Goodness, Sephora thought as she digested this last confidence. She was so much more used to flighty small talk at social occasions, unimportant musings or even the more pointed gossip, and she could not believe the way this conversation was heading.
These women were...powerful, that was the word she sought, powerful in their hopes for themselves and each other, fearless in their opinions and she liked it. Maria would like them, too, she thought, and wished her sister could have been there.
At that point Gabriel Hughes lifted his glass to make a toast.
‘Here’s to a long and happy marriage,’ he said. ‘The final penniless lord and the last one to find his bride.’
‘To Francis and Sephora.’ Daniel Wylde spoke now and in the gaiety Sephora looked over at Francis and saw him watching her.
‘To us,’ he said quietly and handed her a glass. ‘Ad multos annos.’
The Latin made her smile though she wished that he might have made some mention of love.
* * *
Francis came to her room late that night, knocking on the closed door and waiting until she opened it. She was in her nightgown with a thick woollen shawl across her shoulders and some bright red slippers Maria had knitted her for her last birthday on her feet.
‘I found this on the shelves of my library and I thought that you might like it,’ he said and when she looked down she saw he was holding a book, bound in leather and embossed. ‘It was given to me a long time ago and I remember you told me when I was sick that you wrote stories.’
When he handed it to her she saw it was a journal, each page embellished with small figures from fairy tales and beautifully executed.
She wanted to ask who had given him this, but something in his eyes stopped her. He looked lonely, his hair tonight loose so that it sat around his shoulders in long dark curls. His stock was loosened, too, and across the top of the linen she saw a small portion of the scar that traced from one side of his throat to the other.
‘I am just having a hot drink. Perhaps you might join me?’
He seemed perplexed and for a fleeting second Sephora thought he might refuse, but then his reserve softened and he nodded his head. In the midst of her chamber he was hard, large and masculine and she was glad for the chairs before the fireplace to direct him to.
Pouring tea, she watched him take up the dainty china cup and smiled, for she could smell a stronger libation on his breath. Brandy, perhaps, or whisky.
‘This room used to be my sister’s,’ he said after a moment and the shock of the information had her placing her own cup down.
‘I thought there was just you in your family?’
He shook his head. ‘No. I had a sister, too, who was six years older than me. Her name was Sarah. She was in London at her school on the day our parents died.’
‘And you. Where were you?’
‘I had been sick for a number of months with a chest infection and was recuperating at Colmeade House. After that I was never ill again. Not with that particular malady anyway.’
‘Who came to tell you about what had happened?’
His eyes skirted away from her, but not before she had seen the pain in them.
‘No one. They did not return that night or the next one. Finally a friend of my father’s arrived to let us know.’
‘Us?’
‘The servants and me. The family lawyer came down the next day and I was quickly returned to school.’
‘Just like that?’ She was horrified and furious and she could hear the anger in her voice. ‘To just send off a small grieving child like a parcel and expect him to be all right? It is archaic and dreadful and if I ever have a baby I should hope that—’ She stopped when she realised what she was saying and thumbed through the pages of the journal with shaking fingers.
‘It was my sister’s, but she died shortly after my parents did. It’s embossed with her initials, but as they are now the same as your own I thought you might like it.’
S. St C. Sarah. Sarah St Cartmail. Francis and Sarah St Cartmail.
All the little pieces of the Earl of Douglas were beginning to get filled in. Like a puzzle, this bit explaining that one and the tragedy of his past overshadowing everything.
What was it Amethyst Wylde had said today? ‘Francis has been alone and I always hoped that marriage would be his saving grace.’
He’d lost so many people and was still losing them. No wonder he had tried so hard to make sure Anna was safe when she was snatched in the street. Even his kindness to the homeless mangy dog began to have an explanation for he’d probably felt like that, too, as a child. Nowhere to go. No one to love him. She wondered how his sister had died, but did not like to ask.
‘If I began to write stories again, could I read some to you?’
He looked up at that and smiled ‘You’d want to?’
‘Only if you did not laugh at them or tell me to stop writing.’
