With his arms about her and the chandeliers above, Sephora simply leaned into his chest and felt, this moment, this second, with a husband who was good and strong and true. And beautiful, she added. So beautiful she could see a myriad women watching them, watching him. Her fingers tightened about his.
‘Winbury is at the far end of the room, Sephora, but I can see no sign of Terence Cummings.’
She smiled, her musings so different from his alert watchfulness. Gabriel and Adelaide danced nearby and the Earl of Wesley’s eyes scanned the room with the same purpose as Francis did.
Then Sally Cummings came into view, standing alone beside one of the large windows and looking upset. A sense of foreboding filled Sephora. How easily she could have been a woman exactly like her in ten years or so if she had married Richard, for the uncertain nervous expression was familiar; she had seen it so many times on her own face in the mirror.
When the waltz finished Francis led her from the floor towards her parents, who had now arrived and were standing on one side waiting for them.
‘I hope you are well.’ This greeting was given by her mother with some coldness though her father was a little more effusive.
‘It is good to see you again, Sephora. I have missed you, but you look happy.’
‘Is Maria here tonight?’ She glanced around for her sister.
‘Not yet. I think she will no doubt make an appearance a little later. Aunt Susan is with her.’
Her father turned then to Francis. ‘I hope your ward is recovered after her fright in London, St Cartmail, and if there is anything I can do to help you find the culprits please do ask.’
‘Thank you, Lord Aldford, but it is all in hand and the man responsible for the kidnapping should soon be facing the law.’ Francis was polite but distant and Sephora thought at this rate the two men should never know each other well enough to be friends. She was glad when Lucien Howard greeted Francis from behind and her parents moved on.
‘Cummings is here. He was in the card room, but he has gone outside now for some air. He’s been drinking heavily so you might want to be careful. I’ll give you a few moments to sound him out.’
Thanking Lucien, Francis took her arm.
‘I would ask you to go and stand with your parents, Sephora, but I can see it in your eyes that you will not go.’
Despite the situation his voice sounded relaxed, but then he had been in difficulties many times in his life before by all accounts and was probably well able to disguise any misgivings. Her own heartbeat pounded in her ears.
* * *
Francis scanned the space around them as they walked through the wide French doors. Two men at the far end of the terrace were engaged in conversation and at the other end a couple lingered.
Winbury’s cousin was drinking, for two empty glasses sat on a marbled table near him and he held another one. A dash of anger crossed his face as they joined him.
‘I did not think you were back in London, Lady Sephora. All my sources said that you were ensconced most happily at the Douglas family estate in the middle of Kent.’
‘Indeed we were until this morning, but business has called us to the city.’
There was a look in Cummings’s eyes that began to worry Francis and turning to Sephora he spoke quietly. ‘Could you go inside and get me a drink? I find I am suddenly thirsty.’
He wanted his wife away from here and from undercurrents he could not quite understand for there was some wrongness in this situation that played about the edge of his caution. Sephora did not turn away though and as the two from further along the terrace moved closer he saw their faces for the first time. It was the men who had tried to take Anna in London though they were dressed far differently today. Cummings had known them after all, just as Sephora had said he did.
Pushing Sephora behind him he did not wait for them to attack. His first punch brought down the heavier man and he lay there motionless though the younger man had brought out a knife and was circling him with it.
Without hesitation Francis took his own blade from the strap at his breast and crouched, a flash of steel against the darkness as he moderated his breathing, slowing it down and steadying it before moving forward.
His opponent was good but Francis was better and within a few moments he was able to strike the weapon from the other’s fist and bring his blade down into the soft flesh of the man’s arm. He couldn’t kill him, not here a few yards from a ball in progress and a room containing a hundred women who would be horrified by such violence.
Using the heavy handle he slammed down hard across the other man’s head as the fellow ran at him and he too, fell to the floor.
Then things took an unexpected turn as Cummings lunged for Sephora and his grip was tight around her neck.
