by Darcy Burke
Once they were alone, Julian rose to his feet with the boneless grace of a snake.
“There you are,” he said, circling round to kneel in front of Sophie, hands on her ankles, already smiling wickedly. “Have I satisfied your heart’s desires? Wealth, comfort, safety—planning for the future. So sweet to a woman’s ear.”
Sophie combed her fingers through his silken hair. “I’m grateful.” She caressed his cheek, his shoulders, hunting for something. A sense of connection, that she didn’t quite feel. “I didn’t ask for too much?”
“You should try.” His hands slid up her silk stockings, cupping her calves and parting her thighs. “See what happens.”
She knew what came next, and she was right. Later, when Sophie left the room, weak-kneed and nervous that she’d trail the scent of her arousal behind her like a confession, she was surprised to find the Dowager Duchess waiting by the balustrade overlooking one of High Bend’s two interior courtyards.
“Your Grace.” Sophie dipped into a curtsey.
“I called for a carriage to take you home—or to your little shop, as you like.” The Dowager held out a friendly arm, which she wrapped around Sophie’s waist. “Let me walk you out.”
They moved together toward the stairwell.
“I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard the word ‘lucky’ over the past few days.” The Dowager leaned her head so close her perfume tickled Sophie’s nose, sharp with spices. “Everyone thinks you’re such a lucky girl. But they’re wrong, aren’t they? They don’t give you the credit you’re due.”
Sophie frowned, the hairs at the back of her neck prickling. “I’m not sure ‘credit’ is the word.”
“Dead parents. Loss of fortune. That hideous brand on your cheek. You’re not lucky at all.” The Dowager paused in the corridor and tapped the middle of Sophie’s forehead with her bare index finger. The point of her nail stung. “You’re clever. You know which side your bread is buttered on. Always have.”
The Dowager Duchess walked in a nimbus of her own consequence, and it bore down upon Sophie—her height, her hand leaden at Sophie’s waist, the sheer blunt force of rank, when understood and wielded with a purpose.
Yet for all their differences, they shared one trait. Age. At thirty, the Dowager Duchess was only a couple of years older than Sophie. Yet Clive had been husband to her, and almost a father to Sophie. More than that: an increasingly distant, unwilling husband to his wife, and an increasingly warm and generous father to Sophie. However little the Dowager had cared for her husband, the contrast must have been difficult to bear.
Sophie stared levelly at the Dowager Duchess. She would not be intimidated, but she would not be unkind, either. She wouldn’t play the part of rival or enemy. “I’m not ashamed of looking to my own advantage.”
“You admit it?” The Dowager’s laughter sounded, brief and unkind. “Brava, Miss Roe. I thought you’d fooled yourself along with the rest of us.”
“Fooled?” Sophie swiped the Dowager Duchess’s hand away from her waist. “Madam, I may have come to High Bend as a beggar, but I did so honestly.”
The Dowager went pale. “What did he tell you?”
Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Clive had not been the sort of man to make his private worries public. He had never said an unkind word about his wife in Sophie’s presence. Sophie only knew what she’d observed: the rebuke in Clive’s eyes every time he laid eyes on his wife, their strained speech.
She knew nothing. But she’d guessed. Furthermore, she knew Julian still believed the Dowager Duchess had killed her husband.
She seized the opportunity. Gaze locked on the Dowager’s, she said: “Enough.”
The Dowager visibly gathered her composure—raised her chin, thrust her shoulders back, firmed her lips. “You play at being small and weak. Perhaps you’ve forgotten that you are small and weak.” She looked glorious, magisterial. “And, since you’re getting married in the morning, perhaps I’ll be the last person to tell you so. But it will always be true, Miss Roe. Always.”
She paused, let the silence creep in. “You may see yourself to the door.”
Sophie made a show of walking away at a sedate pace. First because she would not show the Dowager Duchess that she was afraid; later, as she climbed into the empty carriage, because she’d decided that she was not, in fact, afraid. Sophie knew what people thought of her. Had learned to live with it long ago. She would not quail, at this late date, to hear it spoken aloud.
