Married to a Stranger
Married to a Stranger
Louise Allen
A SHOCK PROPOSAL Sophia Langley’s life is in turmoil. When she learns of her estranged fiancé’s death in a shipwreck, the last thing she expects is for his twin brother, Callum Chatterton, to make a shock proposal! Her inner romantic objects to a marriage of convenience – and brooding Cal makes it very clear that’s all it can be.Yet to save her family Sophia accepts with trepidation – and a highly inconvenient trembling of desire for her reluctant husband! Danger & Desire Shipwreck, Scandals and Society Weddings
Introducing Louise Allen’s most scandalous trilogy yet!
DANGER & DESIRE
Leaving the sultry shores of India behind them, the passengers of the Bengal Queen face a new life ahead in England—until a shipwreck throws their plans into disarray …
Can Alistair and Perdita’s illicit onboard flirtation survive the glittering social whirl of London?
Washed up on an island populated by ruffians, virginal Averil must rely on rebel captain Luc for protection …
And honourable Callum finds himself falling for his brother’s fiancée!
Look for
RAVISHED BY THE RAKE
SEDUCED BY THE SCOUNDREL
MARRIED TO A STRANGER
from Mills & Boon
Historical
About the Author
LOUISE ALLEN has been immersing herself in history, real and fictional, for as long as she can remember, and finds landscapes and places evoke powerful images of the past. Louise lives in Bedfordshire, and works as a property manager, but spends as much time as possible with her husband at the cottage they are renovating on the north Norfolk coast, or travelling abroad. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite atmospheric destinations. Please visit Louise’s website—www.louiseallenregency.co.uk—for the latest news!
Previous novels by the same author:
THE DANGEROUS MR RYDER*
THE OUTRAGEOUS LADY FELSHAM*
THE SHOCKING LORD STANDON*
THE DISGRACEFUL MR RAVENHURST*
THE NOTORIOUS MR HURST*
THE PIRATICAL MISS RAVENHURST*
PRACTICAL WIDOW TO PASSIONATE MISTRESS**
VICAR’S DAUGHTER TO VISCOUNT’S LADY**
INNOCENT COURTESAN TO ADVENTURER’S BRIDE**
RAVISHED BY THE RAKE†
*Those Scandalous Ravenhursts
**The Transformation of the Shelley Sisters
†Danger & Desire
and in theSilk & Scandalmini-series
THE LORD AND THE WAYWARD LADY
THE OFFICER AND THE PROPER LADY
and in Mills & Boon
HistoricalUndone!eBooks:
DISROBED AND DISHONOURED
AUCTIONED VIRGIN TO SEDUCED BRIDE
Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Author Note
I loved writing about the immediacy and the drama of the wreck of the Bengal Queen in the first two books in my Danger & Desire trilogy, but I found it equally challenging to explore the effect of that several months later on two more people whose lives are changed for ever after the ship hits the rocks. Sophia Langley is miles away, safe in a Hertfordshire village, but after years of believing she knows her destiny now she is forced to come to terms with her very uncertain future. Duty and desire both seem to pull her in the same direction—is it the right one to take? Meanwhile Callum Chatterton has to make a decision that satisfies his sense of duty but which threatens to completely overset his careful plans and equally carefully guarded heart.
One of the joys of writing a series is that I can continue to follow characters from earlier books, and it was fun to encounter Dita and Alistair from RAVISHED BY THE RAKE and Averil and Luc from SEDUCED BY THE SCOUNDREL again, and to glimpse their new married lives. They were as eager for a happy ending for Callum and Sophia as I was—I hope you enjoy reading about their journey to find love as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Married to a Stranger
Louise Allen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To all my friends in the Cambridge Chapter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association— thanks for the support and the fun.
Prologue
Hertfordshire—1799
‘I love Daniel and I will wait for him and marry him!’ Sophia Langley glared at Cal. Her small bosom—Where had that come from all of a sudden? he wondered—rose and fell within the bodice of her unfashionable gown; her nose, as usual, was smudged with charcoal.
‘It is ridiculous. You are far too young, both of you.’ He resisted the urge to pick her up like the small, underfed kitten she resembled and give her a good shake to try and get some sense into her. Why on earth his twin would fix on the daughter of one of their gentry neighbours to fall for defeated him. The chit wasn’t even out yet.
‘You do not understand me, you have taken virtually no notice of me when we visit, and now you know what is best for me? I am seventeen and Daniel is the same age as you.’ Indignant blue eyes, her best feature, narrowed at him.
The retort that she was only seventeen and three days old and that he was ten minutes older than his twin was childish; he bit it back unsaid. At just eighteen he was a man and he did not bicker with girls. ‘What do you mean, I take no notice of you? We played together as children, didn’t we?’
She snorted. He supposed she was refraining from observing that she had trailed around after them and had been tolerated as a fielder at cricket and as a suitable maiden to rescue while they were defeating dragons or Saracens or half the French army, but that hardly made them soul mates.
‘We are both going to be away for a long time. You will meet someone else, fall in love properly when you grow up.’
It was, he realised as soon as he had said it, tactless in the extreme. Sophia drew her skinny frame up to its full height somewhere near his chin.
‘You pompous, unfeeling wretch! How you can be the twin of someone as wonderful as Daniel, I have no idea, Callum Chatterton, but I love Daniel and I swear I will marry him and I hope you fall in love with someone who breaks your heart.’ She stalked away, the dignity of her exit marred by catching her toe in the edge of the rug. He laughed. She slammed the door.
Cal shook his head and went back to packing for India.
Chapter One
Glebe End House, Hertfordshire— 5th September, 1809
‘It is from Callum Chatterton.’ Sophia Langley looked up from the single sheet of paper flattened under her hand between plate and cup. Her mother, a slice of toast suspended halfway to her mouth, looked as puzzled as she felt. ‘He says he will call this afternoon.’
‘Then he is back.’ Mrs Langley frowned. ‘I do not think he has been back to the Hall since March.’
‘It appears not.’ Why the man who would have been her brother-in-law was calling now, six months after the funeral of her betrothed, she could not imagine. ‘Lord Flamborough has said very little about him, now I come to think of it.’
Will Chatterton, the Earl of Flamborough, elder brother of the twins, was a near neighbour. He had always been a good friend—too good for Sophia’s conscience once he had brought the news of Daniel’s death. Her betrothed had perished in the wreck of the ship bringing the twins back to England after their ten years in India in the service of the East India Company. Will did not owe them anything now she would not be marrying Daniel.
Sophia looked down at her ringless hand and the tight cuff of her morning gown of deep mauve lawn. She had worn black for three months and had just moved into half-mourning. She still felt the most terrible hypocrite every time any of their friends or neighbours, reminded by her attire, sighed sympathetically over her loss.
With the reading of the will after the funeral it became clear that Daniel had neglected to amend it to recognise his betrothal. Neither Callum, who had been so outspoken about the engagement at the time, nor the earl, whom she suspected of not approving either, seemed to realise just how this left the Langleys.
Daniel had made no provision for her at all. Callum, who had seemed almost frozen with grief over the loss of his twin, had tried to explain that this was simply the result of Daniel’s carelessness about business, his unwillingness to confront unpleasant matters such as his own mortality, rather than any lack of love or care for her.
But her heart told her differently. Daniel had fallen out of love with her, just as she had realised, too late, that she had with him—not that she could say such a thing to either bereaved brother. And if they had not loved each other, then, in all conscience, she had no claim on Daniel. If she had been honest with herself and ended the engagement sooner, she might well have found a husband and her family would have been secure. She would probably have a family of her own by now, she thought with a pang of longing.
Perhaps Callum or the earl would have made over some funds to her if she had asked, but pride, and the awareness of her own youthful folly in ever agreeing to the betrothal, stopped her mentioning it.
Will had called regularly to offer assistance—the loan of a gardener from the Hall, his carriage when they needed to go into St Albans, a surplus of vegetables from the gardens. But in the face of her constant, polite refusals his visits had grown fewer. She worked hard to disguise their poverty and so far, just, she was succeeding. But the stack of bills in her bureau was growing and the polite requests for payment were becoming more abrupt. Sophia knew they were reaching a point where she was going to have to make some very hard decisions about her own future.
‘Perhaps he has decided to do the right thing and make over some of his inheritance from Daniel to you,’ Mrs Langley said. She sounded brighter than she had in weeks at the prospect.
‘There is no reason why he should, or could,’ Sophia explained patiently. ‘The estate he inherited from Daniel was entailed, he cannot part with any of that even if he wanted to and he has his own career and future to consider. No doubt he will be marrying soon, especially if he is not returning to India.’
‘Ah, well.’ Her mother sighed. ‘Never mind. Dear Mark will complete his studies soon and be ordained and then he will have a parish and everything will be all right.’
Sophia did not point out that Mark was hardly likely to find a parish with a stipend large enough to support himself, her and Mama and deal with their debts without an influential patron backing him. Her brother had neither the drive, nor the engaging personality, to seek out a good position for himself; a curate’s place in some industrial town or rural backwater was more likely. It was up to her to deal with this.
She gave herself a mental shake and focused on the letter again. The note in the strong black handwriting was brief and without explanation. Callum Chatterton would do himself the honour of calling on her—not on Mama, she noticed belatedly—that afternoon and trusted that she would be able to receive him.
Sophia scooped up the rest of the post before her mother could realise just how much of it appeared to be bills. How could there be so many when all she seemed to do these days was make do and mend and search for economies? ‘I will deal with these this morning,’ she said brightly. ‘How interesting it will be to see Callum Chatterton again.’
Her desk was in the corner of her bedchamber and she closed the door with a sense of finding sanctuary. Sooner or later she was going to have to make her mother understand just how serious matters were, but not yet. One more month and then she must write to a London agency and seek employment. The shock of having to dismiss their solitary footman had been bad enough for Mrs Langley who felt the loss of status very sharply. Explaining that her daughter was going to have to start earning her own living would doubtless result in hysterics.
The room was simple and light, hung with white and primrose muslins. A girl’s room, Sophia thought, as she closed the door. And I am no longer a girl. I am six and twenty. I am on the shelf, stuck in the back of beyond with no eligible bachelors for miles around.
If only she had had the sense to face up to the fact that she had fallen out of love. She should have written to Daniel, explained, and they could have broken off the engagement amicably with no scandal; everyone had been surprised that her late father had allowed it in the first place, with her so young.
She had been too passive in accepting the betrothal as final. But in other ways she had changed so much in nine years. She had grown up and matured. Grown independent and forward, Mama would say. But what was a girl to do when she was neither a spinster on the shelf nor a wife? She had knowledge now, and her own thoughts and ideas, her own interests and beliefs.
For nine years she had waited, not happy about the length of time, but resigned and patient, learning to keep house and improve her mind. She wondered now with a sudden attack of conscience if it had been patience. Perhaps she had been selfish, enjoying this luxury of time to learn to be herself. When her friends had sympathised with her wait she had been uncomplaining. Her art was her escape and she had focused all her free time and energy into improving her skills.
On the desk lay her sketchbook open at the self-portrait she had attempted the other day. It had made her look at her reflection critically and the outcome was not likely to make her vain, that was certain.
In the years after Daniel had left she had grown upwards, if not much outwards. Now she was rather too tall for the mode, rather too slender, without much to fill out a gown in front. Her nose was a trifle long and her mouth a fraction wide, but her eyes were satisfactory, she thought. They were bluer than they had been, or perhaps that was just because her lashes had darkened with her hair which was virtually black now, no longer the deep brown it had been.
She flicked over the page to a study of the head and shoulders of a man. When she had received the letter that had told her of Daniel’s imminent return she had studied the miniature she had painted of him before he and Callum left. It was poor work, she knew. So she had taken up her pencils and a drawing pad and began to sketch the twenty-seven-year-old man the boy might have become. And that had been when she had finally accepted—or perhaps allowed herself to accept—that she did not love him. She had waited for Daniel because he would make her his wife, give her a place in society. His family and resources and position in the East India Company would finally silence all their creditors.
It had been a shock to see the echo of that picture in Callum’s drawn countenance on the few occasions she had seen him before he’d left Flamborough Hall in March. He had grown into his looks; his body was no longer that of a gangling boy, but a hard, fit man. The intelligent hazel eyes, darkened with pain, held years of experience, his mouth was firmer, his expression more guarded. Only the thick dark brown hair was the same, still apt to fall across his brow, just as Daniel’s had.
That confrontation with Callum the day before he and Daniel had left for London and their new lives with the East India Company came back to nag at her conscience. It was strange how often she had thought of that and those clear hazel eyes summing her up and then dismissing her. I love Daniel and I swear I will marry him, she had vowed. And she had broken that vow. The acceptance of the true nature of her feelings had shaken her as though she was a butterfly breaking out of its chrysalis into a bright, dangerous, exciting new world. ‘I do not love you any more,’ she had whispered to the portrait. ‘What if I do not want to marry you when I meet you and know you again?’
