The Invention of Sophie Carter

by Samantha Hastings

  Sophie unconsciously stepped closer to Ethan and managed to say, “I’m delighted to make your acquaintance.”

  Rebecca released her hold on her husband’s arm and took Sophie’s. “Ethan, why don’t you entertain Charles, and Miss Carter can sit with me?”

  Ethan bowed slightly to Sophie before walking across the room to Charles, whose expression was particularly dour. Aunt Bentley sat near Mrs. Miller and Mr. Eustace Miller. Rebecca led her to a settee, and they sat next to each other.

  “Now, let me get a good look at you,” Rebecca said. “Very beautiful. I can see why Ethan is smitten. Are those his flowers in your hair?”

  Sophie felt her color rise, but she was saved from answering by Adaline sitting down on her other side.

  “What has Rebecca said to embarrass you?” Adaline teased.

  “Nothing,” Sophie said, but she felt as if the world had somehow tilted. Ethan’s family seemed to assume too much about her and him—about them.

  “The night is young,” Adaline said. “I daresay she’ll manage to embarrass you and Mr. Miller before the dinner is over.”

  “I’ll do no such thing!” Rebecca protested.

  “It seems very brave of him to have you meet all of his family before an engagement is announced to the papers and you cannot change your mind,” Adaline said, winking at Rebecca.

  If Sophie were the fainting type, which she thankfully wasn’t, she would have fallen to the floor at Adaline’s bold announcement. Engagement?! It was much too soon to be using that sort of word.

  “He made us all promise to behave ourselves,” Rebecca said.

  Adaline laughed. “Sophie, I know that it’s quite without manners to ask, but is everything settled between the two of you?”

  “Adaline, such an indelicate question!” Rebecca said, but she still leaned forward eagerly to hear Sophie’s answer.

  “Like you’re not dying to know yourself,” Adaline said, shrugging her perfect shoulders. “I’ve had several people ask me, and I would hate to be the last person in London society to know.”

  Sophie didn’t know what to say. Had her behavior given cause for such talk? Marriage. She literally felt sick to her stomach. At last, she found her voice. “Nothing is … We are … Lady Gordon, do you care for Pre-Raphaelite paintings, by chance?”

  Rebecca raised her perfectly shaped eyebrows at her friend. “I’m very fond of art. Are you, Adaline?”

  Adaline gave a resigned sigh. “I suppose I’m not un-fond of it.”

  The butler announced dinner and Sophie was relieved to find Ethan at her side. Adaline took her usual place by Charles, who steadily refused to look at Sophie. Ethan escorted Sophie into an enormous dining room with two large crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. He assisted her to a seat on his left and Lord Gordon sat on her other side. The footmen began to deliver the dishes, which superseded all conversation for a few moments.

  Sophie was glad to have a chance to catch her breath and tidy the thoughts in her mind. Adaline seemed to think that all of London society was expecting a wedding announcement any day now. Clearly Ethan’s sisters thought they were already engaged, or at least soon to be.

  Horrified and embarrassed, Sophie wished that Mariah had come to dinner instead. She stole a glance at Charles, who gave her a withering look in return and then focused his attention on his plate. She wondered what Mariah had said or done to make him feel hostile toward her just when he was starting to behave almost human.

  She turned her head to Ethan, who met her gaze with a smile. Her stomach began to turn in the pleasantly unpleasant way that it always did when he was near. But that feeling was overshadowed by the nausea brought on by his family’s expectations.

  “My sisters weren’t invited tonight,” Ethan said quietly.

  “And yet they’re all here.”

  Ethan shook his head bemusedly. “Yes. My mother told Mary, who told Louisa, who told Anne, who told Rebecca. They were all most eager to meet you.”

  “Rebecca seems very … loquacious.”

  “A busybody,” Ethan said.

  Sophie tried to smile but she felt the eyes of the entire party on her—on them.

  Mrs. Miller diverted the attention. “Charles, how soon will you be departing back to New York?”

  “Nine days,” he said, with a slight questioning glance at Sophie.

  “So soon,” Mrs. Miller said. “Are you quite recovered?”