Not at the words. Nor the crack in the Dowager’s façade, revealing a deep resentment Sophie had never guessed at. It was not right for the Dowager to hate her, but it was fair. So be it.
But the Dowager had provided Sophie with a clue. She’d admitted to a lie, a worm of rot burrowed deep into the core of her unhappy marriage. Something Clive had discovered, that he could have revealed to Sophie.
A secret he might have died to protect?
At Iron & Wine, Sophie told the Dawe siblings about her engagement and the likely location ofIron & Wine’s soon-to-be nib factory. Charlotte was overjoyed; Max, to Sophie’s surprise, seemed a little disappointed. When the excitement settled down, she spent a few minutes discussing the Bank of England order with Max. He’d taken over the job of procuring her supplies, and they needed more of everything to be ready.
By the time she’d finished with Max, noon had come and gone. She plucked her most recent ghost letter from the loose windowpane, where she kept her lunchtime forgeries, stopped by The Raddle Pit and carried her small basket lunch to the stream. The progress of the season had left its mark on the land—the carpet of white anemones and spiky red butterburs had given way to fluted yellow cowslips and bushes of red campion.
When she’d finished eating, she opened up her letter and recognized her mother’s hand:
…To which I reply: luck had nothing to do with it. I married a good man. Good looks, charm, even enthusiastic wooing obscure rather than reveal a man’s character…
Sophie burst into tears. She cried so hard her tear ducts hurt from the pressure. Her throat closed and ached. Furious, she thrust the paper into the stream with both hands. There, under the chuckling water, her hands looked strange: bloodless and too small, stained with black ink.
“Oh, Mama,” she whispered. “What have I done?”
She tore the page, already almost blank again, into pieces and let the scraps float away. So what if she was small and weak? She didn’t care what the Dowager Duchess thought of her. She didn’t regret her decisions. She wasn’t afraid of marrying Julian.
Sophie wiped at her cheeks with frozen hands. The cold stopped the flow of tears; she knelt by the stream and splashed her face, gasping at the chill. It settled her. She breathed normally when she stood and straightened her clothes, her skirts damp and dirt-stained up to the knees now.
Well. She’d be a duchess on the morrow, and calling her everyday clothes “old rags.” No doubt someone would order her to burn her gray woolens before she’d been married a week.
Chapter 18
The day of her wedding started like any other. She awoke before dawn in a room that looked much the same as it always had, but for its bare shelves and tables. Her keepsakes had been packed up along with her clothes in trunks that one of High Bend’s grooms would collect later in the afternoon. Mrs. Purse’s red gown hung on a hook by the door. Her shift, stockings, and shoes were stacked on a chair nearby.
The maid came in to stir up the coals and help her dress. By the time she had finished her preparations, the rest of the family had just begun to stir. Sophie knocked on the door to her aunt’s bedroom and, hearing a muffled invitation, opened the door.
Jenny lay in bed with a breakfast tray over her lap, the sheets tucked around her waist and a cap trimmed in eyelet lace covering her hair. “Oh, Sophia! There’s nothing lovelier than a bride on her wedding day.”
“Thank you.” Sophie twirled. She’d worn her finest dress, which could only be Mrs. Purse’s red gown, and
felt more comfortable in it this time. “I thought I’d walk to the church.”
Aunt Jenny looked at her breakfast, egg and kippers on a porcelain plate, a small spouted pot next to a cup full of steaming chocolate, then back up at Sophie, dressed and ready. “Wouldn’t you rather wait? So we can all go together?”
“I think the walk might settle my nerves,” Sophie replied. “If you don’t mind. This has all been so sudden…”
“Of course, darling.” Jenny picked up her cup of chocolate with both hands. “We’ll see you there.”
So she made the journey to Padley on foot, as usual, in a pair of sturdy half-boots with an apron tied round her waist to keep the mud off her dress. When she saw a bee crawling along the gravel at the side of the road, she stopped to give it honey.
