The thought calmed Sophie. She took a deep breath. The dream that Patrick Foakes might fall in love with her was just that, a dream. Whatever he wanted from her, it wasn’t marriage. Yes, she would see him tonight. But it was a dinner celebrating her engagement to another man.
Still … her heart danced. Even the hair falling down her back, spilling in precisely ordered curls, felt airy, silky, about to be touched.
The carriage jolted sharply as André drew up the horses before Sheffield House. The team reared into the air in tandem, settling back to earth with an irritable jangle of their harnesses and a petulant stamping of feet.
“Best not let his lordship see that trick with the hoasses, Andy,” one of the footmen called saucily. He hopped down from his perch and nipped around to open the door. Everyone knew that the young lady wouldn’t never complain about the rough ride, but Lord a’mercy, the markessa, or whatever her title was, she could give a rare trimming when she put her mind to it.
If the truth be told, Sophie was feeling slightly battered. First her shoulder had crashed into the corner of the coach, and then when the coach finally stopped she had been propelled sharply forward and landed on her knees in the center well between the seats.
“Philippe,” she said, accepting her footman’s assistance stepping out of the coach, “would you tell André that I feel like a tub of cream which Cook is determined to churn into butter?”
Philippe ducked his head to hide a grin. “Yes, my lady, I will convey the message,” he said, his voice half muffled by his high cravat.
Sophie ran lightly up the marble steps to Sheffield House and paused to smile at the portly butler who stood with the door opened.
“How are you, McDougal?”
“Ach, Lady Sophie, it’s beautiful that you look tonight,” McDougal said, pushing the door backward as he spoke. Sophie handed him her velvet pelisse.
When she crooked an eyebrow at him inquiringly, McDougal winked. “You’ll find the countess in her rooms.”
As Sophie disappeared around the curve of the great marble staircase that led to the upper regions of Sheffield House, McDougal smiled to himself. That was a bonny lass, Lady Sophie. Small as a bonnet bee, she was, and light as a fairy, but her smile—it could warm the moon, it could.
When Sophie entered the master suite, Charlotte swung about from a stool before her dressing table, her face lighting up.
“Sophie! How lovely to see you early.”
“No, don’t stand up, sweetheart.” Sophie nimbly bent to kiss Charlotte’s cheek. “I see that Marie is planning something very complicated.” Charlotte’s maid was combing her mistress’s hair, preparatory to fashioning an elaborate nest of braids, satin ribbons, and flowers.
“Bonsoir, Marie.”
“ Mon dieu!“ Marie squeaked in response. “Look at that gown!”
Sophie looked down obediently. Sure enough, the front of her dress was creased where she had fallen on the carriage floor.
Marie darted across the room and yanked on the bellpull. “I’ll have someone come up immediately, Lady Sophie, and attend to it. Please, slip out of the gown. Here”—she snatched up a flowing peignoir—“you might wear this until your dress is pressed.”
Sophie obediently bent down as Marie eased the delicate silk over her head. Then she sat on the bed.
“Don’t forget that I dampen my chemise, Marie,” she said mischievously.
“Mais oui, my lady, naturellement,” Marie breathed, gently handing Sophie’s gown to the curtsying maid who had appeared at the door. Sophie wrapped the peignoir around herself, pushing up the sleeves.
“How are the girls, Charlotte?”
“They’re very well, except that Pippa has taken to ordering everyone to do her bidding. She’s a tiny despot.”
“She always had that potential.” Sophie laughed. “Remember how she used to drive nannies out of the house, one after another—and then she was only a year old! Now she’s what? Two or three? Wait until she’s sixteen!”
“True enough,” Charlotte admitted ruefully.
“Look at this, Charlotte. You’re a veritable giant compared to me!” The slippery lace of the peignoir’s arms wouldn’t stay up and cascaded past Sophie’s hands.
Charlotte grimaced at Sophie, looking at her in the mirror. “In truth, I feel like a giant when I walk next to you.”
“Pooh! You look like a princess and I look like your page,” Sophie said impudently. Her smoky blue eyes were shining with amusement.
