Mary Balogh (3 page)

“How stupid,” she said. “Stop looking at me like that.”

“But do you think your papa might send for your mama if you announced your intention of marrying Lord Francis, Sophia?” Cynthia asked.

“If I got into what Papa calls one of my stubborn moods and insisted that she be consulted, perhaps,” Sophia admitted. “But perhaps not, too. They have managed to solve all problems for the past fourteen years without once meeting face-to-face.”

“But are you willing to try?” Mr. Hathaway asked. “That is the question now. Sutton?”

Lord Francis was grinning at Sophia. “Soph?” he asked.

“I certainly am not marrying you,” she said. “If you have any secret hope that that is how it will end up, Francis, forget it.”

“There is nothing to forget,” he said. “It will be all charade, Soph. All panting and pretended passion. A counterfeit passion. I rather fancy it. Life has been tedious lately.”

“What do you say, Lady Sophia?” Dorothy asked, a note of suppressed excitement in her voice.

Sophia twirled her parasol and prepared to say one more time that the whole idea was ridiculous and that she would not, even in pretense, show a romantic interest in her old childhood tormentor. There was no bringing Mama and Papa together anyway. If they had remained irrevocably apart for fourteen years, there was doubtless no way of changing things now.

“I would strongly advise against it, Lady Sophia,” Sir
Marmaduke said. “The holy institution of matrimony is not to be taken in jest.”

That did it. “I say yes,” Sophia said, lifting her chin and looking indignantly at Lord Francis’s lazy and very white grin. “I say let’s try it. But I am not marrying you, mind, Francis.”

“Good,” he said. “You had better be careful not to fall in love with me in earnest, Soph, or you will be doomed to a terrible disappointment, you know. And if you puff up like that, my girl, you might explode. You gave the first set down. I merely took my cue from you.”

“This will not work,” she said. “It is a remarkably foolish idea.”

“It might, too,” Mr. Hathaway said hastily. “But one thing we must all do is swear secrecy. Not a word or a hint. Miss Brooks-Hyde?”

Dorothy looked to be in an agony. She would fairly burst with the story. “Oh, very well,” she said. “But I hope for your sake that this charade will not go for too long, Lady Sophia. It will do your reputation no good at all.”

“Thank you,” Lord Francis said.

“I mean when she breaks off the betrothal,” Dorothy said, coloring. “Or the connection, if it does not quite come to a betrothal.”

“I do hope the scheme works for you, Sophia,” Cynthia said. “I know how you adore both your mama and your papa. And it is not as if you do not know Lord Francis at all. You have known each other forever, have you not?”

“For at least that long,” Lord Francis said. “Or is it longer, Soph? I can remember outrunning you when you could scarcely walk.”

“Lane?” Mr. Hathaway asked.

“You may depend upon me,” Sir Marmaduke said. “I can only applaud your efforts to effect a reconciliation
between your parents, Lady Sophia, even if I must frown upon your methods. But I shall say nothing.”

“And I shan’t, of course,” Mr. Hathaway said. “So all is settled. And since the Earl of Clifton is at this garden party, I would suggest that the two of you link arms and stroll off and start falling desperately in love.”

“Done,” Lord Francis said, getting unhastily to his feet and stretching out a hand to help Sophia to hers. “You will be able to brush me off after all, Soph.”

“I absolutely will not,” she said indignantly. “You may brush yourself off.”

“You see?” he said, appealing to the rest of the group. “She is afraid that if she once lays hands on me, she will not be able to remove them again.”

Miss Cynthia Maxwell tipped her parasol once more to hide her blushes.

S
HE LEANED FORWARD
in her seat the better to see out of the carriage window. It looked amazingly the same, the village of Clifton, though she had not seen it for well over fourteen years. She looked half eagerly, half unwillingly at the parish church with its tall, elegant spire and its cobbled path that wound through a sleepy churchyard.

They had run along it after their wedding, hand in hand, laughing, eager to escape from the boisterous greetings of family and friends and villagers, eager to reach the carriage outside the gate, eager to be behind the curtains where they had found the privacy in which to kiss lingeringly and gaze into each other’s eyes and smile with the novel and incredible knowledge that they were man and wife, that she was his viscountess.

