The Beaumont Betrothal: Northbridge Bride Series Book 2

by D'Ansey, Leigh

  A sliver of sunlight sliced through the high windows, lighting one side of his face, turning the other dark and unreadable.

  “Paris was our last port of call. We stayed there for several months and she became my mistress.” He made the statement bluntly, almost as if he wanted to shock Sophia. She caught her breath at the word but did not flinch from its significance.

  “Garrett and I weren’t always together,” Bruno continued. “He was much younger than me and he gathered around him a different set of friends. But he met Marie one evening when we were out at dinner. I saw immediately he was smitten so I was careful they didn’t meet again. Marie mixed with a wild crowd and I didn’t want Garrett exposed or hurt. Marie was a…” when he halted, seeming to search for a word that would not offend Sophia’s sensibilities, she interjected boldly.

  “—a courtesan?”

  He gave her a narrowed stare and nodded tightly. “That’s one word for it. We had a business arrangement. We agreed on the details right from the beginning. I purchased and furnished the house of her choice, jewelry, furs, clothing and other knick-knacks that she requested. An account was set up for her through my bank. I made it clear that the arrangement was temporary but that I’d be generous, and when I left she’d be well provided for.”

  Sophia caught a glimpse of her face in the glass over Bruno’s shoulder. It was like looking at a stranger. Her eyes were huge and frightened, her cheeks drained of color. She looked away, although observing Bruno’s ravaged features was equally disturbing. She shivered. “It sounds callous.”

  “It was a business agreement,” he said coldly. “We might not have drawn up a contract but each of us knew what we were prepared to invest and what we were prepared to receive. Marie could be funny and entertaining; we had some great times together, but it was nothing to do with love.

  “The time came when we were to leave Paris, but Marie wasn’t happy. Looking back, I understand her main purpose was to hurt me and in some ways I blame myself for not realizing how unstable she was. What she saw as my rejection infuriated her. Despite everything we’d discussed, she thought she had me wrapped around her little finger, but like any good businesswoman she had a contingency plan in place.”

  He ran a hand around the back of his neck. “She’d been flirting with Garrett behind my back. Once I’d made it clear he and I would both be returning to Pennsylvania, she sought him out and gave him some cock-and-bull story about my abandoning her. She seduced him and begged him to marry her. But most of all she wanted to destroy me, and she knew she could do it through Garrett. He might have been a man in years, but he was an innocent kid in reality. Being Alice and William’s only son…” his features turned to stone; “they’d protected him right through his life.”

  Sophia sat forward. The hairs on the back of her neck prickled as he continued, his voice savage.

  “With the help of one of her more corrupt acquaintances, Marie created a scenario where she made it look as if she and I were still lovers. She was naked in my arms when Garrett rushed in. He was an inexperienced young man, in love with someone he believed to be an innocent young woman being raped by his own brother… at least…”

  His eyes glittered but in the still, tight way he held himself, Sophia saw only anguish and her heart wrenched for him. She wanted to reach out and touch him, but she sensed that would only make him withdraw and she desperately wanted to hear how this bitter story had ended.

  “She lured the two of us—a note delivered to me supposedly from Garrett needing my presence urgently, a note to Garrett claiming she was in danger. Making sure he was primed with an excess of whisky beforehand.” He lifted his shoulders. “It was easily done.”

  “What did she hope to achieve?”

  “To annihilate me. Her temper had always been volatile, but I made the mistake of assuming she’d honor our ‘business’ agreement.” His mouth curled. “It wasn’t enough to talk Garrett into marrying her, making him promise not to tell a soul, using some story about me threatening to murder her…”

  “A woman scorned,” said Sophia softly.

  His brow furrowed. “She was bent on vengeance and she achieved her goal… and more… When I tried to make Garrett see reason, when I called him ‘Brother’ he flew at me, attacked me with the knife I’d given him for protection in the Paris streets just a few days before. I tried to parry but I just couldn’t bring myself to strike back and he got inside my guard.” He ran a hard finger down the white scar, livid now against his bronze skin.

