The girls laughed.
‘Received or not, it doesn’t stop her from gathering all the men’s attention. First Wenderly and his money, and tonight she’s stolen away handsome Lord Taunton,’ one girl said with a pout.
‘It’s easy to steal a man when one has loose morals. All the Italians do,’ the more worldly girl responded with derision.
‘She’s English,’ came the reminder.
‘Not really. My mother says she’s been gone for ten years.’
‘I wish she’d go back. She already has a husband and a title. It’s not fair for her to ruin our chances.’
‘She can’t go back.’ The girl’s voice dropped to indicate the degree of scandal in what she was about to say. ‘My mother says she’s divorced.’
Divorced. The word shimmered in the night, nearly a palpable ghost between them. The scandal was revealed. The veil of illusion torn. Her blemish was exposed.
Conall could see Sofia pale with mortification in the moonlight. ‘Perhaps we should go in and find Helena.’ Although he was torn between doing that and vaulting the balustrade and taking those girls in hand. They needed a scolding.
Sofia shook her head and said quietly, ‘No, don’t bother Helena. I think it would be best if I just went home.’
‘Of course. I’ll call for my carriage and have it out front,’ Conall offered.
‘I can find my own way, it’s not necessary.’
‘No.’ Conall stalled her with a hand on her arm. ‘I will see you home safely, end of discussion.’
The ride home was a silent one. What was there to say? Her secret was out. Sofia was mortified, not only at the girls, but at her own foolishness. How quickly she’d bought in to the illusion she’d created, the pretence that she could belong for a night! And how glorious it had been to live in that illusion, to feel lovely in her blue dress, to dance with a man who treated her like a princess. Her first instinct had been right. She should not have come.
She’d not realised how hungry she’d been for that kind of contact, for connection. He’d asked for nothing except her company. She’d been able to forget for a little while about business, about the obstacle of her past, until those two girls had brought it all back to her, a reminder that she could never truly forget. Society wouldn’t let her. To be fair, even if the girls hadn’t been so blunt, the damage had already been done. She’d seen the looks from the strolling couples and Lord Taunton had, too. This was the second time in his company that scandal had found her. Tonight, however, he was playing the gentleman, allowing her silence, as he sat across from her in his immaculate dark evening clothes, every bit as handsome as the rumours gave him credit for, and a symbol of all she couldn’t have even if she wanted it. She did not wish to marry again, she reminded herself firmly.
The carriage came to a stop in the narrow street before her home. Conall leapt down and halted. Something preternatural in his posture had her on alert. ‘What is it?’ She moved to the carriage door, determined to get out.
‘Stay inside the carriage, Sofia,’ he urged, waving her back with his hand while he moved forward towards danger. ‘Something seems amiss.’
The clouds parted and the moon shone through, confirming Conall’s suspicions. A window pane was broken, the moonlight reflecting off its jagged edge. ‘No!’ Sofia climbed down, racing along the walkway to her door. Conall grabbed for her, catching her about the waist, but she would not be set aside.
‘It’s my house,’ she ground out. But her fear was rising. There was more than one broken pane and the door she’d firmly locked when she’d left to join Helena looked ajar.
‘If you won’t stay in the carriage, then stay behind me,’ Conall instructed. ‘Whoever did this might still be here.’ Gingerly, he pushed the door open and Sofia gasped. Inside, furniture lay broken, shards of glass and porcelain peppered the floor. Drawers were pulled out from cabinets, their contents strewn about the front parlour.
She should have come home sooner. A hundred recriminations went through her mind. This was her fault. She might as well have hung a sign on her door. Chelsea wasn’t unsafe, exactly, but it wasn’t Mayfair either. Thugs could have been watching the house and, knowing she was gone, taken the opportunity to break in.
Conall stepped forward, footsteps crunching on the glass. He grabbed up a chair leg, brandishing it like a club. Methodically, he went through each room, broad shoulders filling each doorway, makeshift club at the ready to deal out justice. At the stairs, she watched him go up, her own hands trembling as they fumbled to light the remnants of a lamp.
