Married to a Stranger

by Louise Allen

  ‘It all sounds wonderful,’ she said with a polite smile. Callum stared back at her, his gaze steady and unreadable under level brows. He made her a slight bow. Acknowledgment of her compliance? A genuine desire to marry her—or just a cynical satisfaction at getting his own way?

  Sophia felt a little shiver run through her and the smile stiffened on her lips. Opposite her, the man sitting at his ease in the wing chair lowered his lids over the clear hazel eyes and she realised she could not read his thoughts in the slightest. Then he looked up again, directly at her, and she saw the heat and the desire in his look and knew she could interpret one thought at least: he was thinking about yesterday afternoon. Was desire to be the only heat in this cool marriage? She shivered.

  The falling notes of the hymn died away. The choir, who a moment ago had looked like a flock of cherubs, their innocent, well-scrubbed faces turned up towards the stained glass window of the east end of the church, became once more a group of freckled village boys, nudging each other as they sat down in the ancient oak stalls.

  No doubt they had mice in their pockets and catapults hidden under their cassocks, Cal thought, amused by the normality of their barely disciplined naughtiness. Beside him Will cleared his throat and on his right hand Sophia closed her hymn book.

  In a moment they would leave the high box pew and walk down the aisle to shake hands with the vicar who would be marrying them in three days’ time.

  And Will and I can both get dead drunk tonight, Cal hoped. He was tired. Beyond tired, he thought, contemplating restless nights, hectic days and miles of travel.

  Now all he wanted was sleep and to get this wedding over with. He had done everything that was needful, he thought. At the East India Company offices he had consolidated his position in a post that brought status, a doubling of what his salary had been in India and the opportunity for endless profitable investment in return for his total commitment to the Company’s interests.

  He had reorganised his house in fashionable Mayfair to receive its new mistress. The rent was high—twice what he would have paid in the City—but they were going to move in the best society, not mingle with the cits. He had given his most superior butler carte blanche to appoint a fashionable lady’s maid and to make all ready for his return and he had come back here and endured Mrs Langley’s endless list-making and insistence on discussing every aspect of the wedding in wearisome detail.

  Then there was a rustle of silk beside him as he walked up the path between the leaning gravestones and he looked down at Sophia, silent in lavender at his side. He held the lych gate for her and then offered his arm as they waited for the carriage to draw up. It was necessary to stand there and shake hands with some of the congregation who had gathered round, to agree that after such a terrible accident, such a tragedy, that it was a blessing that he was comforted by the support of Miss Langley, who had so bravely put aside her own grief to marry him.

  No one appeared to think it strange that she should marry the wrong brother. It was the most logical solution, several people opined and, they added, when they thought they were out of earshot, very gallant of him to step in and prevent Miss Langley being left a spinster.

  Cal was quite certain she had heard those whispers. Sophia’s chin was up, there was colour in her cheeks and her eyes were sparkling with what he strongly suspected was anger, not chagrin.

  ‘Don’t take any notice of them,’ he said when they were at last free to walk across to the carriage.

  ‘I do not like to be pitied,’ Sophia said.

  ‘Nonsense, they are jealous,’ Cal retorted. ‘At least, the ladies are. They all wish they could marry me.’

  ‘Why, of all the conceited men!’ She cut him a sideways glance. ‘You are jesting? Aren’t you?’

  ‘Certainly not. You have only to eavesdrop a little. I’m a son of the Hall—and Will has not yet produced an heir; I must be as rich as Golden Ball if I am in the East India Company and, according to Mrs Whitely, I have powerful thighs. Now what do you think she means by that?’

  ‘That your breeches are too tight,’ Sophia flashed back. ‘Mrs Whitely is a very foolish woman.’

  ‘She is certainly an outrageous flirt.’ The Whitelys had been amongst Will’s dinner guests last night and Cal had enjoyed an interesting passage with her in the conservatory. The lady certainly exhibited both experience and a willingness to demonstrate it, but even with the lingering frustration of controlling himself with Sophia, he had felt disinclined to oblige her amongst his brother’s potted palms.

