Marriage Made in Hope(30)

Her mother had simply sat down on the sofa and Richard looked as if he might strike out, but Sephora smiled through the undercurrents and held herself together.

‘I am leaving London for Colmeade House in Kent tomorrow, Mama, and I have no idea when I shall be back, but I hope we will be gone for a while. Maria, no doubt, shall be down to visit and you and Papa are welcome when you can understand that the Earl of Douglas is the man I have willingly chosen to be my husband forever and I have absolutely no regrets about my decision.’

With that she simply turned around and took her leave, a few strides to the front door where she collected her cloak and hat and then down the steps and into the waiting Douglas carriage.

Once there she took in a breath and brought her shaking hands up in front of her, her marriage ring glinting in the light.

She had done it, she was free, the cloying possessiveness of Richard Allerly behind her once and for all. Every word she had uttered held a truth that was astonishing and illuminating and wonderful. Francis gave her strength and power and the ability to be herself.

Dragging her journal from her bag, she found a pencil and began to write of how it felt to be alive and young and free. To know the passions that her uncle had spoken of on his deathbed, the gifts of life and hope and happiness.

‘I’ll live life for you, too, Sarah,’ she promised, the pad of her finger tracing the embossed initials in the leather of the cover as the whole of her world opened up into new possibility.





Chapter Twelve

Colmeade House came into view finally. She knew Francis had found the journey uncomfortable for she could see a sheen of sweat across his upper lip, although he only smiled at her when she mentioned her concern. Anna on her other side had been turning and squirming for the whole trip just to catch a glance of the carriage behind theirs, the one that was carrying Mrs Billinghurst, her son, Timothy, and the dog.

‘Hopeful does not like travelling. He was sick the other day when Timothy took him across London and Mrs Billinghurst said that it is his stomach and that some dogs are born that way.’

‘Well, he has another minute or two to last at the most for here is the estate now.’ They all looked out of the window at this, the vista of a Palladian-style home greeting them, the stone tinged almost pink in the afternoon sun.

‘But it’s so beautiful,’ Sephora found herself saying, the edge of slight ruin taking nothing from its grandeur.

‘My great-grandfather built it, but ever since it’s been left to stand against the elements and with the help of passing time and little capital invested in it this is the result. My own father hardly touched it.’

‘There is plenty of room for Hopeful to run around in it anyway,’ Anna said quietly as the carriage came to a halt. ‘Will it be safe for him?’

‘It is safe for the dog and safe for you, too, Anna. There is nobody and nothing here to hurt you, I promise it.’ Francis said this in a tone that did not brook argument and when Anna smiled at him Sephora could see a softness there that made her look beautiful. Breathing in, she looked away and swallowed back the tears.

The park went as far as the eye could see, falling to a lake in the foreground and a round loggia of sorts far in the distance, the tall trees that bordered the open spaces planted with the idea of creating a pattern of space and grandeur. The heritage of the Douglases was as unexpected as it was beautiful. She’d imagined a smaller estate and one in better condition. This would need much in the way of time and energy to see it functioning properly.

She remembered then what the earl had told her about his not coming home as a child because it was too much of a nuisance to open the house for one small boy. The boy who would inherit everything. The child who had been an orphan just as Anna was one. What must this place have represented to a son who had just lost his parents? The missing tiles on the roof, the aged patina in the stone, the flaking paint on every window sill observable? Beautiful, but beaten somehow, rich in its lines of architecture, but poor in its maintenance.

Timothy had joined them now with the dog and his mother, Mrs Billinghurst, behind them. Some of the Douglas servants from town had come down to Kent two days prior to get everything ready. Sephora was glad Francis had hired a number of men to make certain the property was secure.

In front of the wide stairwell those serving the house had lined up, the aprons the women all wore white and shining in the sun.

‘Come, I will introduce you, Sephora. Many of these people have served my family for generations. Mrs Billinghurst will take the children inside for luncheon.’

