by Mary Balogh
“And definitely not a young virgin,” Eden said. “Irate papas are just as capable of hoisting pistols as injured husbands are. And—worse—they can nudge one quite determinedly into matrimony. Some lovely and lively widow, then. She should not be difficult to find. You have merely to pick one, smile nicely at her, and wait for her to signal that she has accepted the invitation. We will have to put it to the test. This adds considerable piquancy to the idea of attending balls, by Jove. I can hardly wait. In the meantime I shall search my mind for likely prospects. They must be legion—though the chosen one must be both lovely and lively. I insist upon it.”
Nathaniel was laughing. And yet the idea was not without its appeal now that he and Eden between them had thought of it. An affair between equals. Satisfaction for both. The exploitation of neither. It sounded very civilized and very satisfactory. The distaste he had felt a short while ago in the green room had taken him by surprise. But he knew he would not be able to go back there or to any brothel.
And he certainly was not ready—he doubted he ever would be—to start any courtship.
Yes, an affair would be ideal. Though he did not share Eden’s optimism about the prospects being legion.
It did not matter, he decided. He was enjoying the company of his friends and he must remember that his primary purpose in being here was to introduce Georgina and Lavinia to polite society and to find them husbands.
He had, after all, had a woman again after two years. Three times. He grinned to himself. At least he knew he could still do it.
He turned into White’s with cheerful steps.
FOUR
SOPHIA FOUND HERSELF after all looking forward with some eagerness to the evening at Rawleigh House. She looked over her array of gowns suitable for such an occasion and sighed in some frustration. There were pitifully few and none of them were new or anywhere near in the first stare of fashion. But she had known that before she looked. There was no point in upsetting herself or telling herself that she would send her excuses to Rawleigh House.
Rex would not mind if she looked shabby and dowdy. Neither would the others. When had she looked much different, after all? In Spain and Portugal she had always dressed more for comfort than for elegance or fashion. And Walter would have smiled as cheerfully and spoken as heartily to her whether she had worn the finest silks or a coal sack. He had never noticed her appearance. She had just been “Sophie, old girl” to him.
She sighed. There was no way of being beautiful. Why imagine that if only she had pretty clothes ...
She would still be just “good old Sophie” to the Four Horsemen. She would wager a quarter’s pension that Lady Haverford and Lady Rawleigh were extraordinarily beautiful women.
“And then there is me, Lass,” she said with a laugh to her collie, who was sitting—against the rules—on her bed.
And so she prepared for the evening at Rawleigh House with calm practicality even though she grimaced at the sight of herself dressed in her dark green silk gown—the one Walter had bought her for the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussels before Waterloo—with the inevitable pearls, her only adornment of any real distinction. Her brown hair, thick, very curly, and too long for sense, had been tamed into something resembling respectability, but it was a disaster even so. She had begun to notice lately that short hair was fashionable. She was tempted to have hers cut, but what if her hair cut short turned out to be just as unruly as it was long? What would she do with it then? At least now she could twist it ruthlessly into a topknot.
She smiled ruefully at her image. Nobody looking at her now would guess that her father had been a wealthy man, that Walter’s chief inducement to marry her had been her dowry—as hers to marry him had been the simple desire to wed a respectable, decent man.
Walter had had his pride, at least—and he had been decent. After a certain—confrontation early in their marriage, he had declared his intention of caring for her entirely on his officer’s pay, taking not a farthing more from her father. And he had done it too. She had never gone hungry or cold or companionless.
“Oh, Walter,” she murmured, fingering her pearls, his only frivolous gift to her—just after their confrontation.
But she turned determinedly from the looking glass and gathered up her shawl and reticule from the bed. Eden would be arriving at any moment and those glorious blue eyes of his would sweep over her before smiling with the rest of his face. He would see—Sophie. Good old Sophie.
