The Rivals of Rosennor Hall (Entangled Inheritance Book 3)

by Rebecca Connolly

  “Here, sir,” Shaw intoned, appearing somehow out of nowhere at all.

  Butlers were a rare breed of human, there was no doubt.

  Larkin shook his head, but related the plan to Shaw, who nodded as though he were used to this sort of thing, or perhaps simply unsurprised by it.

  What had life been like at Rosennor before this if the current situation was so unflappable to the staff?

  It was a sobering thought indeed to think that Sir Kentworth’s last will and testament might not have been the most peculiar thing he had ever done.

  But there wasn’t time to consider all the peculiarities of Rosennor and its heritage. Not when guests were descending upon them presently, and he hadn’t actually considered if the house would be prepared for such a thing.

  Heavenly days, he hadn’t even asked if the place was tidy enough to entertain. Renovation and redecoration could create a mess, and he’d just waltzed on home with a party following as though expecting the place to be pristine. What if Sophia hadn’t removed the more ridiculous tapestries in the month he’d been away? What if the hideous rugs he’d uncovered while searching one of the spare rooms hadn’t been removed from Sophia’s corridors? What if the silver hadn’t been polished or the carpets beaten, or the pianoforte tuned?

  What if nothing was prepared at all?

  Good heavens, what had he done?

  “Larkin.”

  He turned to look at Sophia, wide eyed and trembling with the storm of anxiety currently pummeling him.

  She tilted her head, fair brow furrowed, considering him with some concern. “Are you well?”

  She could ask him that? She, who hadn’t had any notion a house party of strangers would be coming, and knew full well the house wasn’t prepared for such, and the degree to which it was not. She could ask if he was well?

  Remarkable.

  Shaking himself, Larkin did some strange combination of nodding that he was well and shaking his head in an attempt to brush her concern off, which undoubtedly only heightened her confusion presently, and would illustrate him to be even more the fool than she already thought him.

  “We’d better take our places,” Sophia said, gesturing to the place beside her. “The carriages.”

  Right. No time for all of that.

  Don’t be ridiculous.

  Well, it might have been a bit late for that, but he could certainly attempt to improve.

  Larkin moved to Sophia’s side, picking at his apparently offensive cravat, craning his neck in discomfort. “If I forget to say it at any point during the next fortnight, I am truly sorry for doing this to us.”

  Sophia hummed softly just once. “Oh, that’s all right.”

  It was?

  He looked out her, completely befuddled. “Is it?”

  She nodded firmly, a small smile on her lips. “Yes. You see, I fully intend to exact revenge upon you, Larkin Roth. And more than likely when you least expect it.”

  Larkin coughed in surprise. “I think we’ve got a bit much to be getting on with, don’t you?”

  Sophia glanced up at him, that maddening hint of a smile still there. “I will find a way, Larkin. Believe me, you will pay for this.” Her smile spread into the most terrifying smile he had ever been witness to, and then she turned her attention towards the door where the first of their new guests were arriving.

  He swallowed and attempted to plaster a welcoming smile on his face, but it was rather difficult, knowing now that his life could be in jeopardy.

  For Sophia Anson was no ordinary woman, and he feared her wrath more than anything his nightmares could conjure up.

  He was doomed.

  CHAPTER 15

  Dinner was being served, and so far, they’d not had a single disaster.

  Somehow that felt monumental.

  There were a dozen people at the table, and Sophia could only remember a handful of their names. She ought to have been better about that, but having never been to an event involving twelve strangers, she had little training in the matter.

  Life at Geillis had been so much simpler.

  “Not hungry, Sophia?”

  Sophia glanced at the man sitting to her right, whom she had only known for a few hours, but was already making an irritation of himself. “I am perfectly well, thank you, Taft. I tend to lose my appetite when encumbered by a stressful situation.” She pointedly took a small bite of potato, her eyes never leaving his.

