Читать книгу Marriage Made In Hope - Sophia James - Страница 11
ОглавлениеAn hour later Francis was standing by one of the tall and opened windows at the less crowded end of the room. He wished he could have gone outside to enjoy a cheroot, but oft-times at other balls he had been waylaid in the gardens by women wanting to share more than a word with him. Tonight he did not wish to chance it.
A hand on his arm had him turning and Sephora Connaught stood beside him, a look of pleading on her face and her voice low.
‘I am glad to have this small fortune of finding you alone, Lord Douglas. I have written you a letter, you see, which I should have given you before when we spoke. The marquis let me know he had sent a card with our thanks, but I wanted the same chance myself.’
She bent to extract a paper from her reticule and handed it over. ‘Don’t read it until you are home. Promise me.’
With that she was gone, tagging on the back of a group of giggling women walking past, her mother to the other side of the procession.
The older lady caught his glance at that moment and held it, steely anger overlying puzzlement. Tipping his head at her, Francis turned, the letter from her daughter held tightly in his hand.
* * *
Sephora hoped she had done the right thing by giving him her missive. Please God, do not let him show it to his friends so that they might all laugh at her, she prayed, as her mother’s arm came through hers and Richard joined them.
She had not been able to leave Francis St Cartmail’s bravery to the ministration of Richard’s thanks. She owed him some sort of personal expression of her gratitude and her relief.
The fact that she hoped he might reply, however, made her squeeze her jaw together and grimace. It was the look in his eyes, she thought, that had convinced her to approach him, that and the blazing scar upon his cheek. He’d been hurt badly and she did not wish that for him. Even the scratches she had placed there herself were still visible.
Unfortunately she knew her mother had seen her speaking with the earl, but Elizabeth would say nothing of it within Richard’s hearing distance. Maria was chattering away and laughing and Sephora was so very glad for her sister’s joy in life. She wondered where her own joy had gone, but did not at that particular moment wish to dissect such a notion.
Over against the pillars on the other side of the room the number of beautiful women around Francis St Cartmail seemed to have multiplied. She recognised Alice Bailey and Cate Haysom-Browne, two of the most fêted debutantes of this Season, and both were using their fans with the practised coquetry of females who knew their worth.
‘Have you enjoyed the night, Sephy?’ Her father was beside them now and his pet name for her made her smile.
‘I have, Papa.’
‘Then it is good to see you happy after your awful fright.’
Just a fright now? She frowned at his terminology, thinking her parents had no idea of the true state of her mind.
‘The marquis has decided to stay on for a while, but we thought to head for home. Richard has people to connect with, I suppose, now that his father is sick.’
‘You saw the duke a few days ago. How does he fare?’
‘Not so well, I am afraid. He and your Aunt Josephine are retiring to the country. I hope that he will at least get to experience the occasion of his only son’s wedding in November before...’
He stopped at that and a constricting guilt of worry tightened about Sephora’s throat. Uncle Jeffrey was a good man and he had only ever been kind to her, but she did not wish to shift her nuptials to Richard forward six months so that his father might live to see it. The very thought made her feel ill.
It was as if she stood on a threshold of change and to cross over it meant that she would never ever be able to come back. She was also unreasonably pleased that Richard would not be accompanying them homewards in the carriage this evening. Such a thought gave her cause to hesitate, but she could not explore the relief here in the glittering ballrooms of the ton.
Her mother was watching her closely and further afield she saw the wife of Lord Wesley, Adelaide Hughes, looking across at her with interest.
The cards of her life were changing, all stacked up in random piles, the joker here, the king of hearts there. A twist of fate and her hand might be completely different from the one that she had held on to so tightly and for so very many years.
The water beneath the Thames had set her free perhaps, with its sudden danger and its instant jeopardy. Always before this her life had flowed on a gentle certain course, barely a ripple, hardly a wave.
She was glad she had given Francis St Cartmail her letter, glad that she had mustered up the courage and seized the chance to do something so very out of character.
The Connaught wraps were found by the footman in the elegant entrance hall of the Hadleigh town house and moments later they were on their way home.
* * *
Francis poured himself a drink and opened the windows to one side of his library. Breathing in, he shut the door and reached for the pocket inside his jacket before sitting down behind his wide oaken desk.
The parchment was unmarked and sealed with a dab of red wax. There was no design embossed into it and no ribbons either. He brought the paper to his nose. The faint smell of some flower was there, but Sephora Connaught had not perfumed her letter in any way. It was as if the sheet of paper had simply caught the fragrance she wore and bore it to him.
