Hyacinth, however, had never been known to be reasonable. “You live here,” she pointed out.
Francesca swallowed, then took a sip of tea, the delay intended to preserve her composed exterior. “I sleep here,” she said coolly.
“Isn’t that the definition of where you live?”
Francesca slathered more jam on her muffin. “I’m eating, Hyacinth.”
Her youngest sister shrugged. “So am I, but it doesn’t prevent me from carrying on an intelligent conversation.”
“I’m going to kill her,” Francesca said to no one in particular. Which was probably a good thing, as there was no one else present.
“Who are you talking to?” Hyacinth demanded.
“God,” Francesca said baldly. “And I do believe I have been given divine leave to murder you.”
“Hmmph,” was Hyacinth’s response. “If it was that easy, I’d have asked permission to eliminate half the ton years ago.”
Francesca decided just then that not all of Hyacinth’s statements required a rejoinder. In fact, few of them did.
“Oh, Francesca!” came Violet’s voice, thankfully interrupting the conversation. “There you are.”
Francesca looked up to see her mother entering the breakfast room, but before she could say a word, Hyacinth piped up with, “Francesca was just about to kill me.”
“Excellent timing on my part, then,” Violet said, taking her seat. She turned to Francesca. “Are you planning to go over to Kilmartin House this morning?”
Francesca nodded. “I live there.”
“I think she lives here,” Hyacinth said, adding a liberal dose of sugar to her tea.
Violet ignored her. “I believe I will accompany you.”
Francesca nearly dropped her fork. “Why?”
“I should like to see Michael,” Violet said with a delicate shrug. “Hyacinth, will you please pass me the muffins?”
“I’m not sure what his plans are today,” Francesca said quickly. Michael had had an attack the night before—his fourth malarial fever, to be precise, and they were hoping it would be the last of the cycle. But even though he would be much recovered by now, he would still most likely look dreadful. His skin—thank God—wasn’t jaundiced, which Michael had told her was often a sign that the sickness was progressing to its fatal stage, but he still had that awful sickly air to him, and Francesca knew that if her mother caught one glimpse of him she would be horrified. And furious.
Violet Bridgerton did not like to be kept in the dark. Especially when it pertained to a matter about which one could use the term “life and death” without being accused of hyperbole.
“If he’s not available I will simply turn around and go home,” Violet said. “Jam please, Hyacinth.”
“I’ll come, too,” Hyacinth said.
Oh, God. Francesca’s knife skittered right across her muffin. She was going to have to drug her sister. It was the only solution.
“You don’t mind if I come along, too, do you?” Hyacinth asked Violet.
“Didn’t you have plans with Eloise?” Francesca said quickly.
Hyacinth stopped, thought, blinked a few times. “I don’t think so.”
“Shopping? At the milliner?”
Hyacinth took another moment to run through her memory. “No, in fact I’m quite certain I don’t. I just purchased a new bonnet last week. Lovely one, actually. Green, with the most cunning ecru trim.” She glanced down at her toast, regarded it for a moment, then reached for the marmalade. “I’m weary of shopping,” she added.
“No woman is ever weary of shopping,” Francesca said, a touch desperately.
“This woman is. Besides, the earl—” Hyacinth cut herself off, turning to her mother. “May I call him Michael?”
“You’ll have to ask him,” Violet replied, taking a bite of eggs.
Hyacinth turned back to Francesca. “He’s been back in London an entire week, and I haven’t even seen him. My friends have been asking me about him, and I don’t have anything to say.”
“It’s not polite to gossip, Hyacinth,” Violet said.
“It isn’t gossip,” Hyacinth retorted. “It’s the honest dissemination of information.”
Francesca actually felt her chin drop. “Mother,” she said, shaking her head, “you really should have stopped at seven.”
“Children, you mean?” Violet asked, sipping at her tea. “Sometimes I do wonder.”
“Mother!” Hyacinth exclaimed.
Violet just smiled at her. “Salt?”
