“John would never worry over me,” she said.
For a moment she didn’t think he would reply, but then he said, “I know,” and his voice was oddly grave and serious. “It’s the only reason I tease you.”
She’d been watching the pavement, looking for rough spots, but his tone was so serious she had to look up.
“You’re the only woman I know who would never stray,” he said, touching her chin. “You have no idea how much I admire you for that.”
“I love your cousin,” she whispered. “I would never betray him.”
He brought his hand back to his side. “I know.”
He looked so handsome in the moonlight, and so un-bearably in need of love, that her heart nearly broke. Surely there was no woman who could resist him, not with that perfect face and tall, muscular body. And anyone who took the time to explore what was underneath would come to know him as she did-as a kindhearted man, loyal and true.
With a hint of the devil, of course, but Francesca supposed that was what would attract the ladies in the first place.
“Shall we?” Michael said, suddenly all charm. He tilted his head back in the direction of home, and she sighed and turned around.
“Thank you for taking me out,” she said, after a few minutes of companionable silence. “I wasn’t exaggerating when I said I was going mad with the rain.”
“You didn’t say that,” he said, immediately giving himself a mental kick. She’d said that she’d been feeling a bit odd, not that she’d been going mad, but only an idiot savant or a lovesick fool would have noticed the difference.
“Didn’t I?” She scrunched her brow together. “Well, I was certainly thinking it. I’ve been rather sluggish, if you must know. The fresh air did me a great deal of good.”
“Then I’m happy to have helped,” he said gallantly.
She smiled as they ascended the front steps to Kil-martin House. The door opened as their feet touched the top stair-the butler must have been watching for them- and then Michael waited as Francesca was divested of her cloak in the front hall.
“Will you stay for another drink, or must you leave immediately for your appointment?” she inquired, her eyes glinting with the devil.
He glanced at the clock at the end of the hall. It was half eight, and while he had no place to be-there was no lady waiting for him, although he could certainly find one at the drop of a hat, and he rather thought he would-he didn’t much feel like remaining here at Kilmartin House.
“I must go,” he said. “I’ve much to do.”
“You’ve nothing to do, and you know it,” she said. “You just wish to be wicked.”
“It’s an admirable pastime,” he murmured.
She opened her mouth to offer a retort, but just then Simons, John’s recently hired valet, came down the stairs.
“My lady?” he inquired.
Francesca turned to him and inclined her head, indicating that he should proceed.
“I’ve rapped on his lordship’s door and called his name-twice-but he seems to be sleeping quite soundly. Do you still wish me to wake him?”
Francesca nodded. “Yes. I’d love to let him sleep. He’s been working so hard lately”-she directed this last bit at Michael-“but I know that this meeting with Lord Liverpool is very important. You should-No, wait, I’ll rouse him myself. It will be better that way.”
She turned to Michael. “I shall see you tomorrow?”
“Actually, if John hasn’t yet left, I’ll wait,” he replied. “I came on foot, so I might as well avail myself of his carriage once he’s done with it.”
She nodded and hurried up the stairs, leaving Michael with nothing to do but hum under his breath as he idly examined the paintings in the hall.
And then she screamed.
Michael had no recollection of running up the stairs, but somehow there he was, in John’s and Francesca’s bedchamber, the one room in the house he never invaded. “Francesca?” he gasped. “Frannie, Frannie, what is-” She was sitting next to the bed, clutching John’s forearm, which was dangling over the side. “Wake him up,
Michael,“ she cried. ”Wake him up. Do it for me. Wake him up!“
Michael felt his world slip away. The bed was across the room, a good twelve feet away, but he knew.
No one knew John as well as he did. No one.
And John wasn’t there in the room. He was gone. What was on the bed-
It wasn’t John.
“Francesca,” he whispered, moving slowly toward her. His limbs felt strange and funny and gruesomely sluggish. “Francesca.”
She looked up at him with huge, stricken eyes. “Wake him up, Michael.”
“Francesca, I-”
“Now!” she screamed, launching herself at him. “Wake him up! You can do it. Wake him up! Wake him up!”
And all he could do was stand there as she beat her fists against his chest, stand there as she grabbed his cravat and shook and yanked until he was gasping for breath. He couldn’t even embrace her, couldn’t offer her comfort, because he was every bit as devastated and confused.
And then suddenly the fire left her, and she collapsed in his arms, her tears soaking his shirt. “He had a headache,” she whimpered. “That’s all. He just had a headache. It was just a headache.” She looked up at him, her eyes searching his face, looking for answers he’d never be able to give her. “It was just a headache,” she said again.
And she looked broken.