It Takes Two to Tangle (13 page)

“Jem? Why did you choose to marry Emily?”

Henry supposed he should have knocked at the door of his brother's private study before he blurted out the words. Jem was startled; his hands jerked, and he nearly dropped the quizzing glass he was using to study caricatures in a society paper. “Gadzooks, Hal. Didn't see you there.”

His surprise was understandable. Henry rarely entered Jem's study for any reason at all, much less to ask him questions about his choice of a wife.

Henry knew Jem did not mind the intrusion, though. He was always willing to talk, especially if he thought Henry was making a rare request for guidance. He set down the paper he'd been scrutinizing and drummed a hand on his wide mahogany desk, flexing his fingers in the circle of light cast by a bronze and glass Argand lamp.

“Come in. Sit, sit, sit. Does this have anything to do with the ball yesterday? Are you thinking to marry, Hal?”

Henry suppressed a sigh at the old nickname and dropped into a chair opposite his brother. “No, not exactly. I am simply wondering how one knows how to choose a lady. Or how one ought to choose.”

This afternoon, a messenger had at last brought another letter from Caro, a quick note of apology for her silence. But with the Blue Room holding Henry's thoughts like a firefly in a jar, he had not known how to answer it. It lay hidden under a book on the ink-spattered desk in his bedchamber, still awaiting a reply.

He was torn, more torn than he could ever remember feeling before. He had wrung intimacies from Caro on paper; he had stolen them from Frances in a hushed room the color of rain. He'd remembered the desire of the flesh, not just ambition—and ambition seemed a cold, lonely promise compared to the warmth of a woman.

With Frances, he could be himself and forget the world, but the world would always loom, waiting. Caro was a weapon against those who would deny Henry his homecoming. She was bright as a shield, sharp as a saber. More golden than any medal.

Yet he doubted her regard for him, mercurial as she was.

Yet… the more he succumbed to doubt, the more he needed the social certainty she held.

None of it made sense; none of it added up. Henry hoped for a bolt of clarity from Jem, who loved to offer advice almost as much as Emily did—and who would pry into Henry's reasons far less.

Jem had picked up his quizzing glass again and was twirling it in the fingers of his right hand, his arms slung lazily over those of his chair. His mild countenance was furrowed into an uncharacteristic expression of concentration as he considered his answer.
How
do
you
choose?

Jem knew everything—or thought he knew it, which, when one was a wealthy earl, came to nearly the same thing. “D'you know,” he finally said, “I think what I first noticed about Em was her happiness. That's why I chose her.”

“You're joking,” Henry said flatly. “You didn't happen to take note of the fact that she was the most beautiful woman in London?”

Jem shook his head and gave the quizzing glass one final twirl before setting it aside, as if he'd seen all he needed to. “Of course I noticed she was beautiful. But there are scads of beautiful women, Hal. Every year more of them pike into Town. If you pay close attention, though—and I'm not saying you should, because they usually come with overeager mothers—most of them are tiring.”

“You mean tiresome.”

“Not exactly.
Tiring
. They
want
things, you see. They want to make the best marriage, or they want to have the most stylish gowns or the wealthiest admirers. All the fuss is exciting for a while, but it tires a man out, always having to compete.”

“Yes, that makes sense,” Henry said slowly. He felt that fatigue himself, every time he was caught in a crowd now. Especially within Caro's inevitable throng of admirers. As if he had to scrabble for her regard by shouldering others aside.

What was the alternative, though? “Jem, surely you're not suggesting it's better to pursue a woman no one else wants, just for the ease of it. That cannot have been true of Emily.”

“Certainly not.” Jem looked offended. “That's not what I meant at all. I'm saying that it's better to pursue a woman you
enjoy
pursuing. I'd never have chased after her for her looks alone, or her influence. There was something else about her that I admired.” He raked a hand through his dark hair. “She was easy to be with.”

Henry coughed, and Jem shot him a quelling look. In the shadow cast away from his lamp's flame, he was the image of their long-departed father. “Emily was beautiful, as you said. Still is, as much as ever. But she's happy too. She's not the tiring sort.”

“I beg to differ. You must not have heard her badgering me about the guest list for last night's ball.”

“
Hal.
What I mean is, she doesn't need to collect things for the sake of collecting them. She never has. She only wears gowns that make her feel beautiful, and she only spends time with people whose company she likes. She wants to please herself, not others. It doesn't matter to her if the things she likes are the ones other people think are the best.”

“But other people do think so.”

“Well, that's the effect of happiness for you. She's satisfied with her choices, so other people think they must be good choices. Then they imitate her.” He lowered his voice, confidential. “She likes that too. I don't know if you've noticed, but she's fond of her own way. Rather enjoys being a leader in the
ton.
”

“That has dawned on me once or twice,” Henry replied drily.

