Читать книгу Marriage Made In Hope - Sophia James - Страница 9
ОглавлениеFive days later his butler came into his library with a heavy frown upon his face.
‘There is a gentleman to see you, Lord Douglas. From Hastings, my lord. He has given me this.’
Walsh passed over a card and Francis looked down. Mr Ignatius Wiggins, Lawyer. ‘Show him in, Walsh.’
The man was small and dressed in unfashionable clothes of brown. He looked nervous as he fidgeted with a catch on the leather case that he held before him like a shield.
‘I am the appointed counsel of Mr Clive Sherborne, my lord, and I have come to tell you that he has been murdered, sir, in Hastings a week ago. It was quick by all accounts, a severed throat and a knife to the kidney.
Good Lord, Francis thought. He stood to digest the brutality of such an ending and thought of the deceased. He had met him only once for he’d come to the Douglas town house with his wife, a garish but handsome-looking woman of low character and poor speech. They had come with the express purpose of informing his uncle about the birth of a baby whom they insisted was his by-blow. Wiggins had accompanied them.
Lynton St Cartmail had been furious and wanted nothing to do with such a hoax. Blackmail, he’d called it, Francis remembered, as he had ordered them summarily gone.
Clive Sherborne, however, had taken the child they had brought with them in his arms, a crying-reddened baby with dark lank hair and pale skin, even as he promised that he would instruct a lawyer to call on the fourth Earl of Douglas. His voice had been gentle and sad, a man who had not looked like the type to be murdered so heinously years later and Francis wondered what had happened in the interim to make it thus.
‘Mr Sherborne had asked me to inform you of any significant events in his household, my lord, and so I am—informing you, I mean, about his death. A significant event by anyone’s standards.’
‘Indeed it is, Mr Wiggins.’ Francis wondered briefly whether the mother, Sherborne’s wife, was still alive and what had become of the girl child. He wondered why Wiggins had come back, too, given the amount of years that had passed since last being here.
‘The deceased had given me a letter, sir, in better times, you understand, a missive that was to be delivered into your hands only in the circumstances of his death, for he wanted to make certain that Anna Sherborne was...catered for. He was most adamant that I should give you this last correspondence personally, my lord, and that I should allow no other to take my stead...’
Francis remembered Wiggins distinctly, for his physical countenance looked much the same as it had. Last time he had gesticulated wildly at the screaming bundle of the unwanted newly born baby, but this time his hands were clasped tightly together, dark eyes showing an ill-disguised puzzlement mixed with fear.
‘I shall not be a party to the lies any longer, Lord Douglas. Your uncle, the fourth Earl of Douglas, Lynton St Cartmail, paid me well to keep my silence about his illegitimate daughter and I have regretted it ever since.’
‘He paid you?’
‘From his own private funds, my lord, and they were substantial. The receipts are all here.’
The horror of the lie congealed in Francis’s throat. The thought of a child, who was in effect his cousin, lost under his uncle’s profligate womanising, was so shocking he felt the hair rise along his arms. Lynton had laughed off the charade of her birth as an obscene pretension by a misguided harlot to gain money from the coffers of the Douglas estate and at twenty-two Francis had had no cause to think the old earl was being anything but truthful. He could barely believe the dreadful falsehood and struggled to listen as the lawyer went on.
‘This is the end of it, you understand, and I won’t be held responsible for the consequences. I am elderly, my lord, and trying to make my peace with the Almighty and this deception has played heavily upon my conscience for years.’
Opening his bag, he found a thick wad of documents, which he laid down on the desk. ‘This is the missive Mr Sherborne left in my care. It outlines the Douglas monies accorded to him for seeing to the child’s upbringing and also any extra amounts sent. I should like to also say that although gold can buy certain things, sir, happiness is not one of them. Unfortunately. Miss Anna Sherborne is now largely at the mercy of the borough and one who has no idea of the true circumstances of her family connections and elevation.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘It is all there, my lord, all written down in the letter, but...’
‘But?’
‘The child has been brought up without proper rule of law and although Clive Sherborne was born a gentleman he most certainly did not have the actions of one. His wife, God rest her soul, was even less upstanding than her husband. To put it succinctly, the young girl is a hoyden, unbridled and angry, and she may well need a lot more from you than the promise of some sort of temporary and transitory home.’
