A Regency Match (27 page)

“Hummph!” her stepmother grunted, but, not wishing to endanger the success of her objective, she held her peace.

Sophy, who had reached the end of the sofa and found herself trapped, jumped up. “Perhaps Mr. Scarpe would like a lemonade. Shall I get some, ma'am?”

“No, thank you,” Lady Edgerton answered quickly. “I'll see to it myself.” And with a meaningful look at her cousin, she left them to themselves.

Sophy took an armchair halfway across the room. But the vicar would not be outmaneuvered. He rose, took hold of a straight-backed chair and dragged it as close to the girl as he dared. Perching upon it and leaning so close to her she could feel his breath, he smiled at her broadly. “You need not be shy with me, my dear. I can see that your life with Lady Edgerton has not been easy, but in me you have found a friend.”

“Lady Edgerton has been very kind,” she said mendaciously.

The vicar raised his eyebrows. “I have eyes and ears, Miss Edgerton. ‘He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,'
Mark
, 4:9. I believe I have it in my power to ease your lot, you know.”

The afternoon was very hot, and a fine beading of perspiration appeared on Mr. Scarpe's upper lip. He reached into his pocket to take out his handkerchief and mop his face. The action dislodged the edge of his neckcloth, which stood up like a tiny cat's tail against his neck. Thinking it a fly, he brushed at it, intent on the girl's face.

Sophy restrained the urge to laugh. “Indeed, sir, you need have no concern for me. My lot is not so very difficult.”

“Perhaps not yet,” he said urgently, attempting to brush away the “fly” and lean toward her at the same time, “but you should not delay too long in setting up an establishment of your own, with a husband to protect you and children to bring you joy. ‘Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you,'
John
, 12:35.” He shifted in his chair as he attempted to catch at the annoying “fly.”

“I have no intentions of marrying,” Sophy said bluntly, hoping to quash his pretensions as soon as possible.

He dabbed at his face with one hand while he swished away at the “fly” with the other. “You cannot be serious, Miss Edgerton! A young lady of your—if I may say so—spectacular charms must not be permitted to keep them to herself. You must stop thinking like a child.” He reached out and patted her arm. “It is time to ‘put away childish things.'”

“Are you not going to give the source?” Sophy asked acidly, thrusting his hand from her arm. It fell to her lap where the infuriating lecher kept it, turning his palm to feel her thigh. “Sir, I must ask you to—” She moved her leg aside.

Her lack of encouragement of both his words and his attempts at physical intimacy left him completely undaunted. “
Very
spectacular charms,” he repeated, snatching both her hands. Still bothered by the “fly,” but with his hands more interestingly occupied, he resorted to a twitch of the shoulder and head to shake the “fly” away. If Sophy were not so angry, she would not have been able to restrain her laughter.

“Please, sir,” she said irritably, “I wish you will release my hands. I'm certain my stepmother would not approve—”

“Lady Edgerton knows that my object is matrimony. She wishes me to make my case as strongly as possible …”

“I assure you that this is pointless,” Sophy said desperately, trying to get away from his clutch and the smell of his breath. “My way of life is not what a man of the cloth would wish. I am quite shatterbrained and flighty—not given to holy thought or good deeds …”

“Don't trouble about that, my dear. I will teach you. In time, you will be a modei wife for a clergyman. ‘For the fashion of this world passeth away,'
First Corinthians
, 7:31. And think of the happiness we would find while I instructed you …”

A beatific vision filled his mind of this succulent morsel ensconced in the sitting room of his cottage, bending over a book of his sermons while he perched on the arm of her chair stroking her white neck. Quite overwhelmed with the idyllic possibilities of the scene, he released her hands with the object of sweeping her into his arms, but he was momentarily distracted by the “fly,” and stopped to twitch and swat. Sophy, quite aware that he was about to reach for her, took advantage of her temporary release and jumped up from her chair. The precipitous movement caused him to rock back. His chair tipped over backwards, and he fell to the floor with a crash.

Sophy first reacted with concern. “Are you hurt?” she asked, looking down at him. He had raised himself on one elbow and was blinking up at her in bemused anger. “You … you did that on
purpose
!” he cried in wounded dignity.

