The Admiral's Penniless Bride (13 page)

S
ophie slowed her steps as she approached the Brusteins’ manor. Her face still felt hot from the embarrassment of Starkey seeing them like that. Or was it from the flush that flooded her chest after positively enjoying Admiral Bright’s kiss? Andrew had been a slight man, frail, almost, especially in the last few months of his ordeal with Admiralty House. Clasping the admiral in her arms had been a new experience. He was a bigger man and she had found herself enjoying the weight of his upper body as he had begun to press down on her. It was a new sensation.

‘Oh, Lord,’ she whispered, putting her hands to her face.
Sally Bright, thank goodness you did not press up against him and sleep in his arms last night
, she thought. Considering their arrangement, so calmly worked out in that pew at St Andrew’s Church, that would have been the outer limits of the role her husband had carefully outlined. True, she had patted him back to sleep, but anyone with half a brain would have done that.

She closed her eyes against the feeling that had taken such possession of her with that impulsive kiss. It had to
be impulsive; surely he had no design to do such a thing. And why on earth did she kiss him back? Look where it led! All she had wanted to do then was undo that knot on his shabby robe and tug up his nightshirt.

She tried to consider the whole sequence rationally. It had been actually more than five years since she had been refreshed by a man. In the last year of his too-short life, Andrew had been too distracted to consider her a source of consolation. She didn’t want to think about the admiral, because she felt herself growing warm in places where she had felt warm so little in recent years. Was it just that she wanted a man, or did she want
that
man?

Instinctively, she put her legs closer together until her knees touched, then managed a small laugh. ‘You are such an idiot,’ she reminded herself, keeping her voice low.
At least I did not throw myself on him last night
, Sophie thought, as she crossed the road and started down the much tidier lane to the Brustein manor.
That is a relief.

The same cat was luxuriating in the same front window when she knocked. The housekeeper smiled to see her this time, though, and Jacob Brustein clapped his hands together like a child when she said she had come to read to Rivka Brustein.

‘We were both hoping you were serious when you suggested that very thing,’ he told her, as they walked upstairs. ‘Your husband is elsewhere occupied?’

She told the old gentleman about Charles’s sisters. ‘They have wanted to manage him to the furthest degree, since he retired from the navy,’ she said, as they went into Rivka’s room. ‘I believe he is trying to delicately manoeuvre them out of the house now.’

‘And you thought it politic to be elsewhere,’ Brustein said.

‘They think I am a gross interloper,’ she whispered.

‘Relatives!’ he replied. He touched his heart. ‘Who would have them?’ He came close to the bed and touched his wife’s cheek. She opened her eyes. ‘Rivka, my love. Look who has come to read to you!’

Jacob sat beside his wife a few minutes. He smiled when Rivka made a feeble shooing motion with her hand.

‘This is for the ladies, Jacob! Find yourself something to do.’

With a wink at Sophie, he left the room quietly. Rivka turned her attention to Sophie. ‘My dear girl. If you will leave the book here, I will make him read to me tonight, the old lover!’ She folded her hands. ‘But for now, you read.’

Sophie needed no more urging to begin with her favourites. When she finished those, she noticed that Rivka had closed her eyes, so she sat there silently, wondering whether to continue. After a long silence, Rivka spoke without opening her eyes. ‘Do continue. Sometimes my eyelids are heavy, but I am listening.’

Sophie opened the little volume at random this time, and began reading. ‘“When my love swears that she is made of truth, I do believe her, though I know she lies.”’

Sophie closed the book, her heart racing.
Good God, that is I
, she thought. She sniffed back tears, grateful that Rivka’s eyes were closed.

She hadn’t reckoned on the little lady in the bed, who opened her eyes and reached out her hand to capture Sophie’s wrist. Her touch was as light as a bird’s wing.

‘Pitseleh, what on earth is the matter?’

There was no way Sophie could keep it in, not with such kindness in the old woman’s voice. She let the story come out about her marriage of convenience, and how she had so nearly thrashed the whole thing that morning with what started as a simple kiss. She couldn’t tell the whole, sorry
tale, thinking it best to leave out Andrew’s suicide. The admiral’s marriage of convenience to a destitute widow was bad enough. ‘Mrs Brustein, I am a failure at this marriage already and we are barely married!’

