She knew she could not stay here tucked away in the safety of her bedroom forever after such a difficulty and she also understood that to put their meeting off was only postponing the problem.
Pushing back the bedding, Sephora rose up into the morning and was glad when her maid came in to help her dress.
* * *
As Richard entered the small blue salon Sephora could see her mother hovering on the edges of her vision, just to make certain everything was proper and correct, that propriety was observed and manners obeyed.
‘My dear.’ His hands were warm when he took hers, the brown in his eyes deep today and worried. ‘My dearest, dearest girl. I am so very sorry.’
‘Sorry?’ Sephora could not quite understand his meaning.
‘I should have come after you, of course. I should not have hesitated, but I am a poor swimmer, you see, and the water there is very deep...’ He stopped, as if realising that the more he said the less gallant he appeared. ‘If I had lost you...?’
‘Well, you did not, Richard, and truth be told I am largely unharmed and almost over it.’
‘Your leg?’
‘A small cut from where I hit the stone balustrade, but nothing more. I doubt there will even be a scar.’
‘I sent a note to thank Douglas so that you should have no need for further discourse with him. I am just sorry it was not Wesley or Ross who rescued you, for they would have been much easier to thank.’
‘In what way?’ Disengaging his hands, she sat with hers in her lap. She felt suddenly cold.
‘They are gentlemen. I doubt Douglas has much of a notion of the word at all. Did you see the way he just left without discourse or acknowledgement? A gentleman would have at least tarried to make certain you were alive. At that point you barely looked it.’
Sephora remembered vomiting again and again over Francis St Cartmail as they had waded in from the deep, seawater and tears mixed across the deep brown of his ruined jacket. He wore a ring, she thought, trying to recall the design and failing. It sat on the little finger of his left hand, a substantial gold-and-ruby cabochon.
‘I took you from him at the water’s edge, Sephora. My own riding jacket suffered, of course, but at least you were safe and sound. A groom found a blanket to put around you and I sent for my carriage and marshalled all those about us into some sort of an order. Quite a fracas, really, and a fair bit of organisation to see things in order on my part, but I am glad it has turned out so well in the end.’
Sephora mused over all the things Richard had done for her, all the help and good intentions, the carriage filled with warm woollen blankets, his solicitousness and his worry so very on show.
She began to cry quite suddenly, a feeling that welled from the bottom of her stomach and swelled into her throat, a pounding, horrible unladylike howl that tore at her heart and her sense and her modesty. Unstoppable. Inexplicable. Desperate.
Her mother rushed over and took her in warm arms and Richard left the room with as much haste as he could politely manage. Sephora was glad he was gone.
‘Men never have an inkling of what to say in a time of crisis, my love. Richard was indeed wonderful with his orders and his arrangements and his wisdom. We could not have wished for more.’
‘More?’ Her one-worded question fell into silence.
He had not dived into the water after her, he had not risked his life for her. Instead he had simply watched her fall and sink, down and down into the greying dark coldness of the river without breath or hope.
Richard had done what he thought was enough and he was her betrothed. She had never met the Earl of Douglas and yet Francis St Cartmail had, without thought, jumped in to save her there amongst the frigid green depths.
She had no touchstone any more for what was true and what was not. Her life had been turned upside down by a single unselfish act into question and uncertainty and lost in the confusion of reality—these seconds, these moments, this morning with the sun coming in through wide windows and open sashes.
If Lord Douglas had not come to her, she would have been lying now instead on a cold marble slab in the family mausoleum, drowned by misadventure, the unlucky tragic Lady Sephora Connaught, twenty-two and a half and gone.
Her nails dug into the skin above her wrists, leaving whitened crescents that stung badly, and she liked the pain. It told her she was alive, but the numbness inside around her heart was spreading and there was nothing at all she could do to stop it.
Copyright © 2016 by Sophia James
ISBN-13: 9781488004155
Scandal at the Midsummer Ball
Copyright © 2016 by Harlequin Books S.A.
The publisher acknowledges the copyright holders of the individual works as follows:
The Officer’s Temptation
Copyright © 2016 by Marguerite Kaye
The Debutante’s Awakening
Copyright © 2016 by Nikki Poppen
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