The dangerous idea had been niggling at the back of her mind that perhaps she could earn her living by drawing—not teaching girls, but actually selling her own work. It was not love for a man that made her heart beat faster now, but the act of creation as a picture took form on the page, when the visions in her mind came to life at the point of her pencil. She had toyed with the idea of approaching some book publishers—the famous John Murray or Mr Ackermann who produced so many prints, perhaps.
But there was no choice, not realistically. The idea of making her own living in that way was a daydream. Ladies did not become commercial artists; it would be one step up from the stage and the scandalous reputation that carried with it.
Nor could a lady jilt a gentleman; it would be a shocking and ungrateful thing to do now she had let things run on for years. No one expected marriages to be love matches, so that was no excuse. Nor did a dutiful daughter throw away an alliance that would secure her family’s fortune—and certainly not if she would be left an old maid of twenty-six in the process. Whatever sort of man Daniel had grown into, saint or sinner, she must marry him and do her duty. But then tragedy had released her in the only way that society would accept, making her emotional turmoil even worse.
Sophia tossed the bills on top of the sketchbook and paced across the room. But there was no escape, for that brought her to the trunk that was full of linens, each sheet and pillow sham and towel embroidered in the corner with C and the cat’s mask that was Daniel’s family crest: a pun on the French chat for Chatterton. There were underclothes and handkerchiefs, nightgowns and sachets, pen wipers and gloves. The trunk represented nine years of collecting and embroidering and carefully ticking off each item on the list in The Ladies’ Compendium and Housewife’s Remembrancer.
That had been almost a fantasy. She had played at being betrothed while she got on with the rest of her life, as independent as any woman with limited means and a reputation to maintain might be. But now this was real and the folly of a young girl’s infatuation was coming home to roost. It was all her fault. She should have broken off the engagement years before, found another match. If she had she would not be an old maid now, her husband would be supporting her mother and she would not be afraid to open the day’s post or look at the accounts book.
Sophia squared her shoulders and went to sit at the desk. Ignoring the mess they were in could only make it worse. To throw herself on Lord Flamborough’s mercy and ask for a loan would be to sacrifice every iota of self-respect and pride. To try to make a living by her art would scandalise all who knew her.
‘Mr Chatterton. Good afternoon.’ Sophia dropped her sketchbook and pencil into the flower trug beside the rustic seat and walked across the front lawn towards him. She had been pretending to gather flowers for the past half-hour rather than have the front door opened to him by the maid of all work, the only servant other than Cook who was left to them.
‘Miss Langley.’ Callum swung down from his horse and threw the reins over a spike in the picket fence before opening the gate into the small front garden. He removed his hat and his face was serious as he took her proffered hand. ‘I hope I find you well?’
‘Very well, thank you.’ She smiled brightly as though the brilliance of it might distract him from her limp and much-washed gown. ‘You look … I mean since I last saw you …’
He had lost some of the colour that India and a sea voyage had given him, but the lines of strain and grief had gone from his face, leaving him, she was almost startled to find, a remarkably good-looking man. She should have expected it—she had seen him six months ago, after all—but now, with his full attention on her, the effect was disconcerting. Her pulse fluttered, her tongue was twisting itself into knots and Sophia knew she was blushing. Obviously she did not mix with gentlemen enough.
Callum must think her a complete ninny, but if he did, he did not let it show on his face. ‘It was a difficult time,’ he acknowledged. ‘I think it is behind me now. I find I can look back with gratitude for the memories and even forward to the future.’
She found her hand was still in his and that she had no desire to remove it. ‘I am glad the pain is healing. I can imagine that, dreadful as it must be to lose a brother, the loss of a twin is even harder to bear.’
‘Yes. That is perceptive of you. Not everyone realises.’ He shifted her hand to the crook of his arm. ‘Is the summer house still standing?’
‘The summer house? Why, yes.’ Startled by the change of subject, she turned and let him lead her around the side of the small villa. ‘How strange that you recall it. Daniel and I used to hide in there and talk and talk and imagine that my parents had no idea where we had got to. It is just the same as it used to be, just rather more rickety.’ There had been tiny yellow roses around the wide doors again this summer, roses she had thought to pick for her bridal flowers.
The doors were unlocked and she opened them, went inside and turned as he followed her slowly into the small, rather dusty space. ‘It is not quite the romantic bower we thought it then; you must excuse the spiders and earwigs.’
‘I am still surprised how small insects are in England,’ Callum said, and his mouth curved into the first smile she had seen from him since his return. ‘Might we sit here and talk?’
‘Yes, of course. Shall I ask the maid to bring out some refreshments? Perhaps I ought to call Mama.’
‘Thank you, no refreshments.’ Callum set two chairs near the doorway, dusted off the seats with his handkerchief, put down his hat gloves and whip and waited for her to sit. ‘Do you feel you need a chaperone?’
‘Not at all. Why ever should I? I have known you for years. You were almost my brother.’
Callum raised one eyebrow. ‘I can assure you, Sophia, my feelings for you were never brotherly.’
Flustered, Sophia took the left-hand seat. Now he had put the idea of danger into her head he seemed altogether too male and too close in the tiny structure. ‘Is the earl well?’
‘Yes, thank you. I gather it is a while since he has seen you.’
She had been avoiding Will and his kindness, afraid that she would humiliate herself and ask him for help, knowing that once he realised in what straits the Langleys found themselves he would feel honour-bound to bail them out.
‘He has been very kind,’ she murmured. ‘You have been in London since—’
‘Since the funeral. Yes. I was offered a senior post with the Company, one that is based at East India House in Leadenhall Street. The hard work helped at first. Since then I have found it fascinating.’
‘I am delighted for you,’ Sophia said politely, wondering what this had to do with her, but glad that he was recovering from the tragedy. ‘How gratifying that your talents have been recognised.’ This was not the gangling youth she remembered hitting a cricket ball all round the lawns of the Hall, nor the intense young man setting out to seek his fortune in India.
‘Thank you. I have taken a house in Half Moon Street—a fashionable area by St James’s Park.’
‘Indeed?’
‘And now I have concluded that there is one thing missing from my new life.’ He was looking out over the tangled shrubbery, but she sensed his mind was not on horticulture or even on the unkempt surroundings.
‘Hmm?’ she prompted as encouragingly as she knew how.
‘A wife.’ Callum Chatterton swivelled round and faced her, his air of abstraction quite gone.
‘A wife?’ Sophia found herself caught by his eyes, eyes that seemed now to see nothing but her.
‘A wife. I wondered if you would do me the honour, Sophia?’
Chapter Two
‘Me?’ Sophia’s surprise was almost comical. For a moment she gaped at him and Cal wondered whether he had made a mistake and she was not the intelligent and poised young woman he had thought six months ago. Then she shut her mouth—her wide and generous mouth—thought for a moment and asked, ‘Why should you wish to marry me, Mr Chatterton?’
Ah, yes, the intelligence was there, and the courage. Her chin had come up; she was taken aback, almost alarmed by his unexpected proposal, but she was not going to allow him to fluster her. He recalled the first time he had seen her after he had returned home. He had been half-drowned, battered, bruised, hoarse with shouting through the long, desperate night for the brother whom the sea had taken, and he had been in no state to be gentle with her.
Sophia had fainted when he’d told her the news, but when she had recovered her senses she had been calm, undemanding and firm with her mother who was indulging in hysterics. From the depths of his own misery Cal had found himself unable to care very much about Sophia and her feelings, only to be grateful for her restraint and the way she retreated behind the mask of the civilised things that one says and does to somehow hold the wild expressions of grief at bay.
He told her a little of what had happened and he had been unprepared for the generosity of her response when she could well be blaming him for failing to save her betrothed.
‘I was on the deck, Daniel was in one of the boats, helping the women down,’ he had explained. ‘A great wave took it. I could not find him.’
‘You went in? You tried to save him?’ she had asked in horror. In her wide eyes he saw again images of tumultuous seas, of darkness and rocks, and heard rending timber and screams.
‘Of course.’ Cal recalled staring at her blankly. ‘Of course I did.’
‘Please.’ She had reached out and touched his cheek, her fingers burning hot against the chill of his skin. ‘You must get warm or you will take a fever.’ Weeks later, as the deep cold inside him had begun to thaw, he had recalled that touch, her instinct to comfort and nurture instead of demanding comfort herself.
Other memories had come back as he learned to live with his loss and to remember Dan. He had nagged his brother to remake his will when he was putting his own affairs in order and Dan had been evasive. He would get round to it, he promised. Nothing was going to happen to him, after all. He had shrugged off all the illnesses that India could throw at a man, had missed being bitten, stung, eaten or mauled by the assorted lethal wildlife—what was Cal worrying about? Besides, if anything did happen, his twin would look after Sophia, he knew that.
‘Yes, of course,’ Cal had agreed. ‘I would care for her as though she were my own, I swear it. But even so—’ But Dan had not done anything about his will and then, when it had come to it, Cal had done nothing to help Sophia. He had been sunk in grief and shock and with a black hole where the consciousness of his twin had been for his entire life. As he recovered that promise came back, niggling at his conscience.
He pulled himself back to the present and the young woman in her drab gown who watched him from behind wary blue eyes. She had grown and filled out from the scrap of a girl he remembered almost ten years ago, but she was still too slender, too pale.
‘I found myself looking forward for the first time in months and I thought it time I married. I am almost twenty-eight, I have estates now to consider as well as a career that involves entertaining. A wife seemed … logical.’ Dull, perhaps, after the high-fliers who had been warming his bed and helping fill the long night hours when he would prefer not to sleep, and certainly not to dream.
‘I can see that,’ Sophia said, a trifle tartly. ‘But why me? You are the brother of an earl, you are in London where you may meet any number of eligible young ladies who, if you will pardon my frankness, will have several more childbearing years ahead of them than I have. I assume an heir is one of your considerations when you talk about estates?’
He liked the sharpness, her honesty, and answered in kind. ‘I had not thought of a long engagement. We could, as it were, make up some lost time.’ She caught his meaning, blushed, but her mouth twitched. Sophia possessed a sense of humour, then.
‘I repeat,’ she persisted with a frown of reproof, ‘why should you want to marry me? The Season might be over, but I cannot believe you could not find a wife in London if you are minded to marry soon.’
‘I think you would be very suitable. And I feel it my duty,’ he stated. ‘Daniel would expect it. I promised to look after you and I have neglected that in my own grief.’ This was the woman Dan had once loved, however carelessly.
‘What?’ Sophia interjected. ‘No! It was a tragedy and an accident and no one owes me anything. And I do not expect anything either—least of all to marry you, Callum Chatterton. You never showed the slightest interest in me when we were younger.’
Sophia got to her feet, her cheeks flaming, a martial glint in her eye. Cal stood too, but made no move to touch her. She was mortified, he could see, and hurt pride was making her angry. Animation improved her looks, he thought, even as he tried to repair the damage of his bald statement.
‘I am proposing a … shall we call it a marriage of convenience?’
‘It is very noble of you,’ she said. And he felt a momentary flicker of admiration for the way she controlled herself. She had dignity as well as courage, he thought and then saw her expression waver into uncertainty. ‘Let me understand. Do you mean that you would not want to … I mean, that you would not expect to share my bed?’
‘Why, certainly I would want to share your bed and make love to you in it, Sophia.’ The blue eyes widened. Was she completely unaroused, completely innocent? How very interesting. And stimulating. He had so far been seeking the company of the skilled and the sophisticated, but an innocent wife would be just as distracting provided the essential sensuality was there.
She recovered her composure with visible effort. ‘Forgive me if I cannot find it in myself to accept such a flattering offer.’
‘I think you have more common sense than to accept some romantic flummery from me,’ he said drily. ‘I could protest feelings that we both know I do not have, any more than I expect them from you. But let us be frank. I assume you have not taken some vow of chastity.’ The haughty look became a frown. ‘So who will you marry now? Some country squire? The curate? Instead you could be the sister-in-law of an earl and have the comfortable life I will give you.’
‘Let us leave aside what I might gain from such a match,’ Sophia said, her back turned to him as she stared out over the untidy garden. ‘What possible benefit could it be to you to marry a woman of my age without influence or wealth, other than to salve your conscience? Any wife will warm your bed as well as I.’
He should stop teasing her. ‘I would gain a wife with elegance of manner, intelligence, courage and poise,’ Cal said. Her cheek, all he could see of her face, became peony pink. He was laying it on rather thick—she hardly looked elegant in that gown. ‘I would have the satisfaction of knowing I have done as my twin would have wished.’ He hesitated, then decided that he owed her frankness, if nothing else.
‘I do not look for a love match. If I am to be honest, I do not think myself capable of that kind of total emotional commitment any longer. I feel, since the wreck, that part of me has been ripped away. You knew us both once, you showed some understanding of how a twin must feel—I wonder if you can comprehend that now I do not think I will ever be able to love anyone wholeheartedly again. Not my brother, and not a woman.’
Sophia moved away, her movements jerky, and came to rest with one hand grasping the frame of the door. She did not speak.
‘With you, with your maturity and our shared loss, I can hope for some acceptance of that. I am not sure I can ask it of some young girl looking for first love.’ Still she did not reply. How much was he wounding her by speaking of Dan and her lost dreams?