Francis’s head reeled, though he made an effort to think logically. ‘Then I thank you for your confidentiality and for your service, Mr Wiggins, and sincerely hope you will bring the girl here to London in the next few days for the Douglas birthright should be her own.’ He said the words quietly, the tremble of his hand the only thing belying complete and utter fury at his uncle as he paid the man off for his troubles and watched him depart.
Lynton St Cartmail’s foolish and ongoing lack of responsibility had now landed firmly on his shoulders and the covering letter the lawyer had given him felt heavy as he ripped open the seal and looked down.
Anna Sherborne was almost twelve years old. He stopped, trying to remember himself at the same age. Arrogant. Cocksure. His parents had died together a few years prior in an accident so that could have been a factor in his belligerence, but Anna Sherborne’s life had not been an easy one either and by the accounts of the lawyer she sounded...damaged.
The Damaged Douglas. That echo made him stand and walk to the window. What the hell was he to do with an almost-twelve-year-old girl? How did one handle a female of that particular age with any degree of success? God, no one had done so thus far in her life by all accounts and he did not wish to impair her further by his ignorance of the issues. His uncle must have known what would happen when he had turned his unsuitable lover and their offspring away with a good deal of financial support and an express intention never to see them again.
Well, she was his responsibility now. He’d need a governess, of course, some female relative with a firm and respectable hand to temper out all the knots and bumps expected in a wayward and abandoned child. He’d need patience, too, and honesty. And luck, he added, catching his reflection in the window.
Sephora Connaught’s nail-marks had settled somewhat on his right cheek, though they were still easily seen in the glass, three reddened lashes running from the corner of his eye.
On the other side the scar from the Peninsular Campaign blazed. He saw others looking at it often, of course he did, this mark that cut his face in half, but he’d made the conscious decision years ago not to let it define him. Still there were times... His finger marched along the pathway of injury and he felt the loss of who he had been and what was left now.
He was supposed to be accompanying Gabriel and Adelaide Hughes to a ball tonight given in honour of a friend’s father. Part of him wished he did not have to go out and be seen after the incident by the river the other day, but the more sensible part of him reasoned that if there was speculation directed at him then so be it.
A small bit of him also hoped that Lady Sephora Connaught might also be attending the ball. He wanted to take a look at her and see if what he remembered matched the truth of her countenance.
Perhaps it was Lucien’s words alluding to her as the ‘angel of the ton’ that had coloured his reminiscences, but he had begun to imagine her in a way that could only be called saintly. She’d had light hair, of that he was sure, but her face in the water had been blurred and indistinct. He did know her lips were full and shapely because he had been focused upon them as he had allowed her his breath.
An intimate thing that, he supposed, and the reason for this ridiculous but abiding interest. He had kissed a hundred woman in his life and bedded a good number, but this was the first time he had felt...what? Connected? Haunted? Aroused with such a speed it felt improper?
All of those things and none of them. Walking to his room, he turned when his valet came in to lay out his clothes for the evening and cursed his mindless and maudlin sentimentality.
Sephora Connaught was to be married forthwith to the Marquis of Winslow and he was by all terms a great and worthy catch. Still, he looked forward to seeing the elusive daughter of Lord and Lady Aldford tonight at the ball even if it was just to understand that the power of reminiscence was never as strong as the reality of a cold hard truth.
* * *
Sephora did not wish to go to the Hadleighs’ ball and she told her mother of it firmly.
‘Well, my dear, it is all very well to be nervous and of course after the events of the past week it is only proper that you should be, but you cannot hide forever and five days of being at home is enough. Richard will be there right beside you as will Maria, your father and I and, if anyone has the temerity to comment in any way that is derogatory, I am certain we shall be able to deal with them effectively.’
Her mother’s words made perfect sense, but for the first time in her life Sephora was not certain that anything would ever be all right again. She was either constantly in tears or as tired as she ever had been and the doctor her mother had called had told her ‘it was only by rejoining the heaving mass of humanity and partaking in social intercourse that she would ever get well’.
His words had left her sister in fits of laughter and even she for the first time in days had smiled properly, but when putting on her new lemon gown this evening with its ruched sleeves and silken bodice she felt dislocated and adrift.
Her leg had healed and she hardly noticed the pain of it any more, though the doctor had been adamant that she leave the bandage on for a good few more days yet. Richard had presented her with new earrings and a matching bracelet and she had worn these tonight to try and lift her spirits.
It was not working. She felt heavy and wooden and afraid and the diamonds were like a bribe for his lack of...what?
