by Sophia James
She looked as if he had struck her.
‘Richard never apologised to me once in all the years of knowing him and I didn’t expect him to either because by then I’d lost whatever it was that gave me worth.’
‘Worth?’ He could not quite understand what she meant.
‘Opinions. Beliefs. The ability to say no and to mean it. People can die by small degrees just as easily as they can by the quick slam of a bullet and sometimes justice isn’t so easily measurable. Those murdered would most certainly think your honour intact given your actions and even the Bible has its verses urging an equitable vengeance.’
‘An eye for an eye?’
‘And a life for a life.’
Unexpectedly she leaned down and took his hand in her own, tracing the lines across the inside of his palm in a gentle touch. ‘You saved mine in the water under the bridge and also perhaps out of it. Is there some sort of celestial scales, do you think, one that places human souls in arrears...or not?’
‘The thought is tempting.’ He liked her reasoning. He liked her smile. He liked the quiet sense she spoke and her conviction.
‘If it were left to me to decide, yours would be a balanced tally sheet. And with Anna...’ Dropping his hand, she pointed to the thick bandages under his shirt. ‘With this I would imagine you are now ahead.’
He’d never had another person who believed in him like this, someone who would hear out his worst confessions and come up with an answer that made sense.
‘Strong opinions are always valuable, Sephora, and if Richard Allerly only wanted to hear his thoughts parroted back by those around him then he is more of a fool than I took him for.’
She smiled, but he could see she was not happy. ‘I believed I deserved what he gave me in the end. I think sometimes I didn’t even want a different life because I wouldn’t have known what to do with it.’ She told this unexpected truth flatly, as though what she described had happened to someone else; a public truth rather than a private one.
‘And now?’
The fierce anger was unmistakable. ‘Now I am different.’
‘Good for you.’
When she laughed the sound of it ran through the memory of three shots high up above the canyons near Hutton’s Landing. Sometimes at night Francis imagined he had seen Kennings go for his gun, there on his hip just before he had fired, the movement against a silver dawn small but real. Today he hoped that this was true for her sake as well as for his own.
‘The doctor said I would be well enough to travel down to the family seat in Kent in a few days.’
‘I’d like that.’
He felt some of the tension inside him ease. His wife would come with him even knowing about Kennings? Being in the country would give him some time to work out how to protect Anna, too, and away from the gossip of the ton he wouldn’t have to worry about what other things might reach Sephora’s ears.
The tiredness that had consumed him since the accident needed to go. He wanted his energy back to look after the family he had somehow been gifted with.
* * *
The screams in the night woke her, shrill, loud, screams with desperation imbued in every one.
Coming to her feet, Sephora ran into the room down the corridor to find Anna sitting up in bed white as a sheet and covered in sweat.
‘I am fine.’ The curt voice was underlined by blind fear.
‘Well, you do not look it to me and when I am worried about something it is always so much easier when you have a friend beside you to share it with.’
Taking her hand, Sephora sat down beside the girl, holding on even as she tried to pull away. Anna’s fingers were as freezing as they had been the last time Sephora had held them. It was as if the blood had not reached them at all in its course around her body, but left her shivering in the extremities. A child made frozen by anger.
‘You are safe, Anna. There is nothing here that will hurt you. I promise.’ She knew the instant the dreadful terror receded for the long and thin fingers relaxed. The girl’s fear was heartbreaking, a child with demons snapping at her heels and enough fury to keep others at bay.
‘If they come here to get me, you won’t let them do it?’
‘I won’t.’ Sephora was not quite sure just who Anna meant, but now was not the right time to dwell upon it, the child’s heart beating so fast she could see the lawn of her nightgown going up and down. ‘You belong to us now, to this family. We will never let you go.’
‘No one has wanted me to stay anywhere with them before. Clive said he did, but he never meant it. Not at the end.’
Sephora had no idea who this Clive was or where the child’s mother had gone, but she squeezed the thin hand and stayed quiet.
‘This is the first house where I have my own room. And books,’ she added. Small fingers still held on tightly. A lifeline perhaps, a raft across the deeper waters of her past?
‘You helped me in the street. The man kicked you, I felt it, but you still didn’t let me go.’
Tears now trickled down her face, the beauty of the Douglases stamped on her, too, but so much harder to see in the anger and under the ill-shorn lanky hair.
‘If Uncle Francis had died...’
‘Well, he didn’t. He is making good progress and by tomorrow I think he will be up and about once again.’
‘You are certain of it?’ For the first time the girl made true eye contact, the dark green of the earl’s own eyes looking out at her.
‘Most certain. But we need to get you to sleep now so that you have some energy for that stray dog I saw you with today. He will be scared by all the change and worried you will send him away so you’ll need to be calm and kind when you handle him.’
‘Like you are? With me?’
Sephora blushed in pleasure. ‘People come to others in different ways, Anna. Dogs, too. Sometimes in life there is no reason for things, but it just feels right.’
