Lord Harry's Daughter (2 page)

Chapter 2

Sophia gave a few desultory dabs to her picture as the sound of hooves receded into the distance. Then she sat back and gazed out over the landscape until she was sure the rider was long gone. All of her life she had been surrounded by soldiers, cavalry officers in general, but this particular officer had had an unusually strong effect on her and she wanted to be alone to sort out her thoughts before returning to the small house on the outskirts of Lesaca where her mother and her stepfather. General Sir Thornton Curtis, were quartered.

Watching the sky as it turned from azure to pink and gold, she straightened up with a start as she realized that she did not even know the officer's name. In fact, she really knew nothing about him except that he was a cavalry officer who rode a magnificent piece of horseflesh extremely well. But that could have described any number of cavalry officers, most of them, in fact. Why then did she feel, after only the briefest of exchanges, as though she had learned enough about the man to want to know more, a great deal more, about him?

It was not his dashing good looks, for Sophia, constantly surrounded by gallant men in uniform, was inured to those. As the daughter of a man who had used his charm to its best advantage, she was far more likely to mistrust a pleasing countenance than she was to be attracted to it. And as she mentally analyzed the major's features, she decided that they were too irregular to be thought of as classically handsome—the cheekbones were too high, the nose and the dark brows too prominent to be considered pleasing—but it was a face with character, a face that one would not easily forget and, in Sophia's case, a face that drew her to the man. The eyes, keen as a hawk's, had swept over her and scrutinized her with an intensity that was almost palpable, as though the man were trying to read her mind and her soul as well as remember her face.

Slowly Sophia gathered her things and put them in a satchel. She would have to ask her stepfather's batman about the major. Speen knew everything there was to know about everyone, or if he didn't, he could be counted on to find out, though it might be rather difficult with no name to go by. She could hardly expect Speen to know or discover anything about a man whose only definitive characteristics were that he rode like the devil, intruded into people's private moments, and analyzed their paintings with a skill and sensitivity beyond the grasp of almost anyone she had ever known.

Sophia thought back over their encounter, trying to recall other details that might identify this particular officer. He had been mapping the fortifications at San Sebastian, so it was clear that he was someone important enough to be trusted with a reconnaissance mission, which only narrowed the field to a choice of a hundred or so. And what reason was she going to offer Speen, who would naturally be suspicious, of her sudden interest in a man whose name she did not even know?

“The senhorita is ready to go now?” Luis sprang to his feet to take Sophia's satchel and help her onto Atalanta's back. The bay mare pricked up her ears and snorted in eagerness to gallop after her afternoon of inactivity. Sophia trotted her through the tall grass to the rough road down which the major had disappeared. “Now, my girl, let us show anyone who cares to see us that the major and his horse are not the only ones who can raise a cloud of dust.” She touched the horse's flank with her heels and they flew off down the road with Luis following at a more rational pace.

“The senhorita will get herself killed one day riding like that. It is not normal. If the Good Lord had wanted man to fly he would have given him wings instead of legs,” the servant muttered to himself as, trying to keep his mistress in sight, he urged his own mount to greater speed.

Oblivious to Luis's efforts to keep up with her, Sophia leaned over Atalanta's neck, glorying in the speed and the sense of freedom she always felt with the wind in her hair.

Now that the sun was setting she had removed her bonnet, tying its ribbons securely around her neck so that it bounced on her back as she rode, adding to the sensation of having cast off all restraints, for the moment at least. Once they came in sight of the pickets she would slow to a more sedate trot, replace the bonnet on her head, and conduct herself like a properly brought-up young lady and the stepdaughter of General Sir Thornton Curtis, but for now, she wanted to stretch her cramped muscles and loosen up after the hours of concentration in front of the easel. She wanted to revel in the wind and the sky and become part of the restless energy she had been trying to capture in her picture.