He thought of her faint when she had heard the news. For nine years she had clung to the promises she had made. She had been faithful and loyal, just as she had sworn that day in 1799 when he had tried so clumsily to put a stop to the betrothal that had seemed premature and ill founded. He had not sensed then any deep emotional involvement from his twin and the passing years had proved him right.
Dan should have come back and married Sophia years ago, even if he hadn’t wanted to risk her health out in India. She’d have had status, the estate, probably children by now, if he had only come home when he had had the opportunity. There was no excuse, not really. There had only been Dan’s desire to have his freedom and his total lack of responsibility towards anyone but Callum. And Cal could have made him come back and do his duty, and he knew he had not because it was good to have his brother beside him and not to have to share him with a wife and children.
He would marry Sophia if she would have him, because that was the right thing to do and it was convenient for him, but he did not want to have to agonise over her feelings. It had been hard enough dealing with his own grief and the aching void where Dan should have been.
But soon he must find a wife and settle down. Besides anything else there were two estates to consider, the one that was in trust for him until he married or reached thirty and the one that had been Dan’s on the same terms and which was now his, too. He felt depressed and weary at the thought of setting out to find a wife, courting a woman, pretending to love a woman. So much simpler to marry Sophia and solve all their problems.
It would help if he could feel any positive emotions, but they seemed to have deserted him, leaving only a black, aching hole even now, six months later. And so had empathy. He felt his brother Will’s pain at a distance; Sophia’s, hardly at all. And yet in all other ways he was back to normal. He worked hard, his brain was as sharp as ever, he had ambition, he planned for the future, he welcomed the company of friends and colleagues. He was eating properly, looking after himself and creating a home, not lurking in bachelor lodgings.
Sophia moved again, as though she checked herself from flight, and the sunlight caught the shine of her hair, outlined her figure vaguely through her thin skirts. She turned and looked at him and he saw a speculation and awareness that had not been there before. Cal felt a sudden heaviness in his groin, a stirring in his blood.
‘Well, Sophia?’ He moved closer to her until the hem of her skirts brushed the toes of his boots. ‘Shall we fix a date?’
‘Mr Chatterton—Callum—I cannot marry you.’ Sophia realised there was nothing else she could think of to say. She could not argue with his sense of duty, with his desire to fulfil a promise to his twin. But how could she accept him when it was her own folly that had allowed the betrothal to endure? Daniel could not have broken it off, not as a gentleman.
‘I realise that your feelings for Daniel might make this somewhat awkward,’ Callum continued, as dispassionately as though he was discussing the price of tea. ‘However, I will endeavour to make you a good husband. I am certain now that I will be remaining in England, which will relieve your mind on the score of either the unhealthy climate or the likelihood of long separations.’
In love with Daniel? She blinked at Callum, distracted from his ruthlessly practical catalogue. Of course, how could he know how inconstant I had been? I swore to him, so long ago, that I would always love Daniel. What else is he to assume? Appalled, Sophia realised that she could hardly disabuse him of the notion now; it would be dreadful to announce that she did not love her betrothed when Callum’s loss was still so raw.
He was saying something else. She pulled her attention back with an effort. ‘… a sensible and amiable wife and you require a husband. We could marry quietly by licence.’
‘You appear to have thought it all through very thoroughly,’ Sophia said, her mouth dry. ‘How efficient. I must confess I do not feel much inclined to be sensible, let alone amiable, just now. As for what the intelligent thing to do might be, I have no idea.’
Screaming seemed tempting. You require a husband, indeed! Certainly she did; she lay awake in the panicky small hours thinking just that thing and wondering how they would manage when their creditors woke up to the fact that there was no well-connected male in her future to pay the bills. It would be a long while before the pittance she could earn as a governess or a put-upon companion would pay off the debts. But to marry a man who was proposing out of a chilly sense of duty …
‘I cannot marry you simply because you have a kindly im pulse.’
‘I do not commit to matters of importance, of honour, on an impulse.’ His mouth curved into something that was almost a smile.
‘Certainly not a kindly one,’ she tossed back at him.
‘I am not much given to impulse,’ Callum confessed, and she became aware of his eyes on her body, assessing her.
He was so certain that she would do what he said. Sophia bit the inside of her lip to stop herself flaring up. It was ungrateful, but she was the only one who would decide what she was going to do. ‘My feelings for your brother do not concern you?’
‘No.’ He did not appear willing to expand on that. Perhaps, because he felt nothing for her, he did not care if she still loved another man. It argued that he did not see marriage as involving any exchange of deep feeling, of passion beyond the physical.
She averted her eyes from his broad shoulders and long legs and the distracting prospect of physical passion. He was an attractive man. That was not a good reason for making a marriage, especially as he would hardly be entertaining the same feelings of physical attraction for her. A wife was a warm body in a bed who would perform her marital duties and produce children. Apparently she passed muster, even if she did not drive him wild with desire.
This was as bad as the prospect of marrying Daniel had become, only colder. Sophia reminded herself that Callum was, by business and training, a trader. He was approaching marriage, she supposed, in the same way as any other contract, rationally and with good sense.
‘Financially there are problems, are there not?’ he asked.
She had to be honest about that, never mind how her pride revolted. ‘Yes. There are debts, more than we can cope with any more. I had intended to apply for a post as a governess or perhaps a companion.’
‘I expected that,’ Callum said. ‘I had not realised it was quite that bad, however. Be assured that I will take care of all of it.’
She would get by far the better part of this bargain, for she would bring Callum nothing but herself and she could not pretend that she was much of a bargain. This was the answer to her prayers. Why, then, was every fibre of her being revolting against it? It was an excellent match and any well-bred and delicately brought-up young woman would expect nothing more than what Callum was offering her. Most would snatch at it, deeply grateful to have a second chance.
But she was not anyone else, she was herself and she ached for a meeting of minds and for companionship and for love. Her heart told her to refuse, politely and firmly and put an end to this humiliation, but her head held her back from an irrevocable decision.
‘I must think about it,’ she found herself saying.
‘What is there to think about?’ Callum seemed genuinely baffled by her prevarication. ‘Is it your mother? You must have planned for her future when Dan returned. Surely there is a relative who would make a congenial companion for her.’
‘Well, yes, Cousin Lettice would be delighted to move here, it was always the intention.’
He nodded. ‘Excellent.’
‘How can you not mind that I was betrothed to your brother?’ She stretched out her hands as if she could somehow reach him through the glass wall of practicality he was erecting between them. ‘Would I not remind you of Daniel?’
Callum stared at her hands without taking them. ‘I have told you how I feel. I have come through the grief and I do hope I would not be so foolish as to be jealous of your feelings for him,’ he said eventually. ‘If you tell me that you cannot marry me because of those feelings …’ He left the sentence hanging. Her escape route.
But it would be a lie and the escape would be into deeper debt, misery for herself and Mama, difficulty for Mark. Sophia shook her head. ‘No, it is not that. I know he is … I have accepted that he is gone. It is just that this is so sudden, so unexpected. I need time.’
‘Time is not on your side. It is not as though you are a widow who has children already,’ Callum said with such flat practicality that it did not hit her until several seconds later that he was warning her that she was letting her only chance of motherhood slip by. ‘It will help you decide if you saw where you will be living. There is the town house, of course, but there are also two estates to choose from for when we are out of London. We could drive over and see them together and decide which to live in and which house to rent out.’
‘Choose?’ Everything was going too fast. ‘But Long Welling was always yours, was it not?’
‘It was managed by my father and then by Will. I have been in India, remember, and in London for six months. I have no great attachment to it and both houses are vacant at the moment.’
The house where she would live with this man. An insidious little voice was murmuring that Callum’s arms would be strong around her body and that he would always stand by her. She could experience physical passion at last. He would give her children. Security. But was it right?
‘You need time to think it over,’ he said and she realised he had hat, gloves and whip in his hands. She had been so deep in her thoughts that she had not noticed him move. ‘I will return tomorrow morning. Goodbye, Sophia.’
‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘Callum—’
‘Of course, how remiss of me.’ He bent his head and kissed her, firmly but fleetingly, on the mouth. ‘Is that what you wanted?’
‘I don’t know.’ Sophia stared at Callum, somehow managing not to run her tongue over her lips to taste him. ‘I have no idea what I want. What I ought to want. You have turned my world upside down.’
‘Excellent.’ He strode away across the lawn without looking back.
Sophia gave way to the urge to lick her lips. There was a faint trace of something alien and disturbing overlain with coffee. Excellent? ‘Oh, you stubborn, impossible man! Were you listening to me at all?’
Chapter Three
Sophia sat in the front parlour the next morning and tried to work through a muddle of thoughts. There was resentment at the way that Callum simply made assumptions about what was best for her—and the fact that he was doubtless right did not help. There was respect for his sense of duty and loyalty to Daniel and the nagging consciousness that her own duty to her family lay in making a good marriage. This marriage.
If only they had a little money and she had room to think. Her mind kept running over and over the lack of money like a dog in a turn-spit wheel. Tradesmen had been understanding about the settlement of bills since her father’s death, because of her betrothal to a son of the Hall. But for the past six months they had known that was not going to happen. Nor, unless she married well, would her brother have the influence of a great family behind him to help his career. And if she did not marry Callum, who could she marry?
The prospects locally were hardly promising—some yeoman farmers much older than herself, the curate, a widower or two, none of whom had shown any particular interest in her. There was no denying that marriage would widen her world very greatly. Mama would be happier if she was well married.
And there was the uncomfortable awareness that she found Callum Chatterton physically attractive. She could not even summon up the will to feel shocked at this, only a conviction that if he actually tried to make love to her she would be stricken with shyness. Duty and a scarce-understood desire said Marry him. Every emotional fibre of her being, coupled to pride, said, No, not when he has no feelings for me and is only offering out of a sense of duty to a man I had not even the constancy to love until death.
The crunch of gravel under wheels brought her out of her brown study as undecided as when she had drifted into it.
‘Mr Chatterton,’ the maid said and closed the door behind Callum. In buckskin breeches, boots and riding coat he should have looked every inch the English country gentleman. Instead he seemed faintly exotic, dangerous even. Perhaps it was the remnants of the tan and the way it made his hazel eyes seem green. Or perhaps it was the sense of focus about him. He was a hunter and she was the prey: all for her own good, of course.
‘Good morning, Sophia. I have the curricle—shall we drive? It is a pleasant day and we will be more able to say what we mean, perhaps, if we are free from the risk of interruption,’ he said. ‘I thought you would like to see the two houses.’
Don’t be missish, she told herself. She was never going to decide whether to marry this man if they met only to have stilted conversations in the parlour.
‘Very well. I will just go and fetch my hat.’
In the hall she said, ‘I am driving out with Mr Chatterton, Lucy. I do not wish to disturb my mother; please tell her where I am if she enquires. I may not be home for luncheon if Mr Chatterton decides to call in at the Hall on the way back.’
‘Yes, Miss Langley.’ The maid’s eyes were wide with speculation. ‘I’ll take pains not to disturb her.’
Oh dear, now she thinks she is assisting in a love affair. I just wish I did know what this was. Am I wrong to encourage Callum? But I do want to be married, to have children. If the man was someone I could like and respect. If I did not think I was imposing on him to an outrageous extent.
She was weakening, she could feel it. She could certainly respect Callum Chatterton’s achievements. He was intelligent, hard working and courageous. But could she like him? What was he like under the emotionless carapace that seemed only warmed by disturbing flickers of sensuality? Perhaps he was as cold and hard and logical as this all the time. He admitted to finding it hard to feel for other people now. I think I want him. I certainly need him. But perhaps not as a husband.
Callum was standing by the curricle when she came down and there was no groom up behind. It really would be rather fast to drive ten miles to Wellingford with him, even in an open carriage.
‘Is it not acceptable for you to drive with me like this in the country?’ he asked. Apparently her doubts were clear on her face. ‘It would be in India, if the man is approved by the family. Your mother would approve of me, I believe,’ he added with the first hint of a genuine smile Sophia had seen.
‘Yes, she would,’ she agreed, as he helped her up into the seat. ‘Mama would approve of any eligible man who showed an interest in me now, let alone you!’ she added and provoked a small huff of amusement from him. She had been evasive last night when her mother had asked her about Callum’s visit. Mrs Langley had been left, she was guiltily aware, with the impression that he had called briefly to see how Sophia was getting on.
There was so much she was feeling guilty about. If she could only let go and just do her duty … Callum handed her the reins while he walked round to mount on the other side.
‘And, yes, this is a trifle fast, but not so very bad in the country.’ She handed the reins back, taking care not to touch his hands as she did so. She wanted her mind unclouded by the disturbing frisson of physical awareness that brushed her senses when she looked at him—to touch him would be worse. If only she knew what was right.
‘It is certain that you will remain in England?’ she asked as Callum looped the reins and turned on to the road to Wellingford.