“It took her eight tries to get it right,” Hyacinth announced, thrusting the salt cellar at her mother with a decided lack of grace.
“And does that mean that you, too, hope to have eight children?” Violet inquired sweetly.
“God no,” Hyacinth said. With great feeling. And neither she nor Francesca could quite resist a chuckle after that.
“It’s not polite to blaspheme, Hyacinth,” Violet said, in much the same tone she’d used to tell her not to gossip.
“Why don’t we stop by shortly after noon?” Violet asked Francesca, once the moment of levity had petered out.
Francesca glanced up at the clock. That would give her barely an hour to make Michael presentable. And her mother had said we. As in more than one person. As in she was actually going to bring Hyacinth, who had the capacity to turn any awkward situation into a living nightmare.
“I’ll go now,” Francesca blurted out, standing up quickly. “To see if he’s available.”
To her surprise, her mother stood also. “I will walk you to the door,” Violet said. Firmly.
“Er, you will?”
“Yes.”
Hyacinth started to rise.
“Alone,” Violet said, without even giving Hyacinth a glance.
Hyacinth sat back down. Even she was wise enough not to argue when her mother was combining her serene smile with a steely tone.
Francesca allowed her mother to precede her out of the room, and they walked in silence until they reached the front hall, where she waited for a footman to retrieve her coat.
“Is there something you wish to tell me?” Violet asked.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do.”
“I assure you,” Francesca said, giving her mother her most innocent look, “I don’t.”
“You have been spending a great deal of time at Kilmartin House,” Violet said.
“I live there,” Francesca pointed out, for what felt like the hundredth time.
“Not right now you don’t, and I worry that people will talk.”
“No one has said a word about it,” Francesca returned. “I haven’t seen a thing in the gossip columns, and if people were talking about it, I’m sure that one of us would have heard by now.”
“Just because people are keeping quiet today doesn’t mean they will do so tomorrow,” Violet said.
Francesca let out an irritated exhale. “It’s not as if I’m a never-married virgin.”
“Francesca!”
Francesca crossed her arms. “I’m sorry to speak so frankly, Mother, but it is true.”
The footman arrived just then with Francesca’s coat and informed her that the carriage would be in front momentarily. Violet waited until he stepped outside to await its arrival, then turned to Francesca and asked, “What, precisely, is your relationship to the earl?”
Francesca gasped. “Mother!”
“It is not a silly question,” Violet said.
“It is the silliest—no, quite the stupidest—question I have ever heard. Michael is my cousin!”
“He was your husband’s cousin,” Violet corrected.
“And he was my cousin as well,” Francesca said sharply. “And my friend. Good heavens, of all people . . . I can’t even imagine . . . Michael!”
But the truth was, she could imagine. Michael’s illness had kept it all at bay; she’d been so busy caring for him and keeping him well that she’d managed to avoid thinking about that jolting moment in the park, when she’d looked at him and something had sparked to life within her.
Something she had been quite certain had died inside of her four years earlier.
But hearing her mother bring it up . . . Good God, it was mortifying. There was no way, no earthly way that she could feel an attraction to Michael. It was wrong. It was really wrong. It was . . . well, it was just wrong. There wasn’t another word that described it better.
“Mother,” Francesca said, keeping her voice carefully even, “Michael has not been feeling well. I told you that.”
“Seven days is quite a long time for a head cold.”
“Perhaps it is something from India,” Francesca said. “I don’t know. I think he is almost recovered. I have been helping him get settled here in London. He has been gone a very long time and as you’ve noted, he has many new responsibilities as the earl. I thought it my duty to help him with all of this.” She looked at her mother with a resolute expression, rather pleased with her speech. But Violet just said, “I will see you in an hour,” and walked away.
Leaving Francesca feeling very panicked indeed.
Michael was enjoying a few moments of peace and quiet—not that he’d been bereft of quiet, but malaria did little to allow a body peace—when Francesca burst through his bedroom door, wild-eyed and out of breath.
“You have two choices,” she said, or rather, heaved.