Light only made it worse. Her favourite tea cup, smashed. A sweet porcelain statue of a dog, shattered. The cushion of her favourite chair where she’d sit by the window and sew, ripped apart, the stuffing littering the floor. The pages of her books torn out. Nothing remained unsullied.
Conall came downstairs, his expression grim. ‘It’s the same throughout.’ He let out a breath. ‘Does anything seem to be missing?’ he asked hopefully.
‘No.’ Her hand shook hard as her brain began to register consciously what it already knew. This was more than a break in. It was wanton destruction. Thieves took things. Thieves didn’t risk breaking into a home to take nothing. She felt faint, numb with the realisation. The lamp slipped from her hand.
Conall rescued the lamp before she dropped it, all efficient action. He took charge, or was it that he stayed in charge? He’d been in charge since the moment the girls had whispered about her in the bushes at Cowden’s. He got her through the next horrible minutes. He found her the remnants of a chair to sit on with its ruined cushion. He lit a fire from the furniture shards. He rummaged in the kitchen for a pot and her bottle of medicinal brandy and put it over the fire to warm. He put the little pan of brandy in her hands, lacking a cup. ‘Drink, you will feel better, I promise. Milk would be best, but at least you’ll be warmer.’ He squatted beside her, steadying the pot in her hand with his own wrapped warm and firm about hers.
‘I haven’t been home. Milk would sour. This is my fault. I left for too long.’ She’d left and far more had gone bad besides milk.
Conall took the pan from her. ‘No, Sofia, this is not the work of thugs. You know that.’ Ah, so he’d come to the same conclusions, too. ‘Whoever did this was looking for something, or someone, and when they didn’t find it, they wanted to make sure you knew they’d been here.’
And so they’d destroyed her life, the precious life she’d built so carefully, piece by piece, dish by dish, cup by cup, for three years. There was only one man who would do such a thing, who would take joy in such a thing. Sofia began to shake again. There wasn’t enough warm brandy in the world to comfort her now. Giancarlo was actively hunting her. His patience with his unreturned letters was wearing thin. How thin? Was he here already? Or was this the work of his minions? Of his personal manservant, Andelmo? Just the thought of the name caused her to shiver. How many times had that hulking thug of a man been a witness, a participant even, in her humiliation? If Il Marchese had sent him, it was serious.
Conall shrugged off his coat and put it around her. ‘Let’s get you back to Cowden’s. In the morning, we’ll sort all of this out and see what can be saved and then we’ll start looking for who did this.’ He held her gaze with his steady grey eyes, his hands running up and down her arms in an attempt to warm her, soothe her, this man who knew her scandal, who owed her nothing. ‘There will be justice for this.’
Sofia’s brain started work again. They could not stay here. They could not come here again. ‘No. There is nothing to save and we have train tickets tomorrow for Somerset.’ It was suddenly imperative to her fear-driven mind that she get as far away from here as possible. Giancarlo, or whoever had done this, was probably counting on her to come and paw through the rubble. Perhaps they had stayed too long already. Was he watching the house even now? How long had they been here? Twenty minutes? She shot a
glance at the unguarded door, half-expecting to see Giancarlo come through it, pistol waving. He would shoot Taunton for the sport of it. She’d seen him do it before, to a poor boy who’d had the misfortune to look too long at her at a picnic. He’d ended up with a knee that would never bend quite right again and she’d ended up with a riding crop across her backside for having supposedly enticed him.
Sofia struggled to her feet, lurching unsteadily in her fright and shock. Conall caught her and she resisted the urge to fall into his arms entirely, to lay this whole mess on his broad, willing shoulders. ‘Just take me back to Cowden’s, please.’ She couldn’t keep the urgency out of her voice. She had to get them away. She would grieve for the loss of her sanctuary later. Right now, all that mattered was getting to safety and then getting on the train and out of London.