  “It’s good for a man to be at his business,” Mr. Eustace Miller said gruffly.

  Charles flushed. “I’m much better, Aunt Miller, and eager to prove myself equal to the task.”

  “And so you will,” Ethan said. “Charles has a great head for business, doesn’t he, grandfather?”

  “Sound,” Mr. Eustace Miller said. “Very sound head.”

  “I hope you’ve all received your invitations to my ball next week,” Aunt Bentley said. “It will be in honor of my dear Charles’s departure.”

  “We’ll certainly be there,” Rebecca said with a knowing look at Sophie and Ethan. “It’s going to be quite the family affair, after all.”

  Sophie stood up suddenly. Her napkin fell to the floor, but she didn’t bother to pick it up. She walked quickly out of the dining room, covering her mouth with her hands; she felt as if she were about to be sick.

  In the hall, she spotted a Grecian urn on the side table. She grabbed it with both hands and brought it to her mouth in time to catch the contents of her stomach.

  “Sophie, are you all right?”

  Reluctantly she turned to see Ethan standing behind her in the hall. He looked so handsome in the candlelight, even with an expression of concern shadowing his face. She glanced down at the priceless historical artifact she’d just befouled.

  “I need some air.”

  “Let’s walk outside to the garden,” Ethan suggested. He gently took the urn from her fingers and set it back on the table.

  As he began to lead her away, she glanced over her shoulder at the urn. “I was … I was sick in that.”

  “I noticed,” he said, a smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Isn’t that what bowls are for?” Ethan said. “You don’t need to worry about it. It’s not an heirloom.”

  He opened a door that led out to a dark garden. The light from the house’s windows wasn’t enough to illuminate it. Instead, the dim light cast shadows on all the trees and bushes, giving them a sinister look.

  Sophie stripped off her gloves and touched her hot cheeks with her hands. Breathing in and out. She hadn’t felt this out of control in years. Mrs. Ellis had successfully beat most emotion out of her.

  “Please tell me what Rebecca said to upset you before dinner,” Ethan asked tentatively from behind her. “I’m sure this is only a misunderstanding that I can explain.”

  She stood silent for a few moments, trying to put her words in order like she would put together the gears of a clock. “Rebecca was not unkind.”

  “Something has upset you,” he said, touching her shoulder.

  Sophie stepped forward, breaking their contact. If he touched her, her tenuous resolve would be lost. “They all seem to assume that everything is settled between us.”

  “Is that such a bad thing?”

  “Yes!” Sophie exclaimed, finally turning to look him in the eye. “You know how I feel about courtships. You know my past. This … this is all much, much too soon for me.”

  Ethan reached his hand out to her. “I know the Trentons abandoned you, but that doesn’t mean that I will.”

  “How could you possibly understand?” Sophie cried, wringing her hands. “Someone like you with your beautiful house and your beautiful family … You will never understand what it’s like to be thrown away! To be treated like you’re even less than a servant, to not know if you’ll have a roof over your head the next day. To watch your sister be starved and belittled and know there is nothing you can do to help her, nothin
g you can do to make her life better. You could never understand.”

  “I’m trying to…”

  Someone must have opened a window at that moment; the sounds of happy chatter floated out into the garden.

  “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t be here,” Sophie said, feeling nauseous again.

  “Please stay. I’m sure we can resolve this together—”

  “There’s nothing to resolve. I don’t belong here … with you. Please call me a carriage. Every moment here pains me.”

  Ethan nodded slowly. “Of course … if you wish it.”

  “Thank you.”

  He left the garden and Sophie was finally alone. For the second time in a week, tears threatened to spill from her eyes. This was all her fault. She should have kept Ethan at a proper distance from herself, from her heart. She knew better. Reaching into her pocket, she felt for her pocket watch and ran her fingers over the engraving on the front until she felt calm again.

  The door to the house opened; Ethan stood holding it for her. Sophie sniffed and walked through it.

  “The carriage is ready, and I’ve brought you another bowl—just in case,” he said with a ghost of a smile.

  He was trying to cheer her up, but Sophie could not return the smile. Her chin quivered as he led her to the front door on the opposite side of the house.