Its delicate wings were shredded, frayed at the edges. Some bees just needed the strength to go home. This one would never see its hive again. It had flown too far, going from flower to flower, and had worked itself to death.
I’m only prolonging its misery, Sophie told herself as she screwed the silver cap back onto her little bottle. But she’d already left the drop of honey; she wouldn’t regret it.
She arrived at the church before Julian or her family. An attendant shepherded her into a private room to wait, where she stared blankly at the bare ironstone walls until her family arrived—Aunt Jenny giddy, Uncle Malcolm somber and gruff. Bettina went to stand with Peter and Honoria in the pews.
Sophie removed her apron and exchanged her boots for a pair of slippers. Her aunt fastened her veil.
“Does it seem real yet?” asked her uncle as he led her down the aisle.
“No,” Sophie answered, seeing Julian by the altar. The dove-gray coat and trousers he wore brought out the golden tones of his skin and the silvery sheen of his pale hair. She felt his eyes on her, sharp with anticipation, and it made her shiver.
“I know you doubt me sometimes,” added Malcolm, preparing to hand her off. “But I love you, Sophie, and I wish you all the happiness in the world.”
Sophie did not reply, even to offer a perfunctory smile.
Her uncle let her go.
“You really arrived first?” Julian whispered, a showman’s twinkle in his eye now that she’d drawn close. “And alone?”
The vicar spread his arms wide to draw attention to himself before Sophie could respond. He began the liturgy. Sophie followed the vows. She spoke when required, without prompting. In the way of very important events, the whole thing felt unreal, dreamlike, and also quite ordinary.
And then Julian lifted the veil over her head and leaned down to kiss her, his lips full and firm against hers, and just for an instant the moment opened up to her, the whole dreadful weight and import of it unfiltered. Fire flooded her veins. Some nameless emotion, a mix of excitement and dread, made her tremble and smile at once.
Julian turned her around. Bettina clapped both her hands over her mouth. Tears dripped down her aunt’s cheeks. Because she’d gotten married?
A pressure at the small of her back sent her moving out of the nave, through the porch, and into the open air, warm with the promise of summer. She heard birdsong. A cart rolled by. It was like any other day, for everyone but her.
“I’ve never seen you smile like that,” said Julian, lifting her into the barouche.
Sophie blinked. “Was I smiling?”
“As if you were the first person to discover how,” Julian answered, climbing up beside her.
Sophie slanted her gaze at him; he’d put on a hat, stiff and tall, tilted at a rakish angle. It went very well with the cocky grin he wore. “And you’re the man who taught me?”
Julian shrugged and twitched the reins. “Logic tells me that the simplest explanation is also the most probable.”
“Logic tells me that you always find the most flattering conclusion the simplest,” Sophie retorted.
“Shush,” teased Julian, as the barouche lunged forward. “You’re supposed to be so overcome with joy that you can’t think straight.”
“Maybe I am,” Sophie said, but the wind snatched the words away, and it didn’t matter anyhow. Julian drove her up, up into the mountains, to the high castle on a high peak, where both the huge, iron-bound arched doors stood open and Julian carried her over the threshold as though she were weightless.
The few witnesses at their wedding joined an assortment of friends and family at High Bend for the traditional wedding breakfast. Max and Charlotte Dawe sat opposite one another at the dining table, silent and gawking. Laura Tidmarsh kept up a lively chatter with Vasari Jones. The Dowager Duchess made eyes at Lord Kingston, who, in turn, made a great show of boredom.
Sophie sat at one end of the long table, opposite her new husband, unable to speak to him—only look. He looked, too, and she grew warmer and more impatient by the minute. She wanted the guests to leave. She wanted the whole castle emptied, every torch lit, and she wanted to defile each room in it one by one.
They could start with the dining room.
They could start on the table.
They could start with his great golden hands on her pale thighs, with his slim hips nestled into the cradle of hers, with his pale fine hair hanging over his brow and his lips ever so slightly parted, on a pant.
Mr. Tidmarsh, sitting to her right, coughed loudly. “Your Grace?”
