The Arrangement: Number 2 in series (Survivors' Club)

by Mary Balogh

  He took Martin and his cane with him to explore the walk and found it indeed rather rocky underfoot and overgrown to the sides once they had passed the work area.

  “It does not take long for nature to reclaim its own, does it?” he said.

  “Good for nature, I say,” Martin said. “Humankind can do shameful things with it, given half a chance.”

  “You are thinking of coal mines and such?” Vincent asked him.

  “More like those silly trees halfway down the drive,” Martin said. “Clipped and shaped to look stupid, just like some poodles.”

  “The topiaries?” Vincent laughed. “Do they really look silly? I have been told they are pretty and picturesque.”

  Martin grunted.

  “Large stone four paces ahead,” he warned. “Pass it to the left. If you go right, you may roll all the way down the hill.”

  “Sophia has told me about the riding track,” Vincent said. “You think it will work, Martin?”

  “I don’t suppose the Derby will ever be run on it,” Martin told him. “But it will work. You should be able to go for a good ride there without all of us fearing you will break your neck.”

  “Sophia consulted you,” Vincent said.

  “She no doubt decided,” Martin said, “that if it was an idea to be laughed at, it was better to have me laugh at her than you. She worships the ground you walk upon, you know.”

  “Oh, nonsense.” Vincent laughed. “She is with child, Martin.”

  “That is what the cook and all the maids say,” Martin said. “Something to do with the fullness of the face and the look in the eye and other such nonsense. They always seem to be right, though. I don’t know how women do it. Know these things, I mean.”

  “I am going to be a father.”

  “If her ladyship is with child, then I hope you are, sir,” Martin agreed.

  And Vincent stopped walking and thought of how slender his wife was, how narrow her hips. And of how many pregnancies resulted in stillbirths or the death of the mother. Or both. And of how he would never see his child even if it lived, never be able to play with it as any normal father would, never…

  Martin grasped his upper arm.

  “There is a seat over here,” he said. “It is pretty dilapidated, but it may bear your weight.”

  It was too late. There was no air to breathe, and he could not see. He clawed at Martin’s hand, whether to prise it free or grip it he did not know.

  The seat could bear his weight. He was sitting on it when he regained control.

  In. Out. In. Out.

  He was blind. That was all.

  It was like a mantra.

  It was the first bout of panic since that one in the carriage with Sophia. They were growing further apart. Perhaps eventually they would stop altogether. Perhaps the time would come when his unconscious as well as his conscious mind would finally accept the fact that he would never see again.

  “Did I draw blood from your hand?” he asked.

  “Nothing a bit of salve won’t cure, sir,” Martin told him. “It will give everyone in the kitchen something to tease me about. They’ll pretend to think it was Sal who did it.”

  “The blacksmith’s daughter?” Vincent said. “Is she pretty?”

  “She is that,” Martin said, “and a good buxom armful too. But a buxom armful is all I ever get, alas. She is after a wedding, that one, as sure as I’m standing here.”

  “And?”

  “I’m not in any hurry,” Martin told him. “Maybe I’ll tire of her. Maybe she’ll tire of me. And maybe I’ll come to think that if the only way I can get under her skirts is to wed her … Well. I have not been brought that low yet, and if I say my prayers at night like a good boy the way Mam taught me, maybe I never will. She has the sauciest sway to her hips, though, Vince.”

  Vincent laughed. “When you say your prayers, Martin,” he said, “you have to know what action you want. Otherwise God might be confused.”

  Interestingly, Martin sighed.

  Vincent thought his legs would support him. He got to his feet, using his cane. The trembles were almost all gone.

  Small women had babies all the time. Sophia had said it herself.

  And one did not have to see in order to touch a baby. Or hold it.

  Or play with it.

  Or love it.

  It.

  Would it be a boy or a girl?

  It did not matter. It absolutely did not matter. As long as it lived. As long as it was healthy.

  And as long as Sophie lived.