‘I was not certain, when we left India, but now the position in London is confirmed. One of the directors was travelling as supercargo and spoke to me at length about my career and the opportunities with the Company. He survived the wreck and I believe I owe much to his influence in gaining this post.’
‘He would not have exerted himself if you did not merit it,’ Sophia said. ‘I am glad you will stay in England. I certainly do not wish to bring up children in the Indian climate; I have heard too many stories of the illnesses they succumb to.’ For a long time she had told herself that was why she had not pressed Daniel about marriage; now she knew it had been an excuse.
‘Ah, we are discussing children now?’ Sophia looked sideways and found Callum was smiling. Faintly, it was true. She realised she was staring at his mouth and switched back to looking straight ahead. ‘Should I take that as a promising sign?’
‘Not necessarily,’ she said, wary that this was going too fast again. ‘I am merely considering all aspects of your proposal.’
‘But if you are convinced I am not returning to India you will marry me and if you think I might go back, you will not have me.’
‘Callum Chatterton, you are harassing me! I said no such thing and this is not a matter to be bargained over.’
‘Very well, let me be clear then. I need an heir; I would like several children, in fact. But I would not expect you to live in India and certainly not bring up a family there.’
‘And I would not wish to spend long periods separated from my husband.’
‘Flattering,’ he remarked and she jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow, suddenly the small girl again.
‘I did not mean that!’
‘I can assure you, that eventuality is highly unlikely to occur.’ When she did not reply he added, ‘I am prepared to promise you that I will not take a posting in the Far East again without your express approval. You see how convinced I am that you will suit me?’
‘Why, thank you, sir,’ Sophia muttered and caught sight of that elusive smile again. But would you suit me? Does that really matter?
‘Here is the turning to Wellingford village.’
‘And Daniel’s estate,’ Sophia said, pulling herself together. This is where she would have lived if she had married Daniel.
‘Yes. It is years since I’ve been there. I have no idea why Grandmama left this one to Dan and the other to me. She used to reside here and Great-Aunt Dorothea had Long Welling. There have been tenants in until recently, so they should both be in good repair, but as for decoration, I have no idea.’
‘Paint and fabrics are easily dealt with. The question is, which feels best to you.’ But her heart was beating a little faster at the prospect. A home of her own, finally. I am deciding on marrying a man, not a house, she reminded herself. There were any number of changes one could make to a house, but not to a grown man, not one as single-minded and stubborn as Callum Chatterton. But she must stop thinking about this as a marriage of love, or even affection. This would be a marriage of convenience with most of the convenience on her side. It would be up to her to accommodate herself to him, not the other way around.
‘There.’ Callum reined in the pair at the crest of a small hill. The valley opened up before them, green and lush; the fields were interspersed with coppices and a larger beech wood crowned the opposite hill. Smoke rose from the chimneys of the village and on the slope directly across from them sat a neat brick house.
‘What do you think?’
‘It looks smug,’ Sophia said instantly, startled out of her reverie by the force of her reaction. ‘So symmetrical and tidy.’ Two windows either side of the front door, five on the floor above, five peeking out from the roof behind the parapet. The drive swept round at the front in a perfect circle with a central flower bed. Service buildings flanked the house in carefully balanced order on either side. It was like a doll’s house or a child’s drawing.
‘And that is wrong?’ Callum was studying it with his head on one side. ‘Everything looks so different after India, I am still not used to it. Except the Hall, of course—that just feels like home.’
‘Shall we look at this one inside?’
‘Isn’t that rather shocking?’ Callum kept his face perfectly straight, but she guessed he was teasing her.
‘I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,’ she said. ‘Driving around in the curricle is rather fast, going into an empty house alone with a man is shocking. But I have come this far; I may as well give you my opinion on the inside as well if you think it would help you make a decision about the house. Your house.’
Callum moved the horses into a walk again and they wended their way down the hill, along the village street where they were much stared at, and up the opposite slope to the gates.
Close to, the air of immaculate formality was reduced somewhat by a rather ragged garden, a drive in need of weeding and dull window glass. Callum drove round to the deserted stables, tied up the pair and offered her his arm as they walked back to the front door. ‘The last tenants left two months ago,’ he said. ‘Will did not re-let because he knew I’d want a free choice.’
‘This feels like intruding,’ Sophia said with a shiver as they stood in the front hall. ‘I half-expect someone to appear and demand to know what we are doing.’
‘Yes.’ Callum threw open the doors on either side. ‘Odd, is it not? When Grandmama lived here it always seemed a friendly enough place. The rooms are well proportioned and the view good.’
Sophia followed him. ‘I suppose we should look at the kitchens and servants’ quarters.’
Those proved to be perfectly satisfactory. Callum did not, to her relief, suggest they look at the bedrooms. ‘It is a very good house,’ Sophia said as they returned to the front door.
‘And you do not like it.’
‘It is not for me to say,’ she responded, earning a sideways look from those penetrating hazel eyes. ‘Do you?’
‘Not much. It is … dull. I cannot imagine us living here.’
‘What are houses in India like?’ Sophia asked, steering the conversation away from marriage as they went back to the stables.
‘The Europeans live in single-storied houses called bungalows, with a wide and shady veranda around the sides. You spend a lot of time out on the veranda. When I was holding court I would sit there and the petitioners would assemble in the courtyard in front. In the evening that is where we would all sit and talk and drink.
‘There are wide windows covered with slatted shutters to let in the breeze, and each room has a big fan in the ceiling that is moved by the punkah-wahllah, a man who sits outside in the passageway and pulls the string with his toe. The bathroom has a door to the outside so the water carrier can come and fill up the tanks and take away the waste. The kitchens are separate because of the heat and the risk of fire. Servants are very cheap so one becomes lazy easily,’ he added.
‘How?’ Sophia asked. Callum, she thought, would not take to a life of indolence. Now, recovered physically from his ordeal, he gave her the sense of suppressed energy. Or perhaps it was simply impatience with her indecision.
‘Oh, you could be carried everywhere if you wanted. You reach out for your glass and someone puts it into your hand. You forget something and a bearer scurries off to get it the moment you frown, apologising as though it was his fault and not yours. Some of the mem-sahibs—the European wives—had constant battles with their cooks, wanting them to make English dishes. If you get used to Indian food it is much easier.’
‘Would you want Indian food in England?’ she asked, seized with trepidation at the thought of explaining dishes she did not understand to a temperamental English cook or, worse, a French one. Stop thinking like that! It is not my problem. Not yet.
‘I could always employ an Indian cook, I suppose,’ he said.
‘Of course,’ she said, politely, and then saw the amusement in his eyes. ‘You are teasing me, are you not? Seeing how far I would be prepared to accommodate your whims.’
‘Whims? A man’s dinner table is almost the most important priority.’
‘What is more important?’ Sophia asked. ‘No, do not answer that! I walked right into it.’
‘I cannot imagine what you mean.’ Callum sounded all innocence. But the man had a sense of humour, thank heavens, even if he was using it to bait her with.
Sophia tried to recall the brothers nine years ago. Daniel was usually laughing and joking. He rarely took anything seriously, except when they were together. Callum, as he had grown up, had become quieter, more intense. More private, she supposed. Or perhaps he was simply being tactful and not intruding on his twin’s courtship.
At least, he had kept out of it until that last day when he had tried to stop her tying herself to Daniel. Why had he done that? At the time she had been too hurt and indignant to puzzle over it, too distressed at Daniel’s departure to worry about what Callum thought. He had been perceptive, it seemed, and had had his twin’s best interests at heart. The love had not lasted—at least, not on her part. She could not guess at Daniel’s feelings.
She brought her mind back to the present and found Callum was taking a back lane through the woods. ‘This is charming. And mysterious,’ she added as they came out of sunlight into shade. The great beeches soared on either side; their smooth grey trunks rose like pillars in an outdoor cathedral, and the tracks that led off on either side wound their way deep into the wood.
‘I came this back way because I wanted to see if the house is still as I remember it, and this is the way we came when I was a child,’ Callum said. ‘You are going to love it or hate it, I think. It is not possible to be indifferent.’
The lane became a track, swung round to the right and opened up into a wide clearing. To the left there were views over the valley and a decent metalled carriage drive heading off to the valley road. To the right stood the house. Or, rather, there it grew, for it was hard not to think about it as anything but organic, rooted in the earth. It was built mainly of soft pinkish-red brick with a section of white stone that looked as though it might have been robbed from a ruined castle, and here and there were the signs of an oak frame, twisted with age. The roof was of clay tiles, moss-covered and irregular, and chimneys sprouted in profusion.
‘I love it.’ Sophia stared, enchanted, not realising that she had put out her hand until she found she had covered Callum’s bare fingers. He did not move away, and after a moment he curled his fingers into hers. She wished she was not wearing gloves, could feel the texture of his skin, whether he was cold or warm, sense his pulse. She gave his fingers a little squeeze, needing to share the moment.
‘I like it, too. I have only a vague recollection of it; we did not come here very often, for Great-Aunt had fallen out with Grandmama and was a trifle eccentric.’ He freed his fingers and jumped down to tie the reins to a branch. ‘Shall we see if it is as welcoming inside?’
‘You feel it? The welcome?’ That was good: they seemed to be in agreement over it. I am thinking as though I have decided. Too fast … I need more time. He is a stranger after all these years.
Callum reached to lift her from the seat, his hands hard at her waist, and she caught her breath as his eyes darkened. He let her down, slowly. Her toes brushed against his boots, her hems must have touched his thighs. Her heart thudded and she was uncertain whether it was more with nerves or desire. ‘I am down now,’ she said after a moment when he still held her.
‘On terra firma?’ His thumbs just brushed the underside of her breasts and a strange aching shiver ran through her.
‘I am not certain I have been on that since you walked back into my life,’ Sophia confessed and Callum laughed and released her.
He opened the door with a huge old key that had been left under a stone by the path and stood aside for her to enter. The house was not musty exactly; rather it smelled of old wood and fabric, faded lavender and the ghost of wax polish and wood smoke. It creaked a little as they stood there.
Somehow it swept away her jittery nerves. ‘I love it,’ Sophia repeated as they stood in the hall. ‘It feels warm, as though it wants to hug us.’ It sounded fanciful as soon as she said it, but Callum did not laugh, only looked at her a trifle quizzically.
‘Perhaps it does. It sounds almost alive. Listen. Like a ship riding at anchor,’ he murmured. ‘Shall we explore?’
They wandered through the old house, drawing back the curtains, peering into cupboards, finding odd flights of stairs that went to one room only, almost falling down the cellar steps.
Sophia caught Callum by the wrist as he peered down the precipitous, dusty steps into the dark beneath. ‘Don’t you dare go down there! Do you remember that day we played hide and seek together at the Hall and I hid in the wine cellar and you and Daniel pretended you didn’t know I was down there and locked the door?’
‘And left you to those great big hairy spiders and the mice and the mouldering skeletons that hung in chains, which is what you accused us of when we relented.’
‘Did I say mouldering skeletons?’ She tugged him firmly back into the kitchen passage and closed the door.
‘No, that’s what you were screaming about when you threw a bottle of Papa’s best crusted port at Dan’s head.’
‘You caught it.’
‘Of course,’ he said and for a moment there was something unspoken, more than just the recollection of a childhood prank. Callum had saved the port, saved his brother from a possibly serious injury and her from the consequences. ‘If you will not let me explore downstairs,’ he said, ‘I dare you to come up to the bedchambers.’
‘Why?’
‘To assess their suitability and condition.’
‘You did not want to look at them at Wellingford,’ she said.
‘We had agreed by then that we did not like the house. There was no point.’ He cocked his head to one side and studied her. ‘Are you suspicious of my motives?’
‘Yes,’ she said frankly.
‘My dear Sophia, if I was intent on seducing you I could do it as well on the drawing-room sofa, the kitchen table or here and now.’
‘You could? Is that not very uncomfortable?’ Disturbing images flitted through her imagination. Callum raised one dark brow and took a step forwards. Sophia threw up both hands. ‘Oh, no, that was not a challenge! Come along then, let us see what is upstairs.’
Finally, they arrived in a great bedchamber dominated by a four-poster of age-blackened carved wood, so high that there was a wooden stool set to help the sleeper climb into bed.
‘Well?’ Callum stood in the middle of the room, hands on hips, and studied her face.
‘I adore it,’ Sophia confessed. ‘I want it. But that is quite irrelevant; I cannot marry a man because I have fallen for his house.’
‘Liking the house is surely on the positive side of the scales. There are other reasons to marry. You would not permit me to attempt to seduce you downstairs, but this is a proper bedchamber and a very comfortable-looking bed.’
‘You are not going to seduce me!’
‘Am I not?’ Callum tossed his hat and gloves on to a chest and came purposefully towards her.
‘You are far too much a gentleman to seduce a virtuous lady,’ Sophia said with all the conviction she could muster.
‘Certainly not one I have no intention of marrying,’ he agreed.
Sophia edged around a stool. ‘But I haven’t said yes yet.’ It came out as an undignified squeak.
‘True. May I not kiss you? Are you quite certain you wouldn’t like to be kissed, Sophia?’
