Miss Fanshawe's Fortune - Linore Rose Burkard Page 0,85

table, took Frannie’s hand and moved her behind the screen. Whispering he said, “Let us discover who is in this part of the house today. It had best not be a visitor.”

With her heart beginning to pound, Frannie felt breathless in the gloom standing so close to Sebastian. “Shusshhh,” he said into her ear, his breath warm and delicious upon her skin. His hands held her arms lightly, keeping her right in front of him.

The door opened. No sound but that of a light step hurrying across the room. When it reached the table with the candle lamp, it hesitated, and Frannie saw that it was Mrs. Arundell!

She almost cried out, but Sebastian immediately tightened his hold on her arms, a signal not to speak. Mrs. Arundell stared at the candelabrum. “Oh, dear,” she murmured. She blew it out, and then, slowly in the dark, made her way to the door, opened it, and was gone.

Now the darkness was deep. Frannie turned, facing Sebastian, their bodies only an inch apart. “Why did you not let me speak?” she asked. Sebastian hesitated. “I suppose I thought it awkward for her to find us here.” She could feel his breath upon her face. He paused. “I apologize, dearest. I was thoughtless to bring you somewhere alone. If Edward, or the baronet, found us—” He shuddered, and pulling her hand said, “Come.”

This crushed her heart. And suddenly she was distraught. She refused to move, and overcome, cried determinedly, “I have borne with this for as long as I can, sir!” Her voice was raw with feeling. It mortified her, but she could not hide it. Her face at least was hidden in the dark, which was some comfort.

“Borne with what?” he asked quietly from the darkness.

“With this—this—impossible idea!” A sob escaped her. “I do not—want—to m-marry your cousin!” Sebastian was utterly still for a moment. Suddenly his hand grasped one of hers, and he dragged her toward the table and stopped. “Wait,” he said. She heard him fumbling for a second and then a single candle came to life. His face, staring at her in stark surprise and consternation, came into view. “Whatever made you think the baronet would marry you?”

Frannie was almost speechless. “You did! Your mother did! She told me, numerous times,” she cried, with an emphatic nod of the head, “that my future was settled to her mind, that it would all be settled at Christmas! And that I would make a proper wife!” A tear slid down her cheek. “I tried to explain to her what you know only too well!” she said, looking up at him tragically, her large eyes seemingly magnified by tears. “That I am not fit to be any man’s wife! That my fortune may well be nonexistent, that—”

She was here stopped from continuing as he took her arms, and said, “Frannie, dearest! My mother does not wish for you to marry Sir Hugo! Nor do I!”

She blinked up at him. “What? She doesn’t?

“No.”

“You don’t?”

He shook his head. “Not at all!”

“But your mother, surely, does. If you could conceive of how often she told me my future would be settled at Christmas! She had one of her inklings about it! She seemed to believe that all I must do is sail down tonight in my new, elegant gown and I will strike love into Sir Hugo’s heart! As if none of my history would matter then, though I never thought as much.”

He smiled. He moved a stray tendril of hair off her face. “Is that why you’ve hidden behind veils throughout this visit?”

She sniffed and nodded. “I did not want him to see me long enough to form a favourable opinion!”

He let out a breath of a laugh. “You confounding girl.”

But Frannie was still confused. “What did your mama mean by it all if not that she wanted the match?”

He smiled again. He leaned his head in toward hers and lay his forehead against hers. A rush of warmth filled Frannie’s heart with sudden hope. He said, in a low, husky tone, “She wants you to marry me, dearest.”

Frannie gasped. She moved away enough to stare up at him. She felt as though a thousand candles were lit at once in her heart, which was suddenly light as a feather. And yet, how could it be? When she was hardly respectable? “Oh, dear! I told her more than once I did not desire the match, but I thought she meant—” Here she stopped, for it