Marriage Made in Hope(24)

As though he could read her thoughts he turned, a half-smile making him look more vulnerable and younger, his eyes an unfathomable and mixed shade of green and brown.

‘It won’t be long before this is all over.’

Did he wish for it to be? Had he had enough of the enforced joyousness and the false congratulations? Her mother was still weeping and had given her nothing of maternal advice at all. Maria seemed to be the only one enjoying the occasion.

‘I shall be married in exactly the same manner—’ her sister’s voice was light and happy ‘—without fuss of pomp and ceremony. And afterwards I shall journey to Italy on a grand tour with my husband and stay in the hot climes for a year and a day.’

* * *

Half an hour later the party was seated in the Aldford dining room and food was being served, numerous and special plates presented with artistry and attention. But Sephora could barely eat because soon it would be just her and Francis St Cartmail, with all the corners of her shadows visible. Then Lord Douglas would discover what he did not now know.

She lacked gumption and adventure and interestingness, and for a lord who had sailed oceans and stood on foreign shores, faced danger and survived numerous threats, that might well be the most damning truth of them all.

When he stood to raise his glass and make a toast she wondered what he might say of her, a bride he’d hardly conversed with, and barely touched. The room became quiet and as he began to speak he turned towards her parents.

‘First I would like to offer my gratitude to Lord and Lady Aldford for all the love they have given to their daughter. It is undoubtedly this attention that has made Sephora into the woman she is today. Thank you for allowing me her hand in marriage and I promise I shall give her the same care as you have. Always.’

Her mother had placed her kerchief down now and was tentatively smiling. Her father gave him an answering nod and finished yet another glass of wine.

‘Sephora and I met unexpectedly, under the waters of the Thames, and I suppose that first encounter set the tone for our courtship. It has been a quick and breathless liaison.’

He waited till the laughter stopped and raised his glass.

‘To my bride and to our marriage.’

She was glad Francis had not dredged out words of love because they would have been as false as Richard’s constant proclamations of the same. Her fingernails left crescent marks in the soft skin of each opposite palm with the stress of worry and nerves.

After the toast Lucien Howard stood up as the best man.

‘Francis has always made his mind up quickly. He has lived life to the full, though there are many stories of his exploits that have taken on a falsity all of their own. I have been a friend of the Earl of Douglas for a long time and he is one of the most honourable and virtuous men I know. After losing his own parents early he has become the man he is without the guidance of any family whatsoever.’

Her groom looked as if he wished Lucien Howard might cease altogether with the compliments. But he didn’t as he turned to look at her. ‘He saved me once, Lady Sephora, almost in the same way as he saved you. I’d dived into the high dam at Linden Park and got caught in the weeds and it was only Douglas’s quick thinking that got me up to the surface before I ran out of air completely. So here’s to happiness and to a long union  ,’ he added and raised his glass.

Virtuous and honourable. Those were the words the Earl of Ross had used and she believed him, a man who would know Francis as well as any. The wine was sweet and easy to drink and it put a buffer between this moment and the wedding night, though the hives she had woken with were becoming larger and larger red welts of itchiness.

Her mother looked somewhat happier and her sister was glowing and if her papa was drinking far more than he ought then still her family had behaved. They had got through such a charade with a sense of grace. Sephora was eminently glad for that.

* * *

An hour later she rearranged her skirt and allowed her new husband to see her into the carriage, her parents and her sister standing on the pavement waving goodbye. Then they were alone, the busy streets of London town all around them, a procession of people and carriages and noise.

Her carefully packed luggage was in the back, an array of new clothes inside, a nightgown and a peignoir made of the softest apricot silk and edged in Brussels lace. Her mother’s gift that, procured yesterday from one of the most expensive French seamstresses in the city, so new it was still wrapped in the tissue it had been bought in.

‘We will go back to my town house first and collect a few things, but we will need to be on the road to Kent before mid-afternoon as I don’t want to be too late in arriving.’