“No, truly, I—” But the sight he presented gave her an uncontrollable urge to giggle. His face was flushed, his purpled lips clenched in anger, his neckcloth now completely askew, and his thin legs sprawled wide apart. She had a flash of memory of a picture of Humpty-Dumpty in her old
Mother Goose
, and she almost expected Mr. Scarpe to crack like an egg. A giggle bubbled from her throat, which caused Mr. Scarpe's cheeks to grow purple. This made the giggle grow to a chortle, and Sophy found herself laughing unrestrainedly.

That was the scene on which Lady Edgerton re-entered. Mr. Scarpe lay on the floor, raised on one elbow, glaring with distended eyes at the hilarious Sophy, his scraggly hair dishevelled, his neckcloth askew, and his legs spread indecently wide. And Sophy, heedless of the look of horror on her stepmother's face and the murderous look in her erstwhile suitor's eyes, pressed her hands against her aching sides and continued to roar with laughter.

After the vicar had taken his leave (for the first time in his life bereft of a fitting line of scripture with which to embellish his exit), Lady Edgerton, trembling in agitation, ordered the girl to her room. “And there you will remain locked,” she intoned darkly, “until you write a note of apology to Mr. Scarpe and beg him to renew his suit.”

“I shall
never
write such a note,” Sophy declared vehemently. “Your Mr. Scarpe is a lecherous, sanctimonious
weasel
, the sort who pinches a girl surreptitiously under the very noses of her parents. You may lock me in my room and feed me bread-and-water for a
month
, but I won't write a
word
to that … that …
humbug
!”

“That you can speak so of a man of the cloth is proof of the depravity of your soul,” Lady Edgerton declared. “But a few days of complete isolation will change your mind. We'll see how much spirit you'll show when I'm done with you.”

Sophy put her chin in the air and marched to the stairs. “Wait 'til Papa hears about this. He won't permit you to lock me up for long.”

But Lord Edgerton, uncomfortable as he was to learn that Sophy was being kept prisoner in her room, nevertheless could not face a quarrel with his wife. After a mild attempt to plead his daughter's cause, he succumbed to the logic of his wife's claim that his softness had brought his daughter to this pass, and that if he wished for the girl's character to be strengthened, he must permit his wife to exercise firm control.

After a couple of days, Sophy's hope of rescue by her father was gone. She spent a few hours weeping bitterly at her fate, and then she began to plot her escape.

It was at this point that Marcus arrived at Edgerton to see Sophy. Once he'd realized that he wanted to marry her, despite the dire predictions he'd made to his mother, his impatience was unbounded. The match would probably be a disastrous one, but disaster or not, he couldn't wait to see her and take her in his arms again. If it meant a lifetime of calamity, he would face it. For he knew now that without her he was only half alive.

As his curricle neared the Edgerton estate, he grew unbearably restive. It was completely unlike him. He'd always been the most contained of men. He had never been hasty or impatient. He had always taken the circumstances of life in easy stride, each thing as it came. This fretful, tense anxiety was both painful and exciting, a strange and disquieting sort of happiness. The serene and peaceful life he'd envisioned with Iris Bethune had paled into oblivion. With an eager tightening of the throat and a racing pulse, he banged the knocker of the Edgerton's door.

And aged and doddering butler led him to the drawing room with the pace of a snail. Then he waited interminably for someone to come. While he waited, he permitted himself to dream of an eager, shining-eyed Sophy bursting into the room with arms outstretched. Instead, he was greeted with icy politeness by a florid Lady Edgerton who said something about Sophia's being unable to see visitors. “What?” he asked stupidly, unable to control the devastating disappointment that swept over him. “Is she ill?”

“No, my lord,” Lady Edgerton explained. “She is quite well. She is, however, being held
incommunicado
at the moment.”

“
Incommunicado
? I'm afraid I don't understand. Why?”

“It is a private matter. Suffice it to say that she will be receiving no visitors in the near future.”

Marcus blinked at the implacable woman as if she were a creature from a nightmare. “I don't think you quite understand,” he said after a pause. “I've come all the way from Sussex without stopping. My business with her is quite urgent. If you send up my name, I'm certain she'll agree to see me.”

