Marriage Made in Hope

by Sophia James

‘It’s my lip that I’ve ventured here to find some salve for, Gabe, not my heart.’ The ensuing laughter wasn’t comforting.

  ‘Will you come, though, Francis? Please.’ Gabriel’s wife had a particular way of inveigling others to do her bidding and he was not immune to such persuasion.

  ‘I’ll be there.’ His promise came quickly, but he wondered even as he said it if his choice was a wise one.

  * * *

  When he got home again he looked at the names he had listed that could have been implicated in Clive Sherborne’s murder. He knew Anna was frightened of someone from her past and he needed to understand exactly who this enemy was so that he could protect her. Mr Wiggins’s documents had made mention of a smuggling ring and that was where Francis had targeted his first questions, though it seemed every family in the village outside Hastings where the Sherbornes had lived were involved to some extent with the free-trade movement, and who could blame them.

  The punitive taxes imposed by successive governments were becoming more and more onerous and the contraction of jobs on the Kentish weald had probably added its bit to the growing lack of legal employment in the area.

  His finger wound its way down the surnames and occupations of those Wiggins had supplied him with. The parson, the quarryman, the local squire, the boatman, the butcher, the innkeeper. The list just kept on going.

  In Kew Gardens his altercation had been with a father and his two sons who’d heard of his interest in identifying those involved at the London end of the supply chain. These three had purchased cut-price brandy and spirits on the side and were firmly of the opinion that anyone threatening their lucrative livelihood with exposure was to be scared away.

  Well, at least they had the measure of him now and he knew that they had played no role in the death of Clive Sherborne for they hadn’t recognised that name at all when he had asked them.

  Still, it was a shame Lady Sephora Connaught had been there watching on, her pale blue dress stirring in the growing wind and a look on her face of pure and utter horror.

  He smiled. Well, this was who he was, too, a man who would protect his own no matter what the consequences, an outsider, a lord who had never fitted in well to the narrow and confined world of the ton. It was best that she knew it.

  Best that he did, too, with all these foolish notions of afternoon teas and refined polite conversation. He’d have to go to the occasion of Adelaide’s because he had promised her he would, but after that...

  He opened his drawer and pulled out the letter Sephora Connaught had written to him yet again. When he’d made certain that Anna was safe he would leave London and go north for his manufacturing businesses were calling out for more of his time and energy. Then he would repair to the Douglas family seat in Kent. He truly wondered if he would ever be back in town.

  * * *

  Sephora took an age to get ready for afternoon tea at the Wesleys, which was unlike her, changing this dress for that one and this hat for another. Her maid watched her with puzzlement as she finally stood in front of the full mirror in her room.

  Usually she barely glanced at herself, but this morning she did, observing her shape and form with other eyes, hazel laughing ones, the gold in them pushed to the very edges of green and brown. The fight she had observed at Kew Gardens four days ago should have made her hesitant, should have underlined all the gossip that was whispered of the dangerous Earl of Douglas. But it had had the opposite effect entirely. It made her want to understand what drove him into such frenzy.

  In the mirror the blue in her eyes caught the hue in her gown and her hair had been curled into a series of fair cascading ringlets. A hat sat atop that, a small jaunty shape that barely covered her crown. She had dabbed an attar of violets on her wrists and at her throat.

  Please let the Earl of Douglas be there, a small voice entreated. She knew Lord and Lady Wesley and Francis St Cartmail were close friends and the hope of some sort of private meeting came to mind, a place where she might talk to the earl and understand what this obsession she was beginning to feel for him was about. It concerned her that she was thinking of him so much. She had never been compulsive about anything before and this new side of her personality was worrying, given her promised troth to Richard.

  Maria was coming with her today, a fact that her sister was pleased about. ‘I always wanted to see inside the Wesley town house, for they say it is one of the most beautiful in all of London. I hope that there are others attending who are not married, though.’

  ‘Well, I am not married, Maria.’

  ‘You nearly are. Unfortunately.’

  Sephora had to laugh and it felt good to simply enjoy the sound. She also harboured a good deal of guilt given that her mirth was at Richard’s expense, but she swallowed that thought down and vowed to enjoy the day. For once she was pleased to be free of constraint and righteousness.

  She would tell him, of course, that she had been to the Wesley function without him, but if she did so after the occasion it would allow her the freedom to savour it first. Squeezing her fingers together, she was glad she did not wear Richard’s ring and that it had been lost and never replaced.

  Lost like a part of her had been. Her heart beat with a trip of apprehension as her sister accompanied her down the stairs and they walked outside to the waiting carriage.

  * * *

  The Wesley town house was as magnificent as Maria had heard it to be when they were shown in to a salon twenty minutes later.

  The room was huge and decorated in a colour of yellow, which lightened it and gave it an airy otherworld feel, so unlike the darker and more sombre tones Sephora was used to. There were paintings on every wall and the furniture was of a French design, ornate and gilded, cushions of flowered tapestry sitting atop a row of chairs. The curtains were of thick gold velvet and tied back with colourful braided tassels. To one end stood a group of people chatting, though all noise stopped as soon as their names were announced.

