The Wicked Wife by Mary Lancaster

Author:Mary Lancaster
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: 0
Published: 2018-10-03T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

A FAINT RUEFUL smile played about his lips. But his eyes were veiled, unreadable, as though he had no idea how she would respond. Neither had Frances.

She knew she stared. She knew she stood perfectly still with her jaw dropped, but those were merely her body’s reactions. Inside, she felt stunned, unable to think, or even to believe her own eyes.

“You,” she whispered. “It was always you.”

His fingers tightened on hers. He leaned nearer, and panic sliced through her numbness. At the same time, a cry went up from the front door and her three youngest sisters spilled down the front steps.

Behind them, Serena cried, “Frances!”

With a sound like a sob, Frances spun away from her husband to embrace her sisters all at once and then individually, laughing and crying at the same time. The floodgates of her emotions had opened and her whole being churned with them.

“Oh, and this is Jamie,” Serena exclaimed, finally registering the bewildered bundle in Frances’s arm. “He is beautiful! Girls, admire your nephew.”

The girls duly did, with some awe, as if Frances had been incredibly clever to produce the tiny being.

Although her sisters were dressed for walking, they immediately dragged her into the house, all talking at once, asking questions and imparting vital news. She didn’t once look back at Torridon. She couldn’t.

“Gervaise!” Helen yelled as soon as she was inside. “Mama! Frances is home!”

I am. I am home, thank God…

“Helen, you hoyden, you are not a fishwife!” Serena scolded.

Frances laughed. “I remember you doing the same thing when Gervaise came home from school the first time. I heard you from the other side of the castle. But I have a confession to make.” There was no point in telling Torridon first. He already knew. He’d known from the moment she had opened her mouth in the draper’s shop. Because, unlike him, she hadn’t disguised her voice. “I have been in Blackhaven for several days. I even came to the ball, and not one of you knew me!”

“Oh, Fran,” Serena said indignantly, as the younger ones swept her upstairs. “Why didn’t you say? Why didn’t you stay here? I’m leaving tomorrow!”

“I know,” Frances said guiltily. “Torridon has just told me. I suppose you had been putting it off for so long, I hoped you would never go!”

“Of course I must go,” Serena said gruffly. “Just as you went to Scotland.”

Frances met her gaze over the girls’ heads. “I never meant us to end up at opposite ends of the country.”

The girls pulled her into the drawing room, where a young woman stood to greet her. A beautiful woman with red-gold hair who looked at once proud and nervous. They had spoken at the ball.

“Now, I must present you to Gervaise’s new countess! Dawn, this is my sister Frances, otherwise Lady Torridon. Frances, this is Eleanor, though we all tend to call her Dawn.”

Frances smiled, going forward alone to meet her. “How do you do? I know there is a story behind these names that I only know part of.

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