He smiled at such fancy and at his deliberate slowness in opening it. Breaking the seal, he let the sheet of crisp paper unfold before him.
Francis St Cartmail...
Her written hand was small and neat, but she had made her ‘s’ longer in the tail than was normal so that they sat in long curls of elegance upon the page.
His entire name, too, without any title. A choice between too formal and too informal, he imagined, and read on.
I should like to thank you most sincerely for rescuing me from the river water. It was deep and cold and my clothes were very heavy. I should have learned to swim, I think, and then I could have at least tried to rescue myself. As it was, I was trapped by fear and panic.
This is mostly why I have written. I scratched you badly, I was told, on your cheek. My sister, Maria, made a point of relating to me the damage I had inflicted upon your person and I am certain the Marquis of Winslow would not have made it his duty to apologise for such a harm.
It is my guilt.
I think that this rescue was not easy for you either, for Maria said you looked most ill on exiting the water. I hope you have recovered. I hope it was not because I took the very last of your breath.
I also hope I might meet you again to give you this letter and that you will see in every word my sincere and utter gratitude.
Yours very thankfully,
Sephora Frances Connaught
Francis smiled at the inclusion of their shared name in the signature as he laid his finger over the word. He could not remember ever receiving a thank-you letter from anyone before and he liked to imagine her penning this note, each letter carefully placed on the page. Precise and feminine.
Did she know anything at all about him? Did she understand what others said of him with the persistent rumours of a past he could not be proud of?
Leaning forward, he smoothed out the sheet and read it again before folding it up and putting it back in his pocket, careful to anchor it in with the flap of the fabric’s opening. A commotion outside the room had him listening. It was late, past midnight and he could not understand who might arrive at his doorstep at this hour.
When the door flew open and a dishevelled and very angry young girl stood on the other side of it he knew exactly who she was.
‘Let me go.’ She pulled her arm away from the aged lawyer and stood there, breathing loudly.
‘Miss Anna Sherborne, I presume.’
Eyes the exact colour of his own flashed angrily, reminding Francis so forcibly of the Douglas mannerisms and temper he was speechless. Ignatius Wiggins stepped out from behind her.
‘I am sorry to be calling on you so late, my lord, but our carriage threw a wheel and it took an age to have it repaired. This is my final duty to Mr Clive Sherborne, Lord Douglas. On the morrow I leave for the north of England and my own kin in York and I will not be back to London. Miss Sherborne needs a home and a hearth. I hope you shall give her one as she has been summarily tossed out from her last abode with the parish minister.’
With that he left.
Francis gestured to the child to come further into the room and as she did so the light found her. She was small and very dark. He had not expected that, for both the mother and his uncle were fair.
She did not speak. She merely watched him, anger on her thin face and something else he could not quite determine. Shock, perhaps, at being so abandoned.
‘I am the Earl of Douglas.’
‘I know who you are. He told me, sir.’ Her voice was strangely inflected, a lilt across the last word.
Removing the signet ring from his finger, he placed it on the table between them. ‘Do you know this crest, Miss Sherborne?’
He saw her glance take in the bauble.
‘It has come to my notice that you have a locket wrought in gold with the same design embellished upon it. It was sent to you after you left the house of your father as a baby according to the papers I have been given.’
Now all he saw was confusion and the want to run and with care he replaced the signet ring on his finger and took in a breath.
‘You are the illegitimate daughter of the fourth Earl of Douglas, who was my uncle. Your mother was his...mistress for a brief time and you were the result.’ Francis wondered if he should have been so explicit, but surely a girl brought up in the sort of household the lawyer had taken pains in describing would not be prudish. Besides, it had all been written in black and white.
‘My mother did not stay around much. She had other friends and I was often just a nuisance. She never spoke of any earl.’
An arm came to rest upon a high-backed wing chair. Every nail was bitten and dirty and there was a healing injury on her middle finger.
‘Well, I promise here you will be well cared for. You have my word of honour as your cousin upon it. I will never ask you to leave.’
The shock that crossed her face told him she hadn’t had many moments of such faith in her young life and she was reeling hard in panic.
‘A word of honour don’t mean much where I come from, sir. Anyone can say anything and they do.’
‘Well, Anna, in this house one’s word means something. Remember that.’
