Marriage Made in Hope

by Sophia James

  Her parents were back in the next second, gliding through the door and taking up the space again between them and the strange dislocation that Francis felt was multiplied.

  ‘Your daughter has agreed to become my wife so I’ll have my lawyers call upon you tomorrow, Lord Aldford.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ Her father’s word was barely audible.

  ‘I will procure a special licence in order to be married before the week’s end. My lawyers will look at an agreement tomorrow afternoon and I would like your daughter present at the discussions.’

  ‘An unseemly haste...’ her mother began, but without further conversation Francis simply tipped his head to them all and took his leave, walking out into the daylight and down the steps to his waiting carriage, the sun today warming the skin at his neck.

  * * *

  The Earl of Douglas had looked furious and distant in all the time he stood there asking her to be his bride. Even when she had assented in private his expression had not changed, the scar on his damaged cheek underlining all that was unknown about him.

  She did not understand him and he did not know her, yet she had agreed to marry him and with none of her usual timidity.

  She should have refused and that would have been the end to it. He would have gone away with the knowledge that he had done the honourable and decent thing and she would have been left to get on with her own life.

  But what sort of life would it be without him? That thought had her placing her hands across her mouth in terror. Could she accept a proposal of marriage that he couldn’t possibly be happy with, a union based only on propriety and public expectation? It would never work, not in a million years, and they could both only be made bitter because of it. He’d said nothing of feelings, nothing of regard, nothing of anything save for his duty to see her reputation safe.

  Sitting in her bedroom watching the moon through the glass, all Sephora could think of was the wedding night. She was almost twenty-three years old and the only man who had ever kissed her had been Richard, embraces that had been few and far between and hardly satisfactory. Besides which he had called her cold.

  Whereas Francis St Cartmail...

  She stopped and pulled her mind away from all she had heard of the earl’s sexual prowess. He would hardly be happy when he realised the true state of her knowledge of the sensual arts. Oh, granted, there were men in society who relished the chance of instructing a virgin in the matrimonial bed, but the earl did not seem to fit into that category at all. He was too raw and too carnal.

  ‘Carnal.’ She rolled the word on her tongue.

  He had asked her to marry him and she had said yes and if they did not know each at all she only had to think of Richard Allerly to understand the futility of years of congress. They had been friends forever and yet it was such a familiarity that had torn them apart and left them strangers.

  Francis St Cartmail was unfamiliar, but he was also kind and every time she had been with him she felt safe and protected.

  Could it be enough? Closing her eyes, Sephora put her fingers to her temples to massage the ache that was building there, a heavy, dull pain of confusion and anxiety.

  * * *

  Anna had locked herself in a cupboard when Francis returned home and Mrs Billinghurst was standing waiting for him so that she could relay the sorry saga of another day’s chaos.

  ‘She is impossible, my lord. We had just got out of the carriage and suddenly she simply turned for home and when I got here she was in the wardrobe of her room and I have not been able to coax her out since.’ Her young son was next to her and trying his hardest to give the distraught woman some comfort.

  This was the first time Francis had seen the lad up close and as a worried visage gazed up at him he realised just how young he really was. Had he been schooled, he wondered, since his father’s death? ‘What is your name?’ he asked the boy.

  ‘Timothy.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘I will be twelve next year, sir.’

  A different worry now formed across Celia Billinghurst’s face.

  ‘He is a good boy, my lord, and is no trouble at all to anyone.’

  ‘Does he read?’

  ‘He began once...’ Her voice petered out as she tried to deduce the reasons behind the question, but the lad stepped forward and answered.

  ‘I do, Lord Douglas. I taught myself and I read whenever I can.’

  ‘What do you read?’

  ‘Old newspapers mainly, my lord. Once I went to the library in Finsbury Square with my father...’ He stopped and swallowed.

  ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘I certainly did, sir.’

  ‘Good.’

