by Mary Balogh
Sophia had felt almost sorry for her cousin that night. Indeed, if Henrietta had told the full truth of the incident—which Sophia learned from listening to the servants—she might have felt all the way sorry for her, at least for a while.
“I shall call at Covington House without further delay,” Sir Clarence said, getting to his feet after consulting his pocket watch, “before anyone else gets there first. I daresay that bore of a vicar will be there before luncheon with one of his speeches and that fool of a Waddell woman will be there with her welcoming committee.”
And you will be there, the mouse commented silently, to offer your daughter in marriage.
“I shall invite him for dinner,” Sir Clarence announced. “Have a talk with the cook, Martha. Make sure she puts on something special this evening.”
“But what does one serve a blind man?” his wife asked, looking dismayed.
“Papa.” Henrietta’s voice was trembling. “You cannot expect me to marry a blind man with no face. You cannot expect me to marry Vincent Hunt. Not after the way he always played the most atrocious tricks on you.”
“Boyish high spirits,” her father said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “Listen to me, Henrietta. You have just been presented with this wonderful opportunity as if on a platter. It is as if we were brought home early from London for just this purpose. We will have him here this evening, and we will look him over. He won’t be able to see us doing it, after all, will he?”
He looked pleased with his little joke, though he did not laugh. Sir Clarence March rarely did. He was too puffed up with his own consequence, Sophia thought with unrepentant malice.
“If he passes muster,” Sir Clarence continued, “then you will have him, Henrietta. This year was your third Season in London, my girl. Your third. And somehow, though not through any fault of your own, it is true, you lost your chance for a baron the first year, an earl the second, and a marquess this year. A Season does not come cheap. And you do not grow younger. And pretty soon, if it has not happened already, you are going to be known as the young lady who cannot keep a suitor when she has one. Well, my girl, we will show them.”
He beamed at his wife and daughter—and ignored the mouse—and seemed totally oblivious to the devastated look on Henrietta’s face and the mortified one on his wife’s.
And off he went to net a viscount for Henrietta.
Sophia felt sorry for Viscount Darleigh, though perhaps, she conceded, he did not deserve her pity. She did not know anything about him, after all, except what she had learned about his alter ego, Vincent Hunt, when he had been just a boy. Though she did know that he was neat and elegant, and independent enough not to have to be led everywhere by his servants.
At least this evening promised to be a little less tedious than life usually was. She would have a viscount to gaze upon, even if seeing his face should make her want to vomit or faint, like Henrietta. And she would be able to observe the early progress of a courtship. It should be mildly entertaining.
She slipped away after Sir Clarence had left and ran upstairs for her sketch pad and charcoal—prized possessions since she was not granted any regular pin money. She had taken them from Henrietta’s long-abandoned schoolroom. She would go out to the woods behind the house, where she could be out of sight, and sketch a large, blustering man with huge chest and biceps and puny head and spindly legs towering over a cowering little man with bandaged eyes and holding a wedding ring aloft in a pudgy hand, while two women, one large and middle-aged, the other young and willowy, stood off to one side, the plump one looking triumphant, the young one looking tragic. As always, she would place a grinning little mouse in the bottom right-hand corner.
3
“I was firm,” Vincent protested, his chin raised as Martin tied his neckcloth in a manner suitable for evening wear. “I refused to go there for dinner. I don’t suppose anyone quite understands how tricky it is chasing food about on one’s plate without knowing quite what food it is one chases while holding a polite conversation at the same time—and wondering if one has dribbled gravy down one’s chin or onto one’s cravat.”
Martin was not to be deterred.
“If you had been firm,” he said, “you would not have gone at all. Old March, for the love of God! And Lady March! And Miss Henrietta March! Need I say more?”
“If you do,” Vincent said, “you may well run out of italics and exclamation points, Martin. Yes, they were a haughty trio and treated the rest of us lowly mortals as if we were worms beneath their feet. But we had a great deal of sport out of them and must not complain.”
“Do you remember the time his nibs set up that stone bust of supposedly ancient Roman origin on a pedestal in his courtyard,” Martin asked, “and invited all the neighborhood to gather around at a respectful distance while it was unveiled with great pomp and ceremony? And then, when old March pulled off the cover with a grand flourish, everyone except the Marches themselves collapsed in a heap of mirth? I’ll never forget that bright blue, winking eyelid with long black eyelashes, or the scarlet up-curling lips. You excelled yourself with that one.”
They snickered and then outright guffawed for a while at the memory of that winking, leering monstrosity of stone.
“Yes, well,” Vincent said, “I almost got caught that time, you know, when I was getting back into the house through the cellar window. The keg beneath it wobbled and would have fallen with a crash if I had not hurled myself beneath it and deadened the sound. I nursed a good few bruised ribs for the following week or so. But the suffering was worth it.”
“Ah, those were the days,” Martin said fondly, indicating with a tap on Vincent’s shoulder that he was ready to go. “And now you are going to pay them an evening call. You are capitulating to the enemy.”
“I was taken aback when March knocked on the door,” Vincent said, “and was not thinking straight. I was still half asleep.”
