lord. Not one bit of science has ever demonstrated that riding astride destroys a woman’s—virtue.”
His face flamed so she thought it must hurt. From the far end of the table, Lady Eleanor, who couldn’t have heard their exchange, called, “So, Rosefield. Have you arranged a tour of the stables for Miss Allington?” On Lady Eleanor’s left, Frances was smiling her cat’s smile.
Annis’s pearls suddenly, inexplicably, tightened around her neck, pressing the moonstone into the soft skin of her throat. A sign? Yes. She had not imagined it.
It was a warning. A warning to tread carefully, to resist the trap they were all setting for her, and for this poor hapless man as well.
It was no wonder this Marquess of Rosefield feared women. His life was being run by them—his mother, Frances, and now, although she had not intended it, herself. Her sympathy for him returned, and she sagged back in her chair, wondering how she had ever allowed herself to be maneuvered into this position.
16
Frances
By the time the guests and residents of Rosefield Hall retired, everyone knew of the argument between Miss Allington and the marquess. The footman who had served Annis at table told the cook, who told the housekeeper when the staff was having their dinner. The housekeeper ordered all the staff to refrain from gossiping, which meant that the ladies’ maids and valets waited until they came above stairs to tell the tale. Even Antoinette, despite her difficulties with English, managed to relate a more or less accurate version of the story to her mistress.
Frances’s first instinct was to storm into Annis’s room and scold her, but she quelled the impulse. Her cantrip must have worn off. She needed to renew it, and quickly, before the rift between the two young people grew too wide to bridge.
She pretended only mild interest in the clash between Annis and Marquess of Rosefield. Antoinette, disappointed in the tepid reception, elaborated a bit, telling her how shocked the staff were by Miss Allington’s assertion that she rode only cross-saddle. “Zey saying,” Antoinette said, as she wielded the hairbrush on Frances’s hair, “zat Miss Annis must be a—hmm—a cowboy. Non, a cowgirl.”
“A cowgirl? I don’t think such a thing exists. Stop spreading gossip, Antoinette.”
Antoinette fell silent, but she smirked at her mistress in the mirror. They both knew there was little Frances enjoyed more than a bit of gossip, especially about prominent society figures. The maid gathered up Frances’s long hair and swiftly wove it into a thick braid.
When she finished, she moved to the bed to begin folding back the coverlet, but Frances shooed her out. “That’s enough for tonight,” she said. “You can go on to bed. Oh, and I’ll want my white shirtwaist in the morning, to go with the gray silk skirt, the one with the little train. They’ll both need to be ironed.”
When the maid was gone, Frances turned the iron key in the lock of the door. She cleared everything from the surface of her dressing table, putting her brushes, perfume bottles, and jars of cold cream into the drawers. When she had a space to work, she knelt to pull the small valise from behind the wardrobe where she had hidden it.
She took out a lump of unformed wax, a half-used tube of mucilage, and a blank wooden bead of the same type she had used before. From the pocket of her dressing gown she drew out the things she had pilfered from the dining room.
It had not been easy. The ladies had withdrawn to a small parlor to have their coffee while the gentlemen sat on at table with a dusty bottle of port. When she heard the men scrape back their chairs and make a noisy progress to join the ladies, Frances pretended she had lost an earring and went back into the dining room to find it. The servants cleaning the room moved chairs and searched under the table while Frances stood beside the chair the Marquess of Rosefield had sat in.
No one saw her pick up the napkin he had used, which still bore the imprint of his lips in a port wine stain. There were crumbs of cheese on his plate, and she took those, too, folding the bits of cheese into the napkin and slipping the whole into her sleeve while the servants scrambled about under the table. As they began to back out, apologizing for their failure to find the mythical earring, she spotted a treasure, caught on