  A few minutes later he stood in front of the solid oaken wardrobe and knocked twice. ‘Come out, Anna, I need to talk with you.’

  There was the slide of wood and a click of a lock and the door opened. His small cousin held one of his books and a candle in her hand and she had been crying.

  This surprised him more than anything for each time he had seen her she had been prickly, angry and distant.

  ‘Mrs Billinghurst said that you ran away from her and came home here all by yourself. Why?’

  ‘I don’t enjoy shopping.’ She lifted her chin and faced him directly.

  ‘Then perhaps you should stay home for a time so that we will all know where you are. It is dangerous for a young lady of your age to be lost in a busy city for a great length of time.’

  Relief crossed the small face. ‘I can do that.’

  There was something she was not telling him, he was certain of it.

  ‘Did you see someone in town whom you were frightened of?’

  She shook her head, hard, the Douglas determination stamped into her eyes and, knowing such stubbornness would be hard to budge, he changed the subject.

  ‘I would like to hire a tutor for you, Anna, and set up a small schoolroom here as an adjunct to your governess’s lessons for I think your mind is a lively one and could do with further training. Mrs Billinghurst’s son, Timothy, is about your age and he enjoys reading as much as you do. How would you feel about having a fellow student in your class for two days a week?’

  ‘I would like that.’

  ‘Good. Then you now need to go and find Mrs Billinghurst and apologise to her. We can discuss further arrangements tomorrow when we are all feeling less emotional. Oh, and, Anna, I would prefer it if you called me Uncle Francis. We are family and it is only right.’

  * * *

  Much later that evening as the clock struck the hour of two Francis sat by an opened window in his library with a heavy woollen cloak about him to keep out the cold. He never slept well and tonight after all the happenings of the day he knew he would sleep even worse than usual.

  He wondered what Sephora Connaught was doing. After leaving the Aldfords’ town house he had gone straight into Doctors’ Commons and begun the proceedings for a special licence. Could they be married the day after tomorrow with such unseemly haste and with so little pomp and circumstance?

  They would need separate bedrooms, of course, with his poor sleeping habits and their lack of knowing each other at all, but he hoped in time...

  What did he hope?

  He hoped that she might begin to see him as he had been once before his stay in Hutton’s Landing, before his life had been shaped differently, before he had killed a man in cold blood and not just under the protecting banner of war.

  He’d never had a family, never had anyone who had lived with him for a very long time. His uncle and aunt had tried to be some sort of guardians to him, he would give them that, but he had been rebellious and angry after the early death of his parents and when he’d barely let them in, they had not endeavoured for a closer acquaintance.

  School had fostered his friendships with Daniel and Lucien and then later Gabriel. And now Anna had come and Mrs Billinghurst and the son who looked frightened and intense and needy. A house filled with problems, but also with li
fe. He could feel them all here around him and despite the quandary he liked the new energy.

  Tipping his head, he took in air once and then twice more. He could barely believe Sephora Connaught had agreed to marry him and hoped that she would not hate him when she knew him better.

  A dog barked in the distance, plaintive and sad, and the sound rolled around with that particular nuance of hopelessness he himself had often felt. A homeless animal, probably a stray. If the thing came closer, he would instruct his kitchen staff to go out and take it a bone.

  Chapter Ten

  Sephora fussed around and could barely settle all of the next morning because she knew Francis St Cartmail would be here in the afternoon with his lawyer. Would he have changed his mind? Would things today look very different from what they had yesterday as he realised the extent of what he had promised and regret it? Would he simply take his troths back and leave her here, the ruin of her name too daunting even for him to try to manage?

  * * *

  When he did finally come she thought he looked tired, the shadows beneath his eyes darker today than she had ever seen them before.

  ‘Douglas.’ Her father’s greeting was cold, but when the earl’s glance found her own he smiled and she forgot everything else entirely.

  ‘Lady Sephora.’ Her name slipped from his tongue. ‘I hope I find you well this afternoon.’

