Marriage Made In Hope

Her heart began to beat a little faster, but she pushed the start of panic down. ‘Of course.’

She was coping and for that she was glad. She was managing to be just the person everybody here thought she was. No one watched her too intently, no conversation had swirled to a stop as she passed a group, no whispered conjectures or raised fans behind which innuendo could be shared. No pity.

Her betrothed’s first finger touched a drop of ornately fashioned white gold at her ear. ‘I knew they would look well on you as soon as I saw them, my love. I was planning on keeping them as a surprise until your birthday, but you looked as if a present might be the very thing needed to cheer you up. I managed to get them at a good price from Rundell’s as they have high hopes of my further ducal patronage in the future.’

‘I imagine that they do.’ She tried to keep sarcasm from the words, but wondered if she had been successful as he turned to look at her sharply. She had not used such a thing before, the poor man’s version of humour, but tonight she could not help it. The chandelier above them gave the blurred appearance of light through water and it momentarily made her take in a deep breath.

All about her was a living, moving feast of life: five hundred people, myriad colours, the scent of fine food and the offer of expensive wine. Without thought her hand lifted to a long-stemmed crystal glass on the silver platter a footman had just presented to the party and if Richard frowned at her choice he had at least the sense not to say anything.

She seldom drank alcohol, but the orgeat lemonade tonight held no allure at all. It looked like the water of the Thames somehow, cloudy, cold and indistinct. She swallowed the wine like a person finding a waterhole in the middle of an endless desiccated African desert and reached out for another. Her mother shook her head even as Richard set his bottom teeth against his top ones and tried to smile. The glint of anger in his eyes was back.

But it was so good, this quiet escape that took the edge off a perpetual panic and made everything more bearable. Even the gaudy new bracelet twinkling in the light started to have more appeal.

The beginnings of the three-point tune of a waltz filled the air around them and when her betrothed took her arm and led her into the dance she allowed him the privilege. His closeness was not the problem it would have been ten minutes earlier and she wondered if perhaps she had been too harsh on a man who after all had always loved her and had failed to learn to swim.

The feel of him was known, his short brown hair well cut and groomed, the smell of an aftershave that held notes of bergamot and musk.

‘You look very pretty, Sephora, and more like yourself.’ This time his smile was genuine and she saw in him for a moment the boy whom she had grown up with and played with, though his next words burst that nostalgic bubble completely. ‘I do think, though, that you should refrain from imbibing any more wine.’

‘Refrain when I have barely begun to feel its effect?’

‘You have had two full glasses already, my dearest heart, and you are now in some danger of flippancy.’

‘Flippancy?’ She rolled the word on her tongue and liked it. She had never been flippant. She had always been serious and composed and polite until she had fallen headlong into that river and discovered things about herself that she could no longer hide.

For just a second she thought she loathed her intended groom with such ferocity she might well indeed have simply hit him. But the moment passed and she was herself again, chastised by the impulse and made impotent by fright.

Who was that inside of her? What crouched below the quiet and ladylike bearing that was her more usual demeanour and appearance, the lemon silk in her gown, the curls in her hair, the dainty bejewelled slippers upon her feet?

She had a headache, she did, a searing terrible headache that made her sick and dizzy. Richard in a rare moment of empathy recognised the fact and led her over to a chair near the wall apart from the others and made her sit down.

‘Stay here whilst I find your mother, Sephora. You do not look well at all.’

She could only nod and watch him go, the slight form of him disappearing amongst the crowd to be replaced by a man she recognised instantly.

‘You.’ Hardly mannerly, desperately said. The sound came from her in a whisper as Francis St Cartmail stood alone in front of her.

‘I am glad to see you much recovered, Lady Sephora. I am sorry I did not stay to see to your welfare after...’ The earl stopped.

‘My drowning?’ She supplied the ending for him and he smiled. It made his face softer somehow, the scar on his left cheek curled into a smaller shape and her three scratches on his right almost disappearing into a deep dimple.

‘Hardly a drowning. More a case of getting wet, I think.’

Simple words that she needed. Words that took away the terror and the hugeness of all that had transpired. He was even looking at her with humour in his eyes. Sephora wanted him to keep on talking, but he didn’t, though the stillness that fell between them was as distinct as any conversation.

‘Thank you,’ she finally managed.

‘You are welcome,’ he returned and then he was gone, Richard in his stead with her mother, her face creased in worry and remorse.

‘I should never have let you come. I shall have a good word with the doctor after this and tell him that it was much too soon and that...’

The words rattled on, but Sephora had ceased to listen. She was safe again, she knew it.

Hardly a drowning. More a case of getting wet, I think.

She suddenly knew that Francis St Cartmail would never have let her drown, not in a million years. He would have jumped in and saved her had the depth of the water been ten feet or twenty. He would have dragged her across a current many times more dangerous or a river fifty times as wide if he had had to.

Because he could.

Because she believed that he could, this enigmatic and unusual earl with his wide shoulders and steel-strong arms.

The relief of it was so startling she could barely breathe. She smiled at the thought. Breath was the one thing she did have now here in the Hadleighs’ ballroom under thirty or more elegant chandeliers and an orchestra of violinists beating out a waltz.

She was alive and well. The spark inside her had not been quenched entirely and was at this very moment bursting into a tiny flaring flame of revival.

She could not believe it.

Francis St Cartmail’s smile was beautiful and the cabochon ring on his finger was exactly as she remembered it. His voice was deep and kind and his eyes were hazel, like the leaves fallen in a forest after a particularly cold autumn, all of the shades of ruin.

And people watched him, carefully, uncertainly, the wave of faces following him holding both fear and awe and another emotion, too. Wonderment, if she might name it as he stalked alone through a sea of colour and wearing only a deep swathe of unbroken black.

She hoped there was someone here he might find a shelter with, some friend who would throw off the ton’s interest with as much nonchalance as he did himself, but he was lost to sight and her mother and Richard observed her closely.

She did not want to go home now. She wished to stay here so that she might catch sight of the Earl of Douglas again and hope that another conversation might eventuate.

He’d smelt like soap and lemon and cleanness, the crisp odour of washed male having the effect of bringing Sephora quickly to her feet.

Her worried mother took her hand.

‘Would you like some supper, my dear? Perhaps if you ate something you might feel better?’

Food was the last thing she truly wanted, but some sort of destination solved the problem of simply standing there dumbstruck, so she nodded.

* * *

After that most unusual exchange Francis went to join Gabriel Hughes leaning against a pillar on one side of the room. ‘Was she what you expected?’

‘You speak of Lady Sephora, I presume?’

‘Cat and mouse does not suit you, Francis. I saw you talking to her. What did you think?’

‘She is smaller than I remember her and paler. She is also frightened.’

‘Of what?’

‘I think she was sure she was going to drown and has suffered since for it. She thanked me for saving her.’

‘And that’s all that she said?’