Well, there were worse things to be than good old Sophie. And than being the friend—the pal, the chum, the comrade—of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. She looked forward immensely to seeing them again, to conversing with them, to listening to them. And to meeting the two wives.
But she sighed one more time before leaving the safe haven of her own room and making her way downstairs. Why was it that age made handsome men even more attractive ? It was not fair to her sex. It definitely was not fair at all. They looked more dashing, more gorgeous than ever, the four of them.
She was eight and twenty years old. She grimaced. Where had the time gone? Where had she misplaced her youth? What was ahead for her? What was there to look forward to? Especially now ...
She gave herself a mental shake. One day at a time. And this evening she was to spend at Rawleigh House.
Nathaniel had left his sister and his cousin at home in a fever of excitement. At least, he had left Georgina in a fever of excitement. It was quite beneath Lavinia’s dignity to admit to any such emotion. She had been apparently engrossed in the pages of one of her library books. But even she, he suspected, was excited at the prospect of her first London ball the following evening. Tomorrow their Season would begin in earnest. But for him there was this evening during which to relax and enjoy himself with his friends.
He was going home early tonight, he had told Eden. To sleep. Gone were the days when he could survive and even have a functioning brain on no more than an hour or two of rest night after night. But he certainly had enough energy left for the evening. And he knew everyone, he discovered when he arrived. Apart from Ken and Moira, Eden and himself, Rex and Catherine had invited several other mutual friends and a few relatives, including Rex’s identical twin, Claude Adams, and his wife, Clarissa; Rex’s sister Daphne, Lady Baird, and her husband, Sir Clayton; and Catherine’s young brother, Harry, Viscount Perry. And Sophie was there too, of course, looking very slightly disheveled and very slightly shabby and altogether familiar and dear.
Catherine took her arm and led her about as soon as Eden had escorted her into the drawing room and presented the two women to each other. Moira was with them by the time they had circled the room, talking to everyone as they went, and had come eventually to where Kenneth and Eden stood with Nathaniel.
“Well, Sophie,” Kenneth said, “our fate is in your hands—at least Rex’s and mine are. What stories are you burning to share with Moira and Catherine?”
“Oh, none at all,” she said. “One would hate to be a bore in company, and what would be duller than a recitation of how perfectly respectable and upright and sober you always were, Kenneth? And Rex too, of course.”
They all laughed.
“Especially when I know it to be true already,” Moira said, “and have never been in any doubt whatsoever.”
“But there must be some interesting stories about Nathaniel and Eden,” Catherine said. “You must regale us with those sometime, Sophie. Is your name Sophia, by the way, and these men have taken the liberty of shortening it?”
“I am Sophie to my friends,” she replied, smiling warmly about her. “And I believe I am among friends.”
“Sophie it is, then,” Catherine said. “Rex came home after meeting you a few mornings ago and talked about you all through breakfast. How I admire you for following your husband to the Peninsula and cheerfully enduring all the discomforts and dangers there. You really must tell us some stories. Will it embarrass you? Or bore you? Are you always being asked to entertain fellow gues
ts in such a way?”
“Not at all,” Sophie said. “But you must not let me go on and on. Stop me when you have heard enough. Have you heard of the time when Nathaniel and Eden and Kenneth rescued my horse and me from a muddy grave?”
The men all chuckled. “The only part of you that was not a shiny brown, Sophie,” Eden said, “was the whites of your eyes. And I am not even quite sure about those.”
“Nat’s scarlet regimentals suffered irreparable harm,” Kenneth said.
“Not so. Sophie brushed them clean when they were dry,” Nathaniel said. “It was the least she could do, of course.”
Trust Sophie, he thought, to begin with a story that showed her in such a disadvantageous light. He remembered the incident vividly—the slippery ooze of her as he had hauled her up onto his horse before him. The unpleasant smell of her. Her good-natured laughter when almost any other woman would have been having a first-class fit of the vapors.
