Elizabeth Boyle (6 page)

Stepping forward, Sophia blocked the girl’s view and halted her further progress into the room.

“What is it, Hannah?”

The maid tried to peer around Sophia to catch a glimpse of Emma. “My lady, your aunt wants you down in the dayroom.
Alone
.” This comment was followed by a mincing sneer in Emma’s direction. “Her ladyship wants you to . . .” Hannah’s voice trailed off as she surveyed the packed trunks and discarded gowns.

Emma joined Sophia in the middle of the room.

The ambitious young maid eyed them both with a look of surprise. “I didn’t think you knew.”

“Knew what?” Emma snapped at the girl. There was no love lost between the two women.

Hannah used every opportunity she could to spy, looking for anything to report to Sophia’s aunt. Sophia knew Emma considered it her personal mission to outwit the girl at every step. So far they’d been lucky.

“That you would be leaving tonight,” the maid finished with a decided note of disappointment in her voice.

“I just made the decision this morning, Hannah,” Sophia said cautiously. “I wasn’t aware that my aunt knew.” That explained the noise at the door they’d heard earlier. Hannah, up to her usual tricks. “Obviously, she’s been informed. Is that why you’re here? Has my lady aunt summoned me for an explanation as to this hasty departure?”

Confusion passed over the girl’s face. “
You
decided to leave, my lady?”

“Yes, my Aunt Mellisande sent around a note this morning. She is ill again and I must return to the country.”

Hannah’s face brightened. “So you don’t know.” The girl whirled around and practically skipped her way back to the door. Turning again, she bobbed her head. “Your lady aunt wishes to see you in the morning room,
alone
and without any delays.” The girl raised her chin, a triumphant grin spreading across her round face. Confident in her position in the household as Lady Dearsley’s personal maid, Hannah didn’t spare her words. “Oh, Lord Trahern is here as well. You’re leaving all right, but not to visit sick relations. He’s here for your wedding. It seems you are to be married tonight.”

Giles sat on a straight-backed chair on the far side of Lady Dearsley’s morning room and wondered if this was how the condemned felt before their executioner. He would have preferred a black-hooded bloke to the lady’s bright yellow day dress and feathered fan.

The morning room, a wide, airy space, had been quickly converted to a dark, vast tomb as Lady Dearsley ordered the heavy velvet curtains drawn across the sparkling windows before Lady Sophia arrived.

“The sunlight bothers her eyes so,” the lady confided.

Then, like a deceitful horse trader, the crafty lady positioned him on the far side of the room. Giles decided his future relation obviously had little faith in her niece’s attributes if she felt the necessity to go to such outrageous lengths to conceal the girl.

“This is a moment for which I have waited far too long,” Lady Dearsley cooed as she poured him a refreshment.

To Giles’s right, Lord Dryden smiled grimly at the lady’s words. The older man had insisted on accompanying Giles on this prenuptial visit.

“When my dear sister proposed this union,” Lady Dearsley commented, “I wasn’t sure of the connection, but Lord Dryden assures me your family is well-respected by His Highness, though I can’t see how.”

Long used to the deceptive words of informants in the field and the honeyed tongues of London’s aristocracy, Lady Dearsley’s bluntness took Giles by surprise. In the twenty minutes since his arrival the woman had effectively insulted his family’s name at least three times, slandered half his friends and acquaintances, and reminded him a dozen times more as to the delicate nature of her niece’s health.

Just then the door to the dayroom opened and the soft steps of a woman whispered the arrival of his intended. Lord Dryden rose, smiling at him to do the same. Giles followed suit, rising stiffly from his chair, suddenly unwilling to face the woman who would be sharing his bed tonight.

“Sophia, finally. Whatever took you so long? I told Hannah to fetch you immediately.” Lady Dearsley nearly ran Giles over as she hustled past him. “Lord Trahern, it is my pleasure to present my dear niece, Lady Sophia D’Artiers.”

Giles turned around slowly. He still clung to the hope that Lady Dearsley’s dire warnings as to his bride’s frail condition were nothing more than the nervous tidings of an overprotective relative.