The girl smiled and as she tucked down under the blankets again Sephora began to hum some of the songs her mother had sung to her when she was young. A movement by the doorway had her turning and Francis St Cartmail stood there, leaning against the frame for balance, fresh blood staining the linen of his shirt where it had seeped through the bandage. He gestured to Anna, asking silently of the young girl’s welfare, and when Sephora nodded he was gone.
She wondered at the pain and determination such a foray must have cost him even as she kept on singing, his Douglas stubbornness an exact copy of Anna’s.
A few moments later she looked into the earl’s room. He was sitting on a chair with a cloak around himself and the chamber was freezing. Every window was open.
‘She’s asleep?’
‘Yes. I promised her that she belonged to us now and that we should never let her go. Is that something I should not have?’
‘Did such a troth feel like the right one to give?’
Tipping her chin down, she looked him directly in the eyes. ‘It did.’
‘Then there is your answer.’
‘You truly think it that simple?’
‘I do.’
As she was about to speak again a movement beneath his bed by her feet made her start. ‘The stray dog is in here?’
He nodded and smiled. ‘Take him into Anna’s room and place him on her bed. If she wakes again, he will afford her comfort.’
‘Does the dog have a name?’ she asked as she bent to take hold of the new leather collar around the animal’s scrawny neck.
‘Hopeful,’ he replied. ‘I’ve called him that.’
Lying alone in bed a few moments later, Sephora watched the moonlight on her ceiling. She was happier here in a household filled with problems than she had been for years. There was a scrawny, abused dog lying entwined in the warm arms of an orphan child who suffered nightmares down the corridor one way and a man who held his own demons close and his past even closer down the other. Each had their secrets and their terrors. Each held the world at bay in silence and in anger.
But beneath all that was difficult she felt the beginning of everything that could be easy.
Francis had called the dog Hopeful. She smiled at the name as she fell asleep and dreamed of water.
* * *
Maria and Aunt Susan came the next day and the one after that, too, and it was late on the second afternoon that her sister mentioned she had seen Richard Allerly at a small private function she’d attended with Mr Adam Stevenage.
‘He had his arm entwined in that of the oldest Bingham girl and he was back to hovering. Miss Julia Bingham looked as though she was a cat who had just found the cream, though I suppose she may not be as pleased with herself in a year or two when she manages to determine the Duke of Winbury’s true character and rues the loss of her own.’
‘Poor girl,’ Sephora returned, glad that Aunt Susan was out of earshot over on the sofa. ‘If I thought it could make a difference I might even feel the need to warn her off him. As it is I am going to just wish them the best.’
Maria turned to look at her. ‘You have changed and I like it. Mama said you would not last a month in such a madhouse, but I think you will never leave the Earl of Douglas because you are happy. He makes you such even trussed up in bandages and lying in a sick room.’ She began to laugh. ‘I happily admit there is a strength in the man that is beguiling, and a sensuality, too. Imagine his effect on your person when he is well.’
Sephora shook such nonsense away, though part of her had been imagining the very same thing. ‘Papa looked tired when I saw him?’
‘He is still not speaking to Winbury at all and only a little to Aunt Josephine, which is surprising, and that is taking a toll. I think he wants to wait and see what happens here before he makes his mind up.’
‘Tell them I am happy, Maria. Tell them if I had the chance to change anything at all that I would not.’
‘Adam says Francis St Cartmail is a genius in his business dealings and hopes he might take him on as a partner in his manufacturing businesses up north. He also said that Douglas sent his cousin’s mother money after Seth Greenwood’s death, enough money to be comfortable for the rest of her life.’
Sephora was pleased to hear this. ‘Richard always told everybody what he was going to do and never did it, whereas the Earl of Douglas seldom says a word and quietly sees to everything.’
‘I think you love him.’ It wasn’t a question.
Turning away, Sephora felt a sort of hopeless longing. ‘I was ruined. Surely that is enough of a reason to at least be grateful.’
‘You lied to yourself every day when you were with Richard. I hope you are not still doing it.’
‘Maria?’
‘Yes?’
‘I will miss you.’
* * *
Francis was up the next morning, dressed and eating a hearty breakfast when she came downstairs. ‘Daniel Wylde is in town with his wife, Amethyst, and they have asked us to a celebration at their place in the afternoon.’
‘A celebration?’ She didn’t feel up to the whole social gambit yet and was certain that he wasn’t. They had not discussed any arrangements particular to their marriage either and when they spoke now she felt more and more as if they were strangers.
‘Lucien’s sister, Christine, will be there and the Wesleys, Gabriel and Adelaide Hughes. A small occasion to mark our wedding though unfortunately Lucien and his wife, Alejandra, are away in Bath on holiday.’
These people were all Francis’s best friends and she was nervous of any questions that might come her way, for so far Francis and she had been circling around each other, a few truths that were surprising, and then long times of polite distance. She wondered what he might have said of her privately.
Women, too, had their ways of finding out things and although she had spoken with Adelaide Hughes and Amethyst Wylde briefly at different social events, she did not know Christine Howard at all, though she had seen her at a distance. She had never had women friends as such, Richard taking up most of her spare time.