Sophie blinked and looked at the gentleman, who coughed again, gently this time, and touched a napkin to his lips. “Frog in my throat, what?”
Sophie gestured to one of the waiting footmen. “Do you need more water? Wine? Tea with lemon?”
A footman rushed forward to refill Mr. Tidmarsh’s glasses. Another glided toward the door to fetch tea. Mr. Tidmarsh looked embarrassed.
Oh. He hadn’t been parched at all. He’d been trying to catch her attention, and she’d been utterly distracted. Realizing her error, Sophie drained half a glass of champagne.
Honoria leaned close. “Now that we’re both prominent local matrons, we’ll have to organize an outing. What do you think? A visit to some of the local scenic views—Mam Tor? Boating on the River Wye?”
Sophie hadn’t planned to have a role as a prominent local matron. She reached for her freshly replenished glass of champagne. When she noticed Julian watching her through hooded eyes, she swallowed a little more than was strictly wise.
“I think we have another job to do, if you’ll take it up with me,” continued Honoria, dropping her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “Now that Mr. William Allsop is out of the running, it’s up to us to find Miss Tidmarsh a suitable husband, so she can join our ranks.”
“Frogface William.” Bettina snickered. “I wonder where he’s hopped off to? Has anyone heard from him yet?”
“I think it’s time we stop making light of his disappearance,” cautioned Mr. Tidmarsh. “My wife has been to see his family. They’re distraught.”
Mrs. Tidmarsh, on the opposite side of the table, nodded. “Every day, it seems likelier that he has met with some accident. How else would he manage? He left without money, without any luggage. They’ve contacted family in distant counties, but received only negative replies.”
Sophie frowned. Something, an itch on her nose, made her glance across the table at Julian. He was listening attentively, his eyebrows arched to express mild interest while his eyes glittered with satisfaction.
A chill skittered down her back.
“There’s something I don’t understand, Sophie,” said Laura, setting down her utensils. “If William caused that scar, how did you come to blame the current duke?”
Sophie started and reached for the champagne. She drank too much, and then blushed. She had never tried to explain aloud what had happened that night. She had been too ashamed. Might still be, in fact.
“I’d received bad news,” she began, then faltered.
“You’d just found out that your dowry was gone,” Bettina said, taking over. “Papa and Clive the Ninth told you on the very night that your engag
ement to the current duke had been announced! You were so upset that you spilled a bottle of ink…”
Sophie drank again and nodded. “I was crying so hard I could barely see. I was clumsy. Not myself.”
“You must have been angry,” Bettina suggested. “Because you picked up the bottle of ink and hurled it at the wall—”
Sophie shuddered and looked down at her lap, at her fingers knotted white.
“—And one of the shards flew out and cut you.”
“I don’t think I even noticed,” Sophie admitted. “Or if I did… I don’t know.” She really didn’t remember the events of that night, only what she’d written down afterward. “That’s when he—my husband—came in, and he was so kind to me.”
The whole table had gone silent, every last flicker of conversation doused. Her own uneven breaths sounded loud to her ears. What came next was the worst. The most deeply, utterly humiliating moment of her life.
“He was there, and he tried to soothe me,” she continued. “But I only felt worse. Guilty, because I knew I would repay his generous treatment with my poverty, that from that moment on I’d only be a burden to him. I said”—she took another drink; had someone filled the glass recently?—“I said that I was sorry. That I didn’t deserve his kindness.” Sophie shook her head. “He must have been gone by then, or left while I babbled. I don’t know. I believe I repeated myself quite a bit.” I’m sorry, I love you so much, I’m so sorry, I love you, I love you, I love you.
“And then I felt someone’s fingers in my hair.” She skimmed fingers along her forehead at her hairline, conjuring that phantom touch. “I thought it was—my husband. I thought he’d come back. But it must have been William Allsop, hearing me say private things.” Sophie blushed. “The sort of things one only says to a fiancé. And then those gentle fingers—Mr. Allsop’s, though I believed otherwise—they pushed my face into the pool of ink. And held me there while I struggled.”