When Mrs Wilson bustled into the room on his instructions a few moments later he asked that the girl be fed, bathed and put to bed, for even as he spoke he saw that Anna Sherborne was about to fall over with tiredness. If his housekeeper looked surprised by the turn of events she did not show it, merely taking the unexpected and bedraggled guest by the arm and leading her off towards the kitchens.
‘Come, dearie, we will find you something to eat for you have the look of the starved about you, mark my words, and in this house we cannot have that.’
When they were gone Francis’s hands moved to the tightening stock about his throat as he walked to stand beside the windows. He needed air and open spaces for already his breath was shortening.
In the matter of a few days his whole life seemed to be changing and reforming into something barely recognisable.
First, he seemed to have won the eternal gratitude of the ‘angel of the ton’ and now he was guardian to a child who gave all the impression of being ‘the spawn of the devil’.
Tomorrow he would need to find out more of Anna Sherborne’s story and try to piece together the truth about Clive Sherborne’s death.
But for now he finished his large glass of brandy and his fingers reached into the bottom pocket to feel for his letter. Pulling it out and straightening the paper, he began to read it yet again.
* * *
Sephora knew Francis St Cartmail would not write back. It had been days since the Hadleighs’ ball and she understood the difficulties in receiving a letter as an unmarried woman. Still, part of her hoped the earl might have done so clandestinely via a maid. But nothing had come.
Maria had insisted that they walk after lunch and although Sephora hadn’t wanted to come this way she found herself on a path by the Thames, her sister’s arm firmly entwined in her own.
‘You look peaky, Sephora, and Mama is worried that you might never be right again. She has asked me to talk to you about the Earl of Douglas, for she thinks you might hold a penchant for him. She is certain that you gave him something the other night at the ball and I tried to tell her of course she is mistaken, but...’
‘I did.’
Maria’s words ground to a halt. ‘Oh.’
‘It was a letter. I wrote to him to say thank you...for saving me...for giving me breath...and to also say sorry for scratching his cheek so badly. The marks were inflamed and it was all my fault.’ Stopping the babble, she simply took in a breath. ‘I am glad I wrote.’
‘And Douglas has replied?’
Sephora shook her head hard and hated the tears that pooled at the back of her eyes. ‘No. I had been hoping he might, but, no.’
‘Does Richard know about any of this?’
‘That I sent a letter? Certainly not. He is...’ She stopped.
‘Possessive.’
‘Yes.’
‘How would Mama have known of it, then?’
‘She saw me speaking with him at the ball.’
‘You conversed with the Earl of Douglas? What did he say?’
‘He implied that he would not have let me drown and that it was only a small accident. I believed him.’
‘My God. He is...a hero. Like Orpheus trying to lead his beloved Eurydice back from death. The Underworld is exactly the same metaphor for the water and both rescues were completed with such risk...’
‘Stop it, Maria, and anyway Orpheus failed in his quest.’
Her sister’s laughter was worrying. ‘When Richard holds your hand do you hear music, Sephora? Do you feel warmth or lust or desire?’
‘To do what?’
‘You don’t?’ Her whisper held a tone of sheer horror. ‘And yet still you would consider marrying him? My God. You would throw your life away on nothing? Well, I shall not, Sephy. When I marry it shall be only for love. I swear it.’
Lust. Desire. Love. What pathway had Maria taken that she herself had missed? Where had her younger sister found these ideas that were so very...evocative?
‘I shall marry a man who would risk his life for me, a man who is brave and good and true. Money shall be nothing to me, or reputation. I shall make up my own mind without anybody telling me otherwise.’
‘There are stories about St Cartmail that are hardly salubrious, Maria.’ Sephora hated the censure she could hear in her words, but made herself carry on. ‘A good marriage needs a solid basis of friendship and trust. Like Mama and Papa.’
‘They barely talk to each other any more. Surely you have noticed that.’
‘Well, perhaps not lately, but...’ She made herself stop. Further along the river three men were walking towards them, three handsome men and one taller than the rest.
Lords Douglas, Montcliffe and Wesley, Francis St Cartmail’s hair jet black against the light of day. He had not seen them yet standing against the sun and she debated whether to stay or to flee.
All Sephora felt was sick, caught here between truth and falsity, skewered in the teeth of both hope and horror. She did not want this suddenness. She liked things orderly and controlled. This was all so wildly unexpected and so very worrying, but it was too late now to do anything other than brave out the encounter.
He hadn’t written back. Would she see the distaste he felt for her upon his face?
