Theresa Romain

by It Takes Two to Tangle

  “I’m glad to see you too, Emily,” Henry said with the scrap of air left to him.

  She sniffled as she pulled away, her eyes red. “I was so worried, Hal. I didn’t want to say anything to the boys last night. I just prayed you’d both be home safe this morning.” She folded her arms tight across her chest and shrugged. “So, now I can get angry in peace. But I suppose you might as well have some breakfast while I yell at you.”

  “That hardly sounds conducive to digestion,” Henry said with a smile. It didn’t bother him at all. Not the hitting, not the cursing, not the threats of more yelling. He understood the hidden meaning there. It all meant I love you, as surely as Jem had when he had begged Henry not to duel.

  Every time they called him Hal, they told him so. I love you.

  How could he repay the constancy of his family? He’d tried to make amends to Jem this morning, but how could he make amends to Emily?

  He’d start with an apology. Henry caught her on one shoulder as they filed in to breakfast, his fingers snarling, clumsy, in her tangled hair. “I’m sorry, Emily. The waiting must have been awful.”

  She looked up at him, blinking with a force that belied the dryness of her eyes. “It was. But I’m sure you didn’t have the best morning of your life, either.”

  “I don’t know.” Henry considered. “I might have, at that.” Emily narrowed her eyes, and he shrugged. “Hit me again if you need to. I’m sure I deserve it.”

  “You do. But I’ll save it till you’ve got a few kippers in you.”

  Her hands whisked down the length of her borrowed dressing gown, and a look of chagrin crossed her face. “I suppose I ought to get dressed first. The food’s ready, though. I had it laid out not half an hour ago.”

  “You look lovely, Em,” Jem said. He kissed his wife on the nose, then moved to the sideboard and began lifting dish covers. “Even wearing my dressing gown. You’re the loveliest thing I’ve seen all day, and I’ve already been up for a couple of hours.”

  Emily laughed shakily. “Since you’ve only seen a passel of men, Jemmy, that’s not much of a compliment.”

  “Sure it is.” Jem began serving eggs onto a plate. “I saw Hal duel and not get himself killed. That’s something.”

  Behind Jem’s back, Henry’s eyes found Emily’s. She offered him a watery smile as Jem talked on, heedless of the compliment he’d just paid both his wife and brother.

  “Gad, you can’t believe how he can shoot. Em, it was amazing. He just waited, cool as any of Gunter’s ices, then took his shot. Deloped, really. Hal, I don’t think Wadsworth will ever be the same. Nor the tree, for that matter.”

  He chuckled, turning with his filled plate. “Oh. But I’m not proud of you. Not for dueling.”

  “Of course not,” Henry and Emily said in unison. Proud, Jem kept saying. It didn’t matter that it was prefaced with the word “not.” Henry could tell what he meant. Jem never was good at hiding his feelings, even behind disclaiming words.

  This type of pride was very different from the precarious feeling that had hacked at Henry’s peace of mind since he returned to London. There was pride, and there was proud of. He’d had a bitter surfeit of the former. The latter was sweet, much more to his taste.

  Jem seated himself, but before he could draw in his chair, Emily perched on his lap. Jem’s light eyes flew wide open. “I say, Em. Ah… are you all right?”

  She laid her head on her husband’s shoulder. “Not yet,” she said, tugging at his lapels. “But I will be. Now tell me everything that happened. And if you leave anything out, I’ll rub bacon grease all over your coat.”

  Jem needed no further encouragement to begin, forking up eggs with his right hand as his left held his wife tight. After a few seconds, Henry began to feel distinctly superfluous.

  It wasn’t that he was embarrassed watching Jem and Emily cuddle and talk; it was comforting to know that a husband and wife could still care for each other so much after ten years of marriage. No, it was more as though his part was over. He’d played it this morning at Chalk Farm. For an encore, he’d allowed Emily to batter him, and he’d given her an apology.