Too late? For what? Sephora thought. For a night alone? For more whisky, but this time plied for the very purpose of softening resistance? He had let it be known that there would only be a few servants accompanying them to Colmeade House, a private affair then, with all the hours of solitude. The Earl of Douglas sat on the same side of the conveyance as she did, but he had made sure to leave a large gap between them. Nothing touching.

A stranger and one who did not try to break the silence with other talk. The beautiful ring he had given her caught at a thread on her gown and snagged it. She spent a moment trying to tease the fabric away from the pointed sharpness of ancient gold and saw that it had left a hole in the silk. Like her life, broken, no matter how hard she might try to fix it and a sign of all that might come?

‘It was my grandmother’s,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘The ring. My mother gave it to me a few months before she died.’

‘How did she die?’

‘A carriage accident. My father was with her. I was ten at the time.’

‘So afterwards there was no one else left for you? Today in the chapel...’ She thought of the empty space on his side of the pews. ‘Lucien Howard told me at the church that he and his friends were as much of a family to you as any and yet they were not there either.’

He leaned over and took her hand, his fingers as cold as her own.

‘Daniel Wylde and Gabriel Hughes are out of London and I hadn’t the time to wait for them to return. I’d spend a lot of weeks with them in the school holidays because it was lonely at the Douglas seat and the servants needed a break. One small child could have hardly warranted the full opening of a large house after all and I was glad to go to where there was some sense of family and laughter.’

‘Who were your guardians, then?’

‘My uncle and his wife, but they were dour and busy people who were not much bothered with my needs. They hadn’t their own children, you see...’

‘So you were alone?’

He smiled. ‘I suppose that I was. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone as much about my upbringing as I have you and if you’d...’

He faltered suddenly, his face changing from repose to complete and utter astonishment as he looked out the window, his cane snatched up from beside him and heavily brought against the ceiling.

‘Stop, right now.’

The conveyance skidded to a halt and her new husband was out of the door, a knife in hand procured from beneath the seat, its shining honed blade caught in the sunshine as he moved.

‘Stay here.’

But Sephora had already left her seat and was behind him, pushing into the path of the traffic, rushing through in the small spaces left between the busyness and pulling in her skirts close so that she could indeed run to keep up.

Ahead a small girl was being dragged along by a man who had her pinned to him by one arm and she was screaming her head off whilst trying to kick back. A wicked punch across the jaw silenced her, but the rage that erupted from the earl at the action brought every face from yards around towards him.

After that things began to happen in slow motion as Francis St Cartmail slashed out with his knife and the offenders gave answering jabs with their own weapons. Two other men had joined in the fracas now, with their anger and fury. One went down, a gash across his thigh opening into red, but the gun that the third offender held was primed and ready and it discharged point blank into the shoulder of the Earl of Douglas. He fell slowly, grabbing the child and using his momentum to roll with her, the shouts of bystanders, the frightened sobbing of the girl, the whitened clammy face of her new husband as he came to a stop by her feet and lay still upon the dirty camber of the road, panting.

The man with the gun moved forward to try to extricate the child from his grasp, but Sephora simply fell on top of them both in protection, her generous silken skirts wrapped around everything as the warm seep of red blood darkened the thin fabric.

And she screamed, too, as loud as she could and as long, bringing bystanders to her aid even as she hung on to the small shaking body of the child with all the strength that she could muster and felt a hefty kick into the exposed fleshy part of her lower back as an angry retaliation for her efforts.

Then their attackers were gone, carrying the other man Francis had wounded between them and leaving a dozen or so spectators gathering about the ensuing brokenness that was left, not quite knowing what to do.

‘Help. Please.’ She could only mouth the words, her breath lost in the vicious last stab of pain and the horror of violence so unexpectedly meted out.

The child between them was sobbing so hard that Sephora had to gather her own will, the young girl demanding attention and some semblance of safety from the adults around her. The earl was still largely conscious at least, his hands held out before him stiff with blood and a clammy sheen of sweat across his face.