It didn’t take but a glance to see his hopes thoroughly trounced as if caught under the hooves of an entire unit of cavalry.

What meager light did filter into the room did little to favor his intended.

A white lace hood covered her hair. The dark strands escaping the lace confines hung in limp clumps to her thin, hunched shoulders. Her gown, an oversized orange-striped day dress, heightened the already yellowish tint of ill health on her face. Her affliction had taken much from her figure, for her dress enveloped her slight frame, giving no detectable sign of curves beneath. Dark circles lined her eyes, whose sharp blue color peered out in an almost ethereal light.

The unusual color struck him immediately. But any comparison to the gaze that had captivated him the night before stopped there.

As if on cue she brought a starkly white handkerchief to her colorless lips. Her long, full lashes fluttered shut while racking coughs shook her shoulders. The fringe on her shawl shuddered violently.

He knew good manners dictated he cross the room and greet his intended, but he just couldn’t bring himself to close the distance between them.

When the coughing subsided, Sophia dipped into a polite curtsy. “Lord Trahern, a pleasure to meet you.”

For a moment her voice stopped him. Hints of a musical French accent tinged her words.

A pleasure to meet you
.

The same words echoed from the night before, but hardly from the same lips.

He shook his head and chastised himself for even making such an unlikely comparison. Mere coincidence and wishful thinking, he realized. Moving forward, he caught her hand and gently brought it to his lips.

Any lingering similarities quickly faded, as his fingers curled around hers. The icy dampness of her skin, like death’s own clasp, chilled him to the bone. There was no doubt his bride-to-be was in ill health.

Whatever had his father been thinking to betroth him to this woman? She didn’t look as if she would survive the walk back to her room, let alone the rigors of childbirth.

Before he could study her more closely she turned away and started to cough anew. Lady Dearsley moved between them, pounding her niece none-too-gently on the back.

“Please, Sophia,” her aunt whispered loudly. “Do control that horrid racket. ‘Tis unseemly.” She steered her niece to the far sofa.

Lady Dearsley filled the remaining space on the narrow chaise, so Giles settled onto his well-placed and distant chair across the room.

“I must apologize, my lady,” he began, having to nearly shout across the wide expanse. “You see, my business interests have made it impossible for me to stay in London, and I doubt I will be back before the date of our wedding. I have asked your aunt to allow us to be wed tonight so there will be no further delays.”

Her features revealed nothing, he realized, not relief, not disappointment, not happiness. He’d seen experienced men in the field with less skills of concealment. What had he hoped to find? Reluctance? An unwillingness to marry? Anything to stop this farce from proceeding.

“If this is your wish, my lord.” She coughed delicately. “Did you say you will be leaving
immediately
after the ceremony?”

The question stopped him. It would be too easy to write her inquiry off as a symptom of virginal worries, but there was something calculating about the lady’s tone.

What was he supposed to say in front of everyone?

I’m sorry, my lady, but, yes, I will be taking you to my bed tonight. There I hope to get you with child so I’ll never have to visit it again
.

“I sail on the morning tide,” Giles replied instead.

Her lashes fluttered. She acknowledged his statement with a small nod. “I understand.
Afterward
,” she commented as if it was the most distasteful thought she had ever encountered, “I would prefer to retire to my Aunt Celia’s home in Bath. I have a fondness for taking the waters there, and with you away it would not
inconvenience
you.”

Giles shifted in his seat. “Certainly. If that is your wish.”

Lord Dryden coughed and patted his jacket pocket.

Giles reached into his own jacket and pulled out a small box. It had been the older man’s suggestion to stop at a jeweler on the way to Lady Dearsley’s house.

“I have been meaning to send this over to you,” he lied as he handed the box to the footman, who stepped forward to bear the gift across the carpeted wasteland to Sophia. “A small token of my affection.”

He watched as her gaze fell demurely to the gift in her hands. As she opened the box he could see her eyes widen with awe as she beheld the diamond and sapphire necklace within.

“It’s stunning,” she whispered. Slowly she pulled it out and held it up for her aunt to see.