She could not bear to have him touch her, even gently or inadvertently. She had not caught his eyes properly either lest he see in the depths of them some glint of her own accusations. A coward. An impostor. A man who could not and would not protect her.
So unfair, she knew. He was unable to swim competently, as were a great many men of the ton, and he had done his utmost ever since to make certain that she was healing and happy. Large bunches of roses had arrived each day, and because of it all she would associate their smell with this dreadful time forever and hate the scent of them until her dying day.
Her dying day. That was the crux of it. She had escaped death by the margin of a whisper and could not quite come to terms with the fact. Oh, granted, she was here still, breathing, eating, sleeping, walking.
And yet...she wasn’t.
She was still under that water, trapped in her heavy clothes and in the darkness waiting to die.
Her skin crept with the thought and she shivered. She felt as if she might never truly be warm again even as the maid placed the final touches to her curled hair with a hot iron.
She looked presentable and calm when she glanced at herself in the mirror a few moments later. She looked as she always had done before any ball or social event of note: mannerly, gracious and composed. She had never been criticised for anything at all until this week, until she had clung to Francis St Cartmail in her torn and sodden riding clothes as though her life had depended on it.
Well, indeed it had. She smiled and the flush in her cheeks interested her. She seldom had high colour and just for a moment Sephora thought such vividness actually suited her, made her eyes bluer and her hair more golden. Usually her skin held the sheen of a statue cut from alabaster, like the one of the Three Graces she had seen in an art book at Lackington’s in Finsbury Square. Translucent and composed. Women untouched by high emotion or great duress.
Maria’s noisy entrance into her chamber had her looking away from her reflection.
‘The carriage is here, Mama. Papa and the marquis are waiting downstairs.’
‘Then we shall come immediately. Have you a wrap, Maria? It is cold outside and we do not want a case of the chills. Sephora, make certain you bring your warmest cloak for there is quite a wind tonight and the spring this year has a decided nip to it. After the incident at the bridge we do not wish for you to sicken, for your body’s defences will be lowered by the alarm of your accident.’
And with that they were off, bundled into the carriage full of Maria’s happy chatter and her mother’s answering interjections.
On her side of the conveyance Sephora simply held her breath, squashed as she was between her father and Richard, and wondered how long she could keep doing so before she might faint dead away. She had got to the slow count of fifty in her room before the black spots had begun to dance in front of her eyes. She did not dare to risk the same here. But still she liked the control of it, silent and hidden. A power no one could take away from her, an unbidden and unchallenged authority.
* * *
At least the ballroom was warm, she thought half an hour later, as their party made their way through the crowded rooms, this outing so far holding none of the fear she’d imagined it might.
‘You look beautiful this evening, my dearest love,’ Richard said as they took their places at the top of the room, the orchestra easily observed from where they stood. ‘Lemon and silk suits you entirely.’
‘Thank you.’ There was a tone in her voice that was foreign and displaced.
‘I hope we might have a dance together as soon as the music begins.’
Her heart began to beat a little faster, but she pushed the start of panic down. ‘Of course.’
She was coping and for that she was glad. She was managing to be just the person everybody here thought she was. No one watched her too intently, no conversation had swirled to a stop as she passed a group, no whispered conjectures or raised fans behind which innuendo could be shared. No pity.
Her betrothed’s first finger touched a drop of ornately fashioned white gold at her ear. ‘I knew they would look well on you as soon as I saw them, my love. I was planning on keeping them as a surprise until your birthday, but you looked as if a present might be the very thing needed to cheer you up. I managed to get them at a good price from Rundell’s as they have high hopes of my further ducal patronage in the future.’
‘I imagine that they do.’ She tried to keep sarcasm from the words, but wondered if she had been successful as he turned to look at her sharply. She had not used such a thing before, the poor man’s version of humour, but tonight she could not help it. The chandelier above them gave the blurred appearance of light through water and it momentarily made her take in a deep breath.
All about her was a living, moving feast of life: five hundred people, myriad colours, the scent of fine food and the offer of expensive wine. Without thought her hand lifted to a long-stemmed crystal glass on the silver platter a footman had just presented to the party and if Richard frowned at her choice he had at least the sense not to say anything.
She seldom drank alcohol, but the orgeat lemonade tonight held no allure at all. It looked like the water of the Thames somehow, cloudy, cold and indistinct. She swallowed the wine like a person finding a waterhole in the middle of an endless desiccated African desert and reached out for another. Her mother shook her head even as Richard set his bottom teeth against his top ones and tried to smile. The glint of anger in his eyes was back.