  “May I accompany you home?”

  “No, thank you,” she said.

  He winced. “I don’t need your thanks.”

  “I have nothing else to give.”

  “This is goodbye for a little while then,” he said, his voice choked with emotion. “I’m leaving tomorrow for Birmingham and I’ll be there for several weeks. I’ve put off this business too long. Perhaps I can call on you when I return?”

  Sophie looked down at the bowl in her hands. She didn’t know what to say. She had no idea where she would be living in a few weeks.

  Ethan opened the carriage door for her and then offered his hand to assist her in, but she didn’t take it, electing to clamber in on her own. She knew she ought to say something, but no words would come. He stood waiting for her response for several moments before he closed the door to the carriage and said to the coachman, “Drive on.”

  As the carriage jerked forward, Sophie ran her fingers through her hair and felt the forget-me-not flowers. She plucked them from her tresses and watched them wilt in her hands.

  At last, the carriage arrived at Hyde Street. Mr. Taylor let Sophie in, his expression more curious than condescending. She brushed past him without a word and went straight upstairs to her room.

  “Sophie?” Mariah said in surprise, sitting up against the pillows. When she saw the look on her twin’s face, she dropped the book she’d been reading and scrambled out of bed.

  Sophie fell into the arms of her sister, the only person she trusted, and cried and cried.

  SEVENTEEN

  SOPHIE OPENED THE FRONT OF Mrs. Spooner’s clock, which had fallen five minutes behind, and wound the minute hand forward carefully, as winding it backward could break it. She cranked the thirty-hour weight until it was at the top and then closed the front, grateful to have something to focus her mind on besides Ethan.

  “I don’t understand why Mrs. Trenton refused to be my friend,” Mariah said as she placed her teacup on its saucer. She picked up a cucumber sandwich and took a bite.

  Sophie returned to her chair and picked up her cold cup of tea. “It doesn’t surprise me at all. She’s a horrible woman.”

  “She’s not horrible.”

  “She is.”

  “Now, now, dears,” Mrs. Spooner said. “I’m sure she does want to see you, Mariah, but seeing you reminds her of wronging you.”

  “But I forgave her,” Mariah protested.

  Mrs. Spooner shook her head slightly. “But has she forgiven herself?”

  Sir Thomas walked in with a harrumph.

  “Still gossiping, I see, like a bunch of lasses,” he said. “With no thoughts of my profession or that my painting should have been completed nearly a fortnight ago.”

  Mrs. Spooner stood up. “You’re right, dear, we weren’t thinking about you at all—it was a refreshing change. Come, ladies. Let’s go finish Joan of Arc.”

  Mariah and Mrs. Spooner helped Sophie back into her armor while Sir Thomas cursed their slowness from the stairs. When Mrs. Spooner announced that Sophie was decent, he growled, “About bloody time.”

  Sophie tried to conceal her smile. She liked Sir Thomas, despite his being egotistical, domineering, and short-tempered. She could hardly believe the painting was almost done. She wouldn’t miss dressing up in enough metal to build a steamboat, but she would miss Sir Thomas and his wife.

  “Hold still, dreadful girl!” Sir Thomas shouted.

  Sophie stuck her tongue out at him and then resumed her position, holding as still as she was able for over an hour. Periodically she would glance at her sister, who was painting with a pursed look on her face. Sophie hated Mrs. Trenton even more in that moment for troubling Mariah so.

  Exhaling slowly, Sophie reminded herself that she’d already determined to not let that woman take any more of her time or emotions. She had to make good to herself on that promise. But the thought that replaced it was equally traitorous: Her mind kept picturing Ethan in the park with the sunshine in his hair, and the hope and happiness she’d felt in his presence.

  “Prudie!” Sir Thomas barked. “Make her stop! She’s making a mooning face.”

  Mrs. Spooner stood up from the chair where she’d dozed off and walked over to Sir Thomas’s easel. She examined the canvas carefully from the very top to the very bottom. It was as if the studio itself was holding its breath, waiting for her pronouncement.

  “It is complete, Sir Thomas,” Mrs. Spooner said finally. “Not another brushstroke.”