He watched with amusement as his bride-to-be turned his gift back and forth, allowing the gems to catch the light in a manner more befitting a mistress assessing the future worth of a lover’s token. When she glanced up and caught him watching her, she stopped, the necklace slipping through her fingers to her lap. She reached for her handkerchief, drawing it to her lips, pulling up the white barrier of her illness.

“Oh my dear! This is entirely wrong!” Lady Dearsley jumped up from her seat. “This is your wedding day, Sophia.” She pointed at Giles. “Get out of my house at once.” She caught him by the arm and hauled him to his feet. “You mustn’t see your bride before the ceremony. Get out, get out immediately.”

He found himself stumbling toward the salon door before he could stop Lady Dearsley’s forward momentum. He looked back and found his bride smiling to herself. It was a private moment, one she obviously hadn’t expected him to see. She was laughing over some secret joke as she once again examined her wedding necklace. The sparkling sapphires matched her eyes, bright and glowing with fire.

To his trained gaze it seemed her posture had improved, as had her sickly pallor. For a moment something bright and alive claimed Lady Sophia.

She looked almost beautiful.

No one that ill
, he thought,
should look that alive.
Or, strangely enough, that cunning.

He pulled himself out of Lady Dearsley’s grasp and started back toward his intended.

Even as he blinked, trying to clear his vision, trying to reconcile in his mind this miraculous change in Sophia, she looked up at him. If she was startled it showed for only a second, then the lights and fire were quickly doused as she turned away and began to cough.

No, it couldn’t be, he realized. Perhaps it was the jeweled blue eyes of another he was hoping to see—eyes that had teased him last night and dared him to follow her.

“I said you were to leave,” Lady Dearsley complained. “This is bad luck.”

He freed himself from the older woman’s iron grip, no easy task, and returned to his bride’s side. “I only wanted to extend my gratitude to Lady Sophia for being so understanding about this abrupt change of plans.”

“Extend those gratitudes later, my lord,” Lady Dearsley told him from the door.

“Until tonight, Lady Sophia,” he said, bowing low over her hand. This time her fingers felt decidedly warmer, having lost most of their dampness. Her soft skin caressed his, and beneath his fingers her pulse beat solidly.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, freeing her hand from his grasp and still unwilling to look him in the eye. “I know how much this means to you, and I don’t want to disappoint you. I just hope that someday you’ll understand.”

Her strange words bewildered Giles just enough to allow Lady Dearsley success in finally routing him from the room.

I just hope that someday you’ll understand
.

Her odd confession haunted Giles the remainder of the day as he went about the tasks of planning his new mission.

Understand what?

An obvious answer, of course, was she hoped he didn’t find her lacking in the marital sense, but the idea seemed too simple, even from such an obviously sheltered and inexperienced girl like Sophia. And Giles never trusted easy solutions.

No, there was something more to her apologetic statement, he reasoned. Despite the multitude of problems on his mind—making his travel arrangements to Paris, the heartbreaking news of Webb—the answer to her conundrum continued to beleaguer him, its solution dangling elusively somewhere just out of his reach.

Her odd words clung to his memory more intensely than any image of her face or features.

Not until he arrived for his wedding did he understand why his frail little bride had made her odd declaration.

She’d done her best to prepare him for the inevitable.

“S
eems they’ve turned out the house for your arrival, my good man,” Monty commented as Giles’s carriage stopped in front of Lady Dearsley’s town house.

Monty wasn’t far off, Giles thought. Every candle in the house blazed, light pouring into the street. From window to window servants scurried about inside. The entire house appeared in a state of upheaval.

The duke followed Giles in climbing out. “With all this light there’ll be no hiding the bride,” his friend commented. “I’m sure she’s not so bad, though she doesn’t have half the qualities
I
would require. No snap to her, too quiet by half an ear, and no style. Down at the club they are claiming that you’ll cry off before the night’s over.” Straightening his puce jacket and adjusting his thick woolen wig, he did his best to appear the noble duke. “I placed my money on the fact, so don’t disappoint me.”

Giles shot a black look over his shoulder at the shorter man, not sure that he appreciated Monty’s critique of Lady Sophia.