Her father crossed the room and extracted an expensive bottle of red wine when they had finished, a tipple he rarely opened because of the cost. The butler laid out five glasses, but Sephora merely played with hers, the thoughts in her head spinning. Lord Douglas was wealthy and he was generous. He was also a force to be reckoned with in the gaining of an equitable marriage contract that was suitable to them both. All afternoon he had been certain to include her in every decision and had taken into account her opinion concerning the points she wished to comment on.
The meeting broke up then and after a quick and formal goodbye the man she would marry tomorrow at one in the afternoon at the chapel of St Mary’s was gone.
Her father finished both his glass of wine and hers. ‘Waste not want not, though at least St Cartmail was easier to deal with than Winbury,’ he said when he had finished the second. ‘In my mind Douglas is either a saint or a fool with his capitulations of money and business interests and time undoubtedly will tell us which of the two it shall be. For your sake, Sephora, I sincerely hope that it shall be the first.’
* * *
Maria arrived home just on dusk and Sephora was glad to hear footsteps running up the stairs, her door bursting open even as her sister was undoing the bows on her bonnet.
‘I cannot believe so much has happened, Sephora. In the two days I have been helping Rachel Attwood with the arrival of her new baby Richard is finally gone for good and in his stead is the Earl of Douglas? Even in my wildest dreams I did not imagine such luck.’
They came together in the middle of the room, Maria cold from the short carriage ride across the city and Sephora warm from the fire, their arms wrapped about one another as if they might never let go.
* * *
‘I think Francis St Cartmail offered to marry me out of guilt,’ Sephora said an hour later, after the whole story had been relayed in each and every minute detail.
Her sister shook her head. ‘Society has been gossiping about the earl for years now. Do you really think a man like that could be brought to heel by Richard’s meanness or by Papa’s anger? Have you spoken with him, privately, and asked him why he should offer you marriage?’
‘I have not had the chance. He came yesterday to relate his intentions to Papa and today with his lawyers to make it official. The two moments Father did allow us to converse alone were largely taken up with him saying that he would never hurt me and with me unable to say a word that made any sense.’
‘Do you love him?’
Sephora drew her nightgown up around her neck, feeling a sudden chill in the room. ‘I don’t know what love is. I thought I loved Richard once, but...’ She trailed off before trying again. ‘Francis St Cartmail makes me feel...safe.’
‘Safe enough to take risks? Safe enough to be yourself? Safe enough to imagine that your opinion matters again?’
‘Yes.’
Maria began to laugh heartily and fell back against the pillows at the head of Sephora’s bed. ‘I go away and come back to find my sister has defied all the convoluted and restrictive social mores that she has always adhered to and has absolutely no qualms or remorse for any of it. Mama is in bed with her smelling salts, Papa is counting the financial largesse of this new suitor and the ton is still talking of nothing else save the fall from grace of its most stellar and malleable angel. I think I should go and see my friend more often, Sephora, I really do.’
‘Will you stand up with me tomorrow at the ceremony?’
‘Tomorrow? My God. You cannot be getting married tomorrow?’
‘By a special licence. I am wearing my blue silk, the one I had made for the Cresswell ball earlier in the Season, but did not go because I fell ill.’ Her most striking dress was heavily embroidered with silver lamé and embellished with Brussels lace. Flowers and shells in the same silver threads festooned the hem, the whole thing having the effect of catching the light in a most unusual manner.
Sephora wondered how she could even think about something as unimportant as the colour and detail of her wedding gown, but unless she concentrated on the small and basic things under her control she thought indeed she might go to pieces. Would Francis St Cartmail insist on a marriage night before they had barely conversed? Or might he simply take her to his family seat in Kent and leave her there, a bride he did not want, a woman who had stumbled into her own marriage through a series of foolish mistakes? An inconvenient bride.