‘Well, yes,’ she said so promptly that he blinked. ‘Now don’t look so shocked! I am curious. Here I am at six and twenty and I have hardly been kissed, certainly not for ten years. The prospect of a good-looking man demonstrating how it is done properly is undeniably intriguing.’
‘Are you always so honest?’
‘I hope so.’ Of course, to allow Callum to kiss her when they were not even betrothed was a shocking and unwise thing to do, but she had been wanting to kiss him for the past hour at least, despite that.
Partly it was curiosity, as she had admitted. But mainly it was the good-looking gentleman himself. He annoyed her, he teased her and she sensed a deep inner darkness in him that he was hiding and showed no signs of wanting to share. On the other hand he would, she was certain, make her a good husband and, when she was not feeling like she wanted to shake him, she found him curiously easy to get along with. Perhaps it was simply the shadow of their childhood acquaintance.
Sophia bit her lip and looked at him standing there patiently for her to make up her mind. As patient as a cat at a mouse hole, she thought.
‘Shall we get rid of that bonnet?’ She began to untie the bow, her fingers all thumbs. ‘If you are considering marriage, you must expect your husband to want to kiss you,’ Callum remarked. Sophia turned her head away, unable to think of a single sensible thing to say. She was beginning to find her focus was oddly blurred, as if she might be coming down with a fever, and it was difficult to read his face. ‘But, if this is making you uncomfortable …’
‘No. I would like to be kissed, I think,’ Sophia said, placing her hat beside his on the chest. It was only a kiss, after all. Another fast thing to be doing, but hardly something to be frightened of. It was ridiculous, at her age, never to have been kissed properly. ‘But that’s all.’
‘I thought you might say that,’ Callum said. She had no time to wonder whether that was a joke or whether he was deadly serious before he pulled her into his arms.
Chapter Four
It was a disturbingly pleasant sensation, being held by Callum Chatterton. Part of her was shocked at being so intimately close to a man, but it was hard to summon the appropriate outrage when she was being held fast against his body and he was tipping up her chin to look down into her face. After all, she had asked for this.
He was very good-looking, even more so close up. Now she could study the fine lines of his lips, the subtle colours in his hazel eyes, the uncompromising masculinity of his bone structure. He was not a pretty youth, he was a man, complete with a bump on his nose which looked like a break, several small scars and faintly tanned skin that gave him a most exotic air.
Callum let her study him, his face as serious as hers must be, then he bent his head and took her mouth. Sophia almost jumped at the intrusion of his tongue between her lips, the pressure that opened them to him. Was this normal? It felt indecently intimate. She quivered and his arm tightened around her, supporting her, almost, not quite, constraining her. He felt very determined.
She could taste him, which was shocking. And she could smell him, which was even more so. He was clean, of course, but under the smell of ironed linen and good soap there was something dangerous and faintly musky, overlain by spice and sandalwood.
He was holding her very firmly, which might have been frightening. Sophia flirted for a moment with a feeling of alarm, the instinct to struggle, then let herself relax into Callum’s hold. He was too strong to fight. His mouth was insistent now and she let him do as he wished, and, increasingly, what she wished, as her tongue learned to play with his.
It made her body feel most strange. There was an ache, low down, and the urge to mould herself tightly against him there as though that would ease it. She realised that his body was hard against her belly and that was … worrying. It made the ache worse and so did pressing against him. Then Callum’s hand cupped her breast and he began to play with her nipple through the fabric of her bodice and the ache turned into a stab of sensation that had her whimpering into his mouth.
This is far more than I expected. Far more. But it was a fleeting thought, easily dismissed. This was the man she was going to … no, might marry. She must learn to respond to his lovemaking. Then the kiss deepened, became more demanding, and Sophia lost awareness of everything except the sensation that was singing through her, the strength of Callum’s hold, the urgency of their bodies. So this was proper kissing … She was drowning. It was overwhelming.
‘Sophia?’
‘Oh.’ Callum had stopped kissing her. How long had she been standing there, her brain reeling, her heart pounding and her senses quite disordered? What must he think of her? She wanted to run and hide, from herself as much as him.
‘Have you ever been kissed before?’
She blinked and he came into focus. He looked pleased with himself and faintly amused. Amused by her old-maidish ignorance, she supposed.
‘Not like that, no.’ It seemed she could articulate, at least.
‘Dan never—’
‘Certainly not. We kissed … but it was different. We kissed a little and held hands. He put his arms around me. He touched my … my breasts once.’ She felt her cheeks getting hot. She wanted Callum to kiss her again, to touch her. And he knew it. He must be feeling sorry for her, poor frustrated spinster that she was.
Gradually her pulse calmed and she felt her colour rising under that steady gaze. She had very little experience of men, but she knew he was aroused. That was only to be expected, she supposed. But had he thought she was so … so desperate? Frustrated? Potentially wanton that she needed to be kissed until her legs trembled?
She felt the anger sweep through her and know it was for herself, not really for him. She had been frustrated and she had not realised. She had been desperate for a man’s caresses. What might she have done if he had not stopped—or would the apprehension that was trembling just under the confused desire have made her flee?
‘Are you all right?’
‘No,’ Sophia said. ‘No, I do not think I am all right. What have you done to me?’
‘Kissed you,’ he said. ‘There is some basic attraction between us, I think.’ From the way he smiled he seemed to find that amusing. ‘Sophia, that was passion, that is all.’
‘Very basic,’ she snapped. ‘I am obviously far more ignorant and innocent than the women you are used to associating with,’ she added bitterly. ‘I did not want passion! I only wanted a kiss in a decent manner. There was no need to virtually ravish me,’ she hissed and slapped him, hard, right across his handsome face. She might not be heavy, but she was fit and tall and she put a great deal of feeling into the blow. It rocked him back on his heels, she was pleased to see.
Callum lifted one hand to his face and touched his cheek with his fingertips. ‘A decent manner? That was the sort of kiss that lovers exchange. The sort of kiss married couples exchange. If I had wanted to ravish you, believe me, we would be on that bed by now.’
Bereft of words, Sophia turned and walked down the stairs and out into the sunlight. And now she was going to have to sit beside Callum for half an hour, so close that she could feel the heat of his body next to hers and all the while he would be smirking with male superiority over reducing an ignorant spinster to such a pitiful puddle of need.
The horses looked up and whickered softly at the slam of the front door and she stared at them in sudden speculation. Perhaps she was not trapped here after all. She could drive a gig with one horse. How much more difficult was it to drive a pair? These had been well exercised and seemed biddable enough.
She ran across the clearing, untied the reins and climbed up on to the high seat. It took a moment to sort out two pairs of reins, but she had been watching Callum’s hands as he drove and she found the knack of it.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ He had come out at last, but there was the width of the clearing between them now. ‘Sophia!’
‘Get up.’ Sophia clicked her tongue and the pair responded as Callum began to run. She slapped the reins down and they broke into a trot, then a canter. As the carriage swayed up the rutted track she heard a shout behind her, but by now she was too concerned with not overturning the curricle to heed him.
The track sloped uphill, which helped, and she had the pair steady by the time it turned on to the road. They settled into a walk again and she did not try for more speed. As it was, the instinct to hang on to the side of the vehicle with her free hand was hard to fight.
But the pair’s docility calmed her. It left her with nothing to do but brood on what had just happened. How could he? Why did he not ask? But he did, in a way, a small voice cut into her tumbling, angry thoughts. He asked to kiss me, it was not his fault that I was so shamefully carried away by it. I gave myself up to his kisses far too easily. I did say I agreed.
She managed a wry smile. Now she knew something about herself that was a revelation. She had felt physical desire and she had also been frightened by the force of it, the sheer physical power of him. His brother had never made her feel like this, needy and shy and confused and almost out of control of where her passions might take her. Memories of Daniel had not made her want to moan with frustration. The gentlemen she encountered at the modest country gatherings had never tempted her in the slightest, she admitted as she negotiated the village street and a flock of sheep. Her body kept murmuring that it expected more. Sophia tried not to listen to it. More meant surrendering everything to Callum Chatterton.
‘Confound the woman.’ Cal stopped at the top of the hill and surveyed the lane down to the village; it was mercifully free of wrecked carriages. The breath rasped in his lungs from running for a mile, but he took a grim satisfaction that he was not panting. He had dragged himself from the lethargy of grief and had thrown himself into physical activity, those past months in London. Boxing, fencing, riding. Sex. They had all helped heal him, helped bring some balance back as well as strengthening his body.
He surveyed the road. If Sophia had got this far, then she was probably sufficiently in control to get home safely. He had chosen steady horses so he could concentrate on her and they had been well exercised. Now he should stop worrying that she had broken her neck and face the fact that he had badly mishandled that kiss. She truly was an innocent and he had shocked her, not so much by what he had done, but by the reactions he had provoked in her.
He had not set out to shock her, Cal told himself as he strode down the hill and into the inn yard. He had intended to kiss her, with restraint, and convince her that marriage to him was nothing to be afraid of. And then she had quivered in his arms and he had sensed the innocent natural passion and sensuality so he had given a mental shrug and found himself taking, demanding, far more than he should.
Sophia’s total surrender in his arms would be flattering if it were not for the fact that she had probably simply been overwhelmed by the novelty of it all. And now the physical desires he had been suppressing when he was near her were all on the surface again. The taste of a woman, the feel of her in his arms, was as powerful as a drug. No, not just a woman. This woman. He wanted Sophia Langley very badly indeed.
‘ Anari murkha,’ he muttered in Hindi. ‘Worse than a fool.’
‘Sir? Sorry, sir.’ An ostler emerged from the stables.
‘Not you.’ Cal unclenched his teeth and tried for a more pleasant tone. ‘I require a horse to get to Flamborough Hall; I’ll have a groom bring it back later today.’
Having to deal with a suspicious ostler who could not understand why a gentleman should arrive sweaty, horseless and without his card case or more than a crown in his pocket, and then riding a slug of a nag home, did nothing to improve Cal’s mood.
He had tried to be honest with her. He could not find it in himself to love, to risk caring so deeply, ever again. Life was too uncertain—how could he cope if he allowed himself to feel for her and then lost her?
Did she understand the difference between physical passion and love? He did not want to hurt her, break her heart all over again. And yet … An errant smile curled the corner of his mouth as he thought of Sophia’s reaction to his kisses and caresses. She had felt glorious in his arms, despite her inexperience.
He was still musing on that as he rode up to the front of the Hall and tossed the reins to the groom who ran forwards to take them. ‘This belongs to the Black Swan in Long Welling. Have someone take it back at once, will you?’
‘Yes, sir. Miss Langley called with the curricle, sir. Wilkins drove her home.’
‘She has won her wager, then,’ Cal said lightly. ‘Most improper. You and Wilkins won’t speak of it, I trust.’
He strolled into Will’s study, his mind full of interesting memories which his body, relaxed by vigorous exercise, was eagerly endorsing.
‘There you are! How did it go?’ His elder brother tossed down his pen and looked up, his expression lightening. ‘You look better—so much colour in your face. Sophia said yes, then?’ Will had been enthusiastic when Cal had returned to the Hall and told him of his intention to marry Sophia. Cal suspected that he had been worried about the Langleys, but had been unable to penetrate their polite reserve.
Cal found himself staring at the triple portrait of the three brothers that hung over the fireplace. There was the man Sophia had loved. He forced his attention back to Will. ‘At first she said, maybe. We went for a drive and decided we did not like Wellingford and we did like Long Welling. Then there was an … incident and now I do not know.’
‘Incident?’ Will’s left brow arched up.
‘Incident,’ Cal repeated, returning a look devoid of expression. ‘She will, however, be marrying me whether she likes it or not.’ He looked away from his brother’s speculative gaze to Dan’s painted smile. Once, just thinking about Daniel had been enough to trigger the instinct that he was there, listening. Now the void inside echoed with emptiness. He stamped down on the feeling.
‘I will let her sleep on it,’ he added. It was tempting to go straight over to the Langleys’ house and have this out, but years of negotiating contracts had taught him to wait and keep the other party guessing. Sophia was angry and embarrassed now; by morning he would wager she would be unsettled.
I need an heir; I would like several children, in fact. He had said that to her and, until the words had left his lips, he had not realised that they would be true at a deeper level than the simple need for a successor. And the way she spoke about children made him think she wanted them, too. He glanced back at the portrait. A wife and children. More hostages to fate.
There was a silence, then Will said, ‘She deserves happiness.’
‘Of course,’ Cal agreed. He would do his best to make her content, just as long as she did not expect love.
Sophia paced up and down the bedchamber floor. I will say no, she thought, sinking down on the end of the bed. It was shameful how he had made her feel—wanton and vulnerable and yearning. And ignorant. She was playing right into Callum Chatterton’s wicked, clever, hands. He had not been shaken to the core by that kiss, that was for sure. Mr Chatterton knew what he was doing. No doubt being bedded by him would be a shattering experience. Not that he was likely to enjoy it much, for she could hardly measure up to the skills of the women who had been his mistresses over the years.
