‘Hell.’ He turned towards the windows and opened them. ‘I’d like to kill the bastard.’
‘Well, you could do that, but a long stretch in goal will do nothing at all to help her. There are rumours swirling everywhere and one of the most persistent is that she came to visit you alone at your town house and that a number of people observed this reckless foray. It is also said that you packed her into your carriage and returned her home yourself when you knew there must be some repercussions from the unexpected visit.’
‘It was the right thing to do. I thought a glass of whisky might fortify her, but she drank too much of it.’
Daniel laughed. ‘Lord, Francis, you got her drunk as well? Then do the next right thing both for her and for you. She has been made an outcast. Adelaide said that she saw her and her sister out walking a few days ago and everybody gave Sephora the cut direct.’
‘Hell.’
‘You came home from America with the weight of the world on your shoulders and then you go right ahead and ruin the “angel of the ton.”’ Daniel breathed in heavily for a moment as though recollecting his thoughts and putting them into order. ‘God knows what will happen next, but your own prospects for a satisfactory marriage have most likely just plummeted as well. A reasonable solution might be looking right at you.’
The last sentence made him ponder. Daniel had not been a man known to be overly interested in the marriage mart before and certainly had not tried to influence him on choosing a wife or a mistress if it came to that. ‘Did Amethyst put you up to this?’
The slight hesitation told Francis that she had.
‘My wife thinks you are lonely. She knows there are things you are not telling us and she wants to help.’
‘Tell her thank you for her worry, but also tell her that I am fine.’
‘You might indeed be, but Sephora Connaught is far from it. What would make her throw her more normal caution and good sense to the wind and arrive at the home of a known and disreputable bachelor unaccompanied and unmindful of who saw her?’
Safety. He almost said the word, almost simply spoke it aloud and spat it out, but Daniel would understand that sentiment as little as he himself did and so he remained quiet.
‘Well, I leave it in your hands, Francis, but I never took you for a man who would forsake a woman needing help and she is most certainly one who does.’
* * *
Two hours later Francis made his way to the Connaught family town house on the north side of Portman Square. A footman showed him in, his eyes widening as he realised just who the visitor was, and led him down a long corridor to the back of the house.
‘Lord Douglas, sir.’
Aldford was sitting behind his desk in a well-stocked library and he got up as soon as the introduction was made.
‘Thank you, Smithson. That will be all. Please see that we are not disturbed.’
‘Very well, my lord.’
When the door closed silence filled the room for the moment it took for Sephora’s father to gather his ire.
‘I hope you have come here to explain and apologise, St Cartmail.’ Jonathon Connaught’s voice shook. He was only just holding on to a temper that reddened his face considerably. ‘After the last time...’ He stopped.
‘Your daughter came to see me, Lord Aldford, and whilst it was true I should not have given her whisky to calm her down, I did not touch her either.’
‘No, you brought her back home to ruination instead and then just left her to it.’
‘I did not know that until today for I have been away from London this past week. I thought Winbury would have seen things right.’
The name seemed to make the older man even more furious. ‘Don’t talk to me about that coward,’ he shouted. ‘If his father knew how he had treated my daughter in her hour of need, he would be rolling around in his newly dug grave, I assure you. He has abandoned her completely.’
‘I wish to marry her.’
‘Pardon?’
‘I have come today to ask permission for your daughter Sephora’s hand in marriage, sir.’
The older man leaned against his desk heavily and sat down, reaching for a kerchief in an opened drawer, then running it across his brow.
‘Why?’ All the fight seemed to have gone from him.
‘It is partly my fault she is in the position she now finds herself. I need to remedy that.’
‘Remedy it. She barely knows you, St Cartmail. She probably even hates you. Her betrothal to the Duke of Winbury has been dissolved and a great measure of the problem is down to the fiasco you created. Did you know that?’
‘I did not at first, but I do now.’