But it was so good, this quiet escape that took the edge off a perpetual panic and made everything more bearable. Even the gaudy new bracelet twinkling in the light started to have more appeal.
The beginnings of the three-point tune of a waltz filled the air around them and when her betrothed took her arm and led her into the dance she allowed him the privilege. His closeness was not the problem it would have been ten minutes earlier and she wondered if perhaps she had been too harsh on a man who after all had always loved her and had failed to learn to swim.
The feel of him was known, his short brown hair well cut and groomed, the smell of an aftershave that held notes of bergamot and musk.
‘You look very pretty, Sephora, and more like yourself.’ This time his smile was genuine and she saw in him for a moment the boy whom she had grown up with and played with, though his next words burst that nostalgic bubble completely. ‘I do think, though, that you should refrain from imbibing any more wine.’
‘Refrain when I have barely begun to feel its effect?’
‘You have had two full glasses already, my dearest heart, and you are now in some danger of flippancy.’
‘Flippancy?’ She rolled the word on her tongue and liked it. She had never been flippant. She had always been serious and composed and polite until she had fallen headlong into that river and discovered things about herself that she could no longer hide.
For just a second she thought she loathed her intended groom with such ferocity she might well indeed have simply hit him. But the moment passed and she was herself again, chastised by the impulse and made impotent by fright.
Who was that inside of her? What crouched below the quiet and ladylike bearing that was her more usual demeanour and appearance, the lemon silk in her gown, the curls in her hair, the dainty bejewelled slippers upon her feet?
She had a headache, she did, a searing terrible headache that made her sick and dizzy. Richard in a rare moment of empathy recognised the fact and led her over to a chair near the wall apart from the others and made her sit down.
‘Stay here whilst I find your mother, Sephora. You do not look well at all.’
She could only nod and watch him go, the slight form of him disappearing amongst the crowd to be replaced by a man she recognised instantly.
‘You.’ Hardly mannerly, desperately said. The sound came from her in a whisper as Francis St Cartmail stood alone in front of her.
‘I am glad to see you much recovered, Lady Sephora. I am sorry I did not stay to see to your welfare after...’ The earl stopped.
‘My drowning?’ She supplied the ending for him and he smiled. It made his face softer somehow, the scar on his left cheek curled into a smaller shape and her three scratches on his right almost disappearing into a deep dimple.
‘Hardly a drowning. More a case of getting wet, I think.’
Simple words that she needed. Words that took away the terror and the hugeness of all that had transpired. He was even looking at her with humour in his eyes. Sephora wanted him to keep on talking, but he didn’t, though the stillness that fell between them was as distinct as any conversation.
‘Thank you,’ she finally managed.
‘You are welcome,’ he returned and then he was gone, Richard in his stead with her mother, her face creased in worry and remorse.
‘I should never have let you come. I shall have a good word with the doctor after this and tell him that it was much too soon and that...’
The words rattled on, but Sephora had ceased to listen. She was safe again, she knew it.
Hardly a drowning. More a case of getting wet, I think.
She suddenly knew that Francis St Cartmail would never have let her drown, not in a million years. He would have jumped in and saved her had the depth of the water been ten feet or twenty. He would have dragged her across a current many times more dangerous or a river fifty times as wide if he had had to.
Because he could.
Because she believed that he could, this enigmatic and unusual earl with his wide shoulders and steel-strong arms.
The relief of it was so startling she could barely breathe. She smiled at the thought. Breath was the one thing she did have now here in the Hadleighs’ ballroom under thirty or more elegant chandeliers and an orchestra of violinists beating out a waltz.
She was alive and well. The spark inside her had not been quenched entirely and was at this very moment bursting into a tiny flaring flame of revival.
She could not believe it.
Francis St Cartmail’s smile was beautiful and the cabochon ring on his finger was exactly as she remembered it. His voice was deep and kind and his eyes were hazel, like the leaves fallen in a forest after a particularly cold autumn, all of the shades of ruin.
And people watched him, carefully, uncertainly, the wave of faces following him holding both fear and awe and another emotion, too. Wonderment, if she might name it as he stalked alone through a sea of colour and wearing only a deep swathe of unbroken black.