  And now there was nothing to do but leave the stage. Perhaps he had better go to Winter Cottage. There would be no shame in it now. It might even be peaceful.

  But regret twanged through him. All the letters that had poured in this morning, just because Henry had acted like a damned fool—or maybe like a man who’d come to his senses after long insanity. It was a small comfort to know that he could move easily through polite society again.

  Only a small comfort, though. The letter he most wanted he had not received. And the woman who might have written it didn’t exist.

  No sense in filling a plate with unwanted food, listening to Jem hash over the morning. Henry had little appetite for any of it.

  He started to move toward the door of the dining room, but Emily called him back.

  “Wait, Hal.” She patted at the bulky dressing gown, finding a pocket and pulling forth a folded square of paper.

  As she held it out, Henry’s fingers began to tingle. He felt more shaky and uncertain than he had when waiting for Wadsworth to take his shot.

  “This came by runner this morning, just like all the other letters. It arrived about a quarter hour after you left.” Her mouth curved, her smile knowing but tired. “I set it aside. This one’s special.”

  Henry reached across the burnished wood table and took the square. There was no seal on the wax; it was just a heavy blob of red.

  He knew who it was from, though. He knew from the feel of the paper, the heft of the letter in his hand. Even before he cracked the seal, he knew.

  What it said, though, he could not imagine.

  Only one way to find out. “Excuse me,” he said, and hurried up to his bedchamber as if carrying a forbidden treasure.

  The letter was thick, several sheets folded together. Page after page of Caro’s heavy paper. Line after line in Frances’s hand. She’d falsified its form, he realized, when she showed him her handwriting during their writing lesson. She’d hidden her true self, but here it was.

  He took a deep breath and found a chair. None of this sitting on the ground nonsense.

  And he read his letter.

  Twenty-Five

  Dear Henry,

  If you’re reading this, you are alive, and you aren’t so angry with me that you threw the letter in the fire at once. I suppose that’s a reasonable starting point.

  I regret the way we parted earlier, though it was probably inevitable. I delayed so long in telling you the truth about the letters—my letters—because I knew you would be disappointed.

  And you might still be, after you read this letter, but you deserve to know everything about my past. First, because it returns the favor of your confidence in kind; second, because I hope it will help you understand why I wrote you the first letter, and why I kept sending more though I knew you thought them from Caroline.

  I was the much-loved only child of a Sussex baronet. As you know, Caroline is my cousin. She is the daughter of my father’s younger brother, a clergyman who held a prosperous living a half-day’s drive away from my father’s home. As we grew up, I was the privileged one, with a rich dowry, though Caroline’s beauty was always thought to be dowry in itself—dazzling enough for the clergyman’s daughter to have a season of her own. But I was the one on whom my parents pinned the hopes of a good match. I was to advance us all.

  This seemed a pleasant enough fate to me when I was young, and so I passed my weeks and months and years in cursory good works, waiting to turn nineteen and travel to London for my season. Because my damnable memory ensures that I always have dates and names at ready recall, I often gave lessons to children in the nearby village; at least, I did so when it suited me. I really do enjoy teaching, as you know, because it allows me to be right and to give advice. An irresistible combination.

  In the course of one of my lessons—a botanical walk—I first c
rossed the path of Charles Whittier, the son of the local public house’s owner. Charles was the handsomest man I’d ever seen, and I was fascinated by him at once. To catch his interest, I came to the village every day, walking past the Red Lion time and again, fabricating errands, taking on more pupils, hoping to impress him with my goodness and intelligence.

  I needn’t have tried so hard. He was ready enough to be impressed by the baronet’s daughter. He must have thought I would be the making of him. And I was delighted to be needed—to be his savior, his everything. Since I knew my parents would never approve of my meeting Charles, much less pursuing him, we made arrangements to meet in secret. This allowed things to go farther than they might have otherwise. A parent’s watchful eye does tend to slow the progress of a courtship.

