Marriage Made in Hope(12)

‘I’ll be there.’ His promise came quickly, but he wondered even as he said it if his choice was a wise one.

* * *

When he got home again he looked at the names he had listed that could have been implicated in Clive Sherborne’s murder. He knew Anna was frightened of someone from her past and he needed to understand exactly who this enemy was so that he could protect her. Mr Wiggins’s documents had made mention of a smuggling ring and that was where Francis had targeted his first questions, though it seemed every family in the village outside Hastings where the Sherbornes had lived were involved to some extent with the free-trade movement, and who could blame them.

The punitive taxes imposed by successive governments were becoming more and more onerous and the contraction of jobs on the Kentish weald had probably added its bit to the growing lack of legal employment in the area.

His finger wound its way down the surnames and occupations of those Wiggins had supplied him with. The parson, the quarryman, the local squire, the boatman, the butcher, the innkeeper. The list just kept on going.

In Kew Gardens his altercation had been with a father and his two sons who’d heard of his interest in identifying those involved at the London end of the supply chain. These three had purchased cut-price brandy and spirits on the side and were firmly of the opinion that anyone threatening their lucrative livelihood with exposure was to be scared away.

Well, at least they had the measure of him now and he knew that they had played no role in the death of Clive Sherborne for they hadn’t recognised that name at all when he had asked them.

Still, it was a shame Lady Sephora Connaught had been there watching on, her pale blue dress stirring in the growing wind and a look on her face of pure and utter horror.

He smiled. Well, this was who he was, too, a man who would protect his own no matter what the consequences, an outsider, a lord who had never fitted in well to the narrow and confined world of the ton. It was best that she knew it.

Best that he did, too, with all these foolish notions of afternoon teas and refined polite conversation. He’d have to go to the occasion of Adelaide’s because he had promised her he would, but after that...

He opened his drawer and pulled out the letter Sephora Connaught had written to him yet again. When he’d made certain that Anna was safe he would leave London and go north for his manufacturing businesses were calling out for more of his time and energy. Then he would repair to the Douglas family seat in Kent. He truly wondered if he would ever be back in town.

* * *

Sephora took an age to get ready for afternoon tea at the Wesleys, which was unlike her, changing this dress for that one and this hat for another. Her maid watched her with puzzlement as she finally stood in front of the full mirror in her room.

Usually she barely glanced at herself, but this morning she did, observing her shape and form with other eyes, hazel laughing ones, the gold in them pushed to the very edges of green and brown. The fight she had observed at Kew Gardens four days ago should have made her hesitant, should have underlined all the gossip that was whispered of the dangerous Earl of Douglas. But it had had the opposite effect entirely. It made her want to understand what drove him into such frenzy.

In the mirror the blue in her eyes caught the hue in her gown and her hair had been curled into a series of fair cascading ringlets. A hat sat atop that, a small jaunty shape that barely covered her crown. She had dabbed an attar of violets on her wrists and at her throat.

Please let the Earl of Douglas be there, a small voice entreated. She knew Lord and Lady Wesley and Francis St Cartmail were close friends and the hope of some sort of private meeting came to mind, a place where she might talk to the earl and understand what this obsession she was beginning to feel for him was about. It concerned her that she was thinking of him so much. She had never been compulsive about anything before and this new side of her personality was worrying, given her promised troth to Richard.

Maria was coming with her today, a fact that her sister was pleased about. ‘I always wanted to see inside the Wesley town house, for they say it is one of the most beautiful in all of London. I hope that there are others attending who are not married, though.’

‘Well, I am not married, Maria.’

‘You nearly are. Unfortunately.’

Sephora had to laugh and it felt good to simply enjoy the sound. She also harboured a good deal of guilt given that her mirth was at Richard’s expense, but she swallowed that thought down and vowed to enjoy the day. For once she was pleased to be free of constraint and righteousness.