A husband who loved his wife would not be disappointed in her ignorance, would be faithful to her. But this was to be a marriage of convenience and under those circumstances a wife was not supposed to take any notice if her husband took a mistress.
Which was not fair. But then life was not fair and she was not some young girl who could afford to dream of fairytales and princes.
She would refuse to marry him. He affected her too much on too many levels. She desired him, he had demonstrated that clearly enough. There had been moments today when she had simply relaxed and enjoyed being with him. He could make her like him and that would hurt if he would not let her close to him. He reminded her of Daniel and of a long-ago innocent time and of her own guilty conscience.
Sophia threw the window open and leaned her elbows on the sill, shivering a little in the cool night air. It washed over her heated skin and with it came a sobering flood of reality. She could fume and plan and curse Callum Chatterton and her feelings about him all she liked, but her own fate was not the only thing at stake here and her anger over what he had revealed to her of her own nature and desires was almost irrelevant.
Even if she found paid employment she would never earn enough to pay off their debts and keep Mama in genteel comfort. Her mother and brother would have to sell this house, pay off the bills and settle together in whatever humble parish Mark found himself. But if she was married into the Chatterton family, then a whole world of influence would be opened up to her brother, her mother would bask happily in the assurance of status and connection and she could have a family of her own.
The same results might come if she married someone else, of course, but it was a daydream to imagine she could easily find another eligible suitor at the age of twenty-six, shut away in the depths of the country with no dowry and no connections.
She turned back into the room and found her sketching pad and began to draw. A church interior, the long aisle, a challenge in perspective, a man at the far end, waiting at the altar rail, his face a blur.
‘Mrs Callum Chatterton,’ Sophia said to herself. ‘I suppose I had better get used to it.’
Chapter Five
By three o’clock the next day Sophia was hard put not to range up and down the parlour like a caged animal. Where was Callum? There was no sign of him, not so much as a note. Had he changed his mind and decided that after yesterday when she had slapped him, insulted him, stolen his horses and abandoned him in the middle of the woods that she was impossible, duty or no duty?
When the clock struck the half-hour she could stand it no longer. ‘I must go out for a walk, Mama,’ she said. She stuffed the half-hemmed pillowcase that she had been mangling into the workbasket and almost ran out of the room. She snatched up a straw villager hat, jammed it on and was out of the front gate before she could think where she was going, or why.
She stepped straight out into the little lane, aiming for the stile into the field opposite and the footpath through the woods. The sound of hoofbeats only registered when the horse was almost upon her. No one cantered down here—Sophia spun round and the rider wrenched the animal to one side, but not before it caught her with its shoulder and knocked her to the ground.
Sophia sat in the mud at the edge of the lane, her hat over one eye, and tried hard not to scream. It was too much. This was her best afternoon dress, worn in the expectation of receiving a proposal of marriage. Her bottom hurt where she had landed on it, her heart was thudding like a steam engine and she wanted to give in and weep.
Instead she found herself being hauled to her feet by a man who was becoming all too familiar. ‘What the devil do you think you were doing? Don’t you ever look where you are walking? You could have been killed!’ He looked as furious as she felt.
‘You were going too fast, Mr Chatterton,’ Sophia snapped back. ‘Or perhaps you cannot control your horse any better than you control your lusts?’ She pushed her hat straight and glared at him.
Callum stared back, his eyes narrowed, his mouth grim. He looked dangerous, irritated and impatient. ‘Where were you going?’
‘Out. For a walk, if it is any of your business.’ He was still holding her with a big hand wrapped around each arm, just above the elbows. ‘Will you kindly let me go?’
He ignored her demand. ‘Out? When you were expecting me?’
‘Expecting you, Mr Chatterton? Why should I be? I assumed you would not make another assault on my virtue in my own home.’ As she said it she felt something contract inside. Was this really the man who had made her drunk with desire, so incoherent that she could not think? Yes, it was and being this close brought back an unsatisfied ache to add to her discomfort.
‘You should have been expecting me to come and finalise the arrangements for our marriage,’ he said, his voice even. It was infuriating that she could not get him to raise his voice and show some emotion, even if it was anger.
‘Oh. You still intend to marry me?’ Thank goodness.
‘Do you mean to be deliberately provocative, Miss Langley?’
‘Yes,’ she said, lifting her chin. I might have to marry him—I do not have to like him.
‘And what are you attempting to provoke, I wonder?’ he said, his voice silky smooth. A quiver of something that was not quite fear and not quite desire went through her and she knew he sensed it from the way his eyes narrowed and his mouth curved.
‘Some genuine emotion,’ she flashed. ‘Not cold duty, not manipulative lust, not sarcasm. The truth. Do you truly want to marry me or not, Mr Chatterton? I should warn you, I meant it when I said we have considerable debts. And Mama will need support; I do not expect my brother to be able to do that.’
The question hung there in the warm air. Then Callum smiled. ‘Yes, I want to marry you, Sophia. I think it is the right thing to do. I think we can deal well together. I cannot pretend that I love you, that I ever will love you. And I do not ask that you will love me—how can I expect you to be so fickle as to forget Daniel that easily? And, in any case, I suspect love to be a much overrated emotion. That does not mean I will not do my utmost to be a good husband to you. And I understand about the debts.’
She tried to block the surge of guilt at his mention of Daniel. It was easier to think how he had made her feel yesterday. How, shamefully, she wanted him to make her feel today. The desire to touch him, to feel those muscles shifting under her hands, to smell his skin again, to taste him against her lips … She was going to marry him, so those sensual promises would be her reward for doing her duty. She only hoped that if the need to provide for her family had not been so great she would have had the strength to refuse him and that she was not doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons.
She twisted away, but something must have shown in her face, for Callum caught her by the shoulder and turned her back to face him as he untied her mangled bonnet strings and removed the crumpled hat. His hand as he brushed her hair back from her face was gentle and she closed her eyes against the intent in his, breathing in the smell of horse and leather and the spicy scent she was coming to know as Callum.
‘I wish to marry you, Sophia Langley, because I believe it is the best thing for both of us. I also wish to marry you because I promised my brother I would look after you if anything happened to him.
‘And I believe that you know you will marry me and, not surprisingly, you are angry and frustrated at having your hand forced by someone else telling you what is right for you. Especially when that other person was somewhat clumsy yesterday.’
‘I—’ He had summarised it perfectly. So efficient, Callum Chatterton. ‘You have left me very little to say, sir.’
‘That was my intention. You could say, yes,’ he suggested.
‘Yes. Yes, I will marry you.’ Surrendering to the inevitable was an odd sensation. A sort of dizzy relief mixed with fear.
‘Excellent.’ Callum bent his head. She held her breath, closed her eyes. He kissed her, lightly, on her cheek.
Sophia gave a strangled gasp of disappointment, relief, surprise, but his hands still held her upper arms. She opened her eyes to find his face already far enough away for her to read the cynical amusement in his eyes. He knows I want him to kiss me properly. How humiliating.
‘Later, Sophia,’ Callum murmured.
‘You know how to tease, do you not?’ she asked, almost tempted into smiling at his effrontery. There was a noise behind her, some kind of disturbance, but Callum continued to hold her. ‘Sometimes it makes the conclusion sweeter,’ he murmured.
‘Sophia Grace Miranda Langley!’
‘Mama.’ It sank in that she was standing—or perhaps sagging—in a man’s arms in the middle of the public highway, her skirts mired, her hat gone and her hair a tumbled mess.
‘Thank heavens! Oh, how wonderful!’
‘Mama?’
‘Come inside, both of you, before someone comes along.’ Mrs Langley flapped her hands as though rounding up chickens.
Callum stooped to hand her the bedraggled villager hat, tossed his horse’s reins over the gatepost, replaced his own hat—which, of course, he had safely in his hand—on his head and opened the gate for her. Elegant, controlled, serious. If he so much as let his lips twitch she would … No, he would not make such a tactical mistake. No giving way to smug triumph or foolish passion for him.
‘Thank you, Mr Chatterton,’ Sophia said with as much frigid politeness as she could manage.
‘My pleasure, Miss Langley.’
‘I fell in the lane, Mama. I will go and change.’ She whisked upstairs, leaving her suitor to break the news to her mother. With any luck Mama would be over the worst of her transports of joy by the time Sophia rejoined them in the parlour.
‘Here you are at last.’ Her mother beamed at her when she finally came down, some composure restored along with a fresh gown and tidy hair. ‘Well! There are many details to arrange, but I am sure we can work everything out over the next month or so.’
‘I intend us to marry in two weeks’ time,’ Callum said, perfectly polite, perfectly implacable.
‘But that is no time at all!’ Sophia gasped.
‘I would have thought you had already waited long enough,’ he said with a lift of one eyebrow. He swept on without waiting for her reply. ‘I will go to London tomorrow, deal with various pressing Company matters and make sure the house is readied for your arrival. I will speak to the butler and have him find a maid for you. I must do some shopping. Then I shall return to the Hall for the wedding.’
Was there no hesitation, not even for a second? Sophia wondered, watching the hooded eyes, the long fingers lying apparently at rest. This is your marriage you are talking about, she wanted to say to him. Our future. How can you be so calm?
But Callum swept on. ‘The wedding will be by common licence and, under the circumstances, very quiet. Six months has passed, Sophia is in half-mourning, there should be no adverse comment, but I would not wish to attract gossip. I trust two weeks will be sufficient time for your cousin to join you, Mrs Langley? Sophia said that was the plan for a companion.’
‘Yes. Dear Lettice can come at any time; she will be delighted, I know. But Sophia’s bride clothes—’
‘She may shop all she likes in London,’ Callum said. He did not shrug, Sophia thought, but he might just as well have done.
‘So romantic,’ she muttered and saw by the lift of an eyebrow that he had heard her. She raised her voice. ‘And if I do not like the house you have in London, or the servants?’ Of all the arrogant, cold, practical men! ‘I thought we were going to live at Long Welling. I like Long Welling,’ she added rather desperately. Her friends were close, St Albans was a familiar and friendly little town that she knew her way around. How was she going to cope, all alone in London with just a virtual stranger of a husband for company?
‘My business requires me to be in London for the present,’ Callum said in a tone of finality. ‘It will take time for Long Welling to be got into a state to be our country home. If you dislike the London house, we will move to another. If the staff fail to please you, you may dismiss them.’
But we cannot dismiss each other, she thought. Yet would it have been any better with Daniel? He would have been almost as much a stranger as Callum and there would have been the disillusion of acknowledging that their love had evaporated with time and distance. Here, at least, there were no illusions to begin with.
‘You will not object if I do that?’ she asked, curious at this willingness to accommodate her. Obviously his emotions were not at all engaged with any of this, not even the house he had been living in for six months.
‘The home will be your concern.’
Well, that was plain enough. It sounded lonely, though. Oh, pull yourself together, Sophia, she scolded. There will be balls and parties when the Season starts and exhibitions and libraries before then—the whole of London to explore. You will make friends soon enough. She was shaken by yesterday’s experience and today’s fall and her resilience was low, worn down by months of worry, that was all it was.
‘It all sounds wonderful,’ she said with a polite smile. Callum stared back at her, his gaze steady and unreadable under level brows. He made her a slight bow. Acknowledgment of her compliance? A genuine desire to marry her—or just a cynical satisfaction at getting his own way?
Sophia felt a little shiver run through her and the smile stiffened on her lips. Opposite her, the man sitting at his ease in the wing chair lowered his lids over the clear hazel eyes and she realised she could not read his thoughts in the slightest. Then he looked up again, directly at her, and she saw the heat and the desire in his look and knew she could interpret one thought at least: he was thinking about yesterday afternoon. Was desire to be the only heat in this cool marriage? She shivered.
The falling notes of the hymn died away. The choir, who a moment ago had looked like a flock of cherubs, their innocent, well-scrubbed faces turned up towards the stained glass window of the east end of the church, became once more a group of freckled village boys, nudging each other as they sat down in the ancient oak stalls.
No doubt they had mice in their pockets and catapults hidden under their cassocks, Cal thought, amused by the normality of their barely disciplined naughtiness. Beside him Will cleared his throat and on his right hand Sophia closed her hymn book.
In a moment they would leave the high box pew and walk down the aisle to shake hands with the vicar who would be marrying them in three days’ time.
And Will and I can both get dead drunk tonight, Cal hoped. He was tired. Beyond tired, he thought, contemplating restless nights, hectic days and miles of travel.
Now all he wanted was sleep and to get this wedding over with. He had done everything that was needful, he thought. At the East India Company offices he had consolidated his position in a post that brought status, a doubling of what his salary had been in India and the opportunity for endless profitable investment in return for his total commitment to the Company’s interests.
He had reorganised his house in fashionable Mayfair to receive its new mistress. The rent was high—twice what he would have paid in the City—but they were going to move in the best society, not mingle with the cits. He had given his most superior butler carte blanche to appoint a fashionable lady’s maid and to make all ready for his return and he had come back here and endured Mrs Langley’s endless list-making and insistence on discussing every aspect of the wedding in wearisome detail.