  I promised to marry him as soon as we were both of age. Under the terms of my parents’ marriage settlement, I would have a dowry of twelve thousand pounds, enough to live modestly for a lifetime if we were careful. But Charles was not careful; he began borrowing against the expectation of it. Soon, everyone in the village was talking of the misalliance.

  My father was livid when word reached his ears. He forbade me to see Charles again. So I told him it was possible that I was with child. This was not exactly a lie, though it was a trick. I did not truly think I was; in fact, I have never conceived and may be unable to. But it was possible, as I told my father. Anything under the sun is possible.

  I can remember, even now, the look of horror on my father’s face. He had never expected his only child to trespass against him. He told me I must go to London and catch a husband quickly, so that the truth might be concealed. If I were unable, I would return to the country and he would permit me to marry Charles by license. But he refused to turn over my dowry to, as he said, “such an upstart” as a workingman.

  Now I learned something new from him: my dowry was contingent upon my marrying with my parents’ permission. If I married against their wishes, the money would not be paid. This was a heavy blow, for on this sum I had pinned all the hopes and plans for my future life.

  My father looked almost pleased as he rendered his verdict. I realize now, he was doing what he considered best. He must have hoped to bring me back to what he thought sense, but I was at least as stubborn as he, and much more devious. I told Charles only that my father agreed to let us marry by license. So you see, on my father, I played a trick. To Charles, I withheld a piece of the truth—as I did to you. I suppose there’s no real difference between those and lies, except one of philology.

  I did go to London for a while, and I loved the novelty of high society, the dances and colors and wealth. But I did not want to be courted, since I had left my heart at home.

  “I’m not Honorable like you are, my dear,” Caroline always teased me about my courtesy title. But Caroline was honorable enough to fulfill our family’s purpose in London. She made a brilliant match with an elderly earl. And once she married, I came home to Charles.

  When it became clear there was no babe on the way, my parents forbade me to see Charles. Perhaps they hoped eventually to marry me to some reclusive gentleman who would not ask too many questions about his wife’s character. But I was stubborn. I kept meeting Charles in secret, and since he continued borrowing against his expectations, I never told him the truth about my dowry. I suspected, even then, that he loved my position at least as well as he loved me.

  When he turned twenty-one, a few months after me, we were married. Soon enough, he figured out the truth about our financial situation. So did his creditors. Charles might, perhaps, have sued my father to try to recover the dowry on some niggling legal ground—but, of course, without the dowry, we had not the resources to take on a baronet.

  It didn’t matter to me; I didn’t care for the money. I was too much in love to be anything but selfish. I would do nothing to risk losing Charles; yet I miscalculated and lost him all the same. When my dowry vanished, he did not love me enough to stay when Frances was all I could give him. I do not know if he would have married me, knowing the truth. But when he learned it, and learned that I had withheld it from him, our marriage was struck a mortal blow.

  My parents refused to see us. Charles and I moved away to start a new life in a town where no one knew us, but there was never enough to live on. When the War of the Fifth Coalition began in 1809, a recruiting party came to our village, beating the drum for volunteers. They paid a small bounty to any man who enlisted. To Charles, the army seemed the solution to our problems. War held the promise of glory, of making something grand of himself. You know as well as I that the reality is much different. I talked to the recruiters. To soldiers’ wives. To men who had come home from the war ill or injured. After doing so, I knew Charles would probably never come back to me. Still, I could not ask him to stay for my sake when he wanted so badly to go. It was my atonement.

  There was no glory for him, of course. He died ill and alone, far away on the Continent, and I thought I would die too from the sorrow of it. I felt guilty at first too, as if I had pushed him away to his fate. So deeply did I grieve him that it took me some months to realize how poor I was. But it was the same problem we had always had: there was not enough to live on. I began to sell off our possessions and take in sewing, but it was never enough.

  This is when a letter came from Caroline. She took me into her home when my parents would not see me. She paid off my debts. She let me cry on the shoulder of her expensive silk gowns. I did not exaggerate when I said I owed her everything. She’s the sister of my heart, always generous. Why, she even lent me her identity when I sent you letters and you wished them from her.