She would tell him, of course, that she had been to the Wesley function without him, but if she did so after the occasion it would allow her the freedom to savour it first. Squeezing her fingers together, she was glad she did not wear Richard’s ring and that it had been lost and never replaced.

Lost like a part of her had been. Her heart beat with a trip of apprehension as her sister accompanied her down the stairs and they walked outside to the waiting carriage.

* * *

The Wesley town house was as magnificent as Maria had heard it to be when they were shown in to a salon twenty minutes later.

The room was huge and decorated in a colour of yellow, which lightened it and gave it an airy otherworld feel, so unlike the darker and more sombre tones Sephora was used to. There were paintings on every wall and the furniture was of a French design, ornate and gilded, cushions of flowered tapestry sitting atop a row of chairs. The curtains were of thick gold velvet and tied back with colourful braided tassels. To one end stood a group of people chatting, though all noise stopped as soon as their names were announced.

Francis St Cartmail was standing by an opened French doorway talking with Lord Montcliffe and his wife. She caught his glance as soon as she entered, quick and covert, before it moved away. Almost angry.

Lady Wesley had taken her arm as she introduced them to everybody in the room. The only person she did not recognise was a young man with long brown hair who stood slightly apart. Mr Adam Stevenage. The name was somewhat familiar and Maria moved towards him like a magnet.

And then the Earl of Douglas was beside her, a good foot taller and much bigger in every way than Sephora remembered him to be.

‘Lady Sephora.’

‘Lord Douglas.’

Today his eyes in the light looked softer than they had ever before, though the brutal mark across his cheek did away with any prettiness at all and her scratches on the other side of his face were barely noticeable. She could glean no ill effects from the fight at Richmond save for puffiness on his lower lip.

‘I had wondered if you would be here today. I know you to be a friend of the Wesleys, of course, so I imagined perhaps I might see you and...’’

She made herself stop. Why had she blabbered that out at him and with such a dull repetitiveness?

Taking two drinks from a tray that a footman offered, he gave her one. ‘Gabriel’s idea of the libation at an afternoon tea is very different from his wife’s, thank goodness.’

The tipple was strong and Sephora coughed slightly, thinking of Richard, who only ever wished her to drink non-alcoholic punch or lemonade.

‘Wesley buys his wine from the Cognac region in France and this particular drop rarely results in any sort of a hangover. I can vouch for that.’

She smiled, liking the way the wine was warming her resolve and making their meeting easier. She was glad, too, when he stepped further out into the gardened courtyard, giving her space and distance from the others present as she followed him.

He was just so very beautiful here in the sunshine, so beautiful she imagined she could simply watch him forever. With a sudden worry she pushed her fingers against her temple where the beat of her heart was thumping.

This is where it could begin, she thought, the scandal, the gossip, the stigma, here in this little moment in the afternoon sun because she wanted to throw herself into Francis St Cartmail’s arms and never let go.

A length of darkness had escaped from the leather he tied his hair with and lay in a long curl across his forehead. She could very easily understand his attraction to all those women of the ton who spoke of him in hushed whispers inflected with an underlying blend of avarice and fancy despite his wildness and his danger.

When his eyes settled on her own there was something in his expression that made her speak.

‘How did your cheek get scarred, my lord?’

The ice in hazel glittered. ‘War is dangerous.’

‘And no one fixed it for you?’

‘I was lost in the Cantabrians. The army of Moore had rolled on towards Corunna so I had to make my own way to Vigo and by then...’ He left the rest unsaid, but he did not turn his damaged face away from the sunlight and she liked him for that.

‘Well, I think it suits you.’

‘Pardon?’

‘The scar. People will take notice of a man who has been through such pain and lived.’

For a second she thought he flushed at her words, but then the distance returned.

‘England is a soft and gentle land, Lady Sephora. It is my experience that anything reminding its people of a consuming chaos in a faraway foreign skirmish is to be avoided altogether. You are the first person ever to ask me of it directly.’

‘Everybody has their secrets, Lord Douglas, and if some are more hidden than others it makes them no less painful.’