She hoped there was someone here he might find a shelter with, some friend who would throw off the ton’s interest with as much nonchalance as he did himself, but he was lost to sight and her mother and Richard observed her closely.
She did not want to go home now. She wished to stay here so that she might catch sight of the Earl of Douglas again and hope that another conversation might eventuate.
He’d smelt like soap and lemon and cleanness, the crisp odour of washed male having the effect of bringing Sephora quickly to her feet.
Her worried mother took her hand.
‘Would you like some supper, my dear? Perhaps if you ate something you might feel better?’
Food was the last thing she truly wanted, but some sort of destination solved the problem of simply standing there dumbstruck, so she nodded.
* * *
After that most unusual exchange Francis went to join Gabriel Hughes leaning against a pillar on one side of the room. ‘Was she what you expected?’
‘You speak of Lady Sephora, I presume?’
‘Cat and mouse does not suit you, Francis. I saw you talking to her. What did you think?’
‘She is smaller than I remember her and paler. She is also frightened.’
‘Of what?’
‘I think she was sure she was going to drown and has suffered since for it. She thanked me for saving her.’
‘And that’s all that she said?’
‘Well, there was some silence, too.’
‘The stunned silence of Perseus falling in love with the drowning Andromeda?’ Gabriel’s tone held a good deal of humour in it that Francis ignored.
‘She fell off a bridge, for God’s sake. She was not chained to a rock waiting to be devoured by sea monsters.’
‘Still, one must feel a certain connection when a soul is saved. I would imagine something along the lines of the life debt in honour-bound cultures, so to speak.’
‘A heavy price, if that’s the case? I did not see such in the eyes of Sephora Connaught, though they are surprisingly blue.’
Gabriel nodded. ‘And young men have written sonnets about those orbs. The number of her suitors is legendary, though she has turned each and every one of them down.’
‘For the marquis?’ He didn’t want to ask the question, but found himself doing so.
‘Winslow fancies himself as something of an example others should be copying in both dress and manner, I think. He is said to be somewhat pompous and arrogant in his dealings with people.’
‘Well, he looks fairly harmless.’ Glancing across the room to where the young lord stood, Francis saw that Sephora Connaught was tucked in beside him.
‘Harmless but controlling. See how he positions himself at her elbow. Adelaide said that if I were to ever constantly hover like the Marquis of Winslow does, she would simply shove me in the ribs.’
‘Perhaps Lady Sephora enjoys it?’
‘I think she allows it because she has never known differently.’
Sephora Connaught’s profile was caught against the light—a small turned-up nose, sculptured brow and cheekbones that were high. Her pallor was almost white.
‘From all accounts Winslow congratulated himself quite heartily on his organisation at the riverside, but his bride-to-be does not look quite herself tonight. Perhaps she does not concur to the same opinion. Perhaps she wishes he had thrown caution to the wind and made the more solid gesture of self-sacrifice by jumping in after her.’
‘Stop teasing, Gabe.’ Adelaide swiped her husband’s arm. ‘It was a scary and dangerous situation and I am certain everyone tried to do their best. Even the marquis for all his pedantic and fussy ways.’
But Francis was not so sure. ‘No, I think Gabe has the gist of him. Winslow sent me a card the next day. While he made an art form of thanking me for my help, he also implied that further correspondence with Lady Sephora would be most unwelcome. He did not want her bothered by any maudlin recount of the incident, he stated, and hoped I had put the whole nonsense behind me because he certainly had.’
‘So you are now to be an inconsequential saviour? A man to be barely thanked?’ Gabriel looked like he wanted to go over and knock Allerly’s head off his shoulders.
‘Winslow’s father is ill so perhaps that is weighing heavily upon him.’ Adelaide frowned as she added this to the conversation. ‘It is, however, hard to imagine what a woman like Sephora Connaught might see in such a man.’
‘She grew up with him,’ Gabriel said. ‘Both families are friends with strong ties and all adhere to the expectations of old tradition, so I am sure the parents are more than pleased with their daughter’s choice of husband.’
As they watched, Sephora’s well-endowed mother, Lady Aldford, towed her away and he observed those around giving their greetings. What was it in the young woman that intrigued him? She was the ton’s favourite daughter, a woman who had managed to snag one of the loftiest catches of the Season without even a hint of criticism from anybody. People admired her. She was everything that was good and true and honest and she was beautiful along with it. Cursing, Francis turned away and was pleased when a passing footman offered around a new tray of drinks.