  His smile wavered, and he glanced down the long table towards Larkin, who was seated at the head at the other end, just as Sophia was there. “Larkin doesn’t seem to have any appetite issue.”

  “Larkin’s appetite is one of the wonders of the world,” Sophia retorted, looking at her partner in this mess and trying not to glare with it. “And why should I not feel the strain of this greater than he does? It is always the woman’s role to run the household, and yet the household, or its guests, seem to be running me.”

  “I did apologize,” Taft pointed out as he took a brief sip of madeira. “And you’re doing splendidly.”

  Sophia cleared her throat, reaching for her glass of water. “Technically, you did not, and splendid is hardly the word I would use to describe myself.” She sipped carefully and plastered a pleasant smile on her face as one of the gentlemen sent a smile in her direction. “For heaven’s sake, I can’t even remember the name of the man smiling at me.”

  Taft looked down the table, then made a show of bringing his serviette to his mouth as if to dab at the corners. “That is Mr. Bell.”

  Sophia nodded, though she could safely say she had no recollection of that name being read out by Shaw earlier.

  “You don’t remember him, do you?”

  “Not a jot,” she admitted freely, still smiling for effect.

  Taft chuckled quietly and took a bite of his fish. “Mr. Bell is a younger son, but still a pretty catch. Clergyman, mind you, so I’d practice your prayers. His father was recently named a knight, and Bell has the largest parish in Hampshire. Rumor has it he’s already a candidate for a position in Bath. Not certain what the positions are in religious orders, but there you are.”

  Sophia took the opportunity to observe Mr. Bell, who was of the fairer sort of coloring, and had a complexion that spoke of too many hours indoors, though his smile was pleasant enough. And he seemed to be entertaining, if the ladies on either side of him were any judge of the thing.

  The church hadn’t exactly been the direction Sophia had been intending for her romantic inclinations, but she supposed it would entirely depend on the man in question.

  Perhaps even Mr. Bell.

  “And who exactly is he so skillfully amusing at this moment?” Sophia murmured, her eyes flicking to Larkin, who was deep in conversation with a woman to his left.

  “Jane Richards,” Taft answered around a mouthful of food. “Ten thousand a year, and one of my oldest friends.”

  That brought Sophia back to the woman in question, and she gave Taft a sidelong look. “She’s very pretty, Taft. Why not forge a connection there?”

  He choked on his current mouthful, and eventually swallowed it down before giving her a horrified look. “You cannot simply say such things. People will talk.”

  Sophia snorted softly and took a small bite of bread. “Nonsense. Besides, you must marry someday. Everyone of importance must.”

  She might have said the Plague was returning to England for all the color that remained in Taft’s face. He immediately turned to the woman next to him and said, too loudly, “And how are you enjoying the house party, Lady Lawson?”

  The young woman’s mouth pinched as though the interruption of her meal was offensive, and one thin, dark brow twitched. “It’s only just begun, my lord. The food is adequate, which is all I can account for at present, and I was enjoying it to my expectation before your query.” Her fork lifted to her mouth again, and any further conversation was ended by the slow chewing of her turnip.

  Sophia watched her chew for a moment, then lo
oked at Taft, who was frowning at nothing in particular, his expression fixed on the table between Lady Lawson’s goblet and his own.

  Poor man probably had no idea how to cope with a lady’s disinterest.

  No matter.

  Sophia kicked him under the table before turning to the woman at her left. “Am I to understand you come from Surrey?” she asked, praying she suspected correctly, even if she couldn’t remember the lady’s name.

  “Indeed, Miss Anson,” she replied brightly, sitting up straighter, her copper hair almost brown in the candlelight of the dining room. “It’s a lovely county, have you ever been?”

  “Any county would be lovely were you to reside in it, Miss Beacom,” Taft praised with such charm it fairly perfumed their entire end of the table.

  Sophia raised a brow at him, but he was too busy making a conquest of Miss Beacom across from him.

  For a man not interested in the matrimonial things in life, he certainly played the part well enough.

