by Sophia James
It was not truly his fault all this—it was hers. It was she who had gone to see the Earl of Douglas in the daylight and in an unwise lather of hope and hopelessness. He had not poured the whisky down her throat either; in fact, he had tried to stop her from drinking too much after offering it as a way to lessen the shaking in the first place.
Was he sitting there now in his town house not two miles from here rueing the day he had ever jumped from the bridge into the waters of the Thames to try to save her, and was her sister’s romantic slant on the forthcoming nuptials as naive as her own imaginings of safety?
Sephora shook her head. The one thing she was very certain of at least was that she had made a lucky escape from the overbearing ways of the Duke of Winbury. For that at least she would be eternally grateful.
* * *
She was dressed in blue and silver and held a small posy of gardenias and green leaves. Her hives were back, too, he noticed, the fiery red marks crawling up the exposed skin on her lower arm and along the slender plane of her neck before dipping into the high-cut bodice at the front, a small fair figure, diminutive and pale against the other three members of her family who had accompanied her.
Lucien stood as best man, a last-minute favour when Francis’s intent of doing this completely alone had wavered and he had asked for some assistance. This wasn’t how Francis had imagined his wedding day might be, a hastily thrown-together affair with a bride who looked like she might simply faint away if he touched her.
‘Your intended does not appear exactly happy.’
It was true. The woman who had said yes to him was now enveloped in a sort of fog of distance and a state of fear, as if just by the blink of an eye this whole charade might simply disappear, her life back to the ordained and gentle path it had been sailing along less than a week ago.
There were no other wedding guests either and the minister was observing each small separate party with a look of concern and worry. At least there was someone playing the organ in an upper-storey loft, for the music covered the awkward quietness and offered a vague tone of religious fervour.
‘Do you have a ring?’
‘Yes.’ Francis fumbled in his pocket for the small box and handed it over. Lucien flipped the top.
‘Substantial.’
His friend’s surprise seemed to give some sort of signal to the minister and he called them together, the age-old words of the Anglican marriage ceremony ringing out as an echo in the emptiness of the church.
‘The grace of our lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the...’
Francis moved to position himself next to Sephora Connaught. He could smell the scent of the flowers she held and this close up he saw she shook quite badly, all her attention on the minister who had raised his hands in a welcome.
The sister was watching him closely, however, her dark eyes running across his own in a frank appraisal. Maria Connaught, unlike Sephora, did not look like a young woman who would be cowed by anything. He wondered about the difference between them. What made one sister brave and the other frightened, one woman ready to fight and another to flee?
As if on their own accord Sephora’s eyes lifted to his and he saw inside the fright a further sense of resolve. Without thought he reached for her hand and her fingers curled into his own and held on. Like two people drowning together.
The oaths and promises were lengthy, but finally the rings were exchanged. His grandmother’s diamond-and-ruby circle fitted Sephora perfectly, the fragile stones setting off the shape of her hand, an ancient and unusual piece that would never be repeated anywhere.
* * *
It was over just as she thought it might never be, the onerous frown of the minister, the still silence of Francis St Cartmail, the quiet weeping of her mother and the stony face of Papa.
‘You may kiss your bride now.’
But he did not. Rather the Earl of Douglas’s thumb simply ran down across one cheek before he turned away, breaking any contact with her and speaking to Lucien Howard next to him.
‘Will you journey down to Kent today?’ The Earl of Ross asked her this question a few moments later as they moved from the church and climbed inside the waiting carriages ready to take them home to the Aldford town house in Portman Square and the prepared wedding breakfast.
‘Is that where the rest of his family are, my lord?’ She wondered why no one had come to stand with him. Surely there must have been some relative who would have sufficed?
The earl shook his head. ‘Francis’s friends have that honour, for his own parents were gone when he was ten. I should probably leave it to him to tell you his story, though, but what I will say is that he has been lonely.’
Lonely. She could see that sometimes in his eyes and in the way he watched others, a careful isolation and a remoteness that allowed few near. She wanted to make him smile, she did, even just to see the ruined dimple on his cheek crease into laughter.
As though he could read her thoughts he turned, a half-smile making him look more vulnerable and younger, his eyes an unfathomable and mixed shade of green and brown.
‘It won’t be long before this is all over.’
Did he wish for it to be? Had he had enough of the enforced joyousness and the false congratulations? Her mother was still weeping and had given her nothing of maternal advice at all. Maria seemed to be the only one enjoying the occasion.
‘I shall be married in exactly the same manner—’ her sister’s voice was light and happy ‘—without fuss of pomp and ceremony. And afterwards I shall journey to Italy on a grand tour with my husband and stay in the hot climes for a year and a day.’
* * *
Half an hour later the party was seated in the Aldford dining room and food was being served, numerous and special plates presented with artistry and attention. But Sephora could barely eat because soon it would be just her and Francis St Cartmail, with all the corners of her shadows visible. Then Lord Douglas would discover what he did not now know.