  Francis St Cartmail was standing by an opened French doorway talking with Lord Montcliffe and his wife. She caught his glance as soon as she entered, quick and covert, before it moved away. Almost angry.

  Lady Wesley had taken her arm as she introduced them to everybody in the room. The only person she did not recognise was a young man with long brown hair who stood slightly apart. Mr Adam Stevenage. The name was somewhat familiar and Maria moved towards him like a magnet.

  And then the Earl of Douglas was beside her, a good foot taller and much bigger in every way than Sephora remembered him to be.

  ‘Lady Sephora.’

  ‘Lord Douglas.’

  Today his eyes in the light looked softer than they had ever before, though the brutal mark across his cheek did away with any prettiness at all and her scratches on the other side of his face were barely noticeable. She could glean no ill effects from the fight at Richmond save for puffiness on his lower lip.

  ‘I had wondered if you would be here today. I know you to be a friend of the Wesleys, of course, so I imagined perhaps I might see you and...’’

  She made herself stop. Why had she blabbered that out at him and with such a dull repetitiveness?

  Taking two drinks from a tray that a footman offered, he gave her one. ‘Gabriel’s idea of the libation at an afternoon tea is very different from his wife’s, thank goodness.’

  The tipple was strong and Sephora coughed slightly, thinking of Richard, who only ever wished her to drink non-alcoholic punch or lemonade.

  ‘Wesley buys his wine from the Cognac region in France and this particular drop rarely results in any sort of a hangover. I can vouch for that.’

  She smiled, liking the way the wine was warming her resolve and making their meeting easier. She was glad, too, when he stepped further out into the gardened courtyard, giving her space and distance from the others present as she followed him.

  He was just so very beautiful here in the sunshine, so beautiful she imagined she could simply watch him forever. With a sudde
n worry she pushed her fingers against her temple where the beat of her heart was thumping.

  This is where it could begin, she thought, the scandal, the gossip, the stigma, here in this little moment in the afternoon sun because she wanted to throw herself into Francis St Cartmail’s arms and never let go.

  A length of darkness had escaped from the leather he tied his hair with and lay in a long curl across his forehead. She could very easily understand his attraction to all those women of the ton who spoke of him in hushed whispers inflected with an underlying blend of avarice and fancy despite his wildness and his danger.

  When his eyes settled on her own there was something in his expression that made her speak.

  ‘How did your cheek get scarred, my lord?’

  The ice in hazel glittered. ‘War is dangerous.’

  ‘And no one fixed it for you?’

  ‘I was lost in the Cantabrians. The army of Moore had rolled on towards Corunna so I had to make my own way to Vigo and by then...’ He left the rest unsaid, but he did not turn his damaged face away from the sunlight and she liked him for that.

  ‘Well, I think it suits you.’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘The scar. People will take notice of a man who has been through such pain and lived.’

  For a second she thought he flushed at her words, but then the distance returned.

  ‘England is a soft and gentle land, Lady Sephora. It is my experience that anything reminding its people of a consuming chaos in a faraway foreign skirmish is to be avoided altogether. You are the first person ever to ask me of it directly.’

  ‘Everybody has their secrets, Lord Douglas, and if some are more hidden than others it makes them no less painful.’

  He laughed, a throaty and hearty sound that held an edge of disbelief. ‘They call you the “angel of the ton”. Do you have any idea as to what they say of me?’

  Frowning, she nodded. Indeed, she had heard of all the things that were told of him. Wild. Ill disciplined. Unlawful. Barbaric. Dangerous.

  ‘I stood trial in America for the killing of a man.’

  The shock of his words was great. ‘Did you? Kill him, I mean?’

  ‘No. Not that time.’ All humour was gone now and in its place was bare fury.

  ‘Then I am glad for it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I should not wish to be indebted to a murderer for the saving of my life.’

  ‘And are you...indebted?’

  ‘I am, my lord. When you came to me beneath the waters through the cold and the dark I thought you were like a god.’

  He shook his head, but she continued anyway, the need to tell him all of it and without anything held back so desperate.

  ‘I’m to be married to a man who was also there on the bridge that day. The Marquis of Winslow. I am certain you know of him. He was the one on the riverbank who took me from you when you brought me to safety across the mud.’ She waited till he nodded. ‘But he did not jump in to save me. He did not risk his life for mine and I think...I think he was s-supposed to h-have.’

  Horror marked her words, the truth of what she said to him out here in the blueness of the day so real and naked and terrible.

  He touched her then, his hand gentle across her own, as though reassuring her. But it did none of those things because in the shock of his touch other truths surfaced, big important truths that Sephora could no longer deny.

  She felt changed and heightened and alive. She felt unconstrained and sensual and womanly. It was as if in the company of the disreputable Francis St Cartmail she was someone else entirely, the person she might have been had she not let fear and propriety rule her.

  I think I could fall in love with you.

  My God, had she just said that out aloud? The horror of such a possibility kept her rooted to the spot waiting for his mirth. When his expression did not change she felt a relief so great she imagined she might fall down, down into a crumpled heap at his feet, clinging to his fine and well-polished boots.

