‘What do you read?’
‘Old newspapers mainly, my lord. Once I went to the library in Finsbury Square with my father...’ He stopped and swallowed.
‘Did you like it?’
‘I certainly did, sir.’
‘Good.’
A few minutes later he stood in front of the solid oaken wardrobe and knocked twice. ‘Come out, Anna, I need to talk with you.’
There was the slide of wood and a click of a lock and the door opened. His small cousin held one of his books and a candle in her hand and she had been crying.
This surprised him more than anything for each time he had seen her she had been prickly, angry and distant.
‘Mrs Billinghurst said that you ran away from her and came home here all by yourself. Why?’
‘I don’t enjoy shopping.’ She lifted her chin and faced him directly.
‘Then perhaps you should stay home for a time so that we will all know where you are. It is dangerous for a young lady of your age to be lost in a busy city for a great length of time.’
Relief crossed the small face. ‘I can do that.’
There was something she was not telling him, he was certain of it.
‘Did you see someone in town whom you were frightened of?’
She shook her head, hard, the Douglas determination stamped into her eyes and, knowing such stubbornness would be hard to budge, he changed the subject.
‘I would like to hire a tutor for you, Anna, and set up a small schoolroom here as an adjunct to your governess’s lessons for I think your mind is a lively one and could do with further training. Mrs Billinghurst’s son, Timothy, is about your age and he enjoys reading as much as you do. How would you feel about having a fellow student in your class for two days a week?’
‘I would like that.’
‘Good. Then you now need to go and find Mrs Billinghurst and apologise to her. We can discuss further arrangements tomorrow when we are all feeling less emotional. Oh, and, Anna, I would prefer it if you called me Uncle Francis. We are family and it is only right.’
* * *
Much later that evening as the clock struck the hour of two Francis sat by an opened window in his library with a heavy woollen cloak about him to keep out the cold. He never slept well and tonight after all the happenings of the day he knew he would sleep even worse than usual.
He wondered what Sephora Connaught was doing. After leaving the Aldfords’ town house he had gone straight into Doctors’ Commons and begun the proceedings for a special licence. Could they be married the day after tomorrow with such unseemly haste and with so little pomp and circumstance?
They would need separate bedrooms, of course, with his poor sleeping habits and their lack of knowing each other at all, but he hoped in time...
What did he hope?
He hoped that she might begin to see him as he had been once before his stay in Hutton’s Landing, before his life had been shaped differently, before he had killed a man in cold blood and not just under the protecting banner of war.
He’d never had a family, never had anyone who had lived with him for a very long time. His uncle and aunt had tried to be some sort of guardians to him, he would give them that, but he had been rebellious and angry after the early death of his parents and when he’d barely let them in, they had not endeavoured for a closer acquaintance.
School had fostered his friendships with Daniel and Lucien and then later Gabriel. And now Anna had come and Mrs Billinghurst and the son who looked frightened and intense and needy. A house filled with problems, but also with life. He could feel them all here around him and despite the quandary he liked the new energy.
Tipping his head, he took in air once and then twice more. He could barely believe Sephora Connaught had agreed to marry him and hoped that she would not hate him when she knew him better.
A dog barked in the distance, plaintive and sad, and the sound rolled around with that particular nuance of hopelessness he himself had often felt. A homeless animal, probably a stray. If the thing came closer, he would instruct his kitchen staff to go out and take it a bone.
Chapter Ten
Sephora fussed around and could barely settle all of the next morning because she knew Francis St Cartmail would be here in the afternoon with his lawyer. Would he have changed his mind? Would things today look very different from what they had yesterday as he realised the extent of what he had promised and regret it? Would he simply take his troths back and leave her here, the ruin of her name too daunting even for him to try to manage?
* * *
When he did finally come she thought he looked tired, the shadows beneath his eyes darker today than she had ever seen them before.
‘Douglas.’ Her father’s greeting was cold, but when the earl’s glance found her own he smiled and she forgot everything else entirely.