“Only two?” he murmured, even though he hadn’t a clue what she was talking about.
“Don’t make jokes.”
He hauled himself into a sitting position. “Francesca?” he asked gingerly, since it was his experience that one should always proceed with caution when a female was in a state. “Are you quite all—”
“My mother is coming,” she said.
“Here?”
She nodded.
It wasn’t an ideal situation but hardly something deserving of Francesca’s feverish demeanor. “Why?” he inquired politely.
“She thinks—” She stopped, catching her breath. “She thinks—Oh, heavens, you won’t believe it.”
When she didn’t expound upon this any further, he widened his eyes and held out his hands in an impatient gesture, as if to say—Care to elaborate?
“She thinks,” Francesca said, shuddering as she turned to him, “that we are conducting an affair.”
“After only a week back in London,” he murmured thoughtfully. “I’m faster than I imagined.”
“How can you joke about this?” Francesca demanded.
“How can you not?” he returned. But of course she could never laugh about such a thing. To her it was unthinkable. To him it was . . .
Well, something else entirely.
“I am horrified,” she declared.
Michael just offered her a smile and a shrug, even though he was starting to feel a little pricked. Naturally, he did not expect Francesca to think of him in such a manner, but a reaction of horror didn’t exactly make a fellow feel good about his manly prowess.
“What are my two choices?” he asked abruptly.
She just stared at him.
“You said I have two choices.”
She blinked, and would have looked rather adorably befuddled if he weren’t a bit too annoyed with her ire to credit her with anything that charitable. “I. . . don’t recall,” she finally said. “Oh, my heavens,” she moaned. “What am I to do?”
“Settling down might be a good beginning,” he said, sharply enough to make her head jerk back in his direction. “Stop and think, Frannie. This is us. Your mother will realize how foolish she’s being once she takes the time to think about it.”
“That’s what I told her,” she replied fervently. “I mean, for goodness’ sake. Can you imagine?”
He could, actually, which had always been a bit of a problem.
“It is the most unfathomable thing,” Francesca muttered, pacing across the room. “As if I—” She turned, gesturing to him with overblown motions. “As if you—” She stopped, planted her hands on her hips, then clearly gave up on trying to hold still and began to pace anew. “How could she even consider such a thing?”
“I don’t believe I have ever seen you quite so put out,” Michael commented.
She halted in her tracks and stared at him as if he were an imbecile. With two heads.
And maybe a tail.
“You really ought to endeavor to calm down,” he said, even though he knew his words would have the exact opposite effect. Women hated to be told to calm down, especially women like Francesca.
“Calm down?” she echoed, turning on him as if possessed by an entire spectrum of furies. “Calm down? Good God, Michael, are you still feverish?”
“Not at all,” he said coolly.
“Do you understand what I’m saying to you?”
“Quite,” he bit off, about as politely as any man could after having his manhood impugned.
“It’s insane,” she said. “Simply insane. I mean, look at you.”
Really, she might as well just grab a knife and apply it to his ballocks. “You know, Francesca,” he said with studied mildness, “there are a lot of women in London who would be rather pleased to be, how did you say it, conducting an affair with me.”
Her mouth, which had been hanging open after her latest outburst, snapped shut.
He lifted his brows and leaned back against his pillows. “Some would call it a privilege.”
She glared at him.
“Some women,” he said, knowing full well he should never bait her about such a subject, “might even engage in physical battle just for the mere opportunity—”
“Stop!” she snapped. “Good heavens, Michael, such an inflated view of your own prowess is not attractive.”
“I’m told it’s deserved,” he said with a languid smile.
Her face burned red.
He rather enjoyed the sight. He might love her, but he hated what she did to him, and he was not so big of heart that he didn’t occasionally take a bit of satisfaction in seeing her so tortured.
It was only a fraction of what he felt on a day-to-day basis, after all.
“I have no wish to hear about your amorous exploits,” Francesca said stiffly.
“Funny, you used to ask about them all the time.” He paused, watching her squirm. “What was it you always asked me?”
“I don’t—”