Grace Burrowes - Mary Fran and Matthew

He sounded not English, but simply weary himself. A soldier who’d seen too much of war and not enough of peace. A son chafing under the demands of family. A man resigned to loneliness.

“One needs sleep too.” Mary Fran made another effort to sit up, and he let her, but kept his hand on her nape. “I owe you an apology, Mr. D—Matthew.”

“You owe me nothing.” His thumb stroked over the pulse in her throat, which should have been relaxing but was in truth more of a distraction.

“Earlier today…” Mary Fran steeled herself for the cost of being honest. “I had plans for you. Plans that might have involved the gamekeeper’s cottage, had you cast me even a single curious glance. It’s our informal trysting place, because my brothers won’t bring their passing fancies into the house.”

His thumb paused; Mary Fran’s breath stopped moving in her chest. His thumb resumed its slow progress over her skin; she resumed breathing.

“If all you’d wanted was a tumble, Mary Fran, I’d likely have obliged and acquitted myself as enthusiastically as the situation allowed. You are an exceptionally desirable woman, but I think you want something else more than you want a few minutes of oblivion and desire.”

Oblivion and desire? Was that what she’d been after? He was so much more substantial than that, and the yawning need inside her wanted more too. She tried to see into his eyes in the gathering darkness, but there simply wasn’t enough light.

“Let me hold you, Mary Fran. Please.” A suggestion, not a command. He understood her that much, which was better than she understood herself at the moment. She leaned against him and nuzzled his shoulder until she found a comfortable place to rest.

His arms settled around her. His lips brushed against her forehead, and something eased in her aching chest. She fell asleep in his embrace, there on the hard bench under the stars.

Activity was the army’s typical prescription for sexual restlessness, and Matthew found it served in most cases, though after tramping through the Balfour woods for an hour, he still couldn’t get the scent and feel of Mary Frances MacGregor out of his mind, or set aside the conundrum of how honest to be with her. When a man wanted something more than a flirtation but deserved less than an attachment the usual rules were no help.

“Good day. A fine morning for a ramble, is it not?”

A man sat in dappled sunshine on a rough bench a few yards up the path. He rose to a substantial height and came toward Matthew. The fowling piece over his shoulder was exquisite, the stock and handle chased with silver. The fellow’s attire was as fashionable as country turnout could be.

“Good day…” Matthew’s heart gave a lurch as he placed that tall figure and the slight German inflection lacing the man’s greeting. “Your Highness.”

Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel, Prince Consort to the Queen, father to a growing brood of princes and princesses, and devoted sportsman, stood in the Balfour woods, frowning at Matthew.

“It’s Colonel Daniels, isn’t it?”

“Just plain Matthew Daniels, sir.”

The frown cleared. “I recall your situation now. Her Majesty has fretted over you, Mister Daniels. May I assure her all goes well with you?”

Matthew hesitated an instant too long, proving to himself how distracted he’d become with his hostess at Balfour. “All goes well enough. My family is visiting at Balfour in hopes of securing a match between my sister and the earl.”

“A delicate business, the advantageous marriage.” The prince’s eyes danced while he made this observation. “Walk with me, Mr. Daniels, because my wife will want a full report on you and on the matchmaking at Balfour. I would not disappoint her for anything.”

One did not refuse a royal invitation, particularly not when one had nothing better to do but brood over whether a temporary liaison with Lady Mary Frances was worth the unpleasantness bound to ensue if she learned of the scandal hanging over Matthew’s head.

“How fares Her Majesty, sir?”

“She loves it here, and the children enjoy it as well. I struggle along too, of course, between the fishing, the grouse moors, the deer-stalking. One must bear up under the press of duty.” More German humor lurked in his words, both broad and subtle. His Royal Highness produced a flask and held it out to Matthew. “All is not so very well with you, though, is it? Your papa is not an easy man to spend time with.”

The Queen was not the most political monarch to take the throne, but she kept her hand among the peerage socially, as Matthew well knew. “My father is a randy old jackass.”

“So why not sport about at the summer house parties or among the fashionable beauties in Edinburgh? The company there is delightful for an unattached fellow.”

What to say? The Prince was a devoted husband and father, a well-educated man who did much to improve the situation of the same working-class people who treated him with such disdain. He was also one of very few who knew the truth of Matthew’s past.

Matthew took a nip of lovely whisky and passed the flask back. “For the present, at least, I am not suitable company for fashionable beauties, and with one possible exception, there are no beauties who interest me.”

His Highness tucked the flask into an inner pocket of his shooting jacket, shouldered his piece, and sighted down the barrel as they walked along. “Do you know, Mr. Daniels, that though there is war brewing here and there about the realm, and the condition of our cities is a daily disgrace, and the nonsense that goes on at Westminster is without end, the only thing that truly can disturb me is difficulty between me and my wife? She is my exception, and I flatter myself that I am hers. One does well to pay attention to the exceptions.”

“My past—” Matthew fell silent. He wasn’t going to complain, for God’s sake, not to the Prince Consort.

“If she’s truly exceptional, that will not matter—if it even comes up. Would you like to give this gun a try? It’s heavy, but flatters my vanity, and the aim is excellent. It was a gift from my wife.”

