Marriage Made in Hope(19)

Sephora was not quite so certain as group after group passed them by without the shadow of recognition or friendliness. It was as if she did not exist any more and even people whom she might have imagined would be kind were not.

Finally they stopped and Sephora realised Maria had brought her to the exact spot where Lord Douglas had dragged her into the bank after her fall.

‘Do you remember clinging on to the Earl of Douglas, Sephora? Clinging on with such a fervour Richard Allerly had to prise your fingers open to make you let go?’

‘I do.’

‘Do you remember, too, how Douglas shook with such ferocity his teeth chattered? A panic attack, I think, much like the one he had a few weeks ago at the Wesleys in the garden with you. He has dreadful secrets, Sephora. You can see that in his eyes even when he smiles. Adam Stevenage said that he was buried under a collapsed structure in a river once for hours in Georgia. Perhaps it was the mud here that made him remember. Did he shake in the same way out there in the deeper waters?’

He hadn’t, she thought. He had held her to him with an iron grip as he kicked his way in, across the current, against the wind. But he had been steady and calm.

‘Adam said that his cousin died in the same accident. St Cartmail was held at first for his murder. They nearly hanged him for it, but he was saved at the last moment.’

‘By what?’

‘The branch broke as he was in mid-air and the more superstitious amongst them took it as a sign from above for clemency so he was hauled into the local courthouse instead.’

Half-hanged? Sephora’s eyes filled with tears. ‘My God. What happened next?’

‘The magistrate determined the bullet in Douglas’s arm was the same as the one in the dead man and so he was proclaimed innocent as they concluded that someone else had fired the shots.’

The horror of it all had Sephora leaning against the trunk of a tree. Francis St Cartmail had been shot along with his friend? He had not told her anything of that. ‘Is this common knowledge here, amongst society, I mean?’

‘I am not sure. There are certainly many dark stories about him in circulation, but perhaps not that particular one.’

Why had she not heard of the gossip? Suddenly she knew. Because her life had always been sheltered and protected and Richard had had a big hand in that. Anything difficult or sad had been strained out and discarded, half-truths or no truth at all left in their place. The falsity of it all made her feel sick, for in effect she had been pushed to the side of life to live in a vacuum, all perfectly pleasant but no true and utter joy.

She could not help the tears that came as Maria put one arm around her shoulders.

‘I think I have been asleep for years, Maria, like that princess in the fairy tale.’

‘So take this as a gift, Sephora, for a near-death experience has woken you up.’

Unexpectedly they both laughed.

* * *

Richard arrived at three o’clock in the afternoon the next day at her bidding and he looked as if he had not slept for a week.

‘Thank you for coming. I thought you might not.’ Sephora had made sure that she was dressed today not in black but in her most sombre gown, a grey-and-navy silk over which she had laid a deep grey worsted wool shawl.

‘Well, unlike you, I adhere to the manners and mores of our society and its proprieties.’ He did not sound at all happy.

‘I know you do.’ Sephora had always realised this about him, but for the first time she only felt sorry for such compliance. ‘I also realise I have put you into an awful position and would like to say that I quite understand if the terms of our betrothal are now untenable to you.’

‘Untenable?’ For a moment she saw the boy she had fallen in love with all those years ago under the sterner face of the man he had become. ‘For whom?’

Not as easy as she had hoped, then. Resolutely she took in breath.

‘We have changed, Richard, both of us. Once we knew who each other was, liked who each other was, but now...?’ She spread out her hands. ‘Now I think we would be better to remain as friends than as anything more.’

‘No.’ He grabbed her hand and brought it to his lips, the kiss he placed in her palm harsh and angry. Clenching her teeth together, she tried in vain to pull away.

There was nothing there. No passion or lust or joy. No want to take it further in the hope of more, just a deadness that was astonishing and a revulsion, too, if she were honest.

‘It was the river, wasn’t it? You changed after that.’ He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he let her go, standing there breathing loudly. ‘I should have jumped after you, but I didn’t. Is it him? Is it St Cartmail that you want? He is a murderer and a liar and worse.’