“Hurrah!” Charlotte exclaimed. “You’re back!”
Sophie knit her brows. “What on earth do you mean?”
“You look happy again,” Charlotte said. “You’ve had a fragile look the past few weeks….”
“Like a moth singed by the candle?”
“That’s not the analogy I would have chosen,” Charlotte replied. “Like a person who has made a difficult decision and wonders if she made the right one.”
“You’re blunt,” said Sophie, meeting Charlotte’s eyes again in the mirror.
Charlotte twisted about on the stool, heedless of Marie’s muttered reproach as she dropped hairpins on the floor.
“Are you sure, Sophie? Absolutely sure?”
Sophie nodded, her eyes meeting Charlotte’s without flinching.
“Because …” Charlotte’s voice trailed off. “Well, Braddon is a nice person, of course, but he’s not very—”
“Handsome? Interesting? Intelligent?” Sophie suggested, her mouth twisting wryly.
“How can you marry him!” Charlotte flashed back. “Can’t you see how much better it is to marry someone handsome and intelligent?”
“I don’t want to marry your brother-in-law, Charlotte,” Sophie said patiently. “You have to allow me to know what’s best for myself. I don’t want to marry a rake.”
“But Braddon is a rake,” Charlotte insisted. “Why, I distinctly remember you telling me that Braddon had more mistresses depending on him than a lawyer has cases!”
A flash of amusement lighted Sophie’s eyes. “The point is not that Braddon is or isn’t a rake, it’s that I like Braddon. He’s trustworthy. He doesn’t have deep emotions, and he will be very discreet with his mistresses. He assured me of it himself.”
“You mean you have discussed his mistresses?” Charlotte was horrified and fascinated, both at once.
“He brought it up. I have to admit, I was a little surprised myself.” Sophie tried hard to keep any doubt out of her voice. “That’s the kind of marriage we’re going to have, Charlotte: a calm, reasoned, and friendly alliance. I want a placid marriage. You did not want that particular kind of relationship, and so you and Alex are happy together. But I want the kind of marriage where neither person is blinded by passion. Remember how Alex behaved toward you?” Sophie hesitated and then plunged on. “When you had to travel to Scotland?”
“You don’t have to be so delicate,” Charlotte said wryly. “Alex behaved like a royal devil, that’s true. But we worked it out, and now—” She looked at herself in the mirror. Half of her hair still spilled over her ears and the other half garlanded her head. Marie’s hands were busy plaiting a crimson ribbon into her hair, preparing to tuck the braid in among the rest. Even the thought of her husband stained her cheeks a faint echo of the ribbon.
“I know what you mean.” Sophie’s voice was somewhere between dispassion and despair. “But the grand amour is not going to work for me, Charlotte. I know that you wish for me to find the same happiness that you have. But we all find happiness in different ways. For me, the anxiety of marrying a man whom I loved so passionately, the way you care for Alex, could never be worth it. Your parents are happy; mine are not.”
Ignoring Charlotte’s open mouth, she rushed on: “I certainly don’t mean to pry into the circumstances of your parents’ marriage. My point was only that the circumstances of my parents’ marriage are known far and wide. It’s a rare month when my father doesn’t surface in The Morning Post under some pseu
donym or other. My mother won’t hire a Frenchwoman under the age of seventy; it means we’ve likely pensioned off more servants than your mother has hired in her entire married life!”
Charlotte sighed. Sophie’s logic was impeccable. It was just that she was talking nonsense.
“I don’t see what your parents have to do with whether you marry Braddon or Patrick.”
“I like Braddon,” Sophie insisted. “I will never fall passionately in love with him, and therefore I won’t become bitter, as my mother has, if Braddon takes more notice of his mistresses than of me. With Patrick … it’s different.”
“You know that Patrick is coming tonight?”
Sophie’s head swung up. She had been restlessly watching her pale gold slipper swing back and forth, hitting the tasseled edge of Charlotte’s counterpane.
“Yes.”