Then there was a rustle of silk beside him as he walked up the path between the leaning gravestones and he looked down at Sophia, silent in lavender at his side. He held the lych gate for her and then offered his arm as they waited for the carriage to draw up. It was necessary to stand there and shake hands with some of the congregation who had gathered round, to agree that after such a terrible accident, such a tragedy, that it was a blessing that he was comforted by the support of Miss Langley, who had so bravely put aside her own grief to marry him.
No one appeared to think it strange that she should marry the wrong brother. It was the most logical solution, several people opined and, they added, when they thought they were out of earshot, very gallant of him to step in and prevent Miss Langley being left a spinster.
Cal was quite certain she had heard those whispers. Sophia’s chin was up, there was colour in her cheeks and her eyes were sparkling with what he strongly suspected was anger, not chagrin.
‘Don’t take any notice of them,’ he said when they were at last free to walk across to the carriage.
‘I do not like to be pitied,’ Sophia said.
‘Nonsense, they are jealous,’ Cal retorted. ‘At least, the ladies are. They all wish they could marry me.’
‘Why, of all the conceited men!’ She cut him a sideways glance. ‘You are jesting? Aren’t you?’
‘Certainly not. You have only to eavesdrop a little. I’m a son of the Hall—and Will has not yet produced an heir; I must be as rich as Golden Ball if I am in the East India Company and, according to Mrs Whitely, I have powerful thighs. Now what do you think she means by that?’
‘That your breeches are too tight,’ Sophia flashed back. ‘Mrs Whitely is a very foolish woman.’
‘She is certainly an outrageous flirt.’ The Whitelys had been amongst Will’s dinner guests last night and Cal had enjoyed an interesting passage with her in the conservatory. The lady certainly exhibited both experience and a willingness to demonstrate it, but even with the lingering frustration of controlling himself with Sophia, he had felt disinclined to oblige her amongst his brother’s potted palms.
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Louise Allen
A SHOCK PROPOSAL Sophia Langley’s life is in turmoil. When she learns of her estranged fiancé’s death in a shipwreck, the last thing she expects is for his twin brother, Callum Chatterton, to make a shock proposal! Her inner romantic objects to a marriage of convenience – and brooding Cal makes it very clear that’s all it can be.Yet to save her family Sophia accepts with trepidation – and a highly inconvenient trembling of desire for her reluctant husband! Danger & Desire Shipwreck, Scandals and Society Weddings
Introducing Louise Allen’s most scandalous trilogy yet!
DANGER & DESIRE
Leaving the sultry shores of India behind them, the passengers of the Bengal Queen face a new life ahead in England—until a shipwreck throws their plans into disarray …
Can Alistair and Perdita’s illicit onboard flirtation survive the glittering social whirl of London?
Washed up on an island populated by ruffians, virginal Averil must rely on rebel captain Luc for protection …
And honourable Callum finds himself falling for his brother’s fiancée!
Look for
RAVISHED BY THE RAKE
SEDUCED BY THE SCOUNDREL
MARRIED TO A STRANGER
from Mills & Boon
Historical
About the Author
LOUISE ALLEN has been immersing herself in history, real and fictional, for as long as she can remember, and finds landscapes and places evoke powerful images of the past. Louise lives in Bedfordshire, and works as a property manager, but spends as much time as possible with her husband at the cottage they are renovating on the north Norfolk coast, or travelling abroad. Venice, Burgundy and the Greek islands are favourite atmospheric destinations. Please visit Louise’s website—www.louiseallenregency.co.uk—for the latest news!
Previous novels by the same author:
THE DANGEROUS MR RYDER*
THE OUTRAGEOUS LADY FELSHAM*
THE SHOCKING LORD STANDON*
THE DISGRACEFUL MR RAVENHURST*
THE NOTORIOUS MR HURST*
THE PIRATICAL MISS RAVENHURST*
PRACTICAL WIDOW TO PASSIONATE MISTRESS**
VICAR’S DAUGHTER TO VISCOUNT’S LADY**
INNOCENT COURTESAN TO ADVENTURER’S BRIDE**
RAVISHED BY THE RAKE†
*Those Scandalous Ravenhursts
**The Transformation of the Shelley Sisters
†Danger & Desire
and in theSilk & Scandalmini-series
THE LORD AND THE WAYWARD LADY
THE OFFICER AND THE PROPER LADY
and in Mills & Boon
HistoricalUndone!eBooks:
DISROBED AND DISHONOURED
AUCTIONED VIRGIN TO SEDUCED BRIDE
Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
Author Note
I loved writing about the immediacy and the drama of the wreck of the Bengal Queen in the first two books in my Danger & Desire trilogy, but I found it equally challenging to explore the effect of that several months later on two more people whose lives are changed for ever after the ship hits the rocks. Sophia Langley is miles away, safe in a Hertfordshire village, but after years of believing she knows her destiny now she is forced to come to terms with her very uncertain future. Duty and desire both seem to pull her in the same direction—is it the right one to take? Meanwhile Callum Chatterton has to make a decision that satisfies his sense of duty but which threatens to completely overset his careful plans and equally carefully guarded heart.
One of the joys of writing a series is that I can continue to follow characters from earlier books, and it was fun to encounter Dita and Alistair from RAVISHED BY THE RAKE and Averil and Luc from SEDUCED BY THE SCOUNDREL again, and to glimpse their new married lives. They were as eager for a happy ending for Callum and Sophia as I was—I hope you enjoy reading about their journey to find love as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Married to a Stranger
Louise Allen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
To all my friends in the Cambridge Chapter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association— thanks for the support and the fun.
Prologue
Hertfordshire—1799
‘I love Daniel and I will wait for him and marry him!’ Sophia Langley glared at Cal. Her small bosom—Where had that come from all of a sudden? he wondered—rose and fell within the bodice of her unfashionable gown; her nose, as usual, was smudged with charcoal.
‘It is ridiculous. You are far too young, both of you.’ He resisted the urge to pick her up like the small, underfed kitten she resembled and give her a good shake to try and get some sense into her. Why on earth his twin would fix on the daughter of one of their gentry neighbours to fall for defeated him. The chit wasn’t even out yet.
‘You do not understand me, you have taken virtually no notice of me when we visit, and now you know what is best for me? I am seventeen and Daniel is the same age as you.’ Indignant blue eyes, her best feature, narrowed at him.
The retort that she was only seventeen and three days old and that he was ten minutes older than his twin was childish; he bit it back unsaid. At just eighteen he was a man and he did not bicker with girls. ‘What do you mean, I take no notice of you? We played together as children, didn’t we?’
She snorted. He supposed she was refraining from observing that she had trailed around after them and had been tolerated as a fielder at cricket and as a suitable maiden to rescue while they were defeating dragons or Saracens or half the French army, but that hardly made them soul mates.
‘We are both going to be away for a long time. You will meet someone else, fall in love properly when you grow up.’
It was, he realised as soon as he had said it, tactless in the extreme. Sophia drew her skinny frame up to its full height somewhere near his chin.
‘You pompous, unfeeling wretch! How you can be the twin of someone as wonderful as Daniel, I have no idea, Callum Chatterton, but I love Daniel and I swear I will marry him and I hope you fall in love with someone who breaks your heart.’ She stalked away, the dignity of her exit marred by catching her toe in the edge of the rug. He laughed. She slammed the door.
Cal shook his head and went back to packing for India.
Chapter One
Glebe End House, Hertfordshire— 5th September, 1809
‘It is from Callum Chatterton.’ Sophia Langley looked up from the single sheet of paper flattened under her hand between plate and cup. Her mother, a slice of toast suspended halfway to her mouth, looked as puzzled as she felt. ‘He says he will call this afternoon.’
‘Then he is back.’ Mrs Langley frowned. ‘I do not think he has been back to the Hall since March.’
‘It appears not.’ Why the man who would have been her brother-in-law was calling now, six months after the funeral of her betrothed, she could not imagine. ‘Lord Flamborough has said very little about him, now I come to think of it.’
Will Chatterton, the Earl of Flamborough, elder brother of the twins, was a near neighbour. He had always been a good friend—too good for Sophia’s conscience once he had brought the news of Daniel’s death. Her betrothed had perished in the wreck of the ship bringing the twins back to England after their ten years in India in the service of the East India Company. Will did not owe them anything now she would not be marrying Daniel.
Sophia looked down at her ringless hand and the tight cuff of her morning gown of deep mauve lawn. She had worn black for three months and had just moved into half-mourning. She still felt the most terrible hypocrite every time any of their friends or neighbours, reminded by her attire, sighed sympathetically over her loss.
With the reading of the will after the funeral it became clear that Daniel had neglected to amend it to recognise his betrothal. Neither Callum, who had been so outspoken about the engagement at the time, nor the earl, whom she suspected of not approving either, seemed to realise just how this left the Langleys.
Daniel had made no provision for her at all. Callum, who had seemed almost frozen with grief over the loss of his twin, had tried to explain that this was simply the result of Daniel’s carelessness about business, his unwillingness to confront unpleasant matters such as his own mortality, rather than any lack of love or care for her.
But her heart told her differently. Daniel had fallen out of love with her, just as she had realised, too late, that she had with him—not that she could say such a thing to either bereaved brother. And if they had not loved each other, then, in all conscience, she had no claim on Daniel. If she had been honest with herself and ended the engagement sooner, she might well have found a husband and her family would have been secure. She would probably have a family of her own by now, she thought with a pang of longing.
Perhaps Callum or the earl would have made over some funds to her if she had asked, but pride, and the awareness of her own youthful folly in ever agreeing to the betrothal, stopped her mentioning it.
Will had called regularly to offer assistance—the loan of a gardener from the Hall, his carriage when they needed to go into St Albans, a surplus of vegetables from the gardens. But in the face of her constant, polite refusals his visits had grown fewer. She worked hard to disguise their poverty and so far, just, she was succeeding. But the stack of bills in her bureau was growing and the polite requests for payment were becoming more abrupt. Sophia knew they were reaching a point where she was going to have to make some very hard decisions about her own future.
‘Perhaps he has decided to do the right thing and make over some of his inheritance from Daniel to you,’ Mrs Langley said. She sounded brighter than she had in weeks at the prospect.
‘There is no reason why he should, or could,’ Sophia explained patiently. ‘The estate he inherited from Daniel was entailed, he cannot part with any of that even if he wanted to and he has his own career and future to consider. No doubt he will be marrying soon, especially if he is not returning to India.’
‘Ah, well.’ Her mother sighed. ‘Never mind. Dear Mark will complete his studies soon and be ordained and then he will have a parish and everything will be all right.’
Sophia did not point out that Mark was hardly likely to find a parish with a stipend large enough to support himself, her and Mama and deal with their debts without an influential patron backing him. Her brother had neither the drive, nor the engaging personality, to seek out a good position for himself; a curate’s place in some industrial town or rural backwater was more likely. It was up to her to deal with this.
She gave herself a mental shake and focused on the letter again. The note in the strong black handwriting was brief and without explanation. Callum Chatterton would do himself the honour of calling on her—not on Mama, she noticed belatedly—that afternoon and trusted that she would be able to receive him.
Sophia scooped up the rest of the post before her mother could realise just how much of it appeared to be bills. How could there be so many when all she seemed to do these days was make do and mend and search for economies? ‘I will deal with these this morning,’ she said brightly. ‘How interesting it will be to see Callum Chatterton again.’
Her desk was in the corner of her bedchamber and she closed the door with a sense of finding sanctuary. Sooner or later she was going to have to make her mother understand just how serious matters were, but not yet. One more month and then she must write to a London agency and seek employment. The shock of having to dismiss their solitary footman had been bad enough for Mrs Langley who felt the loss of status very sharply. Explaining that her daughter was going to have to start earning her own living would doubtless result in hysterics.
The room was simple and light, hung with white and primrose muslins. A girl’s room, Sophia thought, as she closed the door. And I am no longer a girl. I am six and twenty. I am on the shelf, stuck in the back of beyond with no eligible bachelors for miles around.
If only she had had the sense to face up to the fact that she had fallen out of love. She should have written to Daniel, explained, and they could have broken off the engagement amicably with no scandal; everyone had been surprised that her late father had allowed it in the first place, with her so young.
She had been too passive in accepting the betrothal as final. But in other ways she had changed so much in nine years. She had grown up and matured. Grown independent and forward, Mama would say. But what was a girl to do when she was neither a spinster on the shelf nor a wife? She had knowledge now, and her own thoughts and ideas, her own interests and beliefs.
For nine years she had waited, not happy about the length of time, but resigned and patient, learning to keep house and improve her mind. She wondered now with a sudden attack of conscience if it had been patience. Perhaps she had been selfish, enjoying this luxury of time to learn to be herself. When her friends had sympathised with her wait she had been uncomplaining. Her art was her escape and she had focused all her free time and energy into improving her skills.
On the desk lay her sketchbook open at the self-portrait she had attempted the other day. It had made her look at her reflection critically and the outcome was not likely to make her vain, that was certain.