‘So now you have the damn nerve to just walk in here and expect my blessings or my daughter’s acceptance.’ The ire had returned as fast as it had waned, but Francis had known this meeting was never going to be easy. ‘From memory you are also the very same man who broke my niece’s heart all those years ago and you did not even come to her funeral to pay your last respects. How could we trust you to actually do the right thing this time?’
Francis stayed silent, the faults of his past mounting against him.
‘I can’t think why you imagine either my daughter or I would agree to this proposal, Douglas.’
‘If Sephora agrees to marry me, she will no longer be ruined. I can protect her.’
‘Against everyone?’
‘Yes.’
‘And if she does not?’
‘Then I will leave. I do not want further trouble. I will also promise my confidentiality in all that has been discussed today.’
‘You swear by it?’
‘I give you my word of honour.’
Frowning heavily Connaught called out and the same man who had showed Francis in before opened the door.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Ask one of Lady Sephora’s maids to summon her to the library, Smithson. I need to see her most urgently.’
* * *
Sephora was reading by the window in her room when one of the upstairs maids came bustling in.
‘Lord Aldford requires your company in his library. He says it is important.’
‘Very well.’ Sephora laid down the book she was reading and smoothed out the creases in her muslin day dress as she stood. Papa seldom asked her to come to his library so formally. She wondered what had happened and hoped that there was not some new and difficult problem concerning Richard Allerly.
‘Is the duke with him?’
‘I don’t believe so, Lady Sephora.’ Relief at that answer blossomed.
‘But he is not alone?’
‘No, Lady Sephora. Smithson said there was a visitor.’
This produced a further worry. Stopping to take up her shawl from the chair, Sephora wrapped it around herself and followed the maid downstairs.
* * *
Francis saw the instant Sephora Connaught realised it was him because she blushed a bright red and faltered as she stepped into the room.
‘Sit down, please.’ Her father’s voice was not gentle. When she was seated he began to speak again.
‘The Earl of Douglas has come here today with a marriage proposal. A protection, he calls it. He wants you to be his wife because he knows the current predicament you find yourself in is largely of his own making and he needs to remedy it, a marriage to quell the howls of an offended ton, so to speak. As such he is proposing a union of convenience to mend broken reputations and to lighten the gossip of a dreadful scandal that shows no sign of fading away.’
Was her father a complete fool, Francis thought as he stepped forward.
‘I am hoping you will do me the honour, Lady Sephora, of becoming my wife.’
‘Of course she will not, Douglas. I cannot think of anything further from my daughter’s mind than accepting your—’
Sephora stood and looked at him directly. ‘Why would you ask this of me, Lord Douglas?’ Her eyes were wide, the blue more noticeable today in her high emotion.
‘Because he has ruined you, my dear. It’s the very least as a gentleman that he can do.’ Her father sounded at the end of his tether.
‘You could hardly want this, my lord, to be tied in marriage so...inconveniently when everyone in society knows your poor opinion on the institution itself?’
Francis was about to reply when her father strode across between them and began to speak again.
‘Douglas is renowned in the ton for being wild and dangerous and you would do well to remember that the Duke of Winbury, for all his faults, has not been said to have killed a man. It is you who should not want this union , Sephora, you who have been held in great esteem by the ton all of your adult life, yet are now the subject of ridicule and pity because of the poor choices you have recently made.’
Francis had heard enough. ‘I am not quite without advantage, Lord Aldford. I have returned from the Americas with a great deal of wealth for one and the Douglas title is an old and venerated one.’ He saw Sephora Connaught’s knuckles were white where she held them twisted together, though the hives had gone, the skin to her elbow where her dress sleeves ended now unmarked and fair.
He could not begin to imagine a more awkward wedding proposal and was about to request some time alone to explain his reasoning, when rushing feet from outside put paid to such hopes. Sephora’s mother bustled in, her eyes reddened and her face furious.
‘The butler said that you were here, Lord Douglas.’ She was looking straight at him. ‘And I could not believe that you would have the nerve to be.’