‘Drop the knife, Douglas, or I will kill her.’ The words were snarled and furious as Francis raised his hands. Sephora’s face was deathly pale and her eyes were wide. As Cummings’s fingers pressed deeper, Francis did exactly what he asked, laying the knife to one side of him and speaking quietly.
‘It is over, Cummings. I know what you have done. You can only make it worse for yourself by harming an innocent.’
He moved sideways slowly as he spoke, the anger in him blood red and boiling. One second was all it would take to get to Cummings, but it had to be the right second. A neck could be broken easily with enough pressure and Sephora’s was slender and small. He could do nothing at this moment but wait. The first man at his feet was recovering and he saw Cummings’s eye flicker at the movement.
‘Clive Sherborne was a colleague of yours, was he not?’ Francis asked the question because in an impasse of this sort it was good to engage the participants in dialogue in order to buy time. He knew from experience that the longer these standoffs went on for the less likely someone would be hurt.
The man was arrogant enough to think he could still get away with murder, but Francis could see Lucien’s outline against the doors.
‘Clive Sherborne was an impediment. But why hurt Anna? What had the child done to harm you?’
‘She was never a child, don’t you see. She was his snitch, the one with the eyes and the brain. Without her that coward and thief would have never risen as he did through the ranks of the smugglers. Without her he’d have been dead long before he was.’
‘My cousin saw you kill her father. She was hiding under the straw in the corner of the warehouse. She can identify you, Cummings, and she has.’
The older of the two men Francis had knocked down now sat up, a quiet movement that took Cummings’s attention, and he loosened his grip.
It was enough.
Francis flung himself at Winbury’s cousin knocking both him and Sephora over, coming up across Cummings quickly and punching him hard as his wife scrambled away. With his free foot he kicked the recovering miscreant in the head, pleased at the cracking sound of a skull hitting stone.
‘Run, Sephora,’ he ordered, wanting her out of the reach of any more violence, but instead she stayed where she was and spoke with feeling.
‘You were there, Terence, there on the street when the man tried to kidnap Anna. I called to you for help, but you disappeared. You didn’t want anyone to see you let alone a small girl who recognised you as the one who had murdered her father.’
‘Prove it, Douglas.’ Terence Cummings was so wrathful now he could barely get the words out, blood pouring down his face from a broken nose. ‘Who’d believe you anyway, with your more-than-questionable reputation and the marks of a criminal around your throat?’
His shout drew others from the main ballroom out onto the terrace and Lucien came to stand beside him. Sally Cummings was there too, but she made no move to stand beside her husband, her face ashen and her eyes sunken.
Then Richard Allerly pushed through to kneel down to his bleeding cousin.
‘If you have killed him, Douglas, I will have you hanged properly this time and a good job, too, you bastard.’
The hushed anger of the gathering crowd was familiar and Francis tried to take in breath to answer, but his throat felt tight. Sephora’s parents stood ten yards away behind him, the horror on their faces reflecting all that they imagined their daughter’s life to have become.
A whole group of people who hated him and would not spare the time to even find out the truth. All of a sudden he could not even be bothered refuting the accusation. His eye ached, his hand and back, too, and one of the damned miscreants had managed to land a punch right on the wound of his healing shoulder.
A voice then rang out across all the others. It was Sephora and she was no longer anything like the girl he had first met. Now she was a furious avenging angel who faced the crowd with all the anger of the wrongfully damned and looked them all straight in the eyes.
* * *
These people thought the Earl of Douglas was the one at fault here, so easily and seamlessly, so without thought, explanation or reason. It was how the ton worked after all. Anyone who did not quite fit within its narrow confines was to be ostracised and excluded, cast out into the role of wrongdoer and disreputable.
Francis looked battered and defeated, the cut across his eyes sending blood onto his damaged cheek and he was holding his right-hand side and breathing harshly.
Well, she would fight every person on this terrace if necessary and then more besides to protect him. The anger pummelled through her like a living bolt of fire, untrammelled and vehement. He had been accused wrongly in the Hutton’s Landing by a crowd baying for his blood and she would never let anything like that happen again here.