She lacked gumption and adventure and interestingness, and for a lord who had sailed oceans and stood on foreign shores, faced danger and survived numerous threats, that might well be the most damning truth of them all.
When he stood to raise his glass and make a toast she wondered what he might say of her, a bride he’d hardly conversed with, and barely touched. The room became quiet and as he began to speak he turned towards her parents.
‘First I would like to offer my gratitude to Lord and Lady Aldford for all the love they have given to their daughter. It is undoubtedly this attention that has made Sephora into the woman she is today. Thank you for allowing me her hand in marriage and I promise I shall give her the same care as you have. Always.’
Her mother had placed her kerchief down now and was tentatively smiling. Her father gave him an answering nod and finished yet another glass of wine.
‘Sephora and I met unexpectedly, under the waters of the Thames, and I suppose that first encounter set the tone for our courtship. It has been a quick and breathless liaison.’
He waited till the laughter stopped and raised his glass.
‘To my bride and to our marriage.’
She was glad Francis had not dredged out words of love because they would have been as false as Richard’s constant proclamations of the same. Her fingernails left crescent marks in the soft skin of each opposite palm with the stress of worry and nerves.
After the toast Lucien Howard stood up as the best man.
‘Francis has always made his mind up quickly. He has lived life to the full, though there are many stories of his exploits that have taken on a falsity all of their own. I have been a friend of the Earl of Douglas for a long time and he is one of the most honourable and virtuous men I know. After losing his own parents early he has become the man he is without the guidance of any family whatsoever.’
Her groom looked as if he wished Lucien Howard might cease altogether with the compliments. But he didn’t as he turned to look at her. ‘He
saved me once, Lady Sephora, almost in the same way as he saved you. I’d dived into the high dam at Linden Park and got caught in the weeds and it was only Douglas’s quick thinking that got me up to the surface before I ran out of air completely. So here’s to happiness and to a long union,’ he added and raised his glass.
Virtuous and honourable. Those were the words the Earl of Ross had used and she believed him, a man who would know Francis as well as any. The wine was sweet and easy to drink and it put a buffer between this moment and the wedding night, though the hives she had woken with were becoming larger and larger red welts of itchiness.
Her mother looked somewhat happier and her sister was glowing and if her papa was drinking far more than he ought then still her family had behaved. They had got through such a charade with a sense of grace. Sephora was eminently glad for that.
* * *
An hour later she rearranged her skirt and allowed her new husband to see her into the carriage, her parents and her sister standing on the pavement waving goodbye. Then they were alone, the busy streets of London town all around them, a procession of people and carriages and noise.
Her carefully packed luggage was in the back, an array of new clothes inside, a nightgown and a peignoir made of the softest apricot silk and edged in Brussels lace. Her mother’s gift that, procured yesterday from one of the most expensive French seamstresses in the city, so new it was still wrapped in the tissue it had been bought in.
‘We will go back to my town house first and collect a few things, but we will need to be on the road to Kent before mid-afternoon as I don’t want to be too late in arriving.’
Too late? For what? Sephora thought. For a night alone? For more whisky, but this time plied for the very purpose of softening resistance? He had let it be known that there would only be a few servants accompanying them to Colmeade House, a private affair then, with all the hours of solitude. The Earl of Douglas sat on the same side of the conveyance as she did, but he had made sure to leave a large gap between them. Nothing touching.
A stranger and one who did not try to break the silence with other talk. The beautiful ring he had given her caught at a thread on her gown and snagged it. She spent a moment trying to tease the fabric away from the pointed sharpness of ancient gold and saw that it had left a hole in the silk. Like her life, broken, no matter how hard she might try to fix it and a sign of all that might come?
‘It was my grandmother’s,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘The ring. My mother gave it to me a few months before she died.’
‘How did she die?’
‘A carriage accident. My father was with her. I was ten at the time.’
‘So afterwards there was no one else left for you? Today in the chapel...’ She thought of the empty space on his side of the pews. ‘Lucien Howard told me at the church that he and his friends were as much of a family to you as any and yet they were not there either.’
He leaned over and took her hand, his fingers as cold as her own.
‘Daniel Wylde and Gabriel Hughes are out of London and I hadn’t the time to wait for them to return. I’d spend a lot of weeks with them in the school holidays because it was lonely at the Douglas seat and the servants needed a break. One small child could have hardly warranted the full opening of a large house after all and I was glad to go to where there was some sense of family and laughter.’
‘Who were your guardians, then?’
‘My uncle and his wife, but they were dour and busy people who were not much bothered with my needs. They hadn’t their own children, you see...’
‘So you were alone?’
He smiled. ‘I suppose that I was. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone as much about my upbringing as I have you and if you’d...’
He faltered suddenly, his face changing from repose to complete and utter astonishment as he looked out the window, his cane snatched up from beside him and heavily brought against the ceiling.
‘Stop, right now.’
The conveyance skidded to a halt and her new husband was out of the door, a knife in hand procured from beneath the seat, its shining honed blade caught in the sunshine as he moved.
‘Stay here.’