  Then it occurred to her what he had done.

  Taft knew full well that Sophia hadn’t remembered many names, and he had interjected with flattery in order to remind Sophia of the lady’s name.

  Bless him, he wasn’t quite the nincompoop he looked.

  “I confess,” Sophia remarked, hoping to end Taft’s production of an ardent admirer swiftly, “I have not been to Surrey since I was a little girl, and the memories I have are fleeting at best.”

  Miss Beacom’s nose wrinkled as she laughed rather delicately, which was unaccountably charming. “It looks rather like the rest of England, Miss Anson, and I daresay it is only truly charming to those of us who dwell in it.”

  “Come, come, Eliza,” another woman across the table scolded. “Surrey has much to offer.”

  “If you can name one thing you adore about Surrey, Miss Prescott, I’ll give you my dessert,” the man across from her boasted.

  Another lady coughed in dismay. “One does not wager at a house party.”

  “I beg your pardon, one does all sorts of things at a house party.”

  “What sort of house parties have you been attending, Pritchard?”

  “A gentleman never kisses and tells.”

  And just like that, chaos erupted at dinner.

  Sophia groaned and did her best not to slump in her chair, giving Larkin a disparaging look across the long expanse of table.

  His uneasy smile matched what she felt, and he offered a hint of a shrug as if to say, ‘I don’t understand either.’

  United in their ignorance, then.

  Lovely.

  “Marvelous,” Taft murmured beside her. “Absolutely marvelous.”

  Sophia gave him a bewildered look. “You have the strangest sense of awe in any person I have ever known.”

  Taft huffed in impatience and turned fully towards her in his seat. “My dear Sophia, despite what you may think, what everyone wants from a house party is a good story to tell. Engaging and energetic conversation is always preferable to silence at dinner.”

  “But…” She looked around the table in apprehension, all of her guests engaged in conversation with someone else. “But I don’t know any of them. What if the stories they tell are not favorable?”

  A warm hand covered hers on both sides, and she looked at those sitting next to her, first at Miss Beacom, whose smile was warm and friendly. “Don’t worry, Miss Anson. I’ll help you in any way that I can. I’ve never hosted a house party myself, but I have been to a fair few. I am sure it cannot be so different here than anywhere else.”

  Sophia smiled her thanks, but it was pained. “Thank you. I’ve never even been to a house party.”

  Miss Beacom winked. “Never fear. Between Lord Harwood and myself, we should be able to assist you creditably.”

  “Indeed,” Taft insisted, squeezing Sophia’s hand a little. “And should anyone spread malicious tales, I will call them out and show them the fury of my fists.”

  The boast was as ridiculous as it was sweet, and Sophia looked from Taft’s hands to his face with the sort of dubious air anyone with eyes and sense would have done.

  Taft scowled at it. “Fine, I’ll do something else, but remember you have Larkin in all this, too.”

  He gestured down the table, and Sophia’s eyes followed obediently.

  Larkin, who was the picture of the perfect country host this evening, congenial in anyone’s eyes, and who was once again deep in conversation with a woman, this time at his right.

  And she was well engaged thus.

  “Who is that he’s speaking with now?” Sophia heard herself ask, her tone almost wounded.

  Wounded? Why? Because Larkin wasn’t as lost as she was presently? Because he clearly wasn’t overthinking everything from the position of the place settings to the cleanliness of the crystals on the chandeliers in the ballroom?

  Because he looked so pleasant and entertaining and earnest with her and with Sophia he was not?

  No, it couldn’t be so. That would mean she was jealous, and she most certainly was not jealous.

  Jealous because of Larkin Roth. The very idea.

  “Amelia Spencer,” Taft told her quietly, keeping his voice low. “Very pretty, very rich, very fascinating. She’d be an excellent catch for him.”

  “If he can convince her,” Sophia spat bitterly as she reached for her water again, sipping with much less manner than before. “One mustn’t be blind to his faults.”