  As if unable to stay still any longer, he sprang up, paced across the room and stood looking out of the shattered windows, his hands clasped behind his back, his shoulders rigid. He didn’t seem to notice the glass splintering under his boots.

  Sophia rose and twisted towards him. “Bruno…”

  He spun round, his figure a dark silhouette against the light. He sucked in a tortured breath.

  “Then he spat the truth at me, told me I wasn’t his brother, that his parents had been paid to keep me.”

  He looked past Sophia as if searching some place distant, far beyond the walls of Foxwood. His reflection glinted darkly in the mirror.

  He wiped his brow with the back of one arm. “I remember reeling back against the wall while he stood there holding a knife with my blood on its blade. How could I know he harbored such hatred?”

  “How did… what happened?” Sophia ached for the suffering apparent in his haunted eyes.

  “Marie laughed. A truly horrible, bloodcurdling sound. At that moment I doubted her sanity. Somehow Garrett realized she’d used him to get back at me. He stared at both of us with absolute hatred. I’ll never forget the look on his face. I reached for him, tried to stop him but he was gone in a flash. I raced after him into the street. A carriage and four came hurtling around the corner… and then he was gone.” His voice broke but when Sophia stood to go to him, he waved her away with a violent chop of his hand.

  “Don’t you see, Sophia?” he ground out. “Garrett may not have been my blood brother, but I looked on him as a brother. I cared for him and I lost him due to my own stupidity. All because of a woman. Can’t you see that having found Freddy, I’ve been given another chance? I can’t risk losing him!”

  Sophia raised her chin, quivering inside but gathering courage to challenge him, sure of one thing as she had never been sure of anything. From the inside out, love filled her for Bruno Cavanaugh. Sure of another thing: that with him at her side she could achieve anything. Without him… she could not bear to even think of it. She felt as if her very life was at stake. “But our situation is different! Freddy does not care one jot for me, not as a man should feel towards a woman. You know that.”

  As she began to move towards him he thrust his arm out, palm upwards. “No, Sophia. You’ll cut your feet to ribbons.” He gazed at her for a long moment. No,” he said again, a serrated rasp that severed all hope. With a last tormented stare, he swung away and lunged through the door, his boots crushing the splintered glass underfoot.

  Chapter Nineteen

  On the morning of Vanessa’s picnic, the sun remained hidden behind leaden clouds, but Sophia could not hold back her smile as she held the sheet of paper in both hands and read the letter again.

  “What is amusing you?” Lady Cranston entered the small drawing room, looking stately in her lavender gown.

  “I have received a letter from the Academy, Mama. The Regent himself has expressed an interest in my work. I am to be contacted in due course regarding a commission.”

  Lady Cranston’s eyebrows rose. “That is good news!”

  “I am well aware that ‘in due course’ could mean never, but isn’t it heartening, Mama? That the Prince of Wales himself made comment on my work?”

  “It is indeed, my dear.” Her mother’s smile was kind.

  Sophia dropped the letter into her lap. She knew Mama could not have failed to notice her misery over the past few days. Against her delight at the Regent’s interest, Mr
. Cavanaugh’s mulish sense of honor caused an actual pain in her heart.

  The sensations he had aroused in her could never be erased from her memory. A heightened awareness of her own body had caused her to explore with her own fingers the places he had touched and she had given herself pleasure in the secluded dark of her bedchamber. But she experienced a profound longing for something deeper, closer, more primitively satisfying. The mint-green fabric glimmering from the wardrobe seemed to mock her, as if hopes and dreams could be determined by something so insubstantial as a silken gown.

  Now, swallowing the ache of threatening tears, she lifted another sheet of paper from the arm of her chair and waved it in her mother’s direction. “But that is not all! This letter is from Tom Broadworth’s sister.”

  Lady Cranston selected a mauve glove from the pair she’d left on a side table earlier in the morning. “Tom Broadworth? The gardener? Why on earth would his sister be writing to you?”

  “Surely you remember the portrait of Tom was one of those I submitted to the Exhibition?”

