The Beaumont Betrothal: Northbridge Bride Series Book 2

by D'Ansey, Leigh

  “Remember, we have a luncheon engagement at Wakefield House at the end of the week, and of course you will need something simple for Vanessa’s birthday picnic.” Her brow pleated. “We do not have much time.”

  “Perhaps Vanessa would lend us Pansy Lovelace,” suggested Sophia, draping the length of silk over her arm. “Pansy is a fine seamstress.”

  Lady Cranston nodded thoughtfully. “Indeed, and she has a remarkably stylish eye. The gowns she crafted while Vanessa was increasing were in exceptional taste—although she may not be with the duchess for much longer.”

  Sophia looked at her mother with surprise. “Really?”

  “Vanessa has resigned herself to losing her lady’s maid to that young rascal, Gabriel Heron.”

  “Pansy Lovelace and Gabriel?” Sophia’s interest was piqued. “I was not aware Gabriel’s interest lay in that direction.”

  “As we have already discerned, Sophia, you have been aware of very little these past weeks except for your…” here she cleared her throat before proceeding as if the word had become lodged in her vocal chords before it could be released “…work.”

  “Work?” Sophia smiled. “Why, thank you, Mama! It is the first time you have acknowledged my painting as anything more than a trivial pastime.”

  Lady Cranston sniffed. “I’ll allow twenty-five guineas is not to be sneezed at—although no amount of twenty-five guineas will match the wealth you would achieve by marrying Freddy.”

  Sophia closed down this discussion. “I do not require wealth, Mama. Men have made decent livings as painters. I do not see why it should be impossible for a woman to do the same.” Without giving an opportunity for her mother to respond, she draped the mint green silk over her arm and turned towards the door.

  “Come Mama, let us make a start. We’ll add a high stand collar and a ruffle to my lavender silk taffeta for luncheon at Wakefield House, and instead of muslin, what about white percale with bobbinet inserts in the trim for the picnic. What do you think?”

  Chapter Sixteen

  But when Sophia came downstairs the next morning it was to learn Mama had been taken with a fever overnight and would breakfast in her room.

  “I’ve asked Cook to prepare a special tisane,” began Mrs. Brixton but Sophia had already picked up her skirts and was hurrying up the stairs to Lady Cranston’s bedchamber.

  “Mama! Mrs Brixton tells me you are ill…” She quickly crossed the room to where her Mama reclined against a bank of pillows. Her eyes were over-bright beneath her flannel cap; hectic color marked her otherwise pale cheeks. Wisps of hair escaped the rim of her cap and Sophia found herself startled to see more silver strands among the coppery curls than she had noticed even the day before.

  Lady Cranston gave Sophia a wan smile and took her hand. Her skin felt hot and dry. “Do not be alarmed, child. It is nothing but a chill. I shall be perfectly well after a day or two’s rest.”

  Seeing her mother so stripped of her usual energy frightened Sophia. “Is there anything I can do for you, Mama?”

  Lady Cranston withdrew her hand and gave Sophia a little push. “I do not wish to hurt your feelings, but having you fuss about me all day will not help to revive me.” Her eyes sharpened. “Besides, just because I may not be well enough to attend any function myself, does not mean I do not wish to hear all about it.”

  She waved her hand. “Who was there, who said what, what did Lady Wakefield wear? Last time I saw her must have been more than two years ago and she wore something resembling a horse blanket made of feather dusters.”

  She lay back on her pillows and closed her eyes. “If you really wish to do something for me you could purchase a card of hooks from Mrs. Nighy. I need a few more for my gown.” Her eyes flashed open. “The gown I had planned to wear to your wedding,” she said tiredly, before relaxing back against her pillows and giving every appearance of having fallen asleep.

  Sophia rose. She looked down at her mother for a moment, smoothed a wrinkle or two out of the coverlet, pressed the back of her hand against Lady Cranston’s burning forehead, then brought the same hand against her own face to dash away the tears sparking against her eyelids. She felt unaccountably alone.