‘Seth Greenwood used to pen tales about gold and the fever of it. He even had one published in the Hutton’s Landing newspaper. He got a Draped Bust Dime for his efforts and had it mounted in a piece of old polished swamp wood with the eagle side up. I brought it home for his mother.’
‘What was he like? Adam Stevenage’s cousin?’
‘Larger than life and full of it. I met him in New York when I first arrived in the Americas. He was working in steel, but had always dreamed of the gold and so with the last of my money and a tip he’d had from a dying priest, we headed south. We hired a wagon to make it easier for his wife and children and went down the Fall Line Road between Fredericksburg and Augusta. Three weeks later we were ready to pan on the banks of the Flint in Georgia. The same river he died in.’
Sephora was intrigued by the world described, and she was reminded of her uncle’s dream of seeing foreign lands and different oceans.
‘Not too many weeks ago a man on his deathbed told me that the biggest lesson in life was to find passion. It seems like at least Seth found his.’
Francis nodded and stood, the scar on his cheek caught in the light of the lamp above his head, but his eyes were soft. ‘The money from the gold allowed me to invest in manufacturing and save the Douglas properties, but I’d give it all away to have Seth and his family back.’
Without thought Sephora touched him, laying her hand across his and feeling the warmth.
‘I want to leave London for Colmeade House the day after tomorrow. It’s time I took you home.’
* * *
The next day Sephora received a note from her mother asking her to come and see her in the afternoon, but when she walked into the blue salon of her parents’ town house her heart fell.
Richard Allerly was sitting talking with Elizabeth and when he saw Sephora he got up, a smile upon his face. Her mother had also risen and was speaking quickly.
‘I thought that the time had come to put all our cards on the table so to speak, my dear, and facilitate some sort of dialogue in order to clear things up between you two.’
‘Clear things up?’ Sephora could not quite understand what she meant, but Richard was quick to jump into the fray.
‘I realise that I was rather remiss in allowing our relationship to falter and I have been hearing a number of unsettling things about your new husband which, to be honest, I could no longer keep to myself. Your mother is as worried about you as I am.’
When she did not speak he carried on.
‘Douglas may have been a war hero in Spain, but he certainly seems to have made a mess of his time in the Americas. Not only was he tried in a court of law there for killing one man, but he was also rumoured to have hunted and shot another. He is a dangerous reprobate and there is no telling what he might indeed do to you, should he be inclined to.’
‘Who told you of this?’ She tried to keep her voice steady, but was so furious she wondered how she could even form the question.
‘It is common knowledge all across London. People are looking at you with pity in their eyes—the duped bride who has no idea of the monster to whom she is now married.’
‘I see. Where is Papa?’
‘He has gone to see his sister and will not be back till the day after tomorrow.’ Her mother answered this question, her voice tight.
‘And Maria?’
Now Elizabeth looked less certain. ‘She is in Kew Gardens with Mr Stevenage and Aunt Susan.’
‘Then it is a shame that they are not here, Mama, because I would have liked them all to hear what I have to tell you next.’
As she took in a shaky breath Richard crossed the room and threaded his arm through her own. ‘Come, my angel. I think you need to sit down for you look flustered, pale and upset and I realise that this is all a shock, but...’
The same feeling she had had for so many years came upon her just at his words. He generated a weakness in her, a worry and a fear that was so familiar she almost felt sick. The woman she had been might well have sat and been fussed over, all her insecurities rising like butterflies off a summer tree. But she had changed and the new her was nowhere near as accommodating to perceived failings.
‘Please do not touch me.’ She waited until he had taken a step back before she went on.
‘I shall not be commenting on the stories about the Earl of Douglas, Richard, but I will say that I know the circumstances surrounding them because my husband himself has told me.
‘I will also say that for years now I have been unhappy and frightened, of you and me, of us together. You make me less, Richard, whereas all Francis St Cartmail does is make me more. I can think with him and converse. I can offer opinions and argument and ideas that are far different from his own and expect no redress or criticism. The passion for life which you said I had none of has returned and I thank you for that because without your honesty I may have never realised that my own was so lost. There is nothing you could say, Richard, ever, that would tempt me to be the girl again who I was with you. That girl has gone. She has grown up and become this woman and I like her strength so very much more.’