The road widened and its surface became somewhat smoother. Up ahead Sophia caught sight of an oxcart, laden with provisions, lumbering toward Lesaca. Pulling on the reins, she halted Atalanta, adjusted her bonnet, and then urged her into a ladylike trot. Glancing behind her, she could just make out the dark speck that was Luis. Poor Luis. Sophia grinned. She knew she was a constant trial to him, and she did feel sorry for the worry he suffered. She had told him times out of mind that he had no cause for concern, for she had practically been born on the back of a horse.

One of the few times that Lord Harry Featherstonaugh had paid attention to his infant daughter was the day when in a fit of desperation, he had taken her—a screaming, squalling bundle that refused to sleep—and trotted off down a country road so that her mother could get some rest. The motion of the horse had lulled Sophia into slumber almost immediately and won for her her father's respect, if not his continued attention.

After that, whenever Lord Harry could stop his gambling, drinking, and wenching long enough to remember his family, it was to make sure that his little girl grew up into a bruising rider capable of handling any horse that her father could put her on. By the time he had been killed in a futilely reckless charge across a ditch at Talavera, Lord Harry had at least succeeded in doing that for her, though he had given her very little else except an extreme reluctance to rely on any man for anything and a healthy cynicism where dashing men of wit and charm were concerned.

Fortunately for Sophia, before she had become a complete misanthrope, her mother had met and married Sir Thornton Curtis, a man as different from the rash and irresponsible Lord Harry as water was from wine. Where Lord Harry had charmed with clever conversation and empty promises. Sir Thornton won with practical sympathy and solid support, and the wife who had never known where her irrepressible first husband was to be found, or in what condition, now discovered the joys of a husband who preferred his own fireside to any tavern and the company of his own wife to the charms of any of the fascinating courtesans that walked the streets or graced the brothels of Lisbon.

This new matrimonial bliss was hard won and therefore doubly appreciated by the new Lady Curtis. The former Maria Edgehill had suffered much and for many years since she had first encountered the devastatingly handsome Lord Harry at a Harrogate assembly seventeen years before.

The only daughter in a strict Methodist household, the young Maria had longed for the wit and gaiety of society, something that was almost nonexistent in the wilds of Yorkshire. It was only by her mother's forcible representations to her father of the expense of supporting a grown-up daughter that Maria had been allowed to visit an aunt in Harrogate long enough to attend the assemblies and find a suitable husband to take her off her father's hands.

One dance with Lord Harry Featherstonaugh, the handsome younger son of the Duke of Broughton, had been sufficient to make her forget all her logical reasons for wishing to marry and Maria fell immediately and totally in love with the dashing scapegrace.

And, to do him justice. Lord Harry had fallen in love with her too. The young Maria with her glossy dark hair, pure white and rose complexion, and dark blue eyes was extraordinarily beautiful; furthermore she worshiped him. To Harry, accustomed to being the despair of his family, her admiration was balm to a wounded soul and he pursued her with all the ardor of a young man who had always been given anything he desired except love and admiration.

However, despite the Duke of Broughton's loud and repeated declarations that by buying his son a commission in the cavalry he had washed his hands of the young man and his ruinous way of life, he had not washed his hands sufficiently not to be utterly horrified with the news that his son wished to marry a provincial nobody.

Oddly enough, Maria's parents were no more enthusiastic than the duke over their daughter's engagement to a wild and spendthrift young nobleman and they expressed their displeasure as forcibly as the Duke of Broughton had. Both families threatened to cut off their offspring without a farthing if the match were brought forward, but Maria and Harry were deaf to the dire threats of poverty and loss of familial support and one glorious day in October of 1792 they eloped to Gretna Green.

By the time Sophia was born in August of the next year a good deal of the romance had already gone out of the marriage and Lord Harry was beginning to discover that his ladylove could be just as annoyed by his unsteadiness and his reckless disregard for anyone but himself as his family had been.

To her credit, the new Lady Harry never voiced the slightest criticism of her husband's callous behavior; however, it was hard to be trapped at home with only a small baby for companionship while her husband was off enjoying himself and losing the money he might be using to make his family's life more comfortable.