‘Smile, for God’s sake.’ Her sister’s hard whisper broke through fright and she did, pinning a ludicrous grin across her grinding teeth and beating heart.
‘Ladies.’ It was the Earl of Wesley who spoke first, the urbane smoothness of his words propping up all the pieces that were scattering. Sephora regathered her logic and straightened.
‘Lord Wesley.’ Her voice. Normal. She did not look at the Earl of Douglas. Not even once, but she felt him there, strong and solid.
‘It is only by good chance that we wandered this way.’ Gabriel Hughes looked smug as he said this. ‘Montcliffe wished to have a view of the river.’
Aunt Susan, her father’s sister, had caught them up by now, arriving from a good ten yards back with her maid and a severe countenance. She gave the impression of a mother goose about to do battle, but also sensing the high standing of its opponents.
Daniel Wylde, the Earl of Montcliffe, unexpectedly took her aunt’s hand into his own and led her off to the side a little. Wesley seemed most intent on asking her sister questions about the weather of late, a topic she was certain he held no abiding interest in, which left her alone with Francis St Cartmail.
‘I must compliment you on your letter, Lady Sephora. I have seldom been thanked with such profuse gratitude.’
His patronage made her prickly given he had not written back. ‘Well, my lord, I have never been rescued with such valour and gallantry.’
‘A stellar state of affairs then for us both, such a mutual admiration.’ He smiled and the mirth touched the hazel in his eyes, lightening the darkness.
At his jesting, Sephora blushed a bright red, the colour sweeping into her cheeks and down onto her neck where no doubt it clashed violently with the pastel pink of her day dress.
She had always been so certain in every social situation, so very good at small talk and mindless repartee. For the four years since her arrival in society she had been measured and polite and self-effacing. She had never uttered a wrong word or a hurtful reply to anyone before. She had been careful and godly and good. But not today. Today some other part of her long hidden surfaced.
‘Are you teasing me, my lord? Because if you are I should like to say the incident for me was beyond frightening. I thought I should not survive it, you see, and although I waited and hoped for a reply you failed to send one.’
Oh, my goodness, why had she blurted that out? She could even hear a note of pleading in her tone.
‘I am certain your mother would not approve of any correspondence or indeed the—’
He stopped and she imagined it was Richard’s name he was about to utter, but the conversation of the others came back to encroach upon theirs. Aunt Susan was giving her goodbyes and, seeing such intent, St Cartmail did the same, walking on amongst the greenery without looking back.
‘Well, I have to say that was a lovely surprise, would you not agree, girls. I knew Lord Montcliffe as a young boy, you understand, as his mother and I were good friends, God bless her soul. I thought he may not have remembered me, but...well.’ She smiled. ‘He certainly seemed to.’
Maria squeezed Sephora’s hand and they dropped back from the company of their aunt and her maid as soon as they were able.
‘St Cartmail made you blush in a spectacular way...’
‘Shh. Do not say a thing to Mama about this, Maria, or about my talking to the Earl of Douglas.’
‘A bit late for that I think, sister dear. Aunt Susan will probably self-combust with the news the moment we reach home.’
‘But if Mama asks you...’
‘I will say we met their party purely by chance and enjoyed a quick and formal greeting.’ Her eyes glanced down. ‘Richard has not replaced your lost ring?’
Sephora shook her head and closed her hand across the lack of it, glad that her intended had not as yet noticed it missing. Something stopped her from simply marching into Rundell’s and seeking a replacement herself for she had a good deal of personal money at her own disposal. But she hadn’t. She had not wanted to feel the ring there with its physical promise of forever winding about her finger. The troth of being bound to a man whose anger seemed to be rising monthly and who seemed more and more demanding of setting an earlier date for their wedding was also disturbing. The only true emotions she felt now for her big day were harried and scrambled. She was glad it was still so far away.
* * *
Richard was waiting for her when they arrived home, his smile giving Sephora more than a frisson of guilt. He looked tired today, heavy shadows beneath both eyes and the lines on each side of his mouth marked.
‘I had hoped to walk with you, my angel, but was held up.’ The endearment she had once liked now only sounded foolish and feeble and she had to stop herself pulling away as he took her hand in his and brought it to his lips. ‘But I must say the exercise seems to have brought colour to your cheeks and you are looking even more beautiful than you usually do. I hardly deserve such fairness.’
Maria’s laugh was not kind and Sephora was glad when her sister excused herself and disappeared upstairs.
Richard observed her departure. ‘Maria is often morose, I fear, and I am glad you hold none of her countenance. I cannot even imagine how she will find a husband who could abide such dourness.’