  Please, God, let her live. And there was no ambiguity in his prayer.

  “I’ll start saving for a wedding gift,” he said.

  Martin grunted again.

  Vincent thought more cheerfully about his impending fatherhood as they came down off the wilderness walk. There was no point in thinking of all the things that could go wrong. And there was no point in lamenting the fact that he would never see any child of his.

  At least there would be a child.

  His and Sophia’s.

  And now of course she would stay and they would finally be done with that more-than-absurd suggestion of his when he was persuading her to marry him. For though they had thought of the possibility of a pregnancy delaying any plan they might have to live apart, neither of them seemed to have considered what they would do with the child when they did go their separate ways.

  There was no way on this earth he would let anyone take a child of his away from him, even if he would never see it. And he would wager the whole of his fortune that nobody would wrest her child from Sophia either.

  That meant they would have to remain together.

  He was so glad that nonsense was done with. He thought Sophia would be glad too. Perhaps he would broach the subject with her later, and then they could finally forget all about it.

  He could hear feminine voices coming from what he thought was the direction of the parterre gardens. He could hear Ursula and Ellen. Ah, and then Sophia. They were back from their trip to the village, then.

  “Oh, look at that,” Ursula was saying as he came within earshot. “It is adorable. Is it a real place, Sophia?”

  “Not really,” Sophia said. “It is my dream cottage, the house of all places where I would like to live.”

  “I do love cottages with thatched roofs,” Ellen said. “Oh, how pretty all these sketches are, Sophia. You have such talent. Just look at those flowers. Oh, and there is your cat. And a puppy sitting in the doorway.”

  “You do not prefer living at Middlebury Park?” Ursula asked, laughing.

  “Ah, but Middlebury is reality,” Sophia said. “The cottage is my dream. I will never live there, of course. It is make-believe. But oh, the peace of it. The quiet of it. The happiness of it.”

  Vincent felt a bit as though he were turned to stone. Martin seemed to have disappeared.

  “I hope you are no less happy here in real life,” Ellen said. “You seem happy, and we have never seen Vincent so contented.”

  “Ah, but we must all be able to distinguish between fiction and reality,” Sophia said, “or we will be forever dissatisfied. Make-believe is just that. I live here in great contentment. I am the most fortunate of women.”

  “Well, I am much impressed with your sketches, Sophia,” Ursula said. “The children are going to miss them when we go home, and the stories you and Vincent tell in such harmony. Ah, Vincent. You had better beware. Sophia is showing us a picture of the cottage where she will live when she can no longer stand living with you.”

  “Oh,” Sophia said. “There you are. Have you been out walking?”

  “I went up over the wilderness walk with Martin,” he said, “and have lived to tell the tale. Did you all have a pleasant visit to the village?”

  Sophia slipped a hand through his arm, and they led the way into the house.

  His spirits were somewhere in the soles of his Hessian boots.

  “I drew the cottage,” she said, “becaus
e I have noticed the curiosity the children have about everything, and they have already started to ask, the fairies at the bottom of what garden? I thought to put the cottage on the cover of the first book in that series. Did you enjoy your walk? Did Martin go with you?”

  She knew he had heard.

  Sir Terrence Fry accepted his invitation.

  So did Sir Clarence and Lady March. Henrietta was to come with them, though she was much in demand at summer house parties, where she was being besieged by the attentions of eligible gentlemen, all of them titled, none of them measuring up to her discriminating standards.

  Sophia smiled at her aunt’s letter at the same time as she felt a certain dismay. Did she want them to come? But she had invited them. She must welcome them warmly and be attentive to their needs.

  Did she want her uncle to come?

  She found that she dreaded his coming for one particular reason. She was afraid he would let her down. Perhaps he had not written to her out of any lingering fondness for her father’s memory or regret that he had not made a point of seeing her before now. Perhaps he would not be able to give her any satisfactory explanation of his long neglect. Perhaps he was coming to show his displeasure with her for stealing Vincent away from Henrietta—if that was the story Aunt Martha had told him. Perhaps…

  Well, she would have to wait and see.