  She had noticed this past week how her mother’s movements had stiffened, how she placed her hand on her hip now and then or stifled a grimace when she rose, how she stepped cautiously down the stairs, keeping her hand on the balustrade. For the first time Sophia saw her Mama as an aging woman, whose body required the ease of living only prosperity could offer. What right did she, Sophia, have to imperil her mother’s health by selecting a course that most in their world would see as simply deluded? With a sense of defeat, she turned away only to come face to face with Pansy Lovelace standing quietly just inside the doorway.

  “Mrs. Brixton sent me, Miss,” she said, after delivering Sophia a smile and a brief curtsey. “She told me Lady Cranston isn’t well and we might need to continue our dressmaking another day.”

  Sophia frowned, thinking of the invitations stacked on the mantelpiece in the small drawing room. She knew nothing would please her mother more than to be assured Sophia’s attire at every single function would be above outstanding.

  “Can her grace do without you?”

  “She assures me she can manage without me for at least another day or two.”

  Sophia tapped her foot impatiently. How simple life would be if one did not require a wardrobe crammed with different gowns specifically to demonstrate one’s station in society.

  “Do you ever think, Pansy, how much easier it would have been to be born a man?”

  Pansy dimpled. “And go wherever I wanted without question? Indeed I have, Miss.” A faraway look came to her chocolate brown eyes. “But mostly I enjoy being female.”

  Remembering Mama’s speculation about Gabriel’s designs on Pansy, Sophia found herself crossing the boundaries of convention to ask curiously: “Are there… is there a gentleman… do you have prospects, Pansy?”

  Pansy tossed her head. “I look at it the other way around, Miss. He has prospects—” she caught her bottom lip between small white teeth “—and they’re very good!”

  Laughter bubbled up in Sophia’s throat. Pansy’s audacity delighted her. She had already stepped into forbidden territory in questioning Pansy about her private life, so she might as well take the next leap. Pansy’s fresh, open expression encouraged her to venture her query.

  “Would it be too impolite of me to ask who the gentleman might be, Pansy?”

  Color brushed Pansy’s cheeks but she answered without hesitation. “He is the gypsy, Gabriel Heron.” She lifted her chin with a touch of pride. “He has asked me to wait while he travels to America to make a home for us, then he will return for me. The young lord has offered to sponsor Gabriel until he is established.”

  With a touch of remorse at her own self-interest, Sophia knew she would miss Gabriel and wondered how she would manage without him as her go-between. But she would not need a go-between she told herself sternly. Those days of subterfuge were behind her.

  Knowing the high regard in which Vanessa held her young lady’s maid, Sophia asked: “Would you leave her grace so easily?”

  Pansy’s pretty face fell. “It would not be easy. Her grace has been nothing but kindness to me since the day we met. But she has urged me to join the man I love if that is what I wish. If I refused to leave her, it would mean I do not love him enough.”

  The simple logic touched Sophia. “Do you love him?” she whispered.

  Pansy’s eyes left Sophia’s to stare out the window towards the wooded hills. Her generous mouth curved into a smile. “He excites me,” she said, color brushing her cheeks. “But I do not know if that is love.”

  Sophia closed her eyes. Thinking of Bruno Cavanaugh excites me.

  “Miss Cranston?”

  Pansy’s voice, tinged with anxiety brought Sophia back to the sunlit room, with her mother snoring gently behind her. Reality took hold.

 
She swiped her hands down the front of her skirt. “Could you come with me to Mrs. Nighy’s, Pansy? I have a list of items, but I do not want to be away from Mama for too long.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  “…and Lady Wakefield wore an exceptionally elegant gown in royal blue with gold buttons and epaulettes,” finished Sophia, setting her tea cup onto the table beside her mother’s bed. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mama, but she looked rather grand.”

  Her mother pushed her bowl aside. Although she still looked worryingly frail, Sophia was pleased to see Mama had eaten most of the broth Sarah had delivered earlier. A couple of abandoned crusts on a side plate suggested she’d also consumed a slice or two of buttered bread.

  “You are looking much better today, Mama. You have some color in your cheeks.”