  The arrival of her sister, though, took the attention from such a dreadful possibility, Maria’s smiling and cheerful face so opposed to all that was transpiring here. Sephora was very glad when a warm arm threaded through her own.

  * * *

  He was making such a hash of this, but with Sephora Connaught half a foot away from him and her blue eyes pale and kind, all the things he had thought to say to her were gone from his head and he was left...reeling. She had not mentioned seeing him at the gardens and for that he was grateful, but his time alone with her was running out like sand through a glass, each grain precious and draining away.

  Mr Adam Stevenage was drinking hard and Francis watched as the young man finished his next glass and came over towards him. The sister, Maria, looked stretched and tense as she gave Sephora her greeting.

  He could usually read people easily, but Sephora Connaught held so many conflicting emotions upon her face and in her eyes, that in the end he could discern only a cloudy wariness.

  When he had touched her a moment ago it was as if an electrical energy had been transferred between them, a jolt of such proportion he had seen her pupils dilate. He wondered if his had done the same.

  He wanted to try it again. He wanted to take her in his arms and feel the warmth of her lips again under his...

  ‘Pardon?’ Stevenage had asked a question directly of him and he had no idea as to what had been said.

  ‘I just enquired, Lord Douglas, what you thought of the town in Georgia called Hutton’s Landing?’

  ‘Why would you wish to know this?’ Francis answered quietly, a sense of alarm growing.

  ‘My cousin was there, you see, last year. I hoped you might give me your account of the place.’

  Could Adam Stevenage’s question really be this naive? Could a man with his own clear demons of drink not have heard the slander that circulated still about his time at Hutton’s Landing?

  ‘I think, sir, it is a town to be avoided altogether.’ Francis hated the anger in his voice and the flat tone of memory that slithered beneath. He hated, too, that Sephora Connaught had turned to observe him and was able to see exactly what it was that he had always hidden from others.

  There was tightness at his throat and the need to gulp in large breaths full of air. His hands fisted at his sides and he couldn’t stop the shaking that emanated from them.

  ‘You asked me to tell you of the flowers here in the garden, my lord.’ Sephora’s voice came through the growing haze and when she shepherded him across the lawn to a small grove of shrubs and perennials he followed. Away from the others she spoke quietly.

  ‘Can I find you help? Your friends perhaps...?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then humour me whilst I try to discern the names of these plants, my lord, for whilst I am no true gardener it might at least give you a moment or two to recover your wits.’

  ‘Thank...you.’

  He listened to her voice, soft and musical, describing the scientific classifications of the shrubs. Even he knew that a lavender bush did not quite look the same as the one she insisted it was, but she was most convincing in her feigned interest and teachings. Certainly Stevenage had given up on further conversation and gone inside as had the younger Connaught sister, leaving them alone again out at the far end of the lawn.

  He felt better now, more in control. He could not believe that the panic had come on so quickly for it never had done that before.

  God. She would think him teetering on the edge of madness and mental incapacity for he had also been like this on the bank of the river Thames.

  He wanted to be sick.

  ‘I was buried...in mud on the side of the Flint River in Hutton’s Landing. Sometimes the memory of it comes back.’

  He had barely told anyone of the experience and couldn’t believe he was now telling her. Still he could not seem to stop. ‘I got out, but my friend didn’t survive it.’

  And he’d been hauled up for his murder, the rope
around his throat and mud caked in his mouth, the hatred of the crowd of people who had gathered easily discerned. ‘Hang him. Hang him. Hang him.’

  ‘Do you think Adam Stevenage knows?’

  This time his smile was more real. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could he be dangerous...to you?’

  Reason flooded back and he shook his head. He did not want Sephora Connaught pulled into his shadows. Out here with the light in her golden hair she did indeed give the impression of goodness and purity. The ‘angel of the ton’. He was beginning to realise just how aptly she was named.

  ‘Come, let us go inside.’

  He was glad when she followed him in and even more glad when her sister crossed the room to stand beside her and garner her attention.

  When Gabriel offered him a drink Francis took it.

  ‘She is very beautiful, this small and pale Lady Connaught.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And sensible, too. Are you feeling better?’

  Looking up, he caught the concern in Gabriel’s eyes. Gabriel had been a spy once and managed to see all that others thought hidden. ‘She was trying to protect you out in the garden and in her fragility there is also strength. She does not wear Winslow’s ring. I wonder why?’

  ‘Stop.’ The word came without hope for Francis knew exactly what it was Gabriel was doing and what he himself had thought to do. But it was all too dangerous and Sephora needed to be protected. He could not stay here. It was wrong and he did not wish to hurt her.

  ‘Will you give Sephora Connaught my goodbye? And also my thanks to your wife?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And inform Stevenage I will see him tomorrow at my town house. At one. Tell him to make certain he is not late.’

  * * *

  When Sephora turned around again the Earl of Douglas was gone. Part of her wanted to simply walk out of the house and follow him, but she shook that thought away and concentrated instead on what Adelaide Hughes was saying.

  ‘When is your wedding to be held?’

  ‘In November, Lady Wesley. In London,’ she added and hoped no more on the subject would be said. But she was to be disappointed.