant incentive.” That was one way of describing Caroline.

“Will you show me?” His blue eyes looked deep into hers. “I want to know this will work.”

A simple enough request, but Frances understood what it meant. Every day, she realized, he must encounter something that had changed because of his injury. Losing an arm meant losing so much more: independence, comfort, even the easy courtesy of one’s acquaintances, as they had seen yesterday.

Frances knew this well, for she had once lost too. Not a limb, but a whole person. A whole family. The finest part of herself.

Oh, she knew the sick dullness of loss. And anything she could help Henry gain, she would, even if it earned her nothing but his gratitude.

“All right,” Frances agreed. “I’ll write something.”

She selected a quill, dipped it in the ink, then wiped the nib. She drew each letter deliberately, rounding it into a perfect feminine copperplate, loops and vowels as open as the model script in a writing primer. Bearing no resemblance to the writing in the letter she’d sent.

HENRY IS TOO DEMANDING.

He laughed. “I see there’s nothing wrong with your handwriting at all.”

Frances sanded the letters as carefully as she would an invitation for the queen, then set the paper aside. “As I said. You couldn’t believe me without seeing it for yourself, could you? Is that because you’re a solider or an artist?”

He narrowed his eyes, the look she now knew meant he was collecting details. “I’ve always been that way, so maybe it is an artist’s curse. But I am curious, why do you speak so readily about soldiering? You seem to understand the life as many women do not.”

His words startled Frances, silencing her for a too-long moment. No one had asked her about her past since she’d come to London with Caroline. It was scarred over, but not truly healed. Most wounds she had unwittingly inflicted herself.

She mustered a reply. “Yes. My late husband, Charles, was a soldier. He died during the siege of Walcheren.” A quagmire. Pointless.

“I am sorry for your loss,” Henry said.

“You need not be. It was almost six years ago; I’ve had plenty of time to come to terms with it.”

This was quite true. Nearly six years was enough time to stop missing the man himself, whom she had long since grown past in years. Charles had died at twenty-two, and Frances would be thirty in a few more months.

“He must have been a marvelous man to deserve you,” Henry said. He really did have fine manners.

“He was far too handsome for me,” Frances murmured, “but I was more than willing to allow the imbalance.”

Her eyes flicked over Henry’s face—hair like morning sun, eyes like afternoon sky. He resembled night-tinted Charles not at all, except that both were far too handsome for her.

Charles’s face had not been the only imbalance in their marriage. For Charles, Frances had tipped so far from her center, she hadn’t righted herself for years. In some ways, she still hadn’t. But she’d found a new equilibrium instead.

Or had, until Henry started studying her with those clear eyes of his, making her think of rolling over again. She knew from long months of watching the ton just how many secrets people betrayed without realizing.

She wondered what Henry saw in her now.

“After Charles died,” Frances said, tugging her eyes down to the safety of the paper on which Henry had been writing. ABCDEFGHIJK. Blot. “I used to look over everything I had of his every day: a sketch of him, some letters. But I have not needed to for a very long time.”

It didn’t bring him closer to look through his things, and it didn’t send him farther when she kept them hidden away. Sometimes she didn’t want him close at all; she only wanted to forget what she’d done to him.

But she couldn’t forget anything, ever.

Henry’s left hand tightened around his pen, then he laid it aside. “I am honored by your confidence.”

She gave him a tight smile and smoothed a lock of her hair trying to uncoil from its pins. If only it was so simple to tidy up unruly emotion. “I probably spoke out of place, Henry. Your wound is much fresher than mine.” Charles, after all these long years, awoke more guilt than grief.

Henry’s clenched left hand unfolded, so close she could almost touch it. And so she did, just a brush over the back of his hand.

Their hands were freed from formal gloves, and Henry was warm skin under her skin—solid bone, sinew, all working perfectly together. To touch him was a wonder. A hand was a living miracle. She supposed Henry knew that better than anyone.

Again, she met his gaze. He was watching her closely as she traced lightly over his hand, his eyes deep and blue enough to drown in.

She sputtered for words, resisting the undertow. “Do you want to talk about it? Your injured arm?”

“No,” he said, but his eyes did not cool with this refusal. “Though I thank you for asking about it. It’s a part of me now.”

He twisted his living left hand beneath her right—she thought at first to free it from her grasp. But he simply rotated it, placing his hand palm to palm with hers. Fingers wrapped around fingers, their sensitive pads awakening each other with pressure as light as the feather on a quill. The contact was simple, everyday, yet almost unbearably intimate.

And it was too uncertain; it could mean everything or nothing. A naked hand to a naked hand was a pact between business partners, a promise between friends, a beginning for lovers.

It was with Caroline he wished a beginning. And Frances had promised to help.

That was better than a pact, at least.

“Well.” She freed her hand, found a quill they hadn’t ruined yet. “Let’s write that letter. You can start again with C.”

My caro, she thought, though she could never say it now.