Jem nodded. “That's the best I can figure. There's no other reason for so many females to start wearing yellow gowns, for one thing. Em loves the color, but it turns most other women into sick canaries.”

Henry smiled at the description, but Jem needed no reply. He was warming to his subject now. “Just think of who makes you happy, Hal. That's probably the woman you ought to spend your life with. If you don't know that much, then you aren't ready to marry.”

He leaned forward across the desk, his voice confidential. “Em would clout me for saying that. I know she wants to see you settled. If she ever gives you any trouble, though, you may just remind her that she waited almost an entire season before deciding on me.”

Henry's thoughts were stumbling, falling behind Jem's words. “She did not always care for you, then.”

He had been away at school when his brother married. He had always assumed Jem's courtship had gone smoothly because everything
always
went smoothly for Jem. His suit could never have involved the pain of veiled taunts or letters painfully printed out with an awkward hand. It would not have driven him to the guilty comfort of another woman's embrace.

“Not at first, she didn't want me,” Jem said with a grin. He tipped his chair back on two legs, balancing himself by resting his hands on his desk. “I trod on her toes the first time we danced. I couldn't think of the steps while I was looking at her; she was that amazing. But that wasn't much fun for her, getting trampled, and she didn't want to dance with me again. I wore her down over time, though. I knew she was the one for me.”

“You knew Emily was the right choice because she was happy.”

“Yes.” Jem let the front legs of his chair thump onto the floor again. “And I think that's why I felt happy around her too. I think everyone does. Don't you?”

Oh, certainly. That is, when she's not scheming to marry me off or turn me into a spectacle in front of the entire
ton.

But Henry understood what his brother meant. Emily
was
happy. And because she loved Henry, she wanted him to find happiness too. She and Jem both wanted that, even if they did not know how to help him attain it.

How simple Jem made the whole situation sound when he reduced it to his essentials.
Think
of
who
makes
you
happy.
But the
who
might not be the same as
what.
No woman on earth could bring back the use of Henry's arm or erase the pain of Quatre Bras.

What was left of happiness, then? He didn't know, but whether as an artist or a soldier, a lover or husband, he'd always planned to grasp for happiness with two hands.

He couldn't do that now. So he had to come up with a new plan.

“Did any of that help you?” Jem asked. His expression was eager.

“I'm not certain,” Henry said.

But the seed of an idea was taking root. A strategy at last.

He just had one more letter to write.

“I thought you'd stopped getting those ridiculous letters.” Caroline handed a fat sealed note to Frances before draping herself onto her morning room's scroll-armed sofa.

Frances shoved the note halfway under her dark blue skirts, then took up her embroidery again. “I'd stopped sending them for a few weeks, so I thought I
would
stop getting them. Or
you
would, actually.”

Her needle whipped quickly through Caroline's delicate lawn handkerchief, creating a monogram.
CS.
Caroline, Countess of Stratton. The lady to whom the note was addressed.

She shouldn't have sent that quick little note of apology following the ball. It was an atonement for mauling Henry in the Blue Room, even after she knew how much he wanted letters from Caroline.

But if he was sending letters again, then she hadn't really atoned for anything. She'd just compounded her sin.

The needle flashed faster. Its tip caught the edge of Frances's thimble, flicking it with a delicate
ping
across the morning room.

“I should never have allowed you to take my name in vain, but I thought the blasphemy would be short-lived. I never imagined your scheme would go on this long.” Caroline stretched back on the green upholstery, chosen to match the shade of her eyes, and picked up the newest issue of
Lady's Magazine
. “Do you think a Pomona green gown would look well on me?”

Frances tossed aside the handkerchief again and dropped to the floor, squinting across the vine-patterned carpet for her lost thimble. “Yes, it would look lovely on you. And you know I meant to put a stop to the letters once it was clear to me that Henry was getting fascinated with you.”

“Now there we differ, because that's not clear to me at all.” Caroline snapped her periodical closed and dropped it on the floor, then hoisted herself up on one elbow. “Why are you scrabbling about on the floor? Are we playing charades?”

“Yes,” Frances said. “I am playing a deranged fool. Could you not guess?” With a wrench of her arm, she laid hold of the thimble under a small writing desk. She then crawled over to retrieve Caroline's magazine, shook out the pages, closed it, and sat up.

Caroline peered down at her from the sofa. “It was a more than fair imitation, but I do not understand why the urge seized you.”

“I lost my thimble,” Frances said. “It was a perfectly normal reaction.”

“And you got a letter from Henry,” Caroline reminded her in a singsong voice.