  While he was recalling Amanda Whitely’s charms Sophia had fallen silent. ‘Are we doing the right thing?’ she asked him after a moment. ‘Would Daniel really have wanted this?’

  Cal did not pretend to misunderstand her. ‘You marrying me? Yes.’ It occurred to him as he said it that it was hardly tactful to be so certain. The more he thought about it, the more he was convinced that Dan had fallen out of his attack of calf-love. But his brother had proposed, been accepted. There had been no way back from that, not without dishonour. And he had inherited that obligation. ‘He would have thought it for the best,’ he added. ‘I had promised him I would look after you. And I will.’

  Despite his tiredness and his impatience with the whole palaver he found himself increasingly reconciled to this marriage, although he could not put a finger on quite why. Perhaps he was simply weary of being a bachelor. The prospect of a well-run home and not simply a house to lodge in was appealing.

  Sophia slid her hand further into the crook of his arm. ‘Sometimes it seems disloyal and then I look at you and think that twins are not the same as ordinary brothers and perhaps it is all right. For him, I mean.’

  ‘Are we so alike to you, then?’ Cal asked as he handed her into the carriage. Physically they had been, he knew that. There had been times when he had caught sight of himself in a mirror and had spoken, thinking it was Dan who stood there. But once people were with them for any length of time they never seemed to have any problem telling them apart.

  ‘I have no idea,’ Sophia said as she sat down, smoothing her sombre skirts into order. ‘All I have are nine-year-old memories and drawings that are just as old. You will both have changed as you became men.’

  ‘So what are those memories?’ What had he got to live up to specifically? He had never been in love, only suffered the pains of adolescent calf-love years ago, so he had no idea what she was feeling still for his brother. But at least he could discover something about how she remembered him. He found he was eager to hear her speak of Daniel. Will had stopped halfway down the path to speak to a group of farmers; they would have their privacy for a few minutes more.

  ‘You mean, not the ones of our childhood, but of his courtship? He was fun to be with, very relaxed. He never took anything seriously—except how we felt, of course. He was kind.’ Her voice faltered and then gathered strength. ‘He was very … romantic. And gentle. We used to creep away and sit in the summerhouse for hours, but he never tried to … to take advantage of the situation. And I always felt he was with me when we were together, not off thinking about anything else. Except you, of course. He was always with you in his head.’

  ‘You noticed?’ It had never occurred to him that anyone else would realise how it was with twins.

  ‘Of course I noticed. I knew about it when we were children, but I realised more when I was in love with him,’ Sophia said with a simplicity that jolted him. ‘He would frown sometimes and say What’s the matter with Cal, I wonder? Or his mood would change suddenly, in a way that was nothing to do with what we were doing or saying and I guessed that was you in his head. Was it the same for you—that constant awareness of your twin?’ Callum nodded. ‘Oh, I am so sorry. To have lost that intimate contact with another mind must be very painful. And lonely.’

  ‘You understand that?’ He swallowed, hard, fearing for a moment that the blurring of his vision was tears. No one, not even Will, had realised just how alone he had felt, how emotionally empt
y he still was. How cut off. It was gradually getting better, he was healing and he was not allowing himself to brood, but it would catch him unawares sometimes, like the stab of a knife. And the dreams … ‘Yes, it was—is—lonely.’

  She became a trifle pink and turned away from him to look out of the window, but he felt a touch on his fingers and glanced down. Sophia had taken his right hand in her left. ‘I wish I knew how to help.’ She gave a little squeeze and released him.

  Cal stopped himself catching her hand again. It was pathetic that she should feel she must comfort him.

  He saw the corner of her mouth move and realised she was biting the inside of her lip. ‘Were you not jealous that I was taking him away from you?’

  ‘No, I knew he would always be there when I needed him.’ And he had never taken Dan’s professions of love for Sophia seriously, he had thought it a mistake, right from the beginning. To be jealous of such foolishness never occurred to him. ‘And my mind was on other things too,’ Cal said.

