Page 25 of Ruined by her Marquess (Seductive Mysteries #3)
CHAPTER 24
I t was a long walk back to the tavern where Frances and Evan had slept the night before. Frances’ feet hurt, she was wretchedly thirsty, and she kept being faced with the forceful reminder that she had much shorter legs than either of the Miller siblings.
But she couldn’t even care because she was here, walking with both of the Miller siblings.
Frances hadn’t released Grace’s hand in an hour. Her grip was a touch sweaty, but she didn’t care about that, either, nor did it seem to bother Grace.
They’d walked in silence for a bit after the high excitement of discovering Grace, fighting that highly unpleasant woman, and fleeing the mill, followed by the length session of crying from the women and semi-hysterical laughter from Evan.
“My sister,” he kept muttering between chuckles. “My beautiful sister. You’re here. How I’ve missed you.”
Every time he spoke, it set Frances to crying even harder, because she hadn’t realized before that he’d had this perpetual weight upon him. It was gone now. And her crying had set Grace to more crying, which Grace had seemed to need a great deal.
Frances could only imagine, given her ordeal. Three years. Three years she’d been imprisoned in that dreadful place with those dreadful people, never knowing if anyone would come to save her.
The morning was in full bloom by the time they’d continued.
“Frances,” Grace said after a while, tilting her head in a curious manner that set Frances’ heart alight because she recognized that motion, even though she hadn’t thought about it in years. “Why are you here?”
Frances blinked up at her friend. She’d forgotten how much taller than her Grace was. Not as tall as Emily, to be sure, but tall. Everyone was taller than Frances, though, so she supposed she oughtn’t be surprised.
“We got word of your handkerchief,” she said. “Which was, you know, very odd. So, we came to find out what we could. And then a very friendly man in a tavern suggested that the people at the mill were suspiciously unfriendly. Which led us to you.”
“The handkerchief!” Grace said, vicious triumph in her face. “Ha, I had wondered what did it. They made me harvest their wretched fields practically by myself, which gave me the chance to leave it as close to the road as I could without worrying that any of the Packards would see it.”
“That was their name?” Evan growled this, brow heavy with fury. “Packard?”
“Oh, yes,” Grace waved a hand like this was uninteresting. “May they rot in hell and all that.”
This sent Frances into a fresh spate of giggles, though she sobered in an instant when a horrible thought occurred to her.
“They didn’t…hurt you, did they?” she asked cautiously, even as her eyes frantically swept over her friend.
Grace, noticing Frances’ gaze, looked down at herself, too, as if she might find some sign of injury.
“No, not physically,” Grace allowed, and Frances could feel the way Evan slumped in relief at her side. “They were rude and awful, of course, and seemed to find it simply hilarious to make me do chores.” She scowled, the look ferocious and yet so very mild compared to what she’d gone through. “I might have thought that after I’d scrubbed a pot a thousand times, the entertainment might wane. But apparently not.”
She clenched her hands into fists and Frances, following the movement, saw cracked knuckles and reddened skin. These were a working woman’s hands, not a nobleman’s daughter’s hands.
Again, Grace noticed where Frances was looking, and it broke Frances’ heart a little, to see how her friend was so painfully aware of the world around her, as if a threat lurked around every corner.
“I hated them,” she said fiercely. “I guess I still do, though being out here feels like…” She gazed up at the sky for a long, quiet moment. “It feels like an entirely different world.”
She looked at Frances, then at her brother.
“I hated them,” she repeated, “but they didn’t break me.”
Frances wrapped both her arms around Grace’s waist and squeezed tight. It made walking awkward, but it was well worth the cost.
“No,” she agreed softly, her head pressed against her friend’s shoulder. Grace smelled warm and dusty, like exertion and the run-down place they’d found her. She smelled alive . “You’re not the least bit broken.”
Then sun had grown oppressively hot by the time they reached the tavern, a poorly timed precursor to the summer that was rapidly arriving. Sweat trickled irritatingly on Frances’ neck.
She ignored the sensation in lieu of catching Grace up on the events of the last few years. She’d worried at first that this would hurt Grace, that it would be a painful reminder of what she’d lost, but when Frances had timidly mentioned that Diana and Emily were married, a smile bloomed across her face, bright and authentic.
“I suppose it shouldn’t surprise me,” she said, chuckling, “and I guess in Emily’s case, it doesn’t. But Diana! I cannot imagine her docilely going to the altar. Unless… She hasn’t married a brigand or some such, has she? Some dastardly fellow straight out of a novel?”
Frances thought of Andrew’s intense manner and propensity for quelling glares and laughed a little. In a way, Diana really had ended up with the type of man one might have expected…just in an altogether different way that Grace thought.
“Not as such, no,” Frances said with a smile. “She married a duke.”
Grace gaped. “A duke! Our Diana, a duchess!” She laughed. “Oh, she must be positively terrorizing Society.”
That, too, was easy to imagine, but…
“She’s not been out and about much this Season,” Frances said. “She’s had a baby.”
“A baby!” Grace had made many such repeated exclamations. “My goodness, is it precious? Or is it one of those scrawny, scrunched ones where you must pretend it’s lovely so as not to upset the parents, when privately you reckon it looks like a turnip? Tell me now so I can be prepared.”