Almost nineteen years ago. She had been seventeen, he twenty-one. Their parents on both sides had been reluctant to consent to the match on account of their youth,
but they had persisted. They had been caught up in all the wonder of young love.

Olivia Bryant, Countess of Clifton, leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. She did not want to view the ghosts of those young lovers rushing from their wedding to a happily ever after world—a world that had lasted not quite five years. She did not want to think of it. She had stopped thinking of it a long time ago.

The carriage proceeded on its way through the village and to the gates leading to Clifton Court half a mile beyond. Her father-in-law’s home when they were married, now her husband’s.

Despite herself she felt her stomach churning with apprehension. What would he look like now? Would she recognize him? He had been tall and slim when she last saw him, his dark hair thick and always overlong, his face handsome and boyish and ever alight with eagerness and a zest for life—except the last time she saw him, of course. He had been twenty-six years old at that time. He was forty now. He had turned forty in May, two months before.

Forty! He was middle-aged. She was middle-aged. She would be thirty-seven in September. They had an eighteen-year-old daughter. Sophia had celebrated her eighteenth birthday in London one day after her father’s birthday. Although in labor all through his birthday eighteen years before, the countess had been unable to give birth until two hours into a new day. They had laughed about it, gazing fondly and triumphantly into each other’s eyes after he had been allowed into her bedchamber to view his new daughter.

She would give him a son the next time, she had promised him. But there had been no next time. She had not conceived in four years, and after four years he had left, never to return.

Would she recognize him? She felt rather sick.

Sophia’s letter had been abject and pleading, Marc’s cool and formal and to the point. But both had made her see that it was necessary for her to come. She had shown both letters to her friend Clarence—Sir Clarence Wickham—and he had agreed with her. She should go, he had advised. Clearly a family decision must be made, and it was the kind of decision that could not be discussed by letter.

Sophia was deeply in love with Lord Francis Sutton, youngest son of Marc’s friend the Duke of Weymouth. Deeply, head over ears, forever in love, according to her letter. He was handsome and charming and intelligent and kind and everything that was wonderful. And if ever he had given in to a youthful wildness, it was all behind him now. He worshiped her and was going to love her and care for her for the rest of their lives. And though he was a younger son and had lived somewhat extravagantly for some years, he was not without prospects. Apart from the settlement his father would make on him when he married, he was the favorite and heir of an elderly great-aunt, who was very wealthy indeed. Please, would Mama come and see for herself just what an eligible husband he would be for her, and persuade Papa that his wild days were at an end? Please would she come?
Please?

Their daughter had conceived a quite ineligible passion, the earl had written, and had declared her intention of marrying the young man or running away with him. Lord Francis Sutton was a hellion, no less, an irresponsible puppy who would lead Sophia a merry dance if they were wed. Besides, she was far too young to be thinking of marriage. And yet the situation was awkward. The young people had been unfortunately vocal in their intentions, and Weymouth and his wife were delighted at the proposed connection. He had been forced to invite them and the young man to Clifton with a few
other guests, hoping that somehow the betrothal could be avoided. Weymouth, on the other hand, seemed to believe that it was a betrothal party that was in the making. Would Olivia please come to Clifton to help talk sense into their daughter?

“You always seem to have had more influence over her than I,” he had written graciously.

And so she was coming. She felt the carriage rumble over the humpbacked stone bridge and knew that the house would be visible out of the left window. She turned her hands palm up and examined them closely.

Surely there must have been some other way. But there had not, she knew. Sophia must be dissuaded from making a disastrous marriage. The countess could remember Lord Francis only as a young and mischievous little boy, three or four years older than Sophia. But Marc had said in his letter that the young man was wild. That would mean that he was a daredevil, a gambler and drinker, a rake. A womanizer.

Not that for Sophia. Anything but that. If they were in love now, it would not last. He would return to his old ways once the gloss had worn off their marriage. Sophia would end up with a lifetime of misery, an unfaithful rake for a husband.

Not that for Sophia.
Please not that
, she begged an unseen power silently.
Please not that
. Sophia was all she had. If she had to live to see Sophia rejected and desperately unhappy, she would not be able to bear it.