  ‘Indeed you do, my lord.’ With Papa and both lawyers present she did not dare to address him less formally though she would have liked to, given the circumstances. It was not normal, she knew, for a woman to be present in such discussions of money and law, but as Francis St Cartmail had expressly requested her presence her father under duress had allowed it.

  ‘I have procured a special licence,’ the Earl of Douglas was saying now. ‘We can be married tomorrow for my lawyer is here to set the terms.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’ Was it even possible to marry legally in so short a frame of days? She could not stop her interjection.

  ‘If that is what you wish?’ He suddenly looked more uncertain and his eyes went to the windows.

  ‘It is, my lord.’

  ‘You cannot mean this, Sephora.’ Her father spoke now. ‘You have no dress, no invitations sent, no plan for a chapel or music or the food.’

  ‘I do not need those things, Papa.’ She said this as she looked straight at Francis St Cartmail and saw the stiffness in him relax. He was trying his hardest to see her safe. The least she could do was to allay his fears of her own hope of a much larger celebration.

  ‘Your mother will be even more horrified than she is now.’

  Again the Earl of Douglas looked at her. ‘If it is a grander ceremony you wish for...’

  ‘I don’t.’

  His hand pushed his hair back from where the darkness had fallen over his forehead and he breathed hard. He always wore his neckcloth tied high and often pulled at it with his fingers, Sephora thought. The ‘half-hanged’ explanation of Maria’s came back to her and she looked away. What sort of mark would a rope leave, both inside and out?

  For a moment she imagined Francis St Cartmail naked under candlelight on their wedding night; this thought so unlike anything she had ever had before she almost blushed. In all of the years she had known Richard she had not once thought of him in any sort of a sexual way and she understood with a stinging clarity why she had not.

  He had not intrigued her as Francis St Cartmail did, just one glance from his hazel eyes sending her into fantasy and folly. Richard had been staid and dictatorial and set in his ways and she had gone along with every single one of his orders and protocols. For years.

  ‘Well then, what is it you are proposing in financial terms, Lord Douglas? My lawyer is most interested to know.’ Her father was a man who thought the bottom line singularly important. She waited for the earl’s answer.

  ‘All that is mine shall be my wife’s on marriage, save for the entailed Douglas properties as these will be passed on directly to any heirs. Any profit from the manufacturing businesses shall also be hers.’

  Heirs? A short burst of heat had her reaching for the nearby back of a chair.

  ‘That is indeed generous, my lord.’ The Connaught lawyer opened his folder and wrote down the pledge. ‘You speak of your garment interests, I am supposing?’

  ‘He does.’ The Douglas lawyer brought his files forward now and her father joined them, comparing notes.

  When Francis St Cartmail caught her eye and smiled, she imagined he could see the pulse in her throat leaping to his attention and turned back to her father.

  ‘There will be a dowry, of course,’ he was saying, ‘Amongst other monies and properties settled upon her, my daughter owns an estate in the north that her grandmother bequeathed her and it is both fertile and in good order.’

  ‘Lady Sephora can keep that for herself. I do not wish the gift to pass into our communal property.’ The words of her husband-to-be astonished her.

  ‘But...’ his lawyer began, and the earl silenced him with only a look.

  Hers. Brockton Manor was to be only hers? The hope of it made the day brighter and her mind surer. A generous husband and a fair one. Richard Allerly was wealthy, too, but she could not have imagined him passing up the offer of another estate. He liked things under his control and his say so.

  Her father was looking at St Cartmail now in a way he had not been half an hour ago, the Connaught legal representative writing his concessions down as fast as he could, his professional demeanour honed in for the best of advantages.

  Finally a draft of the marriage agreements was signed. The Earl of Douglas’s signature was bold and he was left-handed. His middle names were Andrew and Rothurst. So many things she did not know about him. The large cabochon ruby in his ring twinkled in the light and for that familiarity she was glad.