“You must have been,” Martin said. “There I was at the door, explaining to his nibs that he was mistaken, that I had come alone to Barton Coombs to visit my mam and dad and was staying here with your permission, and there you were walking down the stairs behind me as bold as brass, in full view from the door, to make a liar out of me.”
“It is the mark of a good butler,” Vincent said, “that he can lie with a straight face and perfect conviction.”
“I am not your butler,” Martin reminded him. “And what would you have been even if I were? An optical illusion? You had better come down to the kitchen and have some of the rabbit stew I made and some of Mam’s fresh bread before you go. She loaded me down with enough to feed the five thousand.”
Vincent got to his feet and sighed—and then laughed again. This morning had been like a well-rehearsed farce and had left him wondering if the village was ringed about twenty-four hours a day with lookouts whose sole task was to give instant notice of the approach of any and all comers. Sir Clarence March had come soon after eleven, all puffed up with his own importance and magnanimity—nothing had changed there in six years. He had left, in some haste, only when a seeming army of ladies had arrived to welcome Vincent home. Miss Waddell had been the spokesperson, but she had named each of the other ladies in a slow, distinct voice and repeated the list after he had invited them all to be seated—just before he remembered the holland covers. But they had been removed, he discovered when he sat down himself. Then, before the ladies could settle into any flow of conversation, the vicar had arrived, though his wife, who was a member of Miss Waddell’s committee, had scolded him before everyone with the reminder that he had known the ladies were coming at a quarter past eleven and ought to have waited until at least a quarter to twelve before coming himself.
“Poor, dear Lord Darleigh will be feeling quite overwhelmed, Joseph,” she had told him.
“Not at all,” Vincent had assured them, smelling coffee and hearing the rattle of china as Martin carried in a tray. “How delightful it is to receive such a warm welcome.”
He had been rather glad he had not been able to see the expression on Martin’s face.
Several minutes later, just as the Reverend Parsons was setting the finishing touches to his windy welcome speech, Mr. Kerry had arrived with elderly Mrs. Kerry, his mother, and the volume of conversation had increased considerably, for she was deaf.
At the first slight lull in the chatter, perhaps twenty minutes after that, Miss Waddell had delivered her pièce de résistance. There was to be an assembly tomorrow evening, she had announced, in the assembly rooms above the Foaming Tankard Inn, and dear Viscount Darleigh was to be the guest of honor.
And at last light had dawned in Vincent’s brain. His mother! And his sisters! They had guessed he might come here, and they had probably used a pot of ink apiece writing letters to everyone they knew in Barton Coombs and within a few miles of its outer bounds.
So much for his few days of quiet relaxation.
With a smile on his face and thanks on his lips, he had suffered ladies dashing at him from all directions—to pour his coffee, to position his napkin on his lap, to lift his cup and saucer from the tray and set them on the table beside him where he could easily reach them, to set them in his hand a moment later lest he have difficulty finding them on the side table, to choose the best cake from the plate of Mrs. Fisk’s offerings and set it on his plate, to set his plate in his other hand, to set his cup and saucer back down on the table so that he would have one hand free to eat his cake—there were some amused titterings over that—to … Well, they would have eaten and drunk for him if they could.
He had forced himself to remember that their ministrations were kindly meant.
But an assembly?
A dance?
And right now, this evening, a private evening visit to the Marches at Barton Hall.
Perhaps, he thought in one moment of weakness, he ought to have married Miss Dean a month or so ago and put himself out of his misery.
Lady March had been relieved to learn that Viscount Darleigh was not coming to dinner. Henrietta was disappointed that he was coming at all. But neither lady had been able to get any further information from Sir Clarence when they had asked about his lordship’s appearance and demeanor. He had merely smirked and looked self-important and told them that they would see.
“Which is more than Darleigh is able to do,” he had added, his smirk widening and deepening, making him look like the cartoon Sophia had drawn of him the evening Henrietta had first danced with the Marquess of Wrayburn.
Henrietta picked at her food during dinner. She was dressed for the evening in her silver shot-silk ball gown, an extravagance for an evening in the country, perhaps, but suited to the grandness of the occasion, her mama assured her. For tonight a viscount was coming to call, and such an opportunity might not come again.
Aunt Martha was looking rather formidable in purple satin with matching turban and tall, nodding plumes. Sir Clarence could not turn his head more than an inch in either direction. If he did, he would be in dire danger of piercing an eyeball with a starched shirt point.
How silly they all looked, especially when their expected guest was a blind man.
Oh, how Sophia’s fingers itched for her charcoal.
She herself was wearing one of Henrietta’s cast-off day dresses, which she had cut down to size. In the process, of course, she had completely destroyed any style and flow the dress had once had, for she was very much smaller than Henrietta in every imaginable way. Sophia did not go so far as to tell herself that it was a good thing Lord Darleigh was blind. That would be cruel. And it would presuppose the ludicrous notion that he might notice her if he could see. But truly she looked like someone’s abandoned scarecrow.