But Sephora had already left her seat and was behind him, pushing into the path of the traffic, rushing through in the small spaces left between the busyness and pulling in her skirts close so that she could indeed run to keep up.
Ahead a small girl was being dragged along by a man who had her pinned to him by one arm and she was screaming her head off whilst trying to kick back. A wicked punch across the jaw silenced her, but the rage that erupted from the earl at the action brought every face from yards around towards him.
After that things began to happen in slow motion as Francis St Cartmail slashed out with his knife and the offenders gave answering jabs with their own weapons. Two other men had joined in the fracas now, with their anger and fury. One went down, a gash across his thigh opening into red, but the gun that the third offender held was primed and ready and it discharged point blank into the shoulder of the Earl of Douglas. He fell slowly, grabbing the child and using his momentum to roll with her, the shouts of bystanders, the frightened sobbing of the girl, the whitened clammy face of her new husband as he came to a stop by her feet and lay still upon the dirty camber of the road, panting.
The man with the gun moved forward to try to extricate the child from his grasp, but Sephora simply fell on top of them both in protection, her generous silken skirts wrapped around everything as the warm seep of red blood darkened the thin fabric.
And she screamed, too, as loud as she could and as long, bringing bystanders to her aid even as she hung on to the small shaking body of the child with all the strength that she could muster and felt a hefty kick into the exposed fleshy part of her lower back as an angry retaliation for her efforts.
Then their attackers were gone, carrying the other man Francis had wounded between them and leaving a dozen or so spectators gathering about the ensuing brokenness that was left, not quite knowing what to do.
‘Help. Please.’ She could only mouth the words, her breath lost in the vicious last stab of pain and the horror of violence so unexpectedly meted out.
The child between them was sobbing so hard that Sephora had to gather her own will, the young girl demanding attention and some semblance of safety from the adults around her. The earl was still largely conscious at least, his hands held out before him stiff with blood and a clammy sheen of sweat across his face.
‘Anna?’ He looked about blindly. ‘Is...she...safe?’
‘Here. She is here.’ Presuming Francis must mean the child, she wrapped the girl against her warmth and saw what she had not noticed before. The same hazel eyes. The same lines of beauty. The same colour of hair and grace of movement. The same stubborn line of jaw.
His daughter? His offspring? Just another secret that he had allowed her no knowledge of?
All her marriage lines fell into a dissolving welter of lies and omissions though her attention was caught by his raspy laboured breathing as he fumbled to loosen the stock at his neck.
When the white linen fell away she knew another truth as well. The deep red twisted line of where a rope had cut into his flesh was easily visible, knotted welts of skin raised one over the other, and a shocking hue of indigo beneath.
Hurt. Damaged. Left for dead. Once before and now yet again.
She lifted his head carefully, the matted dark curls falling dank across her fingers, and then she pressed her hands down hard against the welling bloodied hole in his shoulder.
‘Get a doctor,’ she shouted and refused to let him pass into the care of anyone else until a proper physician had come.
* * *
The first hours afterwards had been the worst.
Once home at the Douglas town house and upstairs in his chamber, Francis had begun to breathe in a strange way, blood gushing from the hole just above his shoulder blade.
‘Elevate him,’ the Dou
glas physician had instructed and with the help of a few of the servants they got him off the bed and sitting up in a large chair nearby.
Sephora was panicking, but Francis wasn’t. He simply sat there gathering in his hurt and his circumstances and moderating his breathing as best he could. The bandage the doctor tightened around him finally allowed the blood to congeal, but would no doubt gush again with any movement whatsoever.
The earl’s eyes were closed, the dark bruising beneath them worrying, and he was clammy. Shock, perhaps. Sephora found a heavy wool blanket at the foot of the bed and draped it across him as Mrs Wilson bustled in with a young servant and instructed her to light the fire.
‘I do not think the bullet has injured any organ of great import.’ The physician lifted up his bag as he said this. ‘But it is a nasty wound and will need to be tended with great care in order to stop fever or inflammation from appearing. There is also a severe gunpowder burn around the site that will be painful so I will leave medicine to be administered and return on the morrow. The instructions are on the label, but the thing needed most now is a good dollop of sleep so that healing can begin to take place.’
The child, his daughter, had sat next to Sephora without speaking for all of the last hour, refusing to leave the side of the earl. Up close she looked older than Sephora had first thought her and much more unkempt. Her eyes were large orbs of pure and utter fright and her hands were freezing as Sephora brought the girl into her side, trying to warm her.
As her initial stiffness relaxed Sephora felt thin cold arms creeping about her middle.
‘It is quite, quite all right, Anna,’ she said softly, remembering the name the earl had used. ‘The earl will recover, I am sure of it, and this terrible fright will be a thing of the past...’ She stopped even as she said the words, recalling her own dislocation after her fall from the bridge. ‘You are safe now. Nothing will ever happen like this again. You will always be safe.’
The shaky nod almost broke her heart, a child trying desperately to find her courage and appear brave, but when Mrs Wilson reached out and told the girl to come away Sephora could do nothing but watch her go.