The laughing, teasing truth of her sister came fully to mind as Sephora pulled away. Dour and morose were the very last words she would have used to describe Maria.
She was also aware of some dull and nagging pain that had settled in her chest, a heaviness that held her frozen. Even with a glance Francis St Cartmail could bring the blood to her skin, an energy bolt of feeling and frightening possibility that infused every piece of her body with a response. Richard had kissed her hand and all she had wished to do was to be free of him, to follow her sister upstairs and think about her meeting today with the Earl of Douglas in all its minute detail.
But the wedding preparations for their November celebration were going ahead. She even had the first fitting for her gown scheduled in at the end of the following month.
Trapped and breathless. The thought did come that she could simply run away and not have to face it. She was almost twenty-three, hardly a young girl, and wealthy in her own right, for her grandmother had bequeathed her a prosperous estate in the north as well as leaving her a generous cash settlement. The thought of just disappearing held a beguiling promise, but Richard was speaking again and she made herself listen.
‘My father has asked that I bring you to visit him. He has stayed in town for a few days seeing a doctor. If it suited you, we could go now for I have a meeting in the mid-afternoon that I need to attend.’
She could hardly refuse to visit a man who had expressly asked for her company and so gesturing to her aunt that they would again be going out, she followed Richard to the waiting carriage, glad when Susan made no argument about accompanying them as chaperone.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later she sat with the Duke of Winbury in the sunny downstairs chamber of the ducal town house. He looked a little worse than last time she had seen him, more lethargic and less comfortable. There was a tinge to his skin, too, that worried Sephora and she was glad that her aunt and Richard had repaired to the other end of the sitting room, leaving them a little time alone. She had always liked Richard’s father and perhaps in truth that was a small part of why she had agreed to marry his son in the first place.
He took her hand and his skin was cold.
‘You look sad, my dear, and you have been so for a while now. Is everything all right in your world?’
‘It is, Uncle Jeffrey.’ She had called him such ever since she could remember, her parents and Richard’s the very best of friends. ‘I had a walk in the early afternoon with Maria and then arrived back home to find Richard at our doorstep delivering your message.’
‘He is a busy man, is he not, with his politics and his desire to make a difference? Too busy to walk with you in the sunshine, perhaps? Too busy to smell the flowers and look up into the sky?’ He smiled at her surprise. ‘When illness strikes and you are suddenly confronted with the notion that the years you thought you had are no longer quite so lengthy, there is a propensity to look back and wonder.’
‘Wonder?’
‘Wonder if you should have lived more fully, made braver choices, taken risks.’
His voice was weakening with the effort of such dialogue and he stopped for a moment to simply breathe. ‘Once I used to think the right path lay in work and social endeavour, too, just as Richard does. But now I wish I had seen the Americas and sailed the oceans. I would have liked to have stood on the bow of a sailing ship, the breeze of foreign lands blowing in my face, heard other languages, eaten different foods.’
Sephora’s fingers tightened around Jeffrey’s. It was as if this conversation lay on two levels, the spoken edge of truth hiding beneath each particular word. She did not want to be one day wishing her life had been other than what it was and yet here already she was considering other pathways, different turnings.
Could Richard’s father feel this? Was he warning her? Uncle Jeffrey had asked for a moment alone and this was something he had not done before.
‘You are a good girl, Sephora, a girl of honour, a girl any man would be proud to call his daughter. But...’ At this he leaned forward and she did, too. ‘Make certain you get what you need in life. Goodness should not mean missing out on the passion of it all.’
A coughing fit took him then and a servant on the far side of the room hurried forward to deal with his panic. Richard also came towards them, pulling back a little as if he did not wish for the reminder of sickness or for the messiness of it. He did not venture further forward, but waited for her to rise and come to him.
‘I think we should go, Sephora.’ He made a point of drawing his fob watch out and looking at the time. A busy man and important.
‘Of course.’
Going back to Jeffrey, she explained their need to depart whilst Richard stayed at the doorway impatient to be gone. Her husband-to-be took her hand as she came up to him and placed her fingers firmly across his arm.
Mine.
The word came hollow and cold, an echo of uncertainty blooming even as she acquiesced and allowed him to lead her out.
* * *
Sephora dreamed that night of the water. She felt it around her face, the coldness and the dark, sinking and letting go.