  Lady Cranston held a hand at arm’s length to inspect her gloves. “Mmmm…yes, of course,” she said absently.

  “Did you never think, Mama, considering his occupation, how refined Tom was? And educated?”

  Sophia decided not to share the conversation she’d had with Gabriel several weeks before around just this subject. Unlike Grandmama, her mother preferred all humans to remain in the particular slots life had allocated them at birth.

  Lady Cranston tilted her face towards Sophia but her stare was inscrutable and her tone cool. “Although he was much in her company and she conspired for him to give you painting lessons, he was your grandmama’s gardener. I did not consider him very much at all.” She tightened her glove over her fingers.

  “This letter.” Sophia held it aloft. “Is from his sister, a Lady Heatherington who purchased my picture of Tom when she saw it at the Exhibition. Even though she had not seen him for many years, she recognized him immediately. Apparently, he bears a strong resemblance to the other men in his family.”

  Sophia bent her head back to the letter. “She writes that Tom was cast out when he refused to go ahead with the match that had been arranged for him. He’d fallen desperately in love with a woman the family considered of inferior status. In the end they eloped.

  “He and Lady Heatherington had always been close and he wrote to her to let her know he was well and happy. Some years later she received another communication to say his wife had died but he would not be returning to the family. He would make his own way in the world.”

  Sophia glanced up to make sure her mother was still listening. “Over the following years he wrote to her to reassure her he was well, and later in his life he found love again—” Sophia held the sheet of paper to her chest. “Isn’t that a lovely story, Mama?”

  Lady Cranston tugged on her other glove, smoothing it over her fingers. She stared at Sophia. “What on earth is lovely about it?”

  “Love,” whispered Sophia, pressing her thumb into the tear that dropped onto her skirt. “Love is what is lovely about their story.”

  * * *

  The day had not improved by the time they arrived at Northbridge Castle, having been conveyed there by Freddy in a sleek Enderby carriage drawn by his new pair of greys. He brought his team to a halt at the base of the broad sweep of stairs leading up to the castle but seemed reluctant to leave the horses in the care of the grooms, and after being helped out of the carriage by one of the many footmen in attendance, Sophia waved him away with relief.

  Annabelle, who had stayed the night with the Hilliards, spied Sophia and her mother as they emerged from the carriage and sped across the lawn towards them.

  Sophia smiled. “Annabelle! You are a vision!”

  Annabelle dropped a mock curtsey, then twirled around to show off the embroidered shoulders and many-ruffled hem of her white muslin gown. “And isn’t my bonnet the most delicious confection?”

  “Perfectly edible,” Sophia agreed, admiring Annabelle’s headware with its lace-trimmed poke and beribboned crown. “Those daisies are an inspiration.”

  She tucked her arm into her sister’s and allowed herself to be towed across the lawn to join the troop of Hilliards along with their multiple friends and relatives. She could not help but smile as Annabelle detached herself and skipped away, pausing to chat here and there, but making her way unnerringly towards Neville Whitford, whose adoring eyes followed her every move. There was a staunchness about Neville that Sophia admired and she knew he would take care of Annabelle in every way. Sophia would have kept her sister wrapped in cotton wool, but Annabelle had boldly selected her mate and, Sophia had come to understand, was very capable of making her own way in her own world.

  “The thoughts on your expressive face must be worth more than a single penny,” came a laughing voice beside her.

  “Vanessa!” Sophia turned to the duchess, who had joined their group along with a troop of maids. Pansy and Nanny were by her side, Nanny holding the bars of baby Ash’s little carriage in an iron grip.

  “Sophia. You look splendid.” Vanessa took both of Sophia’s hands in her own. “But not very happy,” she said in an undertone. “Can you tell me about it?”

  Sophia negotiated her way round the lump in her throat. “I should like to,” she said in a low voice, wishing she could simply drop her head onto the older woman’s shoulder and burst into tears.