In the secret depths of Sophie’s eyes Charlotte saw an aching confusion, a languorous question that made an answering smile curl the corners of her mouth. Perhaps all Sophie’s rhetoric wouldn’t matter—much. Perhaps, if she found some way to throw Sophie and Patrick together tonight …
There was a brisk knock at the door and a maid half ran into the room, carrying Sophie’s gold dress draped across her outstretched arms as if it were an altar cloth being offered to a pagan deity.
“My lady,” she stammered, curtsying while holding her arms stiffly outstretched.
“My goodness, Bess,” Marie said, scolding her with the freedom of a valued member of the household—more than a valued member, one who ranked only just below the earl’s own manservant, and he only just below the butler. “You will have to learn to be more graceful if you ever want to become a lady’s maid. Go along downstairs, do.”
Bess tripped on the way out but managed to close the door.
“Now, Lady Sophie.”
As Marie approached, Sophie stood up. First Marie briskly dampened Sophie’s all-but-invisible chemise, making the fine lawn cling to her legs. Then she threw the gown up over Sophie’s head, carefully protecting her hair.
The dress rustled sweetly over Sophie’s shoulders, smelling of orange blossoms and, faintly, a hot iron. As it fell down to her feet the silk twisted in the breeze of its own fall, barely glazing her limbs.
“There,” Marie said with satisfaction, after hooking up the back of Sophie’s gown. “If you would give me a minute while I pin up the last of my lady’s braids, I will refurbish your curls.”
“That is a lovely gown,” Charlotte said to Sophie, as Marie nimbly pinned up a few stray curls.
“Thank you,” Sophie replied. “I had it sent from Madame Carême.”
Marie ruthlessly stuck a few extra pins in the coils of Charlotte’s hair, and Charlotte rose, feeling awkwardly top-heavy. She crossed the room to stand before Marie, who had clambered onto a stool and was waiting to slip a crimson evening gown over her head. One of the disadvantages of being so tall was that her lady’s maid had to stand on a stool to put on a dress, or to undo buttons for that matter.
There was a light knock on the door. Marie rushed over and then shut the door smartly in the speaker’s face.
“That was Keating, my lady. The Heppleworths have arrived.”
Charlotte held out her wrist as Marie fastened the clasp of a slim band of rubies. Sophie came over curiously.
“What a beautiful bracelet, Charlotte.” The glowing burgundy of the rubies picked up the sheen of Charlotte’s gown and set off her dark hair.
“A birthday gift from my doting husband,” Charlotte said impishly. “To celebrate our placid life.”
“More likely you threw a chamber pot at him and this was his ploy to reenter the bedroom,” Sophie teased.
Charlotte wrinkled her nose. “Shall we go down and excite the assembled men … all of them?”
Sophie cast a look at herself in the mirror and then deliberately pulled down her tiny bodice, arranging the dress so that the silky gold material just barely skimmed her nipples.
Charlotte chuckled. “You couldn’t possibly look more enticing, Sophie.”
“Yes, well.” Sophie’s eyes were alight with deep excitement. “I see no reason not to make everyone at the dinner party a little interested, no? I am only an engaged woman; I’m not dead!”
“Oh, Sophie! Sometimes you are so French!”
“I like being French in the evening,” Sophie retorted. “One can be English all day, especially when riding a horse, but then one can dress—and think—French after six o’clock.”
Charlotte thought about this a bit doubtfully as they walked down the hallway together. “How French will you be once you’re married?” Charlotte asked.
Sophie cast her friend a laughing look. “Are you trying to find out whether I will be faithful to my husband, Charlotte?”
“Yes.”
“I shall be,” Sophie replied. “Because it is too much trouble to become involved in liaisons and such. I shall flirt, naturally, and I shall take on a cicisbeo, of course. A married woman must have admirers. But no, I will not allow anyone into my bedroom. Why should I?” She gave a charming little shrug.
That shrug was purely French, Charlotte thought. But Sophie’s lack of knowledge about the delights of the bedroom was purely English. Charlotte couldn’t help smiling. If Patrick was anything like his twin, her husband, Alex, he would make sure that Sophie knew exactly what she was giving up by putting Braddon’s ring on her finger.
They walked down the marble stairs together. Charlotte moved toward the Yellow Drawing Room, where the party was assembling.