So many thoughts made her dizzy and she helped herself to a cup of tea and sipped it slowly. ‘I hope they will like me.’
Francis looked up at that and frowned. ‘Why would they not?’
‘Perhaps they might think...’ She stopped for a second, but made herself carry on as he raised his eyebrows. ‘They are strong women. I imagine that there are things about me that they cannot admire.’
‘Such as?’
‘Arriving at your house alone and uninvited and getting drunk on whisky. Tricking you into offering marriage to save me from a ruin of my own making.’
His laugh was rough. ‘You truly think that of me? That I could be tricked into something that I did not wish to do? Something as important as marriage?’
‘I don’t know. I am certain you wouldn’t have been interested in pursuing an acquaintance with me if I had not forced the issue, but...’
Now all humour had fled and he looked deadly serious. ‘This damn bullet has so far ripped out any chance of showing you exactly what marriage should mean, Sephora, but I am recovering. Do not expect such a state of grace to last much longer.’
With that he stood, upending his cup of strong coffee before setting it down, dark eyes running across her in a way that was disturbing. He was newly shaved and his hair had just been washed and any of the illness suffered over the last week seemed to have run away with the bathwater.
A virile man with his own needs and beautiful beyond measure. Even the thought of it made her cheeks blush.
‘If it’s any consolation my friends were all trying their hardest to get me to see you as a suitable candidate for a bride long before you agreed to marry me.’
Then he was gone.
* * *
The afternoon began badly as the rain that had been holding off for the morning suddenly bucketed down on the small run between the carriage and the front door of the Wyldes’ town house. Her hair was ruined, despite the umbrellas, of that she was sure, the curls so carefully fashioned hanging down the front of her jacket in long damp strands.
Francis St Cartmail on the other hand looked magnificent, the rain on his face and scar curled into laughter. ‘God, I love England,’ he said with feeling as they were shown inside. ‘In America, for a good part of it, there was nothing but heat.
‘Rain suits you, too,’ he added as he took her cloak and passed it on to a waiting footman. ‘I like your hair less...formal.’
And after that it was easy, Daniel Wylde’s wife taking her hand and leading her into the room, a warm welcome on her face.
‘We have been looking forward to meeting you properly, Sephora. Might I call you that? Francis has been alone for a large number of years, you see, and I always hoped that marriage would be his saving grace.’
As Lady Adelaide Wesley came forward Sephora remembered the last time they had spoken was on the subject of her marriage to the Duke of Winbury, the ‘body, soul and heart’ talk that had left her flustered and afraid.
Today, however, she was smiling and after searching for a moment in her reticule she lifted up a small bottle of oil.
‘For fertility,’ she explained. ‘I give something to every new bride I know and chart which of the potions works the quickest. I have much hope in this elixir so I pray you don’t disappoint me.’
The general laughter accompanying this statement meant Sephora’s embarrassment went largely unnoticed.
Lucien’s sister, Lady Christine Howard, was the next one to be introduced. Sephora had often seen her at a distance in society and admired her grace and beauty.
‘I am so pleased to meet you, Sephora, and I do love your dress.’
Amethyst laughed. ‘Christine has a business designing and making wonderful gowns though it is rather a secret.’
‘Business?’ Sephora had never really known a woman in business in her life. The idea of it was truly revolutionary.
‘We are not quite the normal run of the women of the ton, Sephora. We like to fashion our own paths
and woe betide the man that tries to stop us.’ It was Amethyst Wylde who gave this explanation, quietly but honestly.
Goodness, Sephora thought as she digested this last confidence. She was so much more used to flighty small talk at social occasions, unimportant musings or even the more pointed gossip, and she could not believe the way this conversation was heading.
These women were...powerful, that was the word she sought, powerful in their hopes for themselves and each other, fearless in their opinions and she liked it. Maria would like them, too, she thought, and wished her sister could have been there.
At that point Gabriel Hughes lifted his glass to make a toast.
‘Here’s to a long and happy marriage,’ he said. ‘The final penniless lord and the last one to find his bride.’
‘To Francis and Sephora.’ Daniel Wylde spoke now and in the gaiety Sephora looked over at Francis and saw him watching her.
‘To us,’ he said quietly and handed her a glass. ‘Ad multos annos.’
The Latin made her smile though she wished that he might have made some mention of love.
* * *
Francis came to her room late that night, knocking on the closed door and waiting until she opened it. She was in her nightgown with a thick woollen shawl across her shoulders and some bright red slippers Maria had knitted her for her last birthday on her feet.
‘I found this on the shelves of my library and I thought that you might like it,’ he said and when she looked down she saw he was holding a book, bound in leather and embossed. ‘It was given to me a long time ago and I remember you told me when I was sick that you wrote stories.’
When he handed it to her she saw it was a journal, each page embellished with small figures from fairy tales and beautifully executed.
She wanted to ask who had given him this, but something in his eyes stopped her. He looked lonely, his hair tonight loose so that it sat around his shoulders in long dark curls. His stock was loosened, too, and across the top of the linen she saw a small portion of the scar that traced from one side of his throat to the other.