  The duchess turned to the rest of the group. “I wish to have a private word with Sophia,” she said. “We shall make our way down to the lake via the topiary garden and join you at the picnic area. The going is a little steeper that way and too difficult for Ash’s carriage.” She bent to plant a kiss on the baby’s forehead. “Be very careful with the earl, Nanny,” she admonished as they turned away.

  Sophia gave Vanessa a grateful smile. When the rest of the group had veered away down the graveled pathway that offered easier, but slower access to the lake she said, “I have made up my mind. I am not going to marry Freddy, but I have not told him yet.”

  The duchess turned to her and arched one eyebrow. “Last time we spoke you appeared to be at least resigned to the marriage. What has changed?”

  Sophia caught her lip between her teeth. “Bruno Cavanaugh.”

  Vanessa looped her arm through Sophia’s and began to lead her through the topiary garden towards the roughly mown lawn sloping down to the lake. But before Sophia could begin, Freddy himself bowled up beside them, several of his hounds ranging alongside.

  Bruno’s suffering over Garrett’s death and his misery at the very thought of wounding Freddy had pierced her heart to the point where she had dallied with the notion that she should marry Freddy, if only to shield his older brother. But no matter how she looked at it, she could not see that as a sensible course of action. If she married Freddy she would put herself entirely beyond Bruno’s reach, and she had no intention of making herself so inaccessible!

  As Freddy ambled between them, one of his hounds swept Sophia’s skirts with an energetic tail, almost unbalancing her on the uneven ground. Sophia grasped Freddy’s elbow just as Bruno Cavanaugh, the Duke of Northbridge, and Gabriel came into view, ascending the slope from the direction of the lake.

  Although Vanessa had made light of the Duke’s injury, even these weeks later he clearly could not keep pace with the younger men. He carried a stick in one hand to aid his balance and every now and then Bruno unobtrusively steadied him with a touch on his arm. Not that any of these took away from his imperial bearing, thought Sophia; his forceful figure and upright stature were as striking as always.

  A whiff of dank water drifted up the incline and the lake gleamed darkly through the trees. On a clear day it presented a picturesque scene but today, with only steely clouds reflecting on its surface, the rippling water looked threatening. Sophia shuddered. Some of the older folk at Northbridge told tales of how the lake was fathoms deep in places, especially where the hillsi
de sloped steeply down at one side.

  She remembered Bruno confessing his fear of even a small body of water and marveled at how he’d conquered his dread enough to sail down rivers and cross oceans to forge a life beyond the one he’d known. When the three men came abreast she was aware of Bruno’s glance at her fingers gripping Freddy’s arm. There is no need to look so grim, she told him silently. After all, isn’t this what you wanted? Me on Freddy’s arm?

  The three men made a striking trio. Gabriel, with his erect posture and confident bearing did not look out of place alongside his companions. Sophia was pleased to see he was clearly on good terms with the duke and the soon-to-be Lord Beaumont, who could advance the ambitions he held not only for himself but for Pansy.

  The Duke’s forbidding expression lightened as he neared his wife. He picked up Vanessa’s hand and kissed her fingers. Moved by this simple expression of tenderness, Sophia lifted her face towards Bruno, trying to make him see with her eyes how much he meant to her.

  “Come on, Sophe,” said Freddy, shattering the moment and turning his brother’s features to stone. “I’ll show you the best fishing spot.”

  “Well,” said Vanessa after a few awkward seconds had crept by. “We’ll leave you two together,” although the tilt of her head and speaking glance told Sophia she would make the opportunity for conversation later should it be desired.

  Sophia heard Bruno’s exasperated oath as Freddy stepped ahead, clearly having already forgotten her. She picked up her skirts and stepped forward, dodging the loping dogs that haphazardly accompanied them. Here was her opportunity to detach herself from Freddy and she would not miss it.

  When they reached the base of the slope the way was made easy due to the paved walkway around the lake, another of the improvements instituted by the Duke when he’d returned to his family’s ancient seat after many hard years away.

  She allowed Freddy to show her an inlet where a tiny stream fed into the water, agreeing without needing to say much, that it would indeed be a good place to hook the fattest fish.