“I’ll be twenty-seven at the end of April. I don’t think it’s so odd that I might want a child.”
His eyes still held a vaguely glazed sort of quality. “No, of course not, but—”
“And I shouldn’t have to explain myself to you!”
“I wasn’t asking you to,” he said, staring at her as if she’d grown two heads.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I overreacted.”
He said nothing, which irritated her. At the very least, he could have contradicted her. It would have been a lie, but it was still the kind and courteous thing to do.
Finally, because the silence was simply unbearable, she muttered, “A lot of women want children.”
“Right,” he said, coughing on the word. “Of course. But…don’t you think you might want a husband first?”
“Of course.” She speared him with an aggravated glare. “Why do you think I came down to London early?”
He looked at her blankly.
“I am shopping for a husband,” she said, speaking to him as if he were a halfwit.
“How mercenarily put,” he murmured.
She pursed her lips. “It’s what it is. And you had probably best get used to it for your own sake. It’s precisely how the ladies will soon be talking about you.”
He ignored the latter part of her statement. “Do you have a particular gentleman in mind?”
She shook her head. “Not yet. I imagine someone will pop to the forefront once I start looking, though.” She was trying to sound jolly about it, but the truth was, her voice was dropping in both tone and volume. “I’m sure my brothers have friends,” she finally mumbled.
He looked at her, then slumped back slightly and stared at the water.
“I’ve shocked you,” she said.
“Well…yes.”
“Normally, I’d take great pleasure in that,” she said, her lips twisting ironically.
He didn’t reply, but he did roll his eyes slightly.
“I can’t mourn John forever,” she said. “I mean, I can, and I will, but…” She stopped, hating that she was near tears. “And the worst part of it is, maybe I can’t even have children. It took me two years to conceive with John, and look how I mucked that up.”
“Francesca,” he said fiercely, “you mustn’t blame yourself for the miscarriage.”
She let out a bitter laugh. “Can you imagine? Marrying someone just so I could have a baby and then not having one?”
“It happens to people all the time,” he said softly.
It was true, but it didn’t make her feel any better. She had a choice. She didn’t have to marry; she would be quite well provided for—and blessedly independent—if she remained a widow. If she married—no, when she married—she had to mentally commit to the idea—it wouldn’t be for love. She wasn’t going to have a marriage like the one she’d shared with John; a woman simply didn’t find love like that twice in a lifetime.
She was going to marry for a baby, and there was no guarantee that she would get one.
“Francesca?”
She didn’t look at him, just sat there and blinked, desperately trying to ignore the tears burning at the corners of her eyes.
Michael held out a handkerchief, but she didn’t want to acknowledge the gesture. If she took the cloth, then she’d have to cry. There would be nothing stopping her.
“I must move on,” she said defiantly. “I must. John is gone, and I—”
And then the strangest thing happened. Except strange wasn’t really the right word. Shocking, perhaps, or altering, or maybe there wasn’t a word for the type of surprise that stole the pulse from one’s body, leaving one immobile, unable to breathe.
She turned to him. It should have been a simple thing. She’d certainly turned to Michael before, hundreds…no, thousands of times. He might have spent the last four years in India, but she knew his face, and she knew his smile. In truth, she knew everything about him—
Except this time was different. She turned to him, but she hadn’t expected him to have already turned to her. And she hadn’t expected him to be so close that she’d see the charcoal flecks in his eyes.
But most of all, she hadn’t expected her gaze to drop to his lips. They were full, and lush, and finely molded, and she knew the shape as well as the shape of her own, except never before had she really looked at them, noticed the way they weren’t quite uniform in color, or how the curve of his lower lip was really quite sensual, and—
She stood. So quickly that she nearly lost her balance. “I have to go,” she said, stunned that her voice sounded like her own and not some freakish demon. “I have an appointment. I’d forgotten.”
“Of course,” he said, standing beside her.
“With the dressmaker,” she added, as if details would make her lie more convincing. “All my clothes are in half-mourning colors.”
He nodded. “They don’t suit you.”
“Kind of you to point it out,” she said testily.
“You should wear blue,” he said.
She nodded jerkily, still off balance and out of sorts.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” she bit off. And then, because no one would ever have been fooled by her tone, she added, more carefully, “I’m fine. I assure you. I simply detest being tardy.” That much was true, and he knew it of her, so hopefully he’d accept it as reason for her snappishness.
“Very well,” he said collegially, and Francesca chattered all the way back to Number Five. She had to put up a good front, she realized rather feverishly. She couldn’t possibly allow him to guess what had really transpired within her on the bench by the Serpentine.
She had known, of course, that Michael was handsome, even startlingly so. But it had all been an abstract sort of knowledge. Michael was handsome, just as her brother Benedict was tall, and her mother had beautiful eyes.
But suddenly…But now…
She’d looked at him, and she’d seen something entirely new.
She’d seen a man.
And it scared the very devil out of her.
Francesca tended to subscribe to the notion that the best course of action was more action, so when she returned to Number Five after her stroll, she sought out her mother and informed her that she needed to visit the modiste immediately. Best to make truth out of her lie as soon as possible, after all.
Her mother was only too delighted to see Francesca out of her half-mourning grays and lavenders, and so barely an hour passed before the two of them were comfortably ensconced in Violet’s elegant carriage, on their way to the exclusive shops on Bond Street. Normally, Francesca would have bristled at Violet’s interference; she was perfectly capable of picking out her own wardrobe, thank you very much, but today she found her mother’s presence oddly comforting.
Not that her mother wasn’t usually a comfort. Just that Francesca tended to favor her independent streak more often than not, and she rather preferred not to be thought of as “one of those Bridgerton girls.” And in a very strange way, this trip to the dressmaker was rather discomfiting. It would have required full-fledged torture to get her to admit it, but Francesca was, quite simply, terrified.