  Taft chuckled under his breath. “She won’t see his faults at dinner.”

  Sophia smirked as she set her glass down. “Perhaps not of her own efforts, but I can draw them out no matter where we are.”

  “Now, now, pet,” Taft soothed as though she were an overwrought horse. “It is only the first night, and there will be plenty of time to goad each other later. Good impression for you both, you understand.”

  She did understand. She understood all too well.

  So long as Larkin and Taft weren’t colluding to find him a rich wife to them buy out Sophia’s shares and send her off with no prospects, no home, and no friends.

  No, she wouldn’t stand for that, and she wouldn’t give into the money just to escape him.

  Rosennor was hers as well. If he was going to actively seek a wife to serve his purposes, she would actively seek a husband who would suit hers.

  Let the conversation about house parties at Rosennor revolve around that for a time.

  Sophia straightened and tossed her hair, though it was pinned and coifed enough to barely move with the motion. She smiled at Miss Beacom, then focused her attention on the man beside the girl.

  “Mr. Bell, how do you manage to serve such a large parish?” she asked, forcing sincerity and earnestness into each word, speaking loudly enough to be heard, but not enough to carry far. “It must positively wear you out, I cannot imagine how you still give sermons after all of that. Clearly you are born for such a calling.”

  For all his declarations of assisting them, Taft was doing a deuced good job of only assisting Sophia.

  Larkin was having to fend for himself, and no one seemed to notice.

  The ladies who had been seated on either side of him at dinner had been engaging enough, but he had never been skilled in the art of conversation, particularly in a forced setting such as this. And with people whose names he couldn’t be bothered to recollect…

  This whole thing would be the biggest farce seen outside of London Society the world had ever known.

  Thankfully, the debate over what did or did not occur at house parties had not lasted long, thanks in part to the hilarity related in anecdotal form by the tepid-looking Mr. Bell. Larkin had nothing against the man, having only met him hours ago, but the man did seem a bit pious for his taste. And yet, his stories of parishioners and his experience with them has proved amusing, and he showed great skill in the telling, which demonstrated a decent enough sense of humor.

  He highly doubted such humor extended into preaching over the pulpit from t
he depths of the Bible, but then, he could not claim to have been a student enough of the work to know where humor could be found therein.

  And he was not particularly inclined to begin a study of it now.

  Though now he thought of it, the timing would be rather useful.

  If there was anything he hated more than piety, it was parlor games.

  As host, he could not escape, and as his mother was having one of her good days and behaving as a lady of station and sense ought, he did not have his usual excuse at hand.

  Standing here like an overgrown potted plant, he felt almost ornamental, and not exactly faring well in that regard. All he could do was stare around with a placid smile as though he were not looking for some means of escape. Charades was fairly harmless, all things considered, but surely Taft could have come up with something else for them to do on this first eve of merriment.

  “Come, Mr. Roth, you should have a turn,” one of the young ladies insisted with an exuberance that instantly grated on his nerves.

  Larkin held up a hand, shaking his head in a gentlemanly way, if such a thing existed. “No, I thank you, I never engage in activities wherein I am doomed to some failure or embarrassment.”

  There were several protests against such a statement, though none, he noted, came from Sophia.

  Instead, she looked at him with a raised brow, her lips curved in bemusement.

  Don’t be ridiculous, he pleaded in his mind. He couldn’t have their spite on display so soon, if ever. What was the greatest of all games for the two of them might not be so easily understood by others.

  Her raised brow quirked, but Sophia said nothing and only smiled.

  Blessed creature, but she was glorious tonight.

  The thought shook him, and he wrenched his gaze back to the gentleman who had stepped into the fray in Charades. He looked an idiot but did not seem to mind.

  Larkin would never subject himself to such a thing.

  “The point of games, you know, is to play them.”

  Larkin slid his eyes to the man now standing to his left. “If you had suggested a game worth playing, I would do so.”