‘Sophie! I may call you that, eh?’

Sophie nodded. ‘Of course you may, Mrs Brustein. And if you have any advice…’

‘My dear Sophie, I did not see my beloved Jacob’s face until he raised my veil during our wedding. Was I terrified? Of this you may be certain. Did I learn to love him?’ She wrinkled her nose, which made Sophie smile. ‘We have four sons, two daughters—God bless them all—and he still sings to me at night if I ask him. Jacob has a lovely voice. Your admiral—is he a good man?’

‘The very best,’ Sophie replied, without hesitation. ‘He could have done much better than me, I think.’ She felt her face begin to flame. ‘He…he made it quite clear from the outset that this was to be a marriage of convenience.’

Rivka managed an elaborate shrug. ‘Minds can change, dearie.’ She chuckled. ‘Men like to think they do not need changing, so that must be our little secret.’ Her tone became more reflective then, wistful even. ‘We learned to love each other, and now I wish there were many more years ahead.’

‘Surely there will be, Mrs Brustein.’

‘You’re a dear, but let us be realistic.’ She touched Sophie’s hand again, more emphatic this time. ‘Do not waste time! We have so little of it.’

Those were good words. Sophie considered them as she walked home, teetered on the brink, then poured water on the whole matter by reminding herself that theirs was a marriage of convenience arranged by two rational people—one seeking a haven from poverty and the other
eager to avoid meddling sisters. She would have to overlook the pleasant way Charles Bright smiled when he looked at her and forget about her admiration of someone who could make such swift decisions and not look back with regret. She knew it was the mark of a confident man, a leader. She had nothing to show for herself except a certain dogged ness in times of crisis.

‘Sophie, you can run his house and help him with his memoirs,’ she said, employing that doggedness as she walked up the weedy lane. She stopped to look at the house when it came into view. Mechanics were crawling over the roof now, one and then another coming out of a hole near the chimney, looking for all the world like the four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in that dratted pie. As she stood there, she heard glass break. ‘Bedlam,’ she said.

Starkey met her in the foyer. ‘The painters pushed a scaffold through the French doors. The sisters are no more,’ he announced.

‘Good God, did Charles shoot them?’ she exclaimed.

‘Really, ma’am,’ he said, looking down his long nose at her, ‘I should warn you that you have no allies there.’

‘I believe that was patently obvious, Starkey.’
And I doubt I have an ally in you, either
, she thought. ‘We can invite them back later, when the house is put back together again. Perhaps they will forgive me for being an encroaching mushroom and monopolising their brother.’

‘If they will come,’ he said ominously, bowed to her and stumped away on his wooden leg, still looking piratical and a little wounded now.

And you despise me because you think I am usurping your place with your master
, she thought.
This was all supposed to be so simple, but it is not.

Vastly discontented, she went in search of her husband. The painters in the drawing room looked at her with guilty
expressions when she peered in. Yes, they had indeed sent a scaffold through the French doors. She sighed and moved on.

She found the admiral in the library, high up a ladder, throwing down books. Some of the small sculptures in the room were covered. The ones still exposed made her gasp.

‘I tried to turn them around, but any direction is an eye-opener,’ he said, as he pitched another book towards the centre of the room. He gestured to the bookshelves. ‘I do believe that Lord Hudley bought every book the Vatican ever condemned.’ He looked at her. ‘Sophie, dear, should we just put a match to this whole place?’

She was tempted to tell him yes. She would have, except that he had just called her ‘dear’, even without any sisters around to bamboozle. She thought of a young and terrified Rivka, looking at an equally terrified Jacob when he raised her wedding veil.

She sat down. The sofa was comfortable and the fabric of excellent quality. ‘No. This is a wonderful sofa. I like this sofa.’

He stared at her as though she had lost all reason.

‘It suits me quite well, so you cannot burn down the house. Besides that, I can sit here and see the ocean, which is precisely why you bought this abomination in the first place. Really, Charles, you need to look past the…’

There was another crash from the sitting room.