When finally she could ignore the approach of the house no longer, she saw that the front doors to the house were open. And Sophia herself was eagerly rushing down the marble steps, looking pretty and fashionable with her dark hair cut short and curled—very like her father as the countess remembered him. She had a young man by the hand and was dragging him after
her—a tall and slender young man with fair hair and a laughing handsome face.

“Mama!” Sophia stood beside the carriage almost bouncing on the spot in her impatience, waiting for a footman to open the door and lower the steps. She continued speaking as soon as the door was opened. “I thought you would never get here. I said you would be here yesterday, but Papa said no, that you could not possibly come all the way from Lincolnshire to Gloucestershire before today at the very earliest. Perhaps even tomorrow, he said. But I knew it would be today once it became obvious that it would not be yesterday.”

She hurled herself into her mother’s arms as the latter descended the steps.

“It seems forever,” she said. “I wish you had come to London, Mama. It is so splendid there. This is Francis.” She turned to smile dazzlingly at the fair young man and to link her arm through his. “Do you remember him?”

“Only as a very young boy who had a gift for getting into mischief,” the countess said, smiling and extending a hand to him. She noted with a sinking of her heart his very attractive grin. “I am pleased to meet you again, Lord Francis.”

“I do not wonder that you have kept yourself in the country, ma’am, rather than come to London,” he said, taking her hand in a firm clasp. “I see that you have been keeping yourself close to the fountain of eternal youth.”

The Countess of Clifton was far from pleased by the young man’s flattery. If he used it on Sophia, it was no wonder that he had turned the girl’s head. And he was far too handsome. But such thoughts fled from her mind as she became aware without looking—without daring to look—of someone else coming out onto the steps of the house and beginning to descend them.

Was it? she thought in some panic when it was no
longer possible to keep her eyes from straying beyond Lord Francis’s shoulder. Could it be? Her heart was beating so painfully that she thought she might completely disgrace herself and faint.

He was broader. Not fat—there was not one spare ounce of fat on his body as far as the eye could tell. But broad and powerful of shoulders and chest. He looked fit, well-muscled, strong. He was taller than she remembered. His hair was still thick—he had not lost any of it, as she had expected he might. It was still dark, but liberally flecked with silver. Oddly enough, the silver hairs added to rather than detracted from the overall impression of virility that he gave.

His face was different. Just as handsome—more so, in fact. It was a man’s face now, not an eager boy’s. But there was a hardness there, about the jaw and in the dark eyes, a cynicism that had been totally absent before.

It was him. Of course it was him. So very different. So very much the same.

“Olivia,” he said, stretching out a hand. She remembered his hands, the long strong fingers, the short, well-manicured nails. “Welcome home.”

“Marcus,” she said, placing her hand in his, watching it close about hers, feeling with some shock its warmth and its firmness, almost as if she had expected to watch but not feel.

And she watched and felt more shock as he raised her hand to his lips. She looked up into his eyes and realized that his thoughts must be occupied in the same manner as her own. He was noticing the changes, the sameness.

Mostly changes, she thought, dropping her gaze again. She had been twenty-two years old when he had left her—no, when she had driven him away. A mere girl.

“Papa,” Sophia said, clapping her hands, “does Mama not look beautiful?”

“Yes,” he said. “Very. Come inside, Olivia. My butler and housekeeper are eager to be presented to you. Then Sophia will take you to your room and you may rest and refresh yourself.”

“Thank you,” she said and laid her hand on the arm he extended to her.

She heard Sophia laugh in delight behind them.

H
E HAD NOT KNOWN HOW HE WAS TO TREAT HER
when she arrived. He had agonized over the possibilities for days. And he was not at all sure that he had made the right decision.

Perhaps he should have treated her as a guest rather than as the mistress of Clifton Court. Perhaps he should have had her put in a guest chamber rather than in the countess’s room next to his own. Perhaps he should have had the connecting door between their dressing rooms locked. Perhaps he should have stayed inside the hall to greet her instead of going outside. Or, perhaps he should have insisted on going out ahead of Sophia. Perhaps he should not have given her the function of hostess at dinner, seating her at the foot of the table, facing him across its length, Weymouth beside her. Perhaps he should have been all business and taken her aside soon after her arrival to discuss the matter of Sophia’s imminent betrothal.