It was not truly his fault all this—it was hers. It was she who had gone to see the Earl of Douglas in the daylight and in an unwise lather of hope and hopelessness. He had not poured the whisky down her throat either; in fact, he had tried to stop her from drinking too much after offering it as a way to lessen the shaking in the first place.
Was he sitting there now in his town house not two miles from here rueing the day he had ever jumped from the bridge into the waters of the Thames to try to save her, and was her sister’s romantic slant on the forthcoming nuptials as naive as her own imaginings of safety?
Sephora shook her head. The one thing she was very certain of at least was that she had made a lucky escape from the overbearing ways of the Duke of Winbury. For that at least she would be eternally grateful.
* * *
She was dressed in blue and silver and held a small posy of gardenias and green leaves. Her hives were back, too, he noticed, the fiery red marks crawling up the exposed skin on her lower arm and along the slender plane of her neck before dipping into the high-cut bodice at the front, a small fair figure, diminutive and pale against the other three members of her family who had accompanied her.
Lucien stood as best man, a last-minute favour when Francis’s intent of doing this completely alone had wavered and he had asked for some assistance. This wasn’t how Francis had imagined his wedding day might be, a hastily thrown-together affair with a bride who looked like she might simply faint away if he touched her.
‘Your intended does not appear exactly happy.’
It was true. The woman who had said yes to him was now enveloped in a sort of fog of distance and a state of fear, as if just by the blink of an eye this whole charade might simply disappear, her life back to the ordained and gentle path it had been sailing along less than a week ago.
There were no other wedding guests either and the minister was observing each small separate party with a look of concern and worry. At least there was someone playing the organ in an upper-storey loft, for the music covered the awkward quietness and offered a vague tone of religious fervour.
‘Do you have a ring?’
‘Yes.’ Francis fumbled in his pocket for the small box and handed it over. Lucien flipped the top.
‘Substantial.’
His friend’s surprise seemed to give some sort of signal to the minister and he called them together, the age-old words of the Anglican marriage ceremony ringing out as an echo in the emptiness of the church.
‘The grace of our lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the...’
Francis moved to position himself next to Sephora Connaught. He could smell the scent of the flowers she held and this close up he saw she shook quite badly, all her attention on the minister who had raised his hands in a welcome.
The sister was watching him closely, however, her dark eyes running across his own in a frank appraisal. Maria Connaught, unlike Sephora, did not look like a young woman who would be cowed by anything. He wondered about the difference between them. What made one sister brave and the other frightened, one woman ready to fight and another to flee?
As if on their own accord Sephora’s eyes lifted to his and he saw inside the fright a further sense of resolve. Without thought he reached for her hand and her fingers curled into his own and held on. Like two people drowning together.
The oaths and promises were lengthy, but finally the rings were exchanged. His grandmother’s diamond-and-ruby circle fitted Sephora perfectly, the fragile stones setting off the shape of her hand, an ancient and unusual piece that would never be repeated anywhere.
* * *
It was over just as she thought it might never be, the onerous frown of the minister, the still silence of Francis St Cartmail, the quiet weeping of her mother and the stony face of Papa.
‘You may kiss your bride now.’
But he did not. Rather the Earl of Douglas’s thumb simply ran down across one cheek before he turned away, breaking any contact with her and speaking to Lucien Howard next to him.
‘Will you journey down to Kent today?’ The Earl of Ross asked her this question a few moments later as they moved from the church and climbed inside the waiting carriages ready to take them home to the Aldford town house in Portman Square and the prepared wedding breakfast.
‘Is that where the rest of his family are, my lord?’ She wondered why no one had come to stand with him. Surely there must have been some relative who would have sufficed?
The earl shook his head. ‘Francis’s friends have that honour, for his own parents were gone when he was ten. I should probably leave it to him to tell you his story, though, but what I will say is that he has been lonely.’
Lonely. She could see that sometimes in his eyes and in the way he watched others, a careful isolation and a remoteness that allowed few near. She wanted to make him smile, she did, even just to see the ruined dimple on his cheek crease into laughter.