‘…little difficulties.’

‘Sophie, you have lost your mind,’ he said mildly, as he started down the ladder. ‘Driven mad by my sisters, this house, who knows what?’

He sat beside her on the sofa; he even bounced a little, which made her turn away because she had to smile.

‘It is a good sofa. Let’s keep the house.’

They looked at each other then. Sophie thought she started first, but Charles was a hair-trigger second.

‘I really should apologise—’

‘Please overlook—’

They stopped. They looked at each other.
I don’t care what you say
, she thought, her gaze not wavering.
You simply could not have been a terror to your men and an ogre in the fleet.

He spoke first, his eyes on her. ‘I propose that we overlook what happened this morning.’ His eyes narrowed. ‘I already recognise that sceptical expression of yours.’

‘My thoughts precisely.’

Charles might have said he would overlook that early morning kiss, but then he put his arm around her. He gave her a quick squeeze, which she thought was possibly more brotherly than husbandly, but only by a tiny degree. ‘Onward, madam.’ He released her, but his arm still rested along the top of the sofa that neither of them, apparently, could do without. ‘My sisters have gone. I have agreed to invite them for Christmas, or when the remodelling is done—whichever comes first. The physician is belowdeck with Vivienne.’

Sophie stood up quickly. ‘I should be with her.’

‘You should.’ He took hold of her skirt and gave it a slight tug. ‘No need to take the stairs two at a time, though. The servants also arrived. I believe Miss Thayn is sitting with her.’

‘That
is
a relief!’

Truly, it was. When Sophie went to the servants’ hall, her new dresser was sitting close to Vivienne. She watched them both for a small moment before they noticed her, pleased with Miss Thayn’s attention to the young girl, who kept her eyes on the table. The physician was putting away
some tools of his trade in his black bag. He looked up at Sophie.

‘You must be Lady Bright.’

‘Mrs Bright will do,’ she replied, suddenly shy, with the other servants listening. She looked around the room, realising that she had never seen so many domestics in one place.
All this for two people
, she thought.

‘Welcome to Admiral Bright’s manor.’ She wished she did not sound like a child trying to play the lady of the house. ‘Things are a little rough right now, but we’re glad you are here.’ She looked for Starkey. ‘You’ve already met Starkey, I am certain. Do believe me when I tell you he is totally in charge.’

She looked at each servant in turn, seeing nothing there but a desire to please. ‘Starkey, they are yours.’ She turned her attention to the physician. ‘Sir, perhaps we could speak upstairs.’

He nodded, patted Vivienne on the head and followed her to the foyer. She apologised that there was no room in which to receive him. ‘Sir, what can you tell me about my little scullery maid?’

The physician had a grandfatherly air to him, which Sophie imagined must have been good for business in the neighbourhood. It pained her to see his face grow solemn, then harden into an expression far from benign. ‘Lady Bright, she has been interfered with.’

‘Poor child,’ Sophie murmured. ‘I thought that was so.’

‘Poor child, indeed,’ he said.

‘Is there anything…?’

‘Just feed her well and treat her kindly. It will probably seem like a novel approach to the child. I expect she will thrive here.’ He shook his head, serious. ‘I cannot tell you
what the final effect is. We may not know for years, but I am hopeful.’

He went to the door and opened it. ‘There is no point in accusing the landlord. He would only deny it. We’ll carry on and hope for the best. If you were hoping for some sort of redress, I am sorry to disappoint you, Lady Bright.’

It’s no more than I ever expected of justice
, she thought, remembering her husband’s trial. ‘I did not expect much,’ she told him. ‘I do appreciate your kind attention, though.’

He bowed himself out and left her standing in the foyer. She sat down and did nothing to stop the tears from coursing down her cheeks, not sure if she was crying for innocence cruelly used or her own discomfort with the law.

She felt a hand on her shoulder and started, looking up to see her husband, book in hand. He knelt beside her chair. ‘Is it all too much, Sophie?’ he asked.

How kind he was to ask. She dried her eyes and told him what the physician had said. ‘He said there was no point in trying to get the landlord charged,’ she told him, her voice muffled in the cloth square. She started to cry again.