“No,
you
got a letter.”

“No.” Caroline shook her head. “It's
your
letter, Frannie. They've all been for you, no matter the name on them. Whatever you've written is what he's become fascinated with. You ought simply to tell him the truth, then do the kind of thing to him that makes a man forget all about being angry.”

The kind of thing they'd done last night… hard-muscled thighs, a firm mouth moving hot over her skin, hands stroking and groping in a twilight-dark room. Frances could have moaned at the memory.

“Your cheeks are turning pink.”

Frances frowned and covered them with her hands. “So? It's hot today.”

“Fine, lie to me.” Caroline reached down an arm and patted around on the floor until she found her
Lady's Magazine
. “I'll just read about Pomona green and wait for the callers to start coming. We'll just have an ordinary day. We'll get far too many roses and we'll feed the blooms to the carriage horses. I wish for nothing else in the world.”

“Nor do I.”

Caroline rolled her magazine into a tube and batted Frances on the head. “Lies, lies, and more lies. I count on your advice, you know. If you're only going to tell me what you think I want to hear, I won't want to hear it anymore.”

Frances rubbed at the top of her head and scooted on the floor out of Caroline's reach. “Right now I'm thinking of something you won't want to hear.”

“Likewise.” Her cousin waggled the rolled-up magazine. “Tell. Henry. You. Wrote. The. Letters.”

Frances stood and brushed off her skirts. “So we're back to that? Listen to me, Caroline. I'm not going to tell him.”

She sighed and sank back into her chair, not caring that she rumpled her embroidery. “I
can't
tell him. Not after seeing how delighted he was to receive a letter he thought was from you. He said…” She made herself smile. “He said he'd been thinking about leaving London, but your letter convinced him to stay.”

Caroline's mouth went slack. “What in God's name did you put in that letter? It must have been some sort of magical incantation.”

“I don't recall, exactly. Just something that let him know I enjoyed his company.” She gave a mirthless laugh. “But he didn't enjoy mine, did he? I signed it as ‘a friend,' and he decided that meant you because your friendship was the one he wanted. He might have welcomed my words, but they held no power until he linked them with your name.”

Caroline had shoved herself upright on the sofa. Under her crown of golden hair, her ocean-green eyes were huge and bright, and her mouth sagged.

“Don't make your lost-kitten face at me.” Frances covered her eyes. “That's not fair. I'm not even going to look at you until you stop.”

“Oh,
fine
.” Caroline's voice sounded normal, but when Frances lifted her face, the countess still looked a little distressed. “I know you don't like that expression, but the feeling's real enough. I absolutely
hate
that you think you aren't everything he wants. And I hate him a little bit for making you feel that way.”

“Don't hate him,” Frances said. “It's not his fault. This muddle is my doing. I wrote more letters knowing he thought they were from you.”

“How silly of him. I suppose that's proof of male arrogance, because I've tried to give him no encouragement. Not since the first time I met him, and certainly not since you sent him a letter. If he had eyes in his head, he'd see that readily enough.”

It
was
silly of Henry, maybe. But it didn't take much for a man to become fascinated with Caroline. Her ever-full drawing room was testament to that.

“Maybe he just thinks you're being devious,” Frances suggested.

“I usually am,” Caroline said, the lost-kitten expression now entirely vanished. “But in this case, you're being far more so.”

“I'm not going to tell him the truth. I just told you why.”

“Then I pity you both, because one day he'll find out the truth and he'll hate you for lying to him.” Her hand fluttered to her mouth. “Oh, damn, and he'll probably hate me too, for going along with it.”

“He won't find out. And please don't say that you pity either of us, Caroline.”
Soldiers
never
want
pity
as
much
as
they
want
a
good
meal
and
a
quick
tumble.

Or
a
not-so-quick one.

“All right.” Caroline slid to the floor. “The words will not come out of my mouth again. They might run through my thoughts, though.”

With a quick swoop, she grabbed the still-sealed letter from the chair where Frances had left it. She cracked the seal and flapped the paper open in front of Frances's face. “Read it, you stubborn wench.”

Despite herself, Frances laughed, and she took the paper from Caroline's outstretched hand.

Dear Caro,

Thank you for your letter. I was pleased to see you at the ball as well. It's kind of you to write that you wished I had danced more. I found one minuet quite enough, though I hope in time to find other amusements that suit me just as well as dancing.

I shall call on you this afternoon—with violets, of course—and must speak to you privately. Would you grant me a few minutes of your time for a discussion of a highly secret but not at all improper scheme?

Yours,

Henry

Her fingers felt chilly, and they trembled. “Here.” She thrust the letter back toward Caroline. “I told you it was intended for you.”

