Marriage Made In Hope. Sophia James
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Her skin crept with the thought and she shivered. She felt as if she might never truly be warm again even as the maid placed the final touches to her curled hair with a hot iron.
She looked presentable and calm when she glanced at herself in the mirror a few moments later. She looked as she always had done before any ball or social event of note: mannerly, gracious and composed. She had never been criticised for anything at all until this week, until she had clung to Francis St Cartmail in her torn and sodden riding clothes as though her life had depended on it.
Well, indeed it had. She smiled and the flush in her cheeks interested her. She seldom had high colour and just for a moment Sephora thought such vividness actually suited her, made her eyes bluer and her hair more golden. Usually her skin held the sheen of a statue cut from alabaster, like the one of the Three Graces she had seen in an art book at Lackington’s in Finsbury Square. Translucent and composed. Women untouched by high emotion or great duress.
Maria’s noisy entrance into her chamber had her looking away from her reflection.
‘The carriage is here, Mama. Papa and the marquis are waiting downstairs.’
‘Then we shall come immediately. Have you a wrap, Maria? It is cold outside and we do not want a case of the chills. Sephora, make certain you bring your warmest cloak for there is quite a wind tonight and the spring this year has a decided nip to it. After the incident at the bridge we do not wish for you to sicken, for your body’s defences will be lowered by the alarm of your accident.’
And with that they were off, bundled into the carriage full of Maria’s happy chatter and her mother’s answering interjections.
On her side of the conveyance Sephora simply held her breath, squashed as she was between her father and Richard, and wondered how long she could keep doing so before she might faint dead away. She had got to the slow count of fifty in her room before the black spots had begun to dance in front of her eyes. She did not dare to risk the same here. But still she liked the control of it, silent and hidden. A power no one could take away from her, an unbidden and unchallenged authority.
* * *
At least the ballroom was warm, she thought half an hour later, as their party made their way through the crowded rooms, this outing so far holding none of the fear she’d imagined it might.
‘You look beautiful this evening, my dearest love,’ Richard said as they took their places at the top of the room, the orchestra easily observed from where they stood. ‘Lemon and silk suits you entirely.’
‘Thank you.’ There was a tone in her voice that was foreign and displaced.
‘I hope we might have a dance together as soon as the music begins.’
Her heart began to beat a little faster, but she pushed the start of panic down. ‘Of course.’
She was coping and for that she was glad. She was managing to be just the person everybody here thought she was. No one watched her too intently, no conversation had swirled to a stop as she passed a group, no whispered conjectures or raised fans behind which innuendo could be shared. No pity.
Her betrothed’s first finger touched a drop of ornately fashioned white gold at her ear. ‘I knew they would look well on you as soon as I saw them, my love. I was planning on keeping them as a surprise until your birthday, but you looked as if a present might be the very thing needed to cheer you up. I managed to get them at a good price from Rundell’s as they have high hopes of my further ducal patronage in the future.’
‘I imagine that they do.’ She tried to keep sarcasm from the words, but wondered if she had been successful as he turned to look at her sharply. She had not used such a thing before, the poor man’s version of humour, but tonight she could not help it. The chandelier above them gave the blurred appearance of light through water and it momentarily made her take in a deep breath.
All about her was a living, moving feast of life: five hundred people, myriad colours, the scent of fine food and the offer of expensive wine. Without thought her hand lifted to a long-stemmed crystal glass on the silver platter a footman had just presented to the party and if Richard frowned at her choice he had at least the sense not to say anything.
She seldom drank alcohol, but the orgeat lemonade tonight held no allure at all. It looked like the water of the Thames somehow, cloudy, cold and indistinct. She swallowed the wine like a person finding a waterhole in the middle of an endless desiccated African desert and reached out for another. Her mother shook her head even as Richard set his bottom teeth against his top ones and tried to smile. The glint of anger in his eyes was back.
But it was so good, this quiet escape that took the edge off a perpetual panic and made everything more bearable. Even the gaudy new bracelet twinkling in the light started to have more appeal.
The beginnings of the three-point tune of a waltz filled the air around them and when her betrothed took her arm and led her into the dance she allowed him the privilege. His closeness was not the problem it would have been ten minutes earlier and she wondered if perhaps she had been too harsh on a man who after all had always loved her and had failed to learn to swim.
The feel of him was known, his short brown hair well cut and groomed, the smell of an aftershave that held notes of bergamot and musk.
‘You look very pretty, Sephora, and more like yourself.’ This time his smile was genuine and she saw in him for a moment the boy whom she had grown up with and played with, though his next words burst that nostalgic bubble completely. ‘I do think, though, that you should refrain from imbibing any more wine.’
‘Refrain when I have barely begun to feel its effect?’
‘You have had two full glasses already, my dearest heart, and you are now in some danger of flippancy.’
‘Flippancy?’ She rolled the word on her tongue and liked it. She had never been flippant. She had always been serious and composed and polite until she had fallen headlong into that river and discovered things about herself that she could no longer hide.
For just a second she thought she loathed her intended groom with such ferocity she might well indeed have simply hit him. But the moment passed and she was herself again, chastised by the impulse and made impotent by fright.
Who was that inside of her? What crouched below the quiet and ladylike bearing that was her more usual demeanour and appearance, the lemon silk in her gown, the curls in her hair, the dainty bejewelled slippers upon her feet?
She had a headache, she did, a searing terrible headache that made her sick and dizzy. Richard in a rare moment of empathy recognised the fact and led her over to a chair near the wall apart from the others and made her sit down.
‘Stay here whilst I find your mother, Sephora. You do not look well at all.’
She could only nod and watch him go, the slight form of him disappearing amongst the crowd to be replaced by a man she recognised instantly.
‘You.’ Hardly mannerly, desperately said. The sound came from her in a whisper as Francis St Cartmail stood alone in front of her.
‘I am glad to see you much recovered, Lady Sephora. I am sorry I did not stay to see to your welfare after...’ The earl stopped.
‘My drowning?’ She supplied the ending for him and he smiled. It made his face softer somehow, the scar on his left cheek curled into a smaller shape and her three scratches on his right almost disappearing into a deep dimple.
‘Hardly a drowning. More a case of getting wet, I think.’
Simple words that she needed. Words that took away the terror and the hugeness of all that had transpired. He was even looking at her with humour in his eyes. Sephora wanted him to keep on talking, but he didn’t, though the stillness that fell between them was as distinct as any conversation.
‘Thank you,’ she finally managed.
‘You are welcome,’ he returned and then he was gone, Richard in his stead with her mother,