Matthew accepted the fowling piece and spent another hour tramping about the woods, shooting twigs and branches of His Royal Highness’s choosing, and telling himself his past really ought not to matter to Mary Frances.

Provided all she wanted from him was oblivion and desire.

***

“The hell of it is, Gordie really had asked me to marry him.” Mary Fran made this disclosure to Matthew—he was no longer Mr. Daniels, even when they were in company—while they strolled the gardens after dinner. The men had abandoned their port and cigars by mutual agreement, leaving a surprised Mary Fran to accept an invitation to enjoy the flowers.

“Were you going to take him up on his proposal?”

She peered over at her escort. The night was warm enough that he’d shed his jacket and carried it over one arm as he walked beside her. He wasn’t touching her, and she… missed him. Missed the touch of him, missed the greater proximity necessitated by walking with arms entwined.

“I don’t know if I was going to accept. I’ve puzzled over it. Gordie was the marquess’s spare, and an earl’s daughter would be considered acceptable in his family, even a Highland earl’s daughter. I’m fairly certain I chose him because he was not acceptable to mine.”

“Because he was English.”

Matthew spoke the words softly, though in the dying light, Mary Fran felt the frustration in him.

“Any Englishman would have annoyed my family, but we did marry, didn’t we? Gordie was as much a Lowlander by breeding as English, though English alone does not cast a man from my family’s favor.”

“Then what was his besetting sin?”

His curiosity seemed genuine, and she ought to tell him, but even after all she had told him, the words didn’t come easily.

“Let’s sit a bit.” She glanced around for a bench, until Matthew took her arm.

“Up the hill, we can watch the stars come out.”

She was a widow, they were in full view of the house, and Matthew was damnably proper with her at all times. “To the pines, then.”

They walked in silence. Even when he switched his grip and held her hand—fingers laced, no gentlemanly pretense of guiding her along involved—Mary Fran didn’t comment on it.

Didn’t comment on the simple, profound, and rare pleasure of merely holding his hand.

“This will do.” He’d chosen a spot partway up the last slope before the woods took over the park, a place where young evergreens surrounded a shallow bowl and the sod was covered with thick grass.

He spread his coat on the ground, and when Mary Fran lowered herself to it, she realized they weren’t in view of the house after all, not when they were in the grass. A soldier would have known that when he’d chosen their location. Matthew came down beside her and settled back to brace himself on his hands.

“You were going to tell me the rest of it, Mary Fran. The part about why Gordie was such an ideal choice for mischief and a bad choice as a husband.”

Plain speaking, indeed. She plucked a little white clover flower from the grass, then another.

“He was a tramp, you see.” She spoke lightly, so the words wouldn’t stick in her throat. “I knew it, knew that’s how he’d come by all his flirting and flattery. He was experienced, and I was eighteen and so wicked smart.”

“I was eighteen once too.”

“But, Matthew, were you such a calculating little baggage you essentially tossed yourself under the regimental tomcat because you thought surely, a man that naughty would know how to look after you your first time?” She couldn’t keep the bitterness from her voice, from rising up the back of her throat as she spoke. “I was wrong, though.”

He moved closer while she systematically plucked hapless clover flowers from the grass.

“I was so bloody, blasted wrong.”

The sound of ripping grass filled a small silence.

“He hurt you.”

She nodded and forced her hands to stop their pillaging. “He hurt me two ways. First, he was not considerate, and then he was not discreet. The second injury was far worse than the first.”

A hand landed on her shoulder, warm and solid. The night wasn’t cold, but the warmth of that hand felt divine. She forced herself to continue with her confession despite the comfort Matthew was offering. “I think Gordie was trying to make me scream. Insurance, in case I wasn’t going to accept his proposal. We were at the regimental ball, a throng of people right out in the corridor.”

He drew in a breath, as if the words gave him pain. “You didn’t scream.” His hand slid across her shoulders to wrap her in an embrace. “You didn’t scream, you didn’t run to your brothers, you didn’t ask for mercy or quarter, but you would not allow your child to be born a bastard.”

“I might have.” She turned to press her face against the side of his throat. “I might have cursed my child that way, except Gordie bragged to his fellows about his latest conquest. His own officers were so disgusted with him that somebody got word to my menfolk, and then six weeks later there were documents executed and the handfasting became official. Ian and Asher promised me Gordie would be sent to Canada, and I’ve wondered if Asher wasn’t the one who made sure I was widowed. I was so stupid.”

“You were so young.”

His thumb traced up the tendon in her neck, a little nothing of a touch, but it eased her soul. He did it again and again, until Mary Fran began to cry.

“I didn’t come out here with you to blubber and carry on like some—”

He slid his hand gently over her open mouth and left it there, giving her a place where she could finally let the screams go. As his arm closed around her more snugly, she keened into his splayed fingers, her fists clutching his shirt in a desperate grip.

“It shouldn’t still hurt like this…” She shook with the remembered indignity, with the hopelessness and pain of it. She cried for a stubborn young girl with too few options, and for a sad, tired widow who had even fewer. She wept for her daughter, for all the daughters, and even for the family whose love and respect she’d betrayed.

And when the tears finally, finally subsided and Matthew’s thumb was brushing gently over her damp cheeks, still she stayed wrapped up in his embrace.

“I am so ashamed. Bad enough I must comport myself like a strumpet, even worse I should seek pity for it.”