In this dream, though, she did not panic. In this dream she could breathe in liquids like a fish and simply watch the beauty of the below, the colours, the shapes, the silence and the escape. Her hands did not close over her face and Francis St Cartmail did not dive in from above and give her the air of life, his tightly bound lips across her own.
No, in this dream she simply was. Dying, being, living, it was all the same. She felt the shift of caring like a scorching iron running across bare skin, changing all that was before to what it was now. And Uncle Jeffrey was there, too, beside her, sinking, smiling as he lifted his face to a breeze inside the water. Foreign lands and different shores.
Nothing made sense and yet all of it did. Permission to live did not only come from another saving your life, it also came from within, from a place that was hope and hers.
She woke with tears on her face and got out of bed to stand by the window and watch a waning moon. Once a long time ago she had often sat observing the stars and the heavens, but that was just another thing that had fallen by the wayside.
Once she had written a lot, too, poems, stories and plays, and it was only as she got older and Richard had laughed at her paltry attempts that she had stopped. She had not only stopped, but she had thrown them all away, those early heartfelt lines, and here at this moment she felt the loss keenly.
When had life begun to frighten her? When had she become the woman she was? The one who allowed Richard to make all the decisions and bided by all his wants and needs? He was a marquis now, but his father was ill. How much worse would it be when he became the Duke of Winbury?
She wiped away the tears that fell down across her cheeks because the thought of being his duchess made her only want to cry.
She felt vulnerable with such a loss of identity and at a quandary as to how to change it. If she talked to him of her feelings, what would she say? Even to get the words making sense would be difficult and he was so very good at laughing at the insecurities of others.
She was also more frightened of him than she had ever been, frightened of his overbearingness and his lack of compassion. Even with his father today he had been distracted, impatient even, and she had seen a look of complete indifference as Jeffrey had coughed and struggled for breath.
Her touchstones were moving, becoming fragmented. She no longer believed in herself or in Richard and the thought of marrying him no longer held the sense of wonder it once had. But still, was it her near-drowning that had brought things so dreadfully into focus, the want for a perfection that was as unreal as it was impossible?
She rubbed at the bare skin on the third finger of her left hand and prayed to God for an answer.
* * *
Francis spent the next few days going through every file his uncle had kept on the Sherborne family and there were many. He’d had them brought down from the attic, the dusty tomes holding much in the way of background on both Clive Sherborne and his unfaithful wife. There was little information on the child, however, a fact that Francis found surprising.
Anna Sherborne herself was languishing against the stairwell as he walked up to instruct his men which new boxes he wanted brought down. Her hair had been cut, he noticed, bluntly and with little expertise. It hung in ill-shorn lengths about her face.
‘Did Mrs Wilson cut your hair?’
‘No.’ The word was almost spat out. ‘Why would she?’
‘You did it yourself, then?’ His cousin sported tresses a good twelve inches shorter than she had done yesterday and her expression was guarded.
An unprepossessing child, angry and diffident. He sat himself down on the step at her level and looked at her directly, the thought suddenly occurring to him that he might find out a lot more of Clive Sherborne’s life from questioning her than he ever could from the yellowing paper in boxes.
‘Was Clive a good father to you, Anna?’
Uncertainly the girl nodded and without realising it Francis let out his breath.
‘Better than my mother at least. He was there often. At home, I mean, and he took me with him most places.’
‘Did you have other brothers or sisters?’
‘No.’
‘Aunts. Uncles. Grandparents.’
‘No.’
‘Did Clive drink?’
She stiffened and stepped back. ‘Why do you ask that?’
‘Because he died in a warehouse full of brandy.’
One ripe expletive and she was gone, the thin nothingness of her disappearing around the corner of the dim corridor. But Francis had seen something of tragedy in her eyes before she could hide it, a memory he thought, a recollection so terrible it had lightened the already pale colour of her cheeks.
He took me with him most places. God, could the man have taken her there to the warehouse and to his appointment with death? Had she seen his killer? Had she seen the only man she knew as a father die? He shook his head and swore again roundly. At his uncle and at her mother. At the unfairness of the hovel Anna had been brought up in, at the loneliness and the squalor. She was angry, belligerent and difficult because in all her life it seemed no one except the hapless Clive Sherborne had taken the time to get to know her, to look after her. And now she was abandoned again into a place where she felt no belonging, no sense of safety, no security.
She’d cut her hair as a statement. No one can love me. I am uncherished and unwanted. His hands fisted in his lap as he swallowed away fury.
Well, he would see about that. Indeed, he would.