  Her mother levered herself up against the pile of lace-edged pillows. “I shall get up tomorrow. A day or two’s convalescence about the house and I shall be quite myself again. I would not miss Vanessa’s picnic for the world.” Her expression turned thoughtful. “I think the hunting green with fresh braid…”

  Sophia smiled and left her mother ruminating over her picnic attire. Downstairs, all was quiet. Pansy had returned to Northbridge, driving the duchess’s own smart pony and the little gig she used for her daily excursions about the Northbridge estate. Faint sounds came from the direction of the kitchen but otherwise Foxwood seemed deserted, and Sophia herself felt low in spirits.

  Luncheon at Wakefield House had been a long, drawn-out affair and the food mediocre at best; the venison dry and unpalatable, the pudding an unidentifiable slush.

  Mr. Cavanaugh and Freddy had both been present, but Freddy had been mostly preoccupied with Lord Wakefield’s new deerhounds and Mr. Cavanaugh, at least in Sophia’s opinion, had paid rather more attention than she thought necessary to Caroline, the Wakefield’s youngest, unmarried daughter. Neither had he neglected Leila Harrington, today wearing an annoyingly fetching white muslin that showed off her trim figure to perfection. Sophia had felt like a lump.

  She wondered now what on earth she’d been thinking when she’d so carefully selected the watered silk for the forthcoming ball in some nebulous hope of—what? That she, Sophia Cranston, could entice Mr. Cavanaugh to her side by wearing a particular shade of green crafted into a modish gown? She twitched her skirt impatiently. Her flights of fancy bordered on the ridiculous. Luncheon had clearly demonstrated Mr. Cavanaugh had no interest in her beyond his determination to make her Freddy’s wife.

  Although the atelier would normally have called to her, she felt restless and disinclined to be confined indoors, especially after having spent the last hour or so in her mother’s rather stuffy bedchamber and the earlier part of the week being turned and measured and draped and inspected by Pansy’s critical eye.

  Taking a russet India shawl from the arm of a nearby chair, she stepped through the opened doors and out onto the portico. A mellow amber glow lit a sky of palest blue as afternoon began to melt into evening. The scent of roses and herbs drifted on an almost imperceptible breeze.

  At first, she planned to do no more than wander around the gardens but soon she found herself on the path leading to the bridge over Huggleton Brook. She had not been there for some days and experienced a sudden longing for the moist, earthy scent of the stream and the sound of water splashing over the rocks.

  Tightening her shawl about her shoulders as she paced along the narrow path, she dismissed the irrational whim that Mr. Cavanaugh might have taken a detour on his way back to Enderby. Oh, how often that man was on her mind!

  Rounding the last bend, her step faltered. He was there, standing at the center of the bridge, silhouetted against a sky streaked with pink and gold. In the split second when she could have turned back, half-hidden as she was by the shrubbery growing alongside the path, his head came up, as if he’d sensed her. She squared her shoulders and stepped forward, clasping the edges of her shawl with a fisted hand pressed between her breasts.

  His jacket was undone and his cravat loosened as if he’d grown impatient with the constrictions of his tailored garments. He looked tired and tousled. Something inside her melted. His eyes swept her from her boots to the top of her head as if to take her in all at once.

  When she neared, his mouth lifted. “Miss Cranston.”

  “Mr. Cavanaugh.” Her voice sounded throaty to her ears and perhaps he thought so too, for he moved towards her when she halted just a short way from him.

  “Are you well?” His eyes searched her face, a crease appearing between his brows. “You look tired.”

  “I am perfectly well, thank you.” She brushed a strand of hair away from her cheek.

  “Perhaps it’s the light.” He cast his gaze towards the sky and back again, his own face partly in shadow as the sun dipped towards the hills. “Or perhaps you have been closeted too long in your work room.” A look of concern crossed his features. “You shouldn’t feel pressured to finish any of my work. There is no deadline.”