She stopped him simply by turning away. ‘No, it is because of me and you, Richard, and your father.’

‘My father?’

‘Uncle Jeffrey told me to find my life again that day you took me to see him. He said I had looked sad for a long while and I needed to find my passion.’

‘Passion?’ He laughed then and the sound was not kind. ‘You have always been cold physically, Sephora, cold and distant. I doubt heartily that you could discover such a thing even if you tried.’

She let the insult pass as she drew into herself. He was hurt and striking out, though in his outburst she allowed him a kernel of truth.

‘Then let me go. Let me break off our betrothal and allow both of us to be free again.’ She could barely believe the words had come from her, strong words and certain. It had been so very long since she had felt such.

As if he had recognised the change he simply looked at her and stepped away. ‘If I do as you ask, Sephora, you shall be looked at in pity. Society will crucify you. Believe me, you will regret this.’ There were tears in his eyes and he wiped at his nose with a starched kerchief dragged from his pocket, but she could not allow the weak emotion of only pity to take away her newfound power of strength. It had to be all or nothing.

Reaching across to a low table, she rang the bell and a servant came into the room immediately.

‘His Grace is just leaving.’ She watched as Richard gathered in his temper and departed.





Chapter Nine

Francis spent the next five days in Hastings trying to piece together as best he could the movements of Anna and Clive across his final hours. He had procured the services of a man who worked for the Bow Street Runners and the meetings he had held in both Hastings and Rye were most illuminating.

It seemed Sherborne had dealt with a London lord in many of his drops of liquor, a man who signed his name simply with an artful and sweeping ‘W’.

‘Find this man and you will have your killer,’ Alan Wilson said over a drink in a tavern just outside Rye. ‘Sherborne was funnelling off both cash and kind and rumour on the ground has it he was found out. Nobody around these parts trusted him much, but they trusted the London cove even less. Besides, Clive Sherborne was seen with his daughter just prior to his murder by a woman who was late home and she said he gave the impression of being drunk and the little girl looked scared. Those about these parts said she was a hellion, too, undisciplined and ill bought up. End up like her mother she will, they told me, with her neck broken on the backstreets and her skirt up around her thighs.’

‘Her mother was killed? When?’

‘Two years ago this August.’

Hell, Francis thought, this sort of place was probably the environment Anna had spent most of her time in and yet still she could read and count better than most children of her age. Who had taught her? Could it have been Clive in his more lucid moments?

‘Did you find out who lived in the house with them in Hastings?’

‘An old scholar boarded with them. Timothy Hawkins. He died of old age a year ago now. The girl visited the grave often and left wild flowers.’

Another loss, then, in a life full of them. If Clive or her mother or his uncle had been in front of him now Francis might simply have screwed their heads off. Instead he finished his drink and worded his next question carefully.

‘Could you go to London and follow the movements of two brothers and their father? I will give you their direction. It will need to be done discreetly, for I would like to know if they meet anyone who fits the description of a London gentleman.’

On his way back to London other matters settled into a cold knot in his stomach. He did not wish to see Sephora Connaught again after the fiasco at her family town house and he most certainly did not want to see her in society hanging on the arm of the Duke of Winbury. No news had filtered through of her wedding, however, and of that at least he was glad, but he needed space and time and distance to re-evaluate his life.

* * *

The morning after his arrival back at his town house he was surprised by an early visit from Daniel Wylde.

‘You damn well need to do something about Sephora Connaught, Francis. She has been ostracised completely by every strata of fine society after breaking off her engagement and Winbury has had a big hand in that by summarily dismissing her as a woman slightly deranged.’

This was the very last thing Francis had expected to hear and he remained mute in surprise.

‘The Duke of Winbury is telling everybody that Lady Sephora Connaught has both an addled mind and a cold nature and that he is well shot of her. Your name was mentioned prominently as the main cause of her onset to a premature insanity.’