“She is priceless,” Frances said. “Absolute perfection. Her name is Gracie.”
Surprisingly, this was the thing that made Grace frown.
“Like I’m some sort of dead maiden aunt to be commemorated though the next generation? No, that shan’t do at all. How old is the child? Is it too late to change it?”
Frances laughed, which caused Grace to glare at her, which reminded Frances so marvelously of old times that she laughed harder.
“I think Diana might object, yes.”
“All right, fine,” Grace said. “I will allow it, as long as everyone remembers that I was the first Grace.” There was a delightful teasing glint in her eye.
Grace was somehow both much the same and much different, Frances mused as they trudged through the streets of the town, thrilled they’d finally made it back to civilization.
She still had a quick wit that struck at any moment, though not in a way that was unkind. When she teased her brother about being shorter than she remembered, she did so while stretching to her tiptoes to ruffle his hair, rendering the comment toothless.
When she turned to Frances and said, “And you, darling, are actually much taller than I remember,” the accompanied it with a loving peck to Frances’ cheek.
But before, this easygoing charm had felt like it was the core of Grace. She’d been a refined lady, of course, but that had always felt like a mask to Frances, the version of Grace that only appeared in public, while the playful Grace was the truest manifestation of her friend. Now, it seemed as though there was another something that lingered even deeper than that teasing exterior.
That deeper core seemed…not precisely sad. Grace, after all, seemed highly pleased to be free of that awful mill. But serious. Thoughtful. Different.
When they reached the tavern, Evan bundled them off to the room, instructing them to stay safe while he met with his contact from the Bow Street Runners.
“I mean it,” he said, his eyes fixed on Frances. “Stay here. Do not leave.”
“I’m not going to—” she protested.
“Do not leave,” he repeated firmly, pointing at her. Rude. “I will be back. I’ll send one of the maids up with food. And when I come back, I trust I will find you both right in this room.”
“Yes, yes,” Frances grumbled.
He peered at her for one more breath, then left, closing the door behind him decisively. Frances was exhausted enough that she sank onto the bed with a huff before she realized that Grace had watched the entirety of this exchange with keen, speculative interest.
“Frances,” she said slowly, looking around the room, her eyes lingering first on Frances’ small bag and then the satchel full of Evan’s possessions. “You never did answer my question.”
Grace’s keen eyes were suspicious, so Frances busied herself thinking innocent thoughts. The first flowers of spring. The headache-inducing smell of shoe polish. Hats. Just hats in general. Anything that distracted from the memory of making love to Evan on this very bed less than a day prior.
“What question is that?” she asked airily.
She was sure she would see Grace narrowing her eyes in suspicion if she weren’t so occupied in looking at the loose stone in the fireplace. That was dangerous. Someone should tend to that.
“Why you’re here,” Grace said, words still slow.
Frances smiled. She was good at faking smiles, wasn’t she? What lady of the ton hadn’t cultivated that particular skill?
“I told you,” she said far too brightly. “We found the handkerchief?—”
“No.” Grace shook her head. “Why are you here? How are you here? With my brother—without a chaperone?” She paused, her eyes growing wide. “Frances, you and my brother aren’t—” She paused, her voice dropping to a whisper. “— married, are you?”
“Oh, no!” Frances said, ignoring the leap of her traitorous heart. “No, no, not married, certainly not.”
It was far too many refusals. Grace’s eyes darted back to the satchel, lingering on where the sleeve of a man’s shirt hung loose from the opening, no doubt from when Evan had stealthily gotten dressed in the dark as he attempted to leave Frances behind. Frances saw the moment that Grace realized that Frances and Evan not being married was actually the far more shocking outcome.
“Oh,” she said quietly. “But you traveled together…”
Frances knew she should account for herself. She just didn’t know how.
And so, for the very first time, she looked at Grace and felt the wave of shyness overtake her, the one that stole her voice and left her unable to do more than stare, wide-eyed.
Grace’s look of confusion flickered to alarm and then briefly to hurt.
And then a knock sounded at the door.
Frances had never been so grateful for anything in her life . She leaped to her feet, ignoring the wounded look on Grace’s face, and opened the door to find the maid, a large tray full of steaming, fragrant food balanced in her arms.
“Mr. Miller ordered this for ye and your friend, Mrs. Miller,” she said. Frances’ cheeks burned at the girl’s casual invocation of the way Evan had introduced her and she very pointedly did not turn back to look at Grace. She settled the tray of food on the small table near the fire. “He also said ye might be wanting a bath, so I’ll bring up hot water shortly.”
“Thank you,” Frances muttered.
The girl bobbed a curtsey and left, bustling off to tend to her next chore. When Frances could not delay turning around any longer, Grace’s eyes were fixed on the food. Frances was half grateful, half tempted to weep. Grace—the old Grace, her Grace—never would have let Frances get away with such an evasion. But this Grace seemed willing to pretend nothing had ever happened.
And they continued to pretend, long after their meal was gone, long after they’d each bathed in the water the girl had dutifully lugged up the stairs. They continued to pretend even after Evan returned and told them he’d be in the room next door.
The silence stretched, grew taut and heavy, as the two friends laid down side by side for the first time since they were girls. It was only in the very last moments before she drifted off to sleep that Frances felt Grace’s cool fingers slip between hers and hold on tight.