Lady Edgerton snorted unkindly. “Yes, I'm certain she
would
! It is
I
who am keeping her from social intercourse at this time.”

Marcus had heard from Bertie that Lady Edgerton was a veritable dragon, but this was more than he bargained for. All his persuasive powers were useless against her implacable resolve. What had Sophy done, he wondered miserably, to deserve such drastic punishment?

The only inroads he was able to achieve in the impregnable fortress of Lady Edgerton's will were her invitation to take dinner with them and her promise to permit him to speak to her husband alone. But the brief meeting with Sophy's father did little good. Although Marcus admitted the purpose of his visit and asked Lord Edgerton for his permission to make his addresses to his daughter, Lord Edgerton could promise him nothing. “My wife is determined that Sophy shall marry her cousin. You've met my wife, so I needn't tell you that her mind, once made up, is absolutely unmoveable.”

Marcus clenched his fists in irritation. “But obviously, Sophy doesn't wish for the match. You cannot mean to
force
her—”

“Oriana has determined on it. I'm afraid, my boy, that there's nothing any of us can do about it.”

Dinner time passed with interminable sluggishness, the aged butler serving with his usual snail's gait. Lord Edgerton kept up a flow of hearty talk about a new-born foal he had hopes of training for racing. Marcus answered in monosyllables. Lady Edgerton's conversation consisted entirely of polite inquiries as to the quality of the various dishes which were served. His answers were equally polite, but since he couldn't taste a thing, his mind being preoccupied with other matters, his hostess could not consider his absent-minded responses as an enthusiastic endorsement of the condition of her kitchen.

When the covers had been removed and the port placed at Lord Edgerton's elbow, Lady Edgerton asked her guest if he would care to join her for evening prayers. “No, no, my dear,” Edgerton demurred quickly, “you must leave him to me. I want to take him to the stables and show him the foal.”

Marcus hoped that Edgerton's excuse to his wife was a ruse to deliver to Marcus some secret message of hope, or to help Marcus concoct a plan by which his wife's purpose might be circumvented. But he was doomed again to disappointment as Edgerton took him to the stable without even mentioning Sophy's name and paraded the foal before him proudly. Marcus could barely maintain an appearance of civility as Edgerton enumerated the little foal's many virtues. He said a few words in praise of the animal and, utterly depressed, put out his hand to bid his host goodnight.

“No, no, you mustn't dream of leaving now,” Edgerton insisted. “It's growing quite dark already, and the nearest inn is several miles off. You
must
stay the night. We might even get in a bit of riding in the morning, if you've a mind.”

Marcus hesitated. The Edgerton household was not one which would normally attract him, but Sophy was under this roof. If he remained, perhaps he might find a way, somehow, to find her room. He thanked his host profusely and accepted the invitation. Then he excused himself for the purpose of fetching his horses and seeing to their disposal for the night.

As he strolled around the side of the building, heading for the front drive, he looked up at the windows. A few of them showed lights, for the twilight was rapidly deepening. He wondered if one of the lights came from Sophy's bedroom. The building was three stories high. If her room was on the second floor, he might reach it by climbing one of the trees. But the third floor looked completely inaccessible.

Good Lord
!, he thought,
the girl has driven me to plotting a break-in
! He should have known it would be like this. He couldn't visit her politely in her drawing room as he would any ordinary girl, oh no! Not Sophy! With
that
girl, it would have to be a scene, a drama, a spectacle. If he were to see her this time, it would have to be by stealth, by climbing up to her window like a damned Don Juan!

Immersed in these ruminations, he was startled by the sound of a falling object—something bulky and heavy which landed a few feet from where he stood. It was a bandbox, hastily packed (with bits of delicate clothing sticking out around the edges) and tied by means of a number of colored ribbons which had been knotted together. Something about the box suggested Sophy. Who else would solve her baggage problems with such draggletailed ingenuity? He looked up, his pulse beginning to race again. To his amazement, he saw a rope-ladder, made from a few twisted bedsheets which had been knotted together, being tossed from a third-story window. He stepped back into the shadows of the shrubbery and waited.