Rex joined them before she finished that story, and they spent a whole hour unashamedly reminiscing. They did a great deal of laughing, Sophie as heartily as the rest of them. Catherine and Moira moved away after a while, summoned to the pianoforte to accompany some impromptu singing.
It was only after they had left that Nathaniel noticed the contrast between their appearance and Sophie’s. They were both taller than she, both elegantly dressed and coiffed in styles that were fashionable and becoming. But Sophie’s lack of elegance had never detracted from their fondness for her. She had an inner beauty that needed no outer adornment.
He did wonder, though, now that he had noticed the contrast, why Sophie looked almost shabby. Did she care so little about her appearance? Or was her pension smaller than a grateful government had had any right to offer her? Or had Walter left debts? But Walter had not appeared extravagant. He had not played deep at the tables. Besides, he had an elder brother—Viscount Houghton—who would surely have taken care of any debts.
It was really none of his business, Nathaniel thought, bringing his mind back to the conversation. Sophie might look as shabby as she pleased and still look good to him and be pleasant company.
It was a wonderful evening, Nathaniel decided as it progressed. He would never make the mistake—none of them would—of glamorizing those years of war, of imagining that they had been a happy time. War was not a happy thing. It was their understanding of that fact that had led them all to sell their commissions after Waterloo. But they had made much of life during those years, more aware than they had been either before or since that life could end at any moment. And there had been some enjoyable times or some less enjoyable ones that they had nevertheless chosen to look upon with a sense of humor—and to remember in the same way.
And it was during those years that they had made the enduring friendships that they celebrated tonight. Life would be altogether less rich if he had never known Eden or Ken or Rex. Or Sophie. Strangely Sophie had seemed more of a friend than Walter, who had always been quiet and somewhat aloof. One had never felt one quite knew him, though he had been an amiable enough fellow. And Sophie had been devoted to him.
“Well, Nat,” Rex said at last, “when do you begin your brotherly matchmaking maneuvers in earnest?”
Nathaniel grimaced. “I hope that will be more Margaret’s task than mine,” he said. “But tomorrow night, actually. The Shelby ball. I have been assured it will be one of the great squeezes of the Season. I shall escort the girls, of course. Ede has promised to dance with them both.”
“On the strict understanding that Nat will not slide a pair of marriage contracts under my nose immediately afterward,” Eden said with a grin.
“Who would want you as a brother-in-law anyway, Eden?” Kenneth asked, raising his quizzing glass to his eye.
Nathaniel looked at Sophie. “One of my sisters is still unmarried,” he told her, “and so is a cousin who is my ward. I have brought them to town with the express purpose of finding husbands for them.”
“Nat has been tamed, Sophie,” Rex said. “Would you have believed it of him?”
“And you do not know the half if it, Rex.” Eden winced theatrically. “Nat came to town after being incarcerated in the country for almost two years, simply panting for a taste of all the joys freedom can bring, and yet after just one night of pleasure—the object of his pleasure handpicked by none other than myself, I would have you know—he has declared it to be against his conscience or his religion or something ever again to employ a—”
“Ede!” Nathaniel said sharply. “There is a lady present.”
“Nonsense!” Eden laughed. “Sophie is not—well, actually she is, of course. But she is also a good sport, are you not, Sophie? Have I offended you?”
“Of course you have not,” she said cheerfully. “I heard a great deal that was far more explicit in past years.”
“Well, I certainly object to having my sexual peccadil loes discussed in a lady’s hearing, Ede,” Nathaniel said, deeply mortified. “My apologies, Sophie.”
“You could make a fortune in blackmail if you set your mind to it, Sophie,” Kenneth said with a grin.
Sophie lost her good-natured smile. “That,” she said sharply, “is not even a good joke, Kenneth. Nathaniel’s apology was unnecessary. But I will hear yours now, if you please.”
