Marriage Made in Hope(37)
‘But it will be safe? You will be safe?’
‘I will be and in public it might be easier to get to him. He won’t have the opportunity of refusal to see me, though with your parents in attendance I’ll understand if you want to wait...’
‘No.’ Her answer was certain. ‘I want this finished with and Anna safe.’
He tipped her chin up and covered her lips with his own, a quiet languid kiss that turned suddenly into more. The quick streak of want made her breathless.
‘If anything were to happen to you because of this...’
‘It won’t.’
Her finger drew a line down the edge of his cheek and settled on the scar. ‘Amethyst said that you were decorated for bravery? Where are your medals?’
‘In a drawer somewhere. There were a lot of other braver men who died doing the same thing as I did.’
‘What was it you did to receive such an honour?’
He brought her closer so that she could feel the breath of him across her hair as he spoke.
‘Our regiment was used to cover the movements of Moore’s retreating army and to do that we were engaged in all the rearguard clashes. Between Lugos and Betanzos we lost more troops over a week than we did in the whole of the expedition altogether. It was the snow and the freezing rain—the mountain passes were slippery with ice and by that time discipline in the rank and file had broken down completely.’
‘So it was every man for himself?’
‘Well, it was and it wasn’t. The French were close behind, you see, and the action at the back was causing as many deaths as the freezing temperatures further up. So I positioned myself on a hill overlooking the valley and picked the French off as I saw them, and little by little our troops got through.’
‘And your cheek?’
‘You can’t stay unseen forever, or protected, as gunshot is easily traceable. A group of men came at me from behind and a sabre caught my face. If I hadn’t turned when I did though it would have sliced off my head and I saved myself by falling down the ravine behind me, grabbing at rocks as I went to slow my descent.’
‘Then you followed the others towards Corunna.’
‘No. By then I’d lost a lot of blood and so I made for the closer port of Vigo. I travelled north-west at night mostly and found a ship home. The transports had left by the time I made it there, but a Spanish sea captain took pity on me and transported me to England. His wife fixed my face.’
‘She sewed it up?’
‘She couldn’t do that because by then it was too inflamed. She poured hot water over the wound and made a poultice of bread and milk. Whatever paste she concocted to draw out the badness worked. The scar just reminds me of how lucky I was to survive.’
‘But you don’t value your medals?’
‘War makes you realise heroism is a changing thing. One moment this and the next one that. I took my orders and did my duty like a hundred other officers in the continent and a lot of them died without recognition or praise.’ He raised his hands up in front of him and looked down. ‘Before that war I was a different man. I thought less about death and more of life.’
Sephora closed her own fingers about his. ‘I was the same. When I fell into the water from that bridge there was a part of me that thought it might have been easier if it just ended then. But I’ve changed now...’
‘...and we are both made whole.’ He finished the sentiment for her.
Different words from the ones Richard had constantly bombarded her with. Not I love you, but much, much more. The truth had her reaching for him.
‘Love me, Francis,’ she said as he nuzzled into her throat.
‘I will.’
* * *
She dressed carefully for the Clarkes’ ball in a gown that she had always thought looked well upon her. It was made of heavy silk with a woven pattern of blue leaves in flossed satin around the bodice and hem. The light had a trick of catching the silk and satin in a way that made the fabric almost live. Teamed with long gloves and a velvet pelisse mirroring the shades of the dress she felt...braver. She smiled at the thought, but it was true.
If she was going into battle she needed to be looking her best. She’d not had one outbreak of hives since becoming Francis’s wife.
Francis wore his usual black, stark and sombre, the cloth and cut of breeches and jacket a classical one. He’d queued his hair tonight in a way that was not as severe as he usually wore it, and it suited him. His one nod to the more decorative came in the wearing of his ruby ring. Sephora thought he had never looked more beautiful or more dangerous.