Chapter Six
The Flying Dutchman chugged out of Paddington station promptly at nine-fifty the next morning for its four-and-a-half-hour run to Exeter, stopping at Taunton, Conall’s family seat, along the way. Conall slid the door to their private compartment closed, shutting out the noise of happy travellers making their way to the spas and seaside of the south-east as the train lurched towards full speed.
‘It’s not called the Holiday Express without cause,’ he joked, trying to instil some of the outside levity into the decidedly more sombre atmosphere inside their compartment. ‘It’s Bedlam out there. You must have worked magic to get private accommodations on short notice.’ Then again, the holiday revellers hadn’t had their homes destroyed or their darkest scandal exposed in the most public way possible.
‘It was nothing a smile and kindness couldn’t achieve.’ Sofia glanced up from her efforts to settle in. ‘You’re happy to be going home,’ she observed with a smile that was over-bright and did not match the shadows beneath her eyes. Conall saw her game too easily. She wanted to pretend last night hadn’t happened, that the girls’ words didn’t matter or exist between them. But this time a smile would not achieve her aims. He would not be distracted.
‘Are we not to speak of last night, then?’ Conall asked bluntly. Sometimes it was best to address the elephant in the room. He had four hours to learn her secrets. It had been a blow last night to hear the word ‘divorce’. For a man who had strict criteria about whom he needed to marry, it was a firmly pounded nail in the coffin of his nascent fantasies. Part of him didn’t want to know empirically that this marvellous creature across from him was unattainable. There was a certain freedom in not knowing the precise scandal attached to her. With precision came limitations, boundaries that could not be crossed.
‘Why? It has no bearing on your business with Barnham.’ Her response was politely cool. Her gaze was steady, but her façade was no longer foolproof. ‘I assume Cowden told you about my alias? I instructed him to use it if it became necessary. It will protect you from any association with me if it comes to that.’
‘You needn’t hide your divorce from me for that exact reason. You’re right, it has no bearing on our business. I am perhaps the one person you can talk to about it, if you would like?’ He watched her process that bit of information, her hands tight in her lap. Today, she wore a pale-blue travelling costume with lavender accents that brought out her eyes—eyes that bore the shadows of a sleepless night. Despite the shadows, she was still lovely. Her colour had returned and she was valiantly trying to put the terror of the burglary behind her. The burglary had shaken her deeply, far more than she liked to let on. But he’d seen her in the immediate moments after the discovery, he’d seen her hands tremble as they held the pan of brandy. He knew better than to believe the calm outward demeanour she wanted to present this morning. ‘Secrets only have power because they’re secrets; things that have to be hidden.’
‘My divorce is not a secret, as last night so clearly demonstrated. Even the newest of debutantes knew about it. It’s a scandal. If you must know, Il Marchese di Cremona and I divorced three years ago. Ever since then, that particular distinction has followed me with the dogged tenacity of a loyal hound, only less welcome.’
‘I am sorry,’ he said carefully into the silence between them, although he thought the words might be wrong. What did one say to a divorcee? It was a social death. It put a woman into a half-life. It separated her from her husband and thus from society. No one would receive her, but what was the point of being received anyway? She might not even be eligible to remarry, legally or socially. Some laws forbade a divorced spouse to remarry.
‘I am not sorry,’ she answered plainly. ‘It was not a happy marriage and I was glad to be rid of him at any cost. He is in Italy; I am here. I have the freedom to do as I please as long as I don’t offend society with my presence. It’s a fair trade.’
‘Freedom at the price of isolation?’ Conall prodded. Socially, there were very few who could take on a wife with that stigma. An affaire would be her only recourse for an intimate relationship. In short, divorce forced a woman to choose to live as a nun or, by social standards, as a whore, going from affair to affair, or perhaps becoming a man’s mistress. No wonder she was lonely. No one but the Wenderlys of the world could claim her. No one else would dare defy convention.
* * *
She smiled coldly. ‘Is this to be a four-hour interrogation?’ The smile didn’t quite conceal the bite of her words. ‘I wasn’t aware I needed to be interviewed.’ It was a reminder that he’d come to her. He had sought out the one investor who had not voted against his proposal.