  Sophia lifted her shoulders. “My work place has not seen much of me this past week and I do not feel pressured by the work at all. Indeed, I am very much enjoying the challenge. It is the social engagements I do not particularly enjoy, the preparations and the infernal fuss over niceties such as a particular button and a specific trim. These things I do not enjoy,” she said, slanting him a smile.

  He shook his head, but his smile was tender. “What am I to do with you?”

  She tilted her face. “In what respect?”

  The corner of his mouth quirked, bringing that infernal indent into play. His teeth gleamed in the failing light. “I know of no other woman who prefers to wear a drab old coat and lock herself away with a pile of paints above selecting a new wardrobe, dining with the cream of society and looking forward to a union that offers lifelong security.”

  “Then perhaps you do not know many women,” she retorted. Drab old coat indeed!

  He laughed softly. “I know many women—but none like you.”

  Suddenly all the pent-up emotions, the turmoil of the past few weeks stormed to the fore. She threw her head back, losing one side of the shawl as it slipped away from her fingers and off her shoulder. Impatience and passion conquered years of convention. She was not in the mood for polite conversation with its subtle undertones and inclination to skirt around the crux of any matter.

  “Why is it so important to you that I marry Freddy?! What difference can it possibly make to you whom he marries?”

  Mr. Cavanaugh’s features turned grave. “Because he did not choose any other woman. He chose you.”

  “Only because I am an easy choice.”

  “I’m sure there is more to it than that—”

  She threw up her head. “How would you know, Mr. Cavanaugh? You have only just met Freddy!”

  “I know he holds you in high affection.”

  “He holds me in no more affection than the smart chestnut gelding that is currently his favorite,” she retorted, twitching the ends of her shawl.

  Mr. Cavanaugh thrust a hand through his hair. “It’s only that he’s shy, and tongue-tied around women,” he countered.

  “A quality I notice you do not share,” Sophia said acidly, making him draw back as if he had been stung.

  His smile hardened. “I am older than Freddy. I have more experience.”

  Sophia sent him a cool stare. “I have no inkling of your experience,” she said. “You tell me I should look upon you as a brother, but how can I? You have simply dropped into our lives from nowhere. How did you live? Who were your family before you came to Northbridge?” She realized she was hungry for details and did not care if her passionate interrogation breached etiquette. “If you were my brother, I would know all about you,” she insisted.

  If he was surprised at the sudden turn of conversation he did not show it, looking away from her towards the woods where beech and alder merged with their own shadows in the gathering twilight. “I apologize if you fi
nd me guarded. It’s not purposeful. You know I only learned of my true identity recently; I met my mother for the first time just a few months ago. My life has taken a strange twist, and in turn that has altered things for you, but I can assure you I have nothing to hide.”

  “But what was your life like?” Sophia asked, more gently this time, moved by the austerity of his expression, yet determined to know more about this man who had disrupted her life and aroused her emotions in ways she could not reasonably explain.

  He continued to gaze towards the woods for a few moments before shifting his position and looking down at her. “About my earliest days, I know very little.”

  Sophia remained silent, reaching out for him wordlessly.

  “It’s an incredible story and the account is a blend of details from my mother and the woman who cared for her all these years.” He paused again as if weaving the threads of his story together like a tapestry he could lay down before her with all the wrinkles ironed out.

  At last he began to speak. “Only three months after her marriage, having only recently learned she was carrying a child, my mother was swept into the ocean off the coast of Cornwall. At first, I couldn’t imagine how it could happen, but I walked along the edge of those same cliffs not so long ago.” At Sophia’s silent enquiry he said, “I wanted to see where she’d walked, understand how it happened. It didn’t take me long to realize how a woman light of stature could be lifted off her feet and hurled into the air. The wind whips across the cliffs like a whirling dervish and the sea is as savage as a wild animal.

  “She told me she’d almost given up on life when she was hauled from the waves, but her relief was short-lived. Her rescue from drowning came in the form of… I can only call them wild beasts from what she said—and I know she omitted the cruelest details.” His mouth thinned into a murderous line. “I’ve been told they are all dead, or I’d hunt them down and kill them myself.”

  Sophia frowned. “But how did she end up in Cuba?”