“Splendid,” Sophie whispered to Charlotte when she saw in which direction they were heading. “This room is a perfect accompaniment to my gown.”
Charlotte rolled her eyes at Sophie. The Yellow Drawing Room had curtains and upholstery of a pale amber and an elaborate Axminster carpet of a slightly darker color. Sophie was right. As she drifted into the room, the saffron-brown tones made her dress glow with a pale gold sheen.
Patrick had not yet arrived. Sophie had developed a sixth sense about him. Without even looking about she knew whether he was in a room.
Braddon bustled toward her and she paused, sweeping him a curtsy. Braddon grinned and bowed. As he straightened he automatically yanked at the bottom of his waistcoat, hauling it back down over his bulging tummy. Sophie lowered her eyes politely.
Braddon bowed again, to Charlotte, before taking Sophie’s arm importantly. This evening his future bride would be formally introduced to his family, and he had thought out the hierarchy of the whole occasion carefully.
“My mother first,” he whispered, steering Sophie toward the far end of the drawing room, “and then my sisters, and finally my godmother because she can be such an infernal nuisance, and also she is a duchess, so …”
Braddon’s family was known far and wide, and only the kindly referred to them as “difficult.” The average gentleman was more likely to label the Countess of Slaslow a hell-born virago. But Sophie had survived nearly twenty years of her own mother’s scathing comments. No amount of rudeness could shake her calm.
Braddon stopped in front of his mother, hovering slightly on the tips of his toes, as if poised to fly to the other side of the room. To Sophie’s mind, Prudence Chatwin looked surprisingly young for one with so fierce a reputation. Her face was deceptively unlined, given that she must be (Sophie calculated swiftly) at least fifty.
Sophie sank into a deep curtsy, bowing her head submissively.
The countess rose to her feet. “Lady Sophie,” she said, her voice as sweet as syrup and clear enough to carry straight across the long room. “How grateful we are to you for rescuing our poor son from the throes of bachelorhood.” She turned a dragon’s eye on Braddon, who was already quailing. “Why, do you know that more than three young ladies turned him down? What can they have been thinking of? But they were very young; it obviously took a more mature eye to see the shining light of dear Braddon’s virtues.”
Quite good, Sophi
e thought appreciatively. In one stroke she had made Braddon into a slacker and Sophie herself into an aging and desperate spinster.
“Just so,” Sophie murmured. The last thing she wanted was to cross swords with Braddon’s mother.
“And how is your dear, dear mother?” The question was accompanied by a poisonous smile.
“Mama is quite well, thank you. She will be here any moment, I am sure.”
“Poor dear,” the countess said kindly. “We all know what a burden she struggles under. Your father … Well, well, mum for that!”
Sophie ducked her head again, biting her lip.
“Must introduce you to m’sisters,” Braddon broke in. “Our excuses, ma’am.” He tried to pull Sophie hastily to the other side of the room.
But Sophie walked slowly. She needed to collect herself before meeting Braddon’s sisters.
“She can’t help it,” Braddon said dismally. “Mama just says whatever thing comes to her mind, and—”
“And everything that comes to mind is unpleasant,” Sophie finished.
“Yes,” Braddon admitted. He awkwardly patted Sophie’s arm. “Doesn’t mean she’s not glad that you’re marrying me, because she is. Must have told me a hundred times in the last week that she never thought I’d do half so well. It’s just that she doesn’t notice what she says, or she doesn’t know what the effect is, or something like that.
“And I haven’t been turned down by more than three ladies,” he added with some indignation. “There were only two, before you, and you accepted me.”
Sophie smiled at Braddon’s tangled speech. “My own mother is not very tolerant.” Although, she thought silently, Mama is not a patch on that old dragon!
It was when she was curtsying to the second of Braddon’s sisters that Sophie sensed Patrick’s arrival. There was a little flurry of giggles from a group of three young women standing close to the door. Sophie stiffened her back. She would not look around. She smiled pleasantly at the freckled woman before her. Margaret had obviously tried to smooth her hair into a semblance of a chignon, but it looked disheveled, wisps falling around her ears.