Marriage Made In Hope

‘No.’

‘Did Clive drink?’

She stiffened and stepped back. ‘Why do you ask that?’

‘Because he died in a warehouse full of brandy.’

One ripe expletive and she was gone, the thin nothingness of her disappearing around the corner of the dim corridor. But Francis had seen something of tragedy in her eyes before she could hide it, a memory he thought, a recollection so terrible it had lightened the already pale colour of her cheeks.

He took me with him most places. God, could the man have taken her there to the warehouse and to his appointment with death? Had she seen his killer? Had she seen the only man she knew as a father die? He shook his head and swore again roundly. At his uncle and at her mother. At the unfairness of the hovel Anna had been brought up in, at the loneliness and the squalor. She was angry, belligerent and difficult because in all her life it seemed no one except the hapless Clive Sherborne had taken the time to get to know her, to look after her. And now she was abandoned again into a place where she felt no belonging, no sense of safety, no security.

She’d cut her hair as a statement. No one can love me. I am uncherished and unwanted. His hands fisted in his lap as he swallowed away fury.

Well, he would see about that. Indeed, he would.

Chapter Five (#ulink_877443ad-d81b-58cc-bf2b-af8cd9a75493)

This outing to Kew had been a mistake, Sephora thought a few days later as she walked with Richard, his second cousin Terence and his wife through the greened pathways of the gardens.

‘Are you quite recovered from your dreadful accident? It was the very talk of the town.’ Sally Cummings asked this in a quiet tone, her eyes full of curiosity.

‘I am, thank you.’ She didn’t particularly want to discuss further what had happened to her at the river as she did not fully understand it yet herself and so was not at all pleased when Richard joined in the conversation.

‘Sephora was left with only a small wound on her leg after all the fuss and that is quite cleared up now.’ He tightened his grip on her arm. ‘We were lucky it was not worse.’

She smiled tightly at this assessment of her health. Richard truly believed in the minimal effects the near drowning had left her with, but her hands still trembled when she held them unsupported and she had not slept properly for a full night since the fall.

Shaking away her irritation, she tried to look nonplussed. Richard had been most attentive on the drive here today, tucking a blanket around her legs and telling her how lovely she looked in her light blue gown. She knew this destination was not one he would have chosen on his own account and for that, too, she was grateful. It was Terence Cummings who had suggested the journey and she had assented readily because plants calmed her, the large expansive swathe of endless greens settling the air around her in a way the city never did.

Sally Cummings was usually quite a silent woman, but today she was chattier. ‘You look happy here, Sephora. I heard Terence say the marquis was hoping that after your wedding in November you might venture to Scotland for a short while. The Highlands are renowned for their wonderful fauna and flora.’

‘Scotland?’ Sephora had not heard this mentioned before and turned to her husband-to-be. ‘You thought to go there?’

Richard shrugged. ‘Well, we cannot travel to Paris with all the problems in France at the moment and Italy is just too far away. I doubt I could spare so much time either, for there are things here I need to keep my fingers on, so to speak.’

‘Of course.’ The words were ripped from her disappointment. Just another plan that differed from what they had once discussed.

The older woman took her arm and tucked it into hers. ‘Terence changes his mind all the time, yet if I do so even once he is most unhappy with me. It is the way of all men, I suppose, their need to be in charge of a relationship and the leader in the home. My father and uncle were both the same. At least you have known Winslow forever and that must be most comforting. A shared history, so to speak.’