  Why should he not hold her hand? They were betrothed. He caught it in his, her small hand in its tight kid glove vanishing into his larger fist. She went very still, but gradually he felt her relax beside him. It was curiously pleasant and he found himself confiding more easily. ‘I was in love, too—or I fancied myself in love. And I had not even had the temerity to approach the girl, let alone say anything to her.’

  ‘Who was she, the girl you loved?’ Sophia turned back, her expression now one of sympathy and an interest that his youthful emotions did not deserve. ‘Did you miss her very much?’

  ‘I recovered within weeks,’ Cal recalled. ‘She was a girl called Miranda who is now married to a worthy knight and the mother of a large brood of children, according to Will.’

  ‘What’s according to me?’ The earl climbed in to join them.

  ‘Village gossip,’ Cal said.

  ‘You can drop me at the end of the lane,’ Sophia said as the carriage moved away towards the Hall. She had freed her hand. ‘It is a fine day for a walk.’

  ‘But you will dine with us tomorrow, of course,’ Will said. ‘Our relatives will wish to meet you before the wedding.’

  ‘Oh. Of course.’

  Sophia seemed a little daunted, Cal thought, managing to keep the frown off his face. He needed a wife who would be able to cope with dinner parties and entertaining. Now he was going to have to keep an eye on her and not give in to the thundering headache that was building up behind his eyes.

  Chapter Six

  Sophia saw the change in Callum’s eyes, even though his face remained impassive. He was not pleased with her lack of enthusiasm, she realised. His change of mood, from confiding and almost gentle to irritated, brushed across her nerves like the touch of a cold finger. Talking of his twin had made her worry again that she was deceiving Callum, that he would not feel he should marry her if he discovered that her feelings for Daniel had altered.

  Now that the die was cast and she had agreed to wed him she found that she had no wish to change her mind, although whether it was entirely relief that their money worries would be settled or a growing curiosity about this intelligent, controlled, wounded man, she could not decide. He was not going to be easy to live with, she suspected.

  ‘Tell me who I will meet,’ she asked, straightening her back. ‘I will try to remember them all.’

  ‘There are two aunts, their husbands and assorted adult offspring with spouses, one widowed uncle, a brace of spinster cousins of our maternal grandmother and our father’s two godsons,’ Will explained. ‘A motley crew,’ he added when he had finished enumerating them. ‘But Lady Atherton—Aunt Clarissa—is worth cultivating. You’ll run into her in town once she goes up again and she’s in with every hostess. She’ll get you your vouchers for Almack’s and see to your presentation next Season if my betrothed, Lady Julia Gray, cannot. The Misses Hibbert, the cousins, are an entertaining pair of bluestockings.’

  He went on, patiently explaining each relative to her until Sophia’s head spun. She was never going to remember them, she thought, and dragged her attention back to him as he concluded, ‘… godson, Donald Masterton. But that’s probably exaggerated.’

  ‘Oh, no doubt,’ Sophia said brightly, wondering just what it was about Mr Masterton, or who he was, other than a godson, come to that.

  It was not so bad as she feared when she and Mama arrived at the Hall the next evening. Sophia found herself surrounded by the younger relatives, who appeared most interested in her—or perhaps they were simply intrigued by her star-crossed romance.

  William kept up a flow of conversation with the older men, the spinster cousins had vanished into the library and the matrons were soon immersed in family gossip. Callum stood alone by the fire under the portrait of the three brothers, almost as if he was deliberately pointing up the fact that one of them was missing.

  Sophia wanted to go to him, slip her hand into his and stand with him, but the confiding man from the carriage outside the church had gone again and his aura of aloofness kept her away. She sighed, then straightened her shoulders—she had a duty to get to know this family who would soon be hers.

  ‘Where is your town house?’ one of the young women asked her.

  Mrs Lambert, Sophia recalled. ‘Half Moon Street. I do not know London at all, I’m afraid.’