  And yet she longed for his coming. She was with child. Her son or her daughter would never lack for attention and love from all the relatives on his or her father’s side. But what about her side? Would there be anyone there at all for her child?

  Or for herself?

  Vincent’s sisters and their families had gone home but would return for the harvest ball. His grandmother was ready to return to Bath. She had even leased a house there. She would go after the ball. His mother was more and more inclined to return to Barton Coombs and her friends there, but she would stay until after Sophia’s confinement, which was expected to be in the early spring.

  The harvest ball had captured the eager attention of everyone for miles around, though it had actually stopped being called that. It was now being called a wedding reception and ball. A belated one. Very belated when it seemed common knowledge that the bride was a few months with child even though the very slight bump was not really visible yet beneath the loose skirts of her high-waisted dresses.

  Her mother-in-law was helping with the plans, though really she had almost no more experience than Sophia did herself with such a grand event. Her main worries were for Vincent.

  “Though you have had a remarkable effect upon him, Sophia,” she admitted almost grudgingly when they were sitting together in the library, making lists of everything under the sun that needed doing—everything they could think of, anyway. There was always something else that kept occurring to one or other of them and sent them into flurries of near panic. “I do not know how you do it. And sometimes I wish you did not. Whatever made you think of a riding track in the park? And how is Vincent going to eat at a public reception or comport himself in a ballroom?”

  “He will do both with the greatest ease, Mama,” Sophia assured her. “He did it at Barton Coombs, and he will do it here. He will be among relatives and friends.”

  “I hope you are right,” her mother-in-law said with a sigh.

  The harvest ball, wedding reception, whatever one chose to call it, was set for early October. Summer slipped into autumn far too soon, as it always did, but autumn had its beauty too. The trees would turn color soon and shed their leaves, and before they budded out into green again, there would be a new baby at Middlebury Park. But it was too soon to dwell upon that yet.

  Sir Terrence and the Marches were due to arrive on the same day, though they were not coming together. Vincent’s sisters were coming a few days later, as was Viscount Ponsonby, who was visiting an elderly relative not far distant and had professed himself delighted to come to Middlebury for a few days.

  “One grows hoarse from yelling into an ear trumpet,” he had written. “My vocal cords need a rest, not to mention the rest of my person. I accept your kind invitation for no other reason.”

  Viscount Ponsonby saw the world through a satirical eye, Sophia thought as she read the whole letter aloud to Vincent. Did that come from his unhappiness, as it had come from hers? She did not know much about him except that he was one of Vincent’s closest friends, one of the Survivors. There was not much sign of physical damage to his person except for his slight stammer. He had world-weary eyes, though. Yet he could not be older than thirty and was probably not even that.

  The Marches arrived first, early in the afternoon. Sophia and Vincent went out to meet them, Vincent led by Shep.

  “Aunt Martha,” Sophia said, stepping forward as soon as the coachman handed out her aunt. And she hugged her for the first time ever.

  “Sophia?” Her aunt’s eyebrows rose in surprise, and her eyes swept over her niece from head to toe. “You have certainly done well for yourself. Middlebury Park is as grand as we were told. Almost as grand as Grandmaison Hall, where Henrietta recently spent two weeks at the special invitation of the Earl of Tackaberry.”

  “I hope your journey was not too trying,” Sophia said.

  “Lord Darleigh,” Aunt Martha was saying as Sophia turned to greet her uncle, who was standing looking about him, his hands at his back.

  “You have landed firmly on your feet, I see, girl,” he said as she contemplated hugging him but rejected the idea. She smiled at him instead.

  “I hope you have had a pleasant journey, Uncle,” she said.

  Henrietta was coming down the carriage steps. But she stopped suddenly and shrieked.

  “Papa!” she cried. “A dog!”

  “He is my guardian, Miss March,” Vincent said. “He remains at my side at all times and is perfectly harmless.”