  That’s who I am, Henry: a devoted, devious fool for love.

  Once again, I have done the wrong thing, but this time for the right reasons. I have been selfish in wanting to be with you, but I also wanted you to be happier. I wanted you to find again the things you had loved and thought lost. And when you began to, I was as delighted as if they were my own joys.

  I’ve never lied to you except to keep you near—but you would never have stayed near if I had not lied. Do the ends justify the means? That is for you to decide, I suppose: whether what we have gained together is more than what you have lost.

  I hope to see you again soon if you live and forgive. Often, even, if you like—just as I told you in my first letter. My regard for you has always been true.

  Please believe me to be,

  Yours,

  Frances

  Twenty-Six

  “Frannie, you must eat something.” A hand thrust a plate of watercress sandwiches into Frances’s field of vision, covering the blank sheet of paper at which Frances had been staring for several hours.

  Frances rubbed at her eyes. “Watercress? No. That’s not even food.”

  The hand set down the plate. “Yes, it is,” said Caroline’s voice. “My callers eat these sandwiches every day. They positively gobble them down as if the bread is stuffed with ambrosia.”

  “That’s because they’re trying to impress you with their good manners.” Frances lifted the plate from the top of her desk and tried to press it back into Caroline’s hand.

  “If they want to do that, they should eat a little less. But for your sake, I’m not at home to callers today. So you can eat the sandwiches instead.”

  Frances crossed her arms.

  “That’s all the response I am to get?” Caroline dropped into a crouch next to Frances’s desk with a rustle of silk skirts. “Fine. I invoke my lofty rank and order you to choose between two options. You may eat something, or you may go to sleep. Or you could go have a bath. Three—three options. That’s quite generous of me.”

  Frances stared at the blank paper as though a reply from Henry might materialize on it. She only had to concentrate hard enough, wish for it fervently enough. She was not sure she even remembered how to shut her eyes.

  Caroline’s fingers curled on the edge of the writing desk, and she rested her chin in her hands. “Frann
nnie,” she chanted.

  All right, so Frances did remember how to shut her eyes. She covered them for good measure. “Stop it. Stop that lost-kitten face, Caroline. Stop.”

  “But I know you’ve been sitting here all night. One of the footmen told Millie.”

  Caroline sighed. “All right, uncover your eyes. The lost kitten is gone. I look perfectly blasé. But please, get up, Frannie. We can send for some newspapers, and we’ll get all the scandal sheets this morning. Or I can send Pollitt to Boodle’s to talk to the servants there. Someone will know what happened.”

  “Yes,” Frances said. “But I’m afraid to find out.”

  Her joints felt numb from sitting in the same position for hours. The plate of uneaten sandwiches proved that this was far from a normal day, while the blank paper on the desk reminded her of the letter she’d sent.

  As long as she sat at this desk, she was connected to him. As long as she stayed in this room, wore the clothes in which he’d last seen her, and did not learn the outcome of the duel. He would still be all right, as long as she didn’t know he wasn’t.

  That was stupid, of course. Caroline was right. They might as well find out.

  And she might as well stand up. She pushed back her chair, stretched, and realized she was sore in places she’d never noticed. The fronts of her shoulders. The base of her skull. The backs of her knees. And Lord, did she need a chamber pot.

  “You look terrible,” Caroline said helpfully.

  “I ought to. I’ve given it a determined effort.” Frances’s elbows and knees popped as she shook out her skirts. She felt like the oldest woman in the world. “But it doesn’t matter. Let’s get those papers.”

  They had scarcely two minutes to wait before the lady’s maid, Millie, scratched at the morning room door and entered with an armful of newsprint. “We’ve been out gathering these, my lady. Pollitt’s just ironed them for you, but they don’t have the news you’ll be wanting. But I heard from John Coachman that he heard someone talking in the mews, and they said that they’d talked to a maid from Tallant House, and she said the duel’s done finished already.”