In the end, Maria bore her husband's neglect without complaint, quietly dedicating herself to her little daughter and to creating a home that was welcoming whenever her husband saw fit to grace it with his presence. Her forbearance, while it did not recapture the ardent affection of their first infatuation, at least won Lord Harry's gratitude and the dubious pleasure of being called his
good little puss
as he kissed her good-bye before embarking on another evening of revelry.

When Lord Harry's regiment had been ordered to the Peninsula, Maria and the baby, not having anywhere else to go, had followed along and, oddly enough, things had improved for a while. There had been too much real soldiering to be done for Lord Harry to find time to get into trouble, and the qualities that had made him such a wretched husband and father—his recklessness, his thirst for excitement—and his craving for attention—made him a soldier to be reckoned with. While no sane commander was willing to risk a large body of men by putting them under Lord Harry's leadership, everyone acknowledged that if there was a dangerous mission to be accomplished or a charge to be led. Lord Harry was the man to do it.

Lord Harry's wife had also taken to life in the Peninsula, where she found herself making a home for more than just her own family. The men of Harry's regiment, longing for the families they had left behind, naturally gravitated toward the Featherstonaughs’ quarters whether they were in a peasant hut or apartments in some provincial capital.

While Lady Harry might not have the companionship of her own husband, she could always count on being the center of a little group of officers who looked forward to an evening of quiet conversation in front of the fire.

Following the drum was an unusual upbringing for a child, but Sophia, who had never known any other sort of life, enjoyed it thoroughly, for there was always someone to talk to or to teach her something. Her eagerness to learn was totally disarming and young officers who had begrudged every minute spent poring over their Greek or Latin now found themselves wishing they had paid more attention as they struggled to recall what their masters at Eton or Harrow had taught them so they could explain things to Lord Harry's daughter.

Brothers who had refused to allow their sisters to tag along now found themselves falling over one another to teach her to fence, and shoot. But no one except Lord Harry was allowed to teach her to ride, for the very simple reason that he was clearly the best there was, no matter the horse, no matter the terrain. And his daughter took after him.

By the time she was ten, there was hardly a horse in the regiment she was not capable of handling. And when her father did take the time to pay attention to her, he would allow as how she was a natural horsewoman. “It is the Featherstonaugh blood,” he would say, “and believe you me, it is the only damned thing you will ever inherit from them—not that you would want anything else from them—a pack of stiff-rumps the lot of them."

But by the time she was old enough to understand such a remark, Sophia was also old enough to know that there were two sides to every issue, and she had seen enough of her father's unreliable nature to suspect that the Featherstonaughs he criticized so harshly might seem considerably less rigid to a normal person. However, she did not regret the lack of relatives, for she had the entire regiment to look after her.

Indeed, when her father had been killed leading the men across the treacherous ditch at Talavera, she hardly missed him. Lord Harry had been such an infrequent presence at their meals or around their quarters that Sophia and her mother hardly noticed his absence.

The army moved to quarters in Lisbon and it was there that Lady Harry had decided to settle. She had no family in England to return to, and both the climate and the companionship were far more welcoming in Portugal than they would have been in England. It was in Lisbon that she became reacquainted with General Sir Thornton Curtis, one of Wellington's quartermasters who was helping to oversee the construction of fortifications for the city.

Sir Thornton's first wife had died in childbirth and, having no children of his own, he gravitated toward everyone else's. It had been Sir Thornton and not Lord Harry who remembered Sophia's birthdays and saw that the Featherstonaughs were made comfortable if he happened to be in the regiment's vicinity. Thus it was only natural for him to reestablish their friendship when he discovered that Maria and her daughter had set up house in Lisbon. And it was only natural that after years of looking out for them whenever he could, that he would make this attention official by making Lady Harry, Lady Curtis. Sophia's mother had blossomed as the general's wife. The lines of worry on her lovely face had been smoothed away by a solicitous husband who returned to his fireside at regular hours.