Theresa Romain

by It Takes Two to Tangle

  Sincerely,

  Your friend

  Good lord.

  Lady Stratton had noticed him. Even more unexpectedly, she sought his company. Without pitying. With “great pleasure.”

  His left hand felt as nerveless as the right, and he sank into a convenient chair. The letter dangled from his hand as if trying to escape, and he made himself hold it in front of his eyes again to prove that it was real.

  It was real. The ink had bitten into the heavy, soft paper, and the words were dark and clear. They were proof, facts, evidence that he had made more of an impression than he thought. That he had succeeded in some small way.

  She wanted to see him again.

  She, the most desirable woman in London. Caro, the foundation for rebuilding his life.

  Before Quatre Bras, the day that changed everything, Henry had made a habit of stretching out on the ground during his few leisure hours. He and his men were accustomed to long hours of work and long hours of monotony: ninety-nine days of drudgery for each day of terror. As soon as fires were lit and shelters built from whatever brush or wood was at hand, Captain Middlebrook always sprawled on the ground, looking as though there was nowhere in the world he would rather be.

  His soldiers thought nothing of it, then, when they brought him terrible news—orders gone astray, enemies drawing near, no sleep again tonight—and Henry was leaning on one elbow or lying with his hands clasped behind his head. Leaning, sitting, or lying down, he took the unexpected from them as easily as the everyday.

  Henry alone knew that when the unexpected hit, it shook him like an earthquake under water, deep within until he felt he’d crumble. So he used the ground as his support, ever ready. He had been only twenty-three when he went to war, and he had neither seen bloodshed nor learned courage.

  Now he was twenty-six, and he had seen much bloodshed, and he still felt shaken to his marrow when he was struck by the unexpected. And he had not expected this letter.

  He hoisted himself from the chair and sat on the floor, leaning against the bed with its ivory damask cover. A carpet was as apt a surface for sitting as was dirt chewed by hooves and marching boots. It reminded him that his world was different now—this familiar society, which had so suddenly tilted askew.

  Caro’s letter itself was not much more than a friendly note, but it set the world straight again.

  He ran his fingers through the loops of the Brussels carpet. Jem’s carpet, in Jem’s house. He was even wearing Jem’s clothing today. Everything he had was Jem’s, really, except for Winter Cottage. Henry could slide out of London without leaving a trace of himself behind.

  But no. It was no more right for Mister Middlebrook to turn tail and run now than it would have been for Captain Middlebrook to do so in Bayonne or Brussels. Or Quatre Bras.

  Very well, he would answer the letter. He would take her confidence for his own. And with enough letters like this, she might make herself dear to him yet, and he might become so to her. Caro.

  He would compose his reply right away. He stood and reached for pen and ink from the compact desk in his bedchamber.

  Except he didn’t. His right shoulder flexed inward from his collarbone, the ghost of the movement he’d commanded, and his numb arm jerked and swayed like a pendulum.

  Damn it. He had forgotten again, in his anticipation. He stared at his disobedient limb, hand, fingers. They would not act; they could not flex to hold a pen.

  His insides tipped, sudden and watery as a ship sliding down a wave.

  He clasped the back of his chair and breathed in and out slowly. This was nothing nearly as serious as Quatre Bras. This was simply putting ink to paper in a comfortable house in London. He could do this.

  He sat at the desk, and with his left hand, he wrenched open the inkwell. Ink spattered onto the painted wood of the desk and speckled his hand.

  “Damn it,” he muttered. This blunder slightly damped the pleasure of answering Caro’s letter. Ink was the devil to clean up.

  He dipped a quill that felt wrongly shaped against the curve of his hand. His unpracticed fingers shivered once the pen took on its load of ink, and black blobbed onto the page.

  No matter. He was just writing a short note; he could cut off the damaged section of the paper.

  But his fingers slipped, dropping more spatters of ink, and filling the D he’d tried to write—just Dear, that was all—in a misshapen circle. And he’d gotten ink on his shirtsleeve too.

  He glared at the paper for a moment, as if the force of his gaze would move the particles of ink where they ought to belong. But the few letters he’d scrawled stayed stubbornly malformed, impossibly childish. Illegible, really. And his sleeve was still ruined.

  He scratched away determinedly for half an hour, shaping letters until he had managed to write “Dear Caro” in handwriting at least as good as that of a five-year-old child. It took seven full sheets of writing paper, and his cuffs were completely ruined.

  Of course, they were really Jem’s cuffs, as he had borrowed this shirt from his brother.

  The thought cheered him at once.

  Henry leaned back in his chair and regarded the fruits of his labor. Jem’s shirt: ruined. His desk: in need of repainting. His hands: speckled as a quail egg.

  All for two meager words. That wouldn’t do.

  He wiped the pen and put it away, the habit of order too strong for him to dismiss even as his mind stumbled around for a solution. He couldn’t ask Jem or Emily to write out his reply. They’d be so delighted for him, they’d be buying a special license by morning. And Caro had asked him to keep her letter a secret.

  Then he had an idea.

  He could answer this letter with a little help from the right person. From someone who held Caro’s full confidence and whom he thought he could trust with his.

  He stood, smoothed his clothing, and rang for Sowerberry.

  “Could you please,” he asked the butler, “ask Lady Tallant to summon Mrs. Whittier for a call tomorrow?”

  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, sinc
e 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.”
<
br />   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.”