  Her father crossed the room and extracted an expensive bottle of red wine when they had finished, a tipple he rarely opened because of the cost. The butler laid out five glasses, but Sephora merely played with hers, the thoughts in her head spinning. Lord Douglas was wealthy and he was generous. He was also a force to be reckoned with in the gaining of an equitable marriage contract that was suitable to them both. All afternoon he had been certain to include her in every decision and had taken into account her opinion concerning the points she wished to comment on.

  The meeting broke up then and after a quick and formal goodbye the man she would marry tomorrow at one in the afternoon at the chapel of St Mary’s was gone.

  Her father finished both his glass of wine and hers. ‘Waste not want not, though at least St Cartmail was easier to deal with than Winbury,’ he said when he had finished the second. ‘In my mind Douglas is either a saint or a fool with his capitulations of money and business interests and time undoubtedly will tell us which of the two it shall be. For your sake, Sephora, I sincerely hope that it shall be the first.’

  * * *

  Maria arrived home just on dusk and Sephora was glad to hear footsteps running up the stairs, her door bursting open even as her sister was undoing the bows on her bonnet.

  ‘I cannot believe so much has happened, Sephora. In the two days I have been helping Rachel Attwood with the arrival of her new baby Richard is finally gone for good and in his stead is the Earl of Douglas? Even in my wildest dreams I did not imagine such luck.’

  They came together in the middle of the room, Maria cold from the short carriage ride across the city and Sephora warm from the fire, their arms wrapped about one another as if they might never let go.

  * * *

  ‘I think Francis St Cartmail offered to marry me out of guilt,’ Sephora said an hour later, after the whole story had been relayed in each and every minute detail.

  Her sister shook her head. ‘Society has been gossiping about the earl for years now. Do you really think a man like that could be brought to heel by Richard’s meanness or by Papa’s anger? Have you spoken with him, privately, and asked him why he should offer you marriag
e?’

  ‘I have not had the chance. He came yesterday to relate his intentions to Papa and today with his lawyers to make it official. The two moments Father did allow us to converse alone were largely taken up with him saying that he would never hurt me and with me unable to say a word that made any sense.’

  ‘Do you love him?’

  Sephora drew her nightgown up around her neck, feeling a sudden chill in the room. ‘I don’t know what love is. I thought I loved Richard once, but...’ She trailed off before trying again. ‘Francis St Cartmail makes me feel...safe.’

  ‘Safe enough to take risks? Safe enough to be yourself? Safe enough to imagine that your opinion matters again?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Maria began to laugh heartily and fell back against the pillows at the head of Sephora’s bed. ‘I go away and come back to find my sister has defied all the convoluted and restrictive social mores that she has always adhered to and has absolutely no qualms or remorse for any of it. Mama is in bed with her smelling salts, Papa is counting the financial largesse of this new suitor and the ton is still talking of nothing else save the fall from grace of its most stellar and malleable angel. I think I should go and see my friend more often, Sephora, I really do.’

  ‘Will you stand up with me tomorrow at the ceremony?’

  ‘Tomorrow? My God. You cannot be getting married tomorrow?’

  ‘By a special licence. I am wearing my blue silk, the one I had made for the Cresswell ball earlier in the Season, but did not go because I fell ill.’ Her most striking dress was heavily embroidered with silver lamé and embellished with Brussels lace. Flowers and shells in the same silver threads festooned the hem, the whole thing having the effect of catching the light in a most unusual manner.

  Sephora wondered how she could even think about something as unimportant as the colour and detail of her wedding gown, but unless she concentrated on the small and basic things under her control she thought indeed she might go to pieces. Would Francis St Cartmail insist on a marriage night before they had barely conversed? Or might he simply take her to his family seat in Kent and leave her there, a bride he did not want, a woman who had stumbled into her own marriage through a series of foolish mistakes? An inconvenient bride.