  “Not another brushstroke?” Sir Thomas repeated.

  Mrs. Spooner placed a hand on her husband’s thick arm. “Not a one. Now, go away, dear. Get yourself some brandy and celebrate. I’ll take care of the framing and arrange with the gallery to come collect it for the presentation.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked, a note of uncertainty in his voice.

  “Sir Thomas, this is why you married me,” Mrs. Spooner replied. “I always know when a painting is complete. Now go, before you traumatize the young ladies any further.”

  Sir Thomas left the studio with something strangely close to a smile on his face. Mrs. Spooner helped Sophie out of the suit of armor and back into her dress. Sophie looked at the pile of metal pieces on the floor. “If it weren’t metal, I would suggest we burn it to celebrate.”

  Mrs. Spooner reached a hand into her voluminous apron pocket and pulled out a five-pound note, handing it to Sophie. “My dear, I think this is a much better way to celebrate.”

  Taking the note, Sophie smiled. “Yes, it is.”

  Mrs. Spooner walked over to Mariah, who was still steadily painting. She examined her small two-foot-by-two-foot canvas as Mariah put down her paintbrush and started to clean up.

  “You are making great steps forward, Mariah,” Mrs. Spooner said. “You shouldn’t stop yet. You’re finding your rhythm.”

  “Our aunt will want us,” Mariah explained. “She should be waking up from her afternoon rest very soon.”

  “She only needs one of us,” Sophie said. “I’ll go.”

  “But I need a model to paint.”

  Mrs. Spooner smiled. “I’ll have a footman bring up a mirror, and you can paint until you can no longer hold up that brush.”

  Mrs. Spooner gave them both a benign smile before leaving the room. Sophie looked intently at Mariah, who had picked her brush back up and continued to steadily stroke the red paint into flame-like curls around Sophie’s face.

  “Are you all right?” Sophie asked. “Should I stay?”

  Mariah shook her head. “I wanted some time to myself, and I think now is as good a time as ever.”

  Sophie nodded, then opened the a
ttic door and climbed over the short brick wall to Aunt Bentley’s house.

  EIGHTEEN

  SOPHIE HAD NOT SAT DOWN on the bed for more than five minutes when Adell knocked on the door and said that Aunt Bentley wished to see her. Sophie picked up a hairbrush and gave the red curls around her face a few quick swipes. She pinched her cheeks and straightened the lace on her dress before following Adell downstairs to the sitting room.

  “Ah, Sophie,” Aunt Bentley said, a piece of paper in her hand. “I was hoping that you would help me write and address these additional invitations to Charles’s party.”

  “As you wish.”

  Sophie sat down next to her aunt and began to copy the words of the invitation in her best penmanship, for Mariah’s handwriting was much cleaner and more elegant than Sophie’s. She carefully wrote and addressed more than fifty invitations to people she’d never even heard of. At least Adaline will be at the party, Sophie thought. Her family’s invitation had already been sent out with the first batch of letters.

  “I see that you’re smiling,” Aunt Bentley said.

  “I’m fond of Miss Penderton-Simpson—Adaline,” Sophie explained. “She’s a delightful companion and a good friend.”

  “If only Charles would realize as much,” Aunt Bentley said with her usual scowl. “I cannot see why he is holding back when she has everything a young man could wish for—and such excellent family and business connections.”

  Sophie nodded absentmindedly, then put down her pen carefully so as not to spill the ink.

  “Adaline certainly has all those things, and more. She has a vivacious charm and a lovely personality. But if there is no spark between them, it is not Charles’s fault.”

  “‘Spark?’”

  “Attraction,” Sophie said simply. “If he doesn’t feel warmly toward her, he shouldn’t ask her to marry him.”

  Aunt Bentley scoffed. “You’re showing your naivety again, Sophie. Love is imaginary, like fairies and monsters. People who delude themselves into believing in love make foolish matches like my sister.”

  “Did you not love the late Lord Bentley?”

  “He didn’t want my love, he wanted a wife,” Aunt Bentley replied flatly. “And I flatter myself that I upheld that position with honor and purpose.”