by Sophia James
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 Sus
an 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 ha
d 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.