  “Mama?” Henrietta cowered on the bottom step.

  “Henrietta had a nasty experience when she was a child,” Aunt Martha explained. “She tried to pet a vicious dog from the village when we were on our way home from church, and it snapped at her and would have bitten her if her father had not beaten it off with a stick. Its owner also swore it was harmless, Lord Darleigh.”

  “I will take him along to our apartments,” Vincent said, “while Sophia has you shown to your rooms. You will wish to refresh yourselves and perhaps rest for a while. I will be pleased to welcome you more fully in the drawing room at teatime. Rest assured, Miss March, that Shep will never hurt you or anyone else. He is merely my eyes. I am very happy you have all arrived safely. Sophia has been longing to have her family here with her.”

  And he turned and went back up the steps and into the house with Shep.

  “His eyes?” Sir Clarence said, his eyebrows raised. “How very peculiar.”

  Henrietta stepped down onto the terrace and Sophia hugged her.

  “Welcome to Middlebury Park, Henrietta,” she said.

  “I hope you are happy here, I am sure,” Henrietta said. “You married a blind man to get it, and I hope it was worth it.”

  “Yes.” Sophia smiled. “I married Vincent, and I am happy here. Do come inside. Uncle Terrence will be here soon.”

  She slid her hand through her aunt’s arm and led the way inside.

  She did not really wonder why they had come. Curiosity had brought them here, and the hope that they would find her regretting her marriage or that Vincent would be regretting it. Or that Middlebury Park would turn out to be not as grand as it was reputed to be. Or that in some way they could go back home comforted that their niece rather than Henrietta had married Lord Darleigh.

  It must be a dreadful thing, she thought, to hug such unhappiness about oneself and defend it for a whole lifetime against all comers. It saddened her to know that she had an aunt and uncle and cousin who would never really be family to her. But for the few days of their visit here, she intended to smother them with attention and courtesy and even affection.

  Her uncle arrived an h
our or so later, and Sophia and Vincent went out again to meet him, Vincent with his cane this time. The carriage steps were being set down as they arrived on the terrace, and a tall, elegant gentleman came down them.

  For a disorienting moment the breath caught in Sophia’s throat and she thought that she must have been misinformed all those years ago. Her father had not died in that duel after all. It was only a moment, of course. This man’s face was handsome but austere. He did not have the warm, smiling charm that had always clung about her father, even when he had had a mountain of debts and had just lost a fortune at the tables. On the other hand, he had a presence that was just as forceful in its own way.

  But he looked so very much like her papa.

  She slipped her arm free of Vincent’s and stepped forward.

  “Uncle Terrence?” she said.

  He stood in front of her, looking her over from head to toe, rather as Aunt Martha had done. He removed his tall hat and inclined his head to her.

  “Sophia?” he said. “Well, you are a dainty little thing and not at all what I had been led to expect.”

  Should she smile? Curtsy? Ask about his journey? Hug him? She felt paralyzed.

  He held out an ungloved hand, and she placed her own in it. He raised it to his lips in a courtly gesture that had her biting her lower lip.

  “On the only occasion when I saw your father after your birth,” he told her, “he described you as his little mop-headed treasure who held him to life whenever despair threatened. Did he ever tell you that, Sophia?”

  She shook her head. She was biting her lip hard. Her vision blurred and she realized her eyes had filled with tears.

  “We often do not say what is in our hearts,” he said, “to those who are closest and most dear to us.” He patted her hand before releasing it.

  She recovered herself.

  “Uncle Terrence,” she said, “may I present my husband? Vincent, Lord Darleigh?”

  Vincent was holding out his right hand and smiling.

  “Sir,” he said. “I am delighted to make your acquaintance.”

  As her uncle stepped forward to shake his hand, Sophia’s view of the carriage was no longer blocked. And for the first time she realized that he had not come alone. Another man stood framed in the doorway, halfway down the steps—a handsome, smiling young man.