At the precise moment the guest was expected, there were the sounds of carriage wheels and horses’ hooves and creaking, jingling harness from the courtyard below the drawing room, and everyone except Sophia leapt to their feet and smoothed out skirts and checked that plumes had not wilted and straightened a cravat and cleared throats and looked nervous and then … smiled with gracious ease as they turned in a body toward the opening door.
“Lord Darleigh,” the butler announced in tones a majordomo in Carlton House might envy.
And in stepped two men, the one with an arm drawn through the other’s before he slid it free and the other took a step back, then disappeared behind the closing door with the butler.
The other man was the burly one who had stepped first out of the carriage this morning.
Sir Clarence and Aunt Martha made a rush for the remaining gentleman and made a great to-do about helping him to a chair and seating him on it. Sir Clarence boomed pompously and Aunt Martha spoke in the sort of voice she might have used to an ailing infant or a harmless imbecile.
Sophia did not notice what Henrietta did in the meanwhile. She herself was too caught up in a personal moment of surprise, and, quite frankly, she stared. It was a good thing he was blind and would not notice.
For Viscount Darleigh was everything she had observed this morning and more. He was not particularly tall, and he was graceful and elegant. He also looked well shaped and well muscled in all the right places, as though he lived a vigorous life and was fit, even athletic. He was dressed for evening with perfect good taste and no ostentation. He was, in fact, really quite gorgeous, and Sophia felt foolishly smitten. And that was just her reaction to what she saw below his neck.
It was what she saw above his neck that caused her to stare in such surprise, though. He had fair hair, a little long for fashion, perhaps, but perfectly suited to him. For it waved softly and was a little disordered—attractively disordered. It looked shiny and healthy. And his face…
Well, it was not ruined after all. There was not even the merest scar to mar its beauty. And it was beautiful. She did not really consider individual features, but the whole was wonderfully pleasing, for it looked like a good-humored face that smiled often, though he surely could not be feeling very happy at the moment about being so fussed. Surely, once he had been shown to a chair, he could have bent his knees and lowered himself safely to the seat without having to be hauled and maneuvered there.
Oh, but there was one feature of his flawless face upon which Sophia’s eyes focused, one feature that raised it above the ranks of the merely good-humored and good-looking and accounted for his almost breathtaking beauty. His eyes. They were large and wide and very blue, and they were fringed with eyelashes any girl might envy, though there was nothing even remotely effeminate about them. Or about him.
He was every inch a man, a thought that caught her by surprise and suspended her breath for a moment, for she did not have any idea what the thought meant.
She gazed at him in wonder and awe and retreated a little farther into her corner, if that was possible. She found him utterly, totally intimidating, as though he were a creature who inhabited another world from her own. She had depicted him in her cartoon earlier as a small man with a bandaged face. She would never do that again. Cartoons were for people over whom she wished to indulge a private and not always kindly laugh.
He looked up at his hosts with those blue, blue eyes. And he looked at Henrietta when Sir Clarence drew her forward to introduce her—or rather re-introduce her.
“You remember our dear Henrietta, Darleigh,” he said with bluff heartiness. “She is all grown up, leading her mother a merry dance and being a naughty puss for her father. She has been taken to town for the past three Seasons and might have married dukes and marquesses and earls by the dozen—enough of them have sighed over her and paid court to her, I would have you know. But nothing will do but she must hold herself aloof for that special gentleman who will come along to sweep her off her feet. And you know, Papa, she says, I am as likely to find him at our own home in the country as I am in the ballrooms of the ton in London. Can you imagine that, Darleigh? Where is she likely to discover her special gentleman in Barton Coombs? Eh?”
He did not often laugh, Sophia reflected, but when he d
id, everyone else cringed. Aunt Martha cringed and smiled graciously. Henrietta cringed and blushed—and gazed in raptures at the unmarked face of the man she had declared she would never marry if he was the last man on earth.
He really was blind, Sophia decided from her quiet corner of the room. She had doubted it for a moment. It had seemed impossible. But he had got to his feet again in order to bow to Henrietta, and although he appeared to be looking directly at her, in reality he was gazing just above the level of her right shoulder.
“If Miss March is as beautiful as she was six years ago,” he said, “and I daresay she is more beautiful as she was just a girl then, I am not surprised that she has been so besieged by admirers in London.”
He was oily, Sophia thought, frowning in disappointment. Or perhaps he was just being polite.
Everyone sat down and launched into stilted, overhearty conversation—at least, the three Marches did. Lord Darleigh merely made the appropriate responses and smiled.
He was being polite, Sophia decided after a few minutes. He was not oily at all. He was behaving like a gentleman. She was relieved. She felt predisposed to like him.
He had been an officer in an artillery regiment during the Peninsular Wars, she had learned. A very young officer. He had been blinded in battle. It was only later that he had inherited his title and fortune from an uncle. It was a good thing too, for there had been very little money in the family. Recently he had left his home in Gloucestershire after his mother and sisters had tried to force a bride upon him. They had all been agreed that it would be best for him, for any number of reasons, if he had a wife to care for him. Clearly he had disagreed, either with the general principle or with their specific choice. He had stayed away for some time, and no one had known where he was until he had arrived at Covington House this morning, as Mrs. Hunt had predicted he would in letters she had written to various ladies in the village.