Sephora mused over all the things Richard had done for her, all the help and good intentions, the carriage filled with warm woollen blankets, his solicitousness and his worry so very on show.
She began to cry quite suddenly, a feeling that welled from the bottom of her stomach and swelled into her throat, a pounding, horrible unladylike howl that tore at her heart and her sense and her modesty. Unstoppable. Inexplicable. Desperate.
Her mother rushed over and took her in warm arms and Richard left the room with as much haste as he could politely manage. Sephora was glad he was gone.
‘Men never have an inkling of what to say in a time of crisis, my love. Richard was indeed wonderful with his orders and his arrangements and his wisdom. We could not have wished for more.’
‘More?’ Her one-worded question fell into silence.
He had not dived into the water after her, he had not risked his life for her. Instead he had simply watched her fall and sink, down and down into the greying dark coldness of the river without breath or hope.
Richard had done what he thought was enough and he was her betrothed. She had never met the Earl of Douglas and yet Francis St Cartmail had, without thought, jumped in to save her there amongst the frigid green depths.
She had no touchstone any more for what was true and what was not. Her life had been turned upside down by a single unselfish act into question and uncertainty and lost in the confusion of reality—these seconds, these moments, this morning with the sun coming in through wide windows and open sashes.
If Lord Douglas had not come to her, she would have been lying now instead on a cold marble slab in the family mausoleum, drowned by misadventure, the unlucky tragic Lady Sephora Connaught, twenty-two and a half and gone.
Her nails dug into the skin above her wrists, leaving whitened crescents that stung badly, and she liked the pain. It told her she was alive, but the numbness inside around her heart was spreading and there was nothing at all she could do to stop it.
Chapter Two
After the rescue at the river Francis removed his sodden jacket and lay down on the day bed in his library, closing his eyes against sickness. Everything upon him was wet, but just for this moment he needed to be still.
It always happened like this, suddenly, shockingly, placing him out of kilter with all that was around him and sending him back to other moments, other times, other places that he never wanted to remember.
Even the change of environment did not banish the panic, though it made the waiting easier here amongst his books and his throat stopped feeling quite so blocked and swollen.
‘Have a drink, Francis. Then if you do happen to die on us you will at least have the rancid filthy taste of the Thames gone from your mouth.’ Gabriel handed him a large glass of brandy filled to the rim as he sat up and took two generous sips before placing it down.
‘This has...happened before. It’s not...fatal. It’s...just damn...unpleasant.’ He was still shaking and his voice reflected it, ice in his bones and shards of glass in his head. He was so very tired.
‘Why?’ One word from Lucien, hard and angry. ‘It’s the Hutton’s Landing affair, isn’t it? That damn blunder with Seth Greenwood and somehow his death is your problem forever.’
Francis shook his head.
‘It’s the...mud.’
‘The mud?’
‘The mud that covered us. The memory comes back sometimes...and I can’t fight off the feeling.’
‘God, Francis. You went to America as one man and came back as altogether a different one. Richer, I will agree, but...altered in a way that makes you brittle and you won’t let us in to help you.’
Francis tried to concentrate, to sift through all of the extraneous matter and find out what was important.
‘Who was...she?’
‘The girl you pulled from the Thames? You don’t know?’ Lucien began to smile. ‘That was Lady Sephora Connaught, the uncrowned “angel of the ton”, the woman who every other female aspires to become like...and one who is engaged to Richard Allerly.’
‘The Marquis of Winslow. The duke’s son?’
‘His only son. The golden couple. Both sets of parents are good friends. Bride and groom-to-be have known each other since childhood and the relationship has matured into more. It will be the wedding of the year.’
Gabriel on the other side of the room was less inclined to sugar-coat it. ‘Allerly is an idiot and you know it, too, Luce, as well as being a damned coward.’
For the first time in an hour Francis felt his shivering lessen with this turn of topic. ‘How is he a coward?’
‘Winslow was there, damn it, right behind his would-be bride. He watched as that untrained horse of hers upended her over the balustrade and sent her tumbling down into the river.’