  ‘A very good address.’ Mrs Lambert approved. ‘And how many rooms does it have?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Don’t tease the poor girl, Felicity my angel.’ That was the tall, rather saturnine young man who was the mysterious Mr Masterton. Or, rather, there was no mystery about him except in her lack of attention to Will’s explanations on Sunday morning.

  Sophia smiled warmly, feeling she should somehow make up for it. ‘Things have all happened very quickly.’

  ‘Still, I don’t suppose it makes much difference to you, does it?’ Mr Masterton remarked. Somehow he had detached her from the others and established a tête à tête in an alcove.

  ‘Indeed it does! Really, Mr Masterton, Callum and Daniel might have been twins, but they were very different personalities.’

  ‘So, Callum is second-best. How bravely you are facing marriage to a stranger, Miss Langley.’

  ‘I did not say that. Callum is not … Comparisons are odious, Mr Masterton. One cannot go back to what might have been. We are very happy and I hope the family feels the same.’ He was tactless and provocative, but somehow it was refreshing after the polite evasions and the poorly veiled speculation, like a mouthful of tart lemonade after too much cream cake.

  He smiled at her heated response. ‘I am not family, Miss Langley, only the most distant of connections and a godson of the late earl. But you certainly have my approval.’ The emphasis was unsettling.

  Sophia managed a tight smile as the butler appeared in the doorway. ‘Excuse me. I believe we are going in.’

  Callum came across the room and offered his arm and Masterton strolled off.

  ‘It must be a comfort to have the family all here,’ Sophia ventured.

  ‘Not really.’ Callum barely dropped his voice as they walked through to the dining room. ‘Don’t forget, I haven’t seen most of them for nine years, except at the funeral. And we were never close in the past.’

  That was disappointing. ‘Oh. I had been hoping that these people would be visitors to the London house, that I was making a head start on knowing your London acquaintance.’

  ‘No, these are the country mice on the whole, not the town ones. Are you daunted by the prospect?’

  ‘A trifle,’ she confessed. ‘But you will introduce me to the town mice first, not the rats, won’t you?’

  That made him smile, but he soon sobered again. Dinner was a formal meal and she felt distanced from it and the other people around the table. Sophia made stilted conversation with Callum, wishing she could recapture the confiding intimacy of Sunday, and then turned with some relief to Lord Atherton, his uncle by marriage, on her other side.
r />   ‘And what do you think of this new post of Chatterton’s, then?’ he enquired.

  ‘I do not know, I am afraid,’ Sophia had to confess. ‘We have had no time to discuss it.’ How little she did know! She knew her new address, but not a thing about its location, size or even the names of the servants. She knew Callum had a position which caused his relatives to nod gravely and with approval, but how he filled his days was a mystery. What would her role in his life be? She did not even have the slightest idea how they would be financially. A fashionable address argued wealth, but Callum might well be spending money on visible show to bolster his new position, and she couldn’t forget that she had handed him a pile of debts to settle. She must be prudent with the housekeeping.

  The conversation veered off to Lord Atherton’s description of his recent trip to Edinburgh and there, at least, she was able to take an intelligent interest until Lady Atherton, acting as hostess, rose and led the ladies out.

  The polite inquisition that followed was what she had expected. Sophia was able to maintain her poise while engaged in the chitchat that barely disguised questions about her family and her connections. She had been betrothed very young and her father had died soon after Daniel had left for India, plunging her into mourning.

  Somehow, as she emerged from that she had never begun to mingle with Daniel’s wider family. If Will had been married it would probably have been different, but a bachelor earl kept a very different household from a married one and there were no house parties to be invited to.

  Having dissected her connections, family and background to their satisfaction the ladies moved on to her ability as a housekeeper and—more difficult to cope with—her feelings about the Chatterton brothers. It felt like being pecked by a flock of starlings. She wished she had a pencil and paper to draw them with their sharp noses, nodding plumes and avid eyes. She had resisted the urge to tuck a pad and pencil into her reticule; this was hardly the kind of party where she could creep away and sketch from the shelter of a curtain as she so often did at dull receptions.