‘Lady Sephora.’ Her name slipped from his tongue. ‘I hope I find you well this afternoon.’
‘Indeed you do, my lord.’ With Papa and both lawyers present she did not dare to address him less formally though she would have liked to, given the circumstances. It was not normal, she knew, for a woman to be present in such discussions of money and law, but as Francis St Cartmail had expressly requested her presence her father under duress had allowed it.
‘I have procured a special licence,’ the Earl of Douglas was saying now. ‘We can be married tomorrow for my lawyer is here to set the terms.’
‘Tomorrow?’ Was it even possible to marry legally in so short a frame of days? She could not stop her interjection.
‘If that is what you wish?’ He suddenly looked more uncertain and his eyes went to the windows.
‘It is, my lord.’
‘You cannot mean this, Sephora.’ Her father spoke now. ‘You have no dress, no invitations sent, no plan for a chapel or music or the food.’
‘I do not need those things, Papa.’ She said this as she looked straight at Francis St Cartmail and saw the stiffness in him relax. He was trying his hardest to see her safe. The least she could do was to allay his fears of her own hope of a much larger celebration.
‘Your mother will be even more horrified than she is now.’
Again the Earl of Douglas looked at her. ‘If it is a grander ceremony you wish for...’
‘I don’t.’
His hand pushed his hair back from where the darkness had fallen over his forehead and he breathed hard. He always wore his neckcloth tied high and often pulled at it with his fingers, Sephora thought. The ‘half-hanged’ explanation of Maria’s came back to her and she looked away. What sort of mark would a rope leave, both inside and out?
For a moment she imagined Francis St Cartmail naked under candlelight on their wedding night; this thought so unlike anything she had ever had before she almost blushed. In all of the years she had known Richard she had not once thought of him in any sort of a sexual way and she understood with a stinging clarity why she had not.
He had not intrigued her as Francis St Cartmail did, just one glance from his hazel eyes sending her into fantasy and folly. Richard had been staid and dictatorial and set in his ways and she had gone along with every single one of his orders and protocols. For years.
‘Well then, what is it you are proposing in financial terms, Lord Douglas? My lawyer is most interested to know.’ Her father was a man who thought the bottom line singularly important. She waited for the earl’s answer.
‘All that is mine shall be my wife’s on marriage, save for the entailed Douglas properties as these will be passed on directly to any heirs. Any profit from the manufacturing businesses shall also be hers.’
Heirs? A short burst of heat had her reaching for the nearby back of a chair.
‘That is indeed generous, my lord.’ The Connaught lawyer opened his folder and wrote down the pledge. ‘You speak of your garment interests, I am supposing?’
‘He does.’ The Douglas lawyer brought his files forward now and her father joined them, comparing notes.
When Francis St Cartmail caught her eye and smiled, she imagined he could see the pulse in her throat leaping to his attention and turned back to her father.
‘There will be a dowry, of course,’ he was saying, ‘Amongst other monies and properties settled upon her, my daughter owns an estate in the north that her grandmother bequeathed her and it is both fertile and in good order.’
‘Lady Sephora can keep that for herself. I do not wish the gift to pass into our communal property.’ The words of her husband-to-be astonished her.
‘But...’ his lawyer began, and the earl silenced him with only a look.
Hers. Brockton Manor was to be only hers? The hope of it made the day brighter and her mind surer. A generous husband and a fair one. Richard Allerly was wealthy, too, but she could not have imagined him passing up the offer of another estate. He liked things under his control and his say so.
Her father was looking at St Cartmail now in a way he had not been half an hour ago, the Connaught legal representative writing his concessions down as fast as he could, his professional demeanour honed in for the best of advantages.
Finally a draft of the marriage agreements was signed. The Earl of Douglas’s signature was bold and he was left-handed. His middle names were Andrew and Rothurst. So many things she did not know about him. The large cabochon ruby in his ring twinkled in the light and for that familiarity she was glad.