‘And he did...nothing?’
‘Well, he certainly didn’t take a leap from a high bridge into a deep and fast-running river without thinking twice. Cowering against the stonework might be a better description of his reaction. The skin on his knuckles was white from the grip.’
Lucien looked as though he found Gabriel’s description more than amusing. ‘Allerly was there soon enough though when you got her to the bank, Francis, I noticed he tried not to get mud on his new boots as he all but snatched her from you.’
‘Hardly snatched,’ Gabriel countered. ‘It did look as if the girl knew who her saviour was at least and it took the marquis a while to get her to let you go. Her bodice was ripped, too. Her beloved took a good long look at what was on offer beneath before taking off his own jacket to cover her. Sephora Connaught’s mother, Lady Aldford, looked less than pleased with him.’
For the first time in hours Francis relaxed. ‘It seems as if Lady Sephora made quite an impression on you both.’
Gabriel took up the rebuttal. ‘We are happily married men, Francis. It’s you we hope might have noticed her obvious charms.’
‘Well, I didn’t. I was shaking too much.’
He leaned back against the sofa and drew a blanket across himself before finishing the rest of the strong brandy. The name was familiar and he tried to place it.
‘Lady Sephora Connaught. How is it I know of her?’
‘She is Anne-Marie McDowell’s youngest cousin.’
Anne-Marie. He had courted her once a good many years ago, but she had died of some quick sickness before they could take the relationship to the next stage. He’d got drunk when he’d found out, so blindingly drunk he’d never made it to her funeral. Looking back, he thought his reactions had come not so much from the shock of Anne-Marie’s death but from the reminder that the grim reaper took people randomly, with no thought of age or experience or character.
The family had not been pleased by his absence though and he knew now he should have handled things with more aplomb than he had.
His right cheek ached from where Sephora Connaught had scratched him, three dark lines running from eye to chin caught in the reflection of the glass that he held. He hoped they would not fester like the wound had on the other cheek as he closed his eyes.
When he had thrown himself off the bridge today part of him had hoped he might not again surface and that he would be celebrated as a hero when he failed to reappear. Such a legacy of valour might sweeten the nightly howls of the Douglas ancestors whose portraits lined the steep stairwell as he walked to his bedroom late at night and there was some comfort in imagining it such before the truth of his life was torn apart again by gossip and conjecture.
He was alone and running from a past that kept reaching out, even here in a quiet, warm room and in the company of friends. Lifting the glass of brandy to his lips, he finished the lot.
‘You look like a man who needs to unload his demons, Francis.’ Gabriel said this, his voice close and worried. ‘Adelaide thinks you have the same appearance as I did when I first met her, swathed in secrets and regrets.’
‘How did she cure you, then?’
‘Oh, a good wife has her ways, believe me, and mine was never a woman to give up.’
Lucien joined in the conversation now. ‘It’s what you need, a woman with gumption, spirit and humour.’
‘And where do you think I shall find this paragon that you describe?’ The brandy was loosening his tongue and stilling the shakes and with the blanket about his shoulders he was finally feeling warmer and safe.
‘Perhaps you have just done so, but do not know it yet.’
Francis frowned in sheer disbelief. ‘Lady Sephora Connaught is engaged to be married to the only son of a duke. A slight impediment, would you not say, even given the fact I have not yet shared one word with her.’
‘But you will. She will have to thank you for risking your life and I am certain jumping into a dangerous freezing river must have its compensations.’
‘Is it the brandy that is making you both talk nonsense for I am damned sure that the so-called “angel of the ton” would have enough sense to keep well away from me?’
‘You paint yourself too poorly, Francis. Seth Greenwood’s cousin, Adam Stevenage, said that you had tried to save Seth. He said that you held him up out of the mud for all the hours of the day and it was the cold that killed him come the dusk.’ Lucien said this softly, but with conviction.
‘Stop.’ The word came with an anger Francis could not hide and he turned away from the glances of both his friends. ‘You know nothing of what happened at Hutton’s Landing.’