‘And your approval is all I need,’ Conall answered with a smile of his own. They could make a war out of smiles if she wished. He had no intention of backing down, gentleman or not, no matter how badly he needed the money. ‘I merely wished to know more about my travelling companion and potential business partner. That hardly qualifies as an interrogation, Marchesa.’
‘It is hardly necessary, is what it is. My divorce does not define me,’ she reprimanded sharply, taking no pains to soften her blows in her rejoinder. She reached in her travelling satchel for a book. ‘My personal life is hardly worth your concern. I am an investor, just like any other.’
‘If you’re just an investor, you are the most intriguing investor I’ve yet to meet—burglaries and blue ball gowns notwithstanding,’ Conall mused.
He couldn’t resist goading her—perhaps if she were goaded enough she might reveal a bit more of herself. He began to enumerate her points of intrigue on his fingers. ‘A woman using a man’s alias to conduct business, a woman who—’
‘A woman? Is that all you see?’ she interrupted. ‘Cowden led me to believe I might expect better of you. He said your sister was quite a proponent of women’s rights,’ she scolded. ‘I am a woman. A divorced one. Do people tally your assets starting each sentence with “a single, unmarried man”? An unmarried man with a business plan to raise alpacas and buy a mill, an unmarried man with an English title?’ she mocked. ‘What makes me interesting shouldn’t be my sex or my marital status.’
Conall nodded, conceding that part of the argument. ‘Point taken. However, you cannot deny there is a certain mystique about you. One might argue you even cultivate it with your veils and seclusion.’
‘It is not my intention to cultivate anything, my lord.’ Apparently that extended to a relationship with him, although last night he’d thought differently when they’d danced. There was a chemistry between them.
She opened her book with an exaggerated show meant to imply the conversation was over, but Conall was not willing to be dismissed so easily. ‘You cultivate nothing? Not even carte-blanche offers from one of the ton’s richest peers?’ He might be the one needing money, but he was not going to pursue it blindly. Who wanted to do business with a spineless turnip of a man?
She snapped her book shut with a loud thump, her eyes flashing as they fixed on him, blue eyes meeting grey. ‘Certainly not. Why is it that a woman must always belong to a man in order to define her place in the w
orld, Lord Taunton?’ Gone was any hard-won familiarity—he’d been downgraded to Lord Taunton, a title he still wasn’t entirely comfortable hearing in relation to himself.
Conall leaned back in his seat, hands folded above his head, studying the virago that was the Marchesa di Cremona. ‘You do indeed sound like my sister. Are you always this argumentative, or just after weddings, balls and break-ins?’ He regretted the words immediately, mostly because in hindsight he knew them to be true. He understood better how difficult the wedding must have been for her, conjuring up images of her own, less-blissful marital state.
She opened her book again and said firmly, ‘I hope you brought something to read, Lord Taunton. It will make the time pass more quickly.’ She was working hard to defend herself with that sharp tongue today, using it to keep him at a distance.
Conall reached for his own bag and retrieved a treatise on alpaca wool. He brandished it in one hand as evidence. ‘I have all the entertainment I need right here. “The clipping and shearing of Alpaca”.’
Usually reading about the alpaca absorbed him. Usually the clack of the carriage wheels on the steel tracks lulled him to sleep. Under the right circumstances, he found train travel soothing—a quiet compartment and time alone with his ideas. Today, the usual conditions of rail travel were not enough to soothe his mind and calm his thoughts. His mind wanted to think about her, the Marchesa di Cremona, Sofia of no last name. He wanted to think about her marriage, what sort of a man had her husband been to make her seek divorce as a preferable option?
Conall turned a page in his pamphlet and gave her a covert look. She was intelligent, sharp-witted, lovely, and she would be a trial to the wrong sort of husband. Goodness knew she wasn’t the sort he was expected to marry. Is that what had happened? Another disaster of a tonnish-style marriage of title to money without consideration for temperaments?
A Marriage Deal with the Viscount--A Victorian Marriage of Convenience Story Page 6