She wished she might have simply followed them up the wide steps into the house, but came behind Francis to meet his staff. The earl was charming to each of them though she could see the distance he also maintained. A smile here and a question there and then they, too, were on the way up the steps and into the house proper.

He took her into a salon to his immediate left and shut the door behind him, leaning against it and closing his eyes. It had been weeks since the attack in the streets of London and each day he had got better and better, but the long trip had exhausted him. She could see it in the grey tinge on his skin.

Crossing to a cabinet she opened the door and pulled out two glasses and the first bottle that came to hand. ‘Drink this. You look as if you need some fortifying.’

Francis smiled when he tasted the tipple. He was sitting now on a wide sofa near the door. ‘Whisky?’ he asked. ‘Seems appropriate somehow. At least if I get drunk you won’t have to take me home and as we are already married Winbury will no longer be a problem.’

Their glances met across the small distance and something inside her moved. The wound had stopped him coming to her room in London as he had tried to recuperate, but here...already she could see an expression on his face akin to intimacy.

‘I do wish for this marriage of ours to be a proper one, Sephora.’

‘Proper, my lord?’ She used the words carefully.

‘I would want you to sleep with me, every night. It won’t be a sham.’ He glanced up at her then without any hint of question and she swallowed because suddenly Richard’s words were back in her ears echoing around the chambers creating uncertainty.

‘You are cold and unfeeling in this way, Sephora. You always have been.’

Was he right? Already her heart was beating faster in worry and she stared at him mutely, unable to formulate any answer at all to explain it away.

* * *

The colour had gone from her face, Francis thought, simply drained like water in a sink at his words. She looked horrified and frightened, not the normal worry of a wife who went to her marital bed for the first time but something else.

‘Did Richard Allerly ever...?’ He stopped there because she was shaking her head madly. Placing his drink on a table he stood as she answered his question.

‘No. He was not like that and I was glad for it.’

‘Not like what?’ Lord, this conversation was getting away from him and why would she be glad?

‘Did he kiss you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And you liked it?’

‘No.’ Now her eyes were like wide saucers of pure shock.

‘But you loved him?’

‘At first I did. A long time ago. After that I was trapped. Everyone just expected us to be together. Like you expect seasons to change or Christmas to come or the organ to be playing in a church on Sundays. No thought in it really just...’

‘Presumptions?’

‘Exactly. And at the end I hated him.’

This was said so softly he could barely hear her.

‘He said... Richard said...I was cold and passionless and had always been that way and I think it is the truth.’ Her fingers were clamped into shaking fists, every knuckle stretched into white. ‘Once I overheard Papa saying the same thing to my mother. Perhaps it is the sort of weakness that runs through a family and blights it, a fatal flaw like Hamlet with his prevarications or Achilles with his ego. And if so then I am not...’

He reached out for her, simply taking her lips, hard and honest and without hesitation; and if he felt her tremble he ignored it, opening her mouth under his and coming within. To plunder, to taste, to know what it was that lay between them in the shock of their contact, to feel the red hot want of lust and roiling waves of desire that raced inside. To show his unusual new wife that she was not frigid or damaged at all.

And then he broke away.

‘Passionless? I do not think you are that.’

But she stood there dazed, with her mouth open and her breasts heaving and when he registered the voices of Anna and Timothy coming down to them along the hallway he leaned forward and whispered.

‘Tonight, Sephora, tonight I promise to show you just what burning feels like.’

* * *

It was happening all over again just as it did at the river; one action that changed her perception of the world, one kiss that had made everything different.

And his promise of tonight? The loosening of something inside her made her light-headed and light-hearted and transformed her from the woman she was before to the one she was now. She had felt everything the stories talked of when he had kissed her, the breathlessness, the possibilities, the wonder. The wooden Sephora Connaught had simply melted into a living flame, wanting him, wanting more, and understanding so terribly all that she had missed with a man who had only ever made her feel less.