As Caroline skimmed the lines, Frances made herself stand and roam around the room, tidying periodicals, folding up her sewing. If Henry intended to call today, he might be here in little more than two hours.

So. She had two hours to wrap her mind around the knowledge that Henry wanted a private interview with Caroline. The secrecy alone made it improper—just as was his supposed correspondence with Caroline.

Yet Frances was the one he had kissed and touched. Frances was the one who had made his breathing rush, who had roused his body.

Or had he only kissed her back? He was the one who had pulled away first, though he pretended it was for her own good.

She creased Caroline's delicate handkerchief into a tiny square and crammed it into her sewing basket.

“A secret scheme,” Caroline murmured. She cast the letter onto the floor with her usual carelessness, and Frances snapped it up and tossed it onto the morning room's small writing desk. “I can't imagine what it could be.”

“Are you going to oblige him?” The tone of Frances's voice rang falsely bright even to her own ears.

“I'll see what he has in mind.” Caroline frowned. “You don't think this is one of Emily's matchmaking schemes, do you?”

“I really can't say.”

Caroline chuckled. “No, I really can't say what goes through Emily's head either. But still, this doesn't sound like one of her plots. If she had dictated the letter, I'm sure she would have been much more effusive about her ball.”

“No doubt.” Frances returned to her chair and folded her hands neatly, facing her cousin. “So. Violets. A secret scheme. Are you still willing to say he's not besotted with you?”

Caroline clambered back onto her scroll-armed sofa,
Lady's Magazine
again in hand. “I'm willing to hear him out. It might be something quite innocent. It could even be a surprise for Emily and Jem.”

She leaned back and flipped open the magazine, then laid it over her face. “Now do let me rest for an hour,” came her muffled voice. “If we're to have a roomful of callers this afternoon, I need to prepare myself.”

She tugged the paper down for a second. “Have Millie lace you into that ravishable bronze-green gown again, won't you? Just in case.”

And with a roguish wink, she vanished again under the pages of fashion, leaving Frances with Henry's letter and far too many questions.

***

Frances fully expected to see some change in Henry's face when he entered Caroline's drawing room that afternoon.

From her customary seat in the corner, she could read each arriving man like a book. Bart Crosby was a sweeping romance, all courtly admiration and puppy love. Lord Wadsworth was rather gothic in the way he squinted at everyone else, as though they were family skeletons he'd intended to shove back in the closet. Hambleton and Crisp were a farce, as always, dressed in identical high-starched cravats and waggling ivory-headed swordsticks.

But when Henry was shown into the drawing room at last, he looked annoyingly normal considering he was plotting a secret. Which made him a mystery.

There were no such shadows under his eyes as there were under Frances's: horrible gray-yellow circles that not even the bewitching bronze-green dress could banish. Henry's smile was bright and confident too, nothing of self-consciousness in it. He strode into the room with his left arm crooked around a bouquet of violets and swept into a bow before Caroline, straightening before his stiffened right arm could swing out of place.

“For me?” the countess asked—rather obtusely, in Frances's opinion.

“Somewhat.” Henry tumbled the violets into her lap, then retrieved what Frances now realized was one of two bouquets he'd been holding. “If you'll excuse me?”

Caroline's smile widened to a positive sunbeam. “Be off with you.”

As seemingly everyone in the room stopped talking, Henry strode over to Frances.

To her, he handed the violets with an entirely different gesture. There was nothing theatrical about the half smile, the simply outstretched hand. Frances sat dumbly, watching, as he waited for her to take the flowers.

“You deserve blooms of your own,” he finally said. “I would like you to accept these, if you're willing.”

“If I'm willing?” She gave a little bark of laughter. “I'm shamefully willing. No one's ever brought me flowers before. Thank you.” She took the bunch from him with a clumsy, overeager gesture.

He gave her a searching look, suddenly a strategist. “Consider this an appeasement, to keep you from ripping my head off in the middle of the drawing room.”

Her fingers tightened on the ribbon-bound stems. “Why? Have you done something unforgivable?”

His mouth kicked up on one side. “I hope you don't think so,” he said in a quiet voice.

Under the armor of the bronze-green silk, Frances felt suddenly conscious of every inch of her skin. “No, I suppose I don't.”

The grin he shot her was pure mischief. “I am relieved to hear it.”

“I'm not relieved in the slightest,” she muttered, too low for him to hear. The tight, sweet tension of unfulfilled desire rippled through her belly at the sight of him, making her nipples harden.

Settle
down
, she told herself. These violets were meant to atone, their frail little blooms covering over a furtive interlude that should never have happened. He was too stubborn in pursuit of his countess, and she was too proud to throw herself at someone who didn't truly want her.