Nathaniel gazed at her with interest while Eden and Rex grinned and Kenneth apologized with exaggerated abject-ness. She was serious. He had forgotten that side to her character. Almost eternally good-natured, she had very occasionally surprised them by scolding them and demanding apologies from them. There was the time, for example, when they had been joking about a fellow officer who had been cuckolded by a superior on whom he had been fawning for months in the hope of advancement. There was nothing amusing, she had told them in just the voice she had used now, about infidelity in marriage or about an unhappy man’s misery.
They had all given the demanded apology—with considerably more sincerity than Ken was showing now.
Their group broke up then with the announcement of supper. Rex’s twin came to lead Sophie in and she declared that it was eminently unfair to the rest of mankind that there should be two such identically handsome men in the world. Nathaniel offered his arm to Daphne and she took it with a smile.
“How pleasant to see you again,” she said. “You have brought some sisters for the Season? I daresay they are beside themselves with excitement.”
“Oh, indeed,” he said. “It is one sister and one cousin, actually. I shall be escorting them to the Shelby ball tomorrow evening.”
“Splendid,” she said. “I shall keep my eyes open and send Clayton over if there should be any danger that one of them is facing the dreadful misfortune of having to sit out a set.”
“Thank you,” he said. She was laughing, but he knew she meant it.
The guests began to drift away quite soon after supper since no special entertainment had been arranged for the evening. Catherine and Rex had been determined, apparently, that it be an informal evening for friends to converse with one another.
Nathaniel handed Sophie into his carriage well before midnight. He was glad of it. He was feeling tired and would welcome a good night’s sleep, especially when there was the ball to face the following evening. He yawned and realized how unmannerly he must appear. Sometimes one forgot to behave with Sophie as one would with any other lady.
“You are tired,” she said.
“A little.” He took her hand and drew her arm through his. “Town life is a great deal more tiring than country life. Do you live here all year?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I do not go to parties and balls every evening all year round, you know. I live a rather quiet life.”
“Do you?” He looked at her in the near darkness. “Are you ever lonely, Sophie? Do you miss Walter? Pardon me, what a very foolish question. Of course you miss him. He was your husband.”
“Yes.” She smiled. “I do not miss that way of life, though. It was uncomfortable when a
ll is said and done. And I am not lonely. Not really. I have some good friends.”
“I am glad,” he said. “I would have expected you to go to live with Houghton or with your own family. But of course a town house was part of what the government coughed up after Walter was decorated. You like it well enough to live there all year?”
“I am more grateful than I can say,” she said, “to be able to live independently of either my brother-in-law or my brother, Nathaniel. I am very fortunate. Walter did not leave me well-off enough to live alone, you know.”
And she was a proud woman too, he thought. She preferred modest independence to comfortable dependence on wealthier relatives. Her own family was very wealthy indeed, he believed.
The carriage stopped. They had arrived at her house already? He was feeling very pleasantly tired, though he repressed the urge to yawn again.
“Invite me in for tea?” he asked, smiling.
“When you are just about asleep?” she said, laughing.
“I am too tired to go home to bed,” he said. “Ply me with tea and talk, Sophie, and then I shall walk briskly home and be fast asleep before my body hits the bed.”
“You are as mad as you ever were.” She clucked her tongue, though she was still laughing. “Come along, then. Though I must persuade you to drink chocolate rather than tea. Tea keeps a person awake, as does coffee.”
“Does it?” he said. “I must remember that the next time I am suffering from insomnia.”
He really must be mad, he thought a couple of minutes later as he followed her inside her house, having dismissed his carriage. He listened to her instruct the manservant who had opened the door to have a pot of chocolate sent up to the sitting room before going to bed. She would lock up after Sir Nathaniel had left, she told the man.
He followed her to the sitting room. It was very much as he might have expected—small, cozy, tasteful without being in any way fussily feminine.
“This is pretty, Sophie,” he said as she stooped to pat her dog, who had jumped up eagerly from the hearth to lick her hand and fan the air with its tail.