‘If Cummings attacks, you need to leave immediately. Do you promise me this, Sephora? Should I have to worry about you, too, I will be distracted and if you were to be hurt...’ He stopped and swallowed.
‘What if Terence is armed?’
He lifted the left opening of his jacket and she saw the heft of a knife beneath and was glad for it.
‘But could there be others with him, do you think? Others in the ton?’
‘Anything is possible, I suppose, but I have a feeling he acts alone. Anna saw only him in the warehouse and you said he was leaving the country with his wife at the end of the month, so he is probably not the sort to want to share his spoils. Ralph Kennings was the same.’
‘He was a loner?’
‘He was a man who wanted to have it all and he did not care whom he trampled on to make it happen. I’d known him in the Continent before I left for the Americas.’
This was new. He’d never offered information like this unbidden before. She stayed quiet hoping he might say more.
‘We were in Spain together. On the hills above the pass where I had dug in to try to help the soldiers from the regiment below and I saw Kennings turn and shoot a British officer. Later I found out it was his wife’s brother he had killed and later still I discovered the woman herself had disappeared. Putting two and two together I think he got rid of them both because she was a wealthy heiress and he wanted the money. How wealthy is Sally Cummings?’
Sephora simply stared at him. ‘Very. Her father protected her assets in a document that said she would not inherit anything until she had been married for ten years. He never liked Cummings, you see, but apart from limiting the access to her funds there was not much more he could do about it.’
‘And how long has she been married now?’
‘It must almost be that number. You think he would murder her?’
‘Killing is easy after you have done it once.’ The hard tone he used made Sephora frown. ‘I barely blinked an eye when I shot Kennings. It was only afterwards that...’
He stopped.
‘That you regretted it?’
‘Yes.’ This time the hazel in his eyes was glazed in pain and torment.
‘I love you, Francis.’ The words came without thought, and they came from her heart, body and soul. ‘I have loved you from the first moment you gave me your breath beneath the water and every second since.’
Unexpectedly he laughed. ‘I take you to my bed and love you in every way I have ever learnt with care and attention and fortitude and you do not say anything. Then when I confess that I have killed a murderer in cold blood and am sorry for it, you tell me this. Is there some law of logic that exists only in women, some way of tangling a man’s thoughts until they do not have a mind of their own, until there is no certainty of anything any more? Save that of knowing I love you too.’
‘You do?’ She could barely utter the words with the thickness in her throat.
‘When you fell off that bridge with your riding habit a living emerald in the sunshine and your tiny hat spiralling through the air behind, I thought... I thought if I could not find you beneath the water then I should die with the trying before I gave you up.’
Sephora smiled at such a truth. ‘Was it preordained do you think, a bee sting at that exact moment and a horse that would react so violentl? One moment later and it would not have happened as it did or a moment sooner and you may have missed me altogether.’
‘Love can be a powerful thing,’ he whispered and reached for her hand. ‘“Doubt truth to be a liar; But never doubt I love.” With me it will be always and forever, Sephora.’
She felt the tears pool in her eyes. ‘When this is over I want you to take me home, Francis, and I want for us to have babies. Lots of them, as many as we can fill Colmeade House with for I am done with the ton and London town. All I need is you.’
* * *
The large ballroom at the Clarkes’ town house was full and busy when they arrived and found their places with Gabriel and Adelaide Hughes, Daniel and Amethyst Wylde and Lucien, Alejandra and Christine Howard.
Sephora was glad Francis would not be alone in this quest and glad, too, that her parents were nowhere at all in sight. Despite the fighting words of a half an hour ago she felt nervous and worried though her elation with the proclamations that they had given each other also lingered.
She’d known she loved Francis for a long time and had felt the same regard back from him, but the words she had once censored were now valued and dear, no longer the oft repeated worthless and unimportant sentiments that they had been with Richard.
When a waltz struck up he leaned over and asked her to partner him. ‘It will give us a better view of the room and those within it,’ he said quietly as they took their place on the floor.