In the years after Daniel had left she had grown upwards, if not much outwards. Now she was rather too tall for the mode, rather too slender, without much to fill out a gown in front. Her nose was a trifle long and her mouth a fraction wide, but her eyes were satisfactory, she thought. They were bluer than they had been, or perhaps that was just because her lashes had darkened with her hair which was virtually black now, no longer the deep brown it had been.
She flicked over the page to a study of the head and shoulders of a man. When she had received the letter that had told her of Daniel’s imminent return she had studied the miniature she had painted of him before he and Callum left. It was poor work, she knew. So she had taken up her pencils and a drawing pad and began to sketch the twenty-seven-year-old man the boy might have become. And that had been when she had finally accepted—or perhaps allowed herself to accept—that she did not love him. She had waited for Daniel because he would make her his wife, give her a place in society. His family and resources and position in the East India Company would finally silence all their creditors.
It had been a shock to see the echo of that picture in Callum’s drawn countenance on the few occasions she had seen him before he’d left Flamborough Hall in March. He had grown into his looks; his body was no longer that of a gangling boy, but a hard, fit man. The intelligent hazel eyes, darkened with pain, held years of experience, his mouth was firmer, his expression more guarded. Only the thick dark brown hair was the same, still apt to fall across his brow, just as Daniel’s had.
That confrontation with Callum the day before he and Daniel had left for London and their new lives with the East India Company came back to nag at her conscience. It was strange how often she had thought of that and those clear hazel eyes summing her up and then dismissing her. I love Daniel and I swear I will marry him, she had vowed. And she had broken that vow. The acceptance of the true nature of her feelings had shaken her as though she was a butterfly breaking out of its chrysalis into a bright, dangerous, exciting new world. ‘I do not love you any more,’ she had whispered to the portrait. ‘What if I do not want to marry you when I meet you and know you again?’
The dangerous idea had been niggling at the back of her mind that perhaps she could earn her living by drawing—not teaching girls, but actually selling her own work. It was not love for a man that made her heart beat faster now, but the act of creation as a picture took form on the page, when the visions in her mind came to life at the point of her pencil. She had toyed with the idea of approaching some book publishers—the famous John Murray or Mr Ackermann who produced so many prints, perhaps.
But there was no choice, not realistically. The idea of making her own living in that way was a daydream. Ladies did not become commercial artists; it would be one step up from the stage and the scandalous reputation that carried with it.
Nor could a lady jilt a gentleman; it would be a shocking and ungrateful thing to do now she had let things run on for years. No one expected marriages to be love matches, so that was no excuse. Nor did a dutiful daughter throw away an alliance that would secure her family’s fortune—and certainly not if she would be left an old maid of twenty-six in the process. Whatever sort of man Daniel had grown into, saint or sinner, she must marry him and do her duty. But then tragedy had released her in the only way that society would accept, making her emotional turmoil even worse.
Sophia tossed the bills on top of the sketchbook and paced across the room. But there was no escape, for that brought her to the trunk that was full of linens, each sheet and pillow sham and towel embroidered in the corner with C and the cat’s mask that was Daniel’s family crest: a pun on the French chat for Chatterton. There were underclothes and handkerchiefs, nightgowns and sachets, pen wipers and gloves. The trunk represented nine years of collecting and embroidering and carefully ticking off each item on the list in The Ladies’ Compendium and Housewife’s Remembrancer.
That had been almost a fantasy. She had played at being betrothed while she got on with the rest of her life, as independent as any woman with limited means and a reputation to maintain might be. But now this was real and the folly of a young girl’s infatuation was coming home to roost. It was all her fault. She should have broken off the engagement years before, found another match. If she had she would not be an old maid now, her husband would be supporting her mother and she would not be afraid to open the day’s post or look at the accounts book.
Sophia squared her shoulders and went to sit at the desk. Ignoring the mess they were in could only make it worse. To throw herself on Lord Flamborough’s mercy and ask for a loan would be to sacrifice every iota of self-respect and pride. To try to make a living by her art would scandalise all who knew her.
‘Mr Chatterton. Good afternoon.’ Sophia dropped her sketchbook and pencil into the flower trug beside the rustic seat and walked across the front lawn towards him. She had been pretending to gather flowers for the past half-hour rather than have the front door opened to him by the maid of all work, the only servant other than Cook who was left to them.
‘Miss Langley.’ Callum swung down from his horse and threw the reins over a spike in the picket fence before opening the gate into the small front garden. He removed his hat and his face was serious as he took her proffered hand. ‘I hope I find you well?’
‘Very well, thank you.’ She smiled brightly as though the brilliance of it might distract him from her limp and much-washed gown. ‘You look … I mean since I last saw you …’
He had lost some of the colour that India and a sea voyage had given him, but the lines of strain and grief had gone from his face, leaving him, she was almost startled to find, a remarkably good-looking man. She should have expected it—she had seen him six months ago, after all—but now, with his full attention on her, the effect was disconcerting. Her pulse fluttered, her tongue was twisting itself into knots and Sophia knew she was blushing. Obviously she did not mix with gentlemen enough.
Callum must think her a complete ninny, but if he did, he did not let it show on his face. ‘It was a difficult time,’ he acknowledged. ‘I think it is behind me now. I find I can look back with gratitude for the memories and even forward to the future.’
She found her hand was still in his and that she had no desire to remove it. ‘I am glad the pain is healing. I can imagine that, dreadful as it must be to lose a brother, the loss of a twin is even harder to bear.’
‘Yes. That is perceptive of you. Not everyone realises.’ He shifted her hand to the crook of his arm. ‘Is the summer house still standing?’
‘The summer house? Why, yes.’ Startled by the change of subject, she turned and let him lead her around the side of the small villa. ‘How strange that you recall it. Daniel and I used to hide in there and talk and talk and imagine that my parents had no idea where we had got to. It is just the same as it used to be, just rather more rickety.’ There had been tiny yellow roses around the wide doors again this summer, roses she had thought to pick for her bridal flowers.
The doors were unlocked and she opened them, went inside and turned as he followed her slowly into the small, rather dusty space. ‘It is not quite the romantic bower we thought it then; you must excuse the spiders and earwigs.’
‘I am still surprised how small insects are in England,’ Callum said, and his mouth curved into the first smile she had seen from him since his return. ‘Might we sit here and talk?’
‘Yes, of course. Shall I ask the maid to bring out some refreshments? Perhaps I ought to call Mama.’
‘Thank you, no refreshments.’ Callum set two chairs near the doorway, dusted off the seats with his handkerchief, put down his hat gloves and whip and waited for her to sit. ‘Do you feel you need a chaperone?’
‘Not at all. Why ever should I? I have known you for years. You were almost my brother.’
Callum raised one eyebrow. ‘I can assure you, Sophia, my feelings for you were never brotherly.’
Flustered, Sophia took the left-hand seat. Now he had put the idea of danger into her head he seemed altogether too male and too close in the tiny structure. ‘Is the earl well?’
‘Yes, thank you. I gather it is a while since he has seen you.’
She had been avoiding Will and his kindness, afraid that she would humiliate herself and ask him for help, knowing that once he realised in what straits the Langleys found themselves he would feel honour-bound to bail them out.
‘He has been very kind,’ she murmured. ‘You have been in London since—’
‘Since the funeral. Yes. I was offered a senior post with the Company, one that is based at East India House in Leadenhall Street. The hard work helped at first. Since then I have found it fascinating.’
‘I am delighted for you,’ Sophia said politely, wondering what this had to do with her, but glad that he was recovering from the tragedy. ‘How gratifying that your talents have been recognised.’ This was not the gangling youth she remembered hitting a cricket ball all round the lawns of the Hall, nor the intense young man setting out to seek his fortune in India.
‘Thank you. I have taken a house in Half Moon Street—a fashionable area by St James’s Park.’
‘Indeed?’
‘And now I have concluded that there is one thing missing from my new life.’ He was looking out over the tangled shrubbery, but she sensed his mind was not on horticulture or even on the unkempt surroundings.
‘Hmm?’ she prompted as encouragingly as she knew how.
‘A wife.’ Callum Chatterton swivelled round and faced her, his air of abstraction quite gone.
‘A wife?’ Sophia found herself caught by his eyes, eyes that seemed now to see nothing but her.
‘A wife. I wondered if you would do me the honour, Sophia?’
Chapter Two
‘Me?’ Sophia’s surprise was almost comical. For a moment she gaped at him and Cal wondered whether he had made a mistake and she was not the intelligent and poised young woman he had thought six months ago. Then she shut her mouth—her wide and generous mouth—thought for a moment and asked, ‘Why should you wish to marry me, Mr Chatterton?’
Ah, yes, the intelligence was there, and the courage. Her chin had come up; she was taken aback, almost alarmed by his unexpected proposal, but she was not going to allow him to fluster her. He recalled the first time he had seen her after he had returned home. He had been half-drowned, battered, bruised, hoarse with shouting through the long, desperate night for the brother whom the sea had taken, and he had been in no state to be gentle with her.
Sophia had fainted when he’d told her the news, but when she had recovered her senses she had been calm, undemanding and firm with her mother who was indulging in hysterics. From the depths of his own misery Cal had found himself unable to care very much about Sophia and her feelings, only to be grateful for her restraint and the way she retreated behind the mask of the civilised things that one says and does to somehow hold the wild expressions of grief at bay.
He told her a little of what had happened and he had been unprepared for the generosity of her response when she could well be blaming him for failing to save her betrothed.
‘I was on the deck, Daniel was in one of the boats, helping the women down,’ he had explained. ‘A great wave took it. I could not find him.’
‘You went in? You tried to save him?’ she had asked in horror. In her wide eyes he saw again images of tumultuous seas, of darkness and rocks, and heard rending timber and screams.
‘Of course.’ Cal recalled staring at her blankly. ‘Of course I did.’
‘Please.’ She had reached out and touched his cheek, her fingers burning hot against the chill of his skin. ‘You must get warm or you will take a fever.’ Weeks later, as the deep cold inside him had begun to thaw, he had recalled that touch, her instinct to comfort and nurture instead of demanding comfort herself.
Other memories had come back as he learned to live with his loss and to remember Dan. He had nagged his brother to remake his will when he was putting his own affairs in order and Dan had been evasive. He would get round to it, he promised. Nothing was going to happen to him, after all. He had shrugged off all the illnesses that India could throw at a man, had missed being bitten, stung, eaten or mauled by the assorted lethal wildlife—what was Cal worrying about? Besides, if anything did happen, his twin would look after Sophia, he knew that.
‘Yes, of course,’ Cal had agreed. ‘I would care for her as though she were my own, I swear it. But even so—’ But Dan had not done anything about his will and then, when it had come to it, Cal had done nothing to help Sophia. He had been sunk in grief and shock and with a black hole where the consciousness of his twin had been for his entire life. As he recovered that promise came back, niggling at his conscience.
He pulled himself back to the present and the young woman in her drab gown who watched him from behind wary blue eyes. She had grown and filled out from the scrap of a girl he remembered almost ten years ago, but she was still too slender, too pale.
‘I found myself looking forward for the first time in months and I thought it time I married. I am almost twenty-eight, I have estates now to consider as well as a career that involves entertaining. A wife seemed … logical.’ Dull, perhaps, after the high-fliers who had been warming his bed and helping fill the long night hours when he would prefer not to sleep, and certainly not to dream.
‘I can see that,’ Sophia said, a trifle tartly. ‘But why me? You are the brother of an earl, you are in London where you may meet any number of eligible young ladies who, if you will pardon my frankness, will have several more childbearing years ahead of them than I have. I assume an heir is one of your considerations when you talk about estates?’
He liked the sharpness, her honesty, and answered in kind. ‘I had not thought of a long engagement. We could, as it were, make up some lost time.’ She caught his meaning, blushed, but her mouth twitched. Sophia possessed a sense of humour, then.
‘I repeat,’ she persisted with a frown of reproof, ‘why should you want to marry me? The Season might be over, but I cannot believe you could not find a wife in London if you are minded to marry soon.’
‘I think you would be very suitable. And I feel it my duty,’ he stated. ‘Daniel would expect it. I promised to look after you and I have neglected that in my own grief.’ This was the woman Dan had once loved, however carelessly.
‘What?’ Sophia interjected. ‘No! It was a tragedy and an accident and no one owes me anything. And I do not expect anything either—least of all to marry you, Callum Chatterton. You never showed the slightest interest in me when we were younger.’
Sophia got to her feet, her cheeks flaming, a martial glint in her eye. Cal stood too, but made no move to touch her. She was mortified, he could see, and hurt pride was making her angry. Animation improved her looks, he thought, even as he tried to repair the damage of his bald statement.
‘I am proposing a … shall we call it a marriage of convenience?’
‘It is very noble of you,’ she said. And he felt a momentary flicker of admiration for the way she controlled herself. She had dignity as well as courage, he thought and then saw her expression waver into uncertainty. ‘Let me understand. Do you mean that you would not want to … I mean, that you would not expect to share my bed?’
‘Why, certainly I would want to share your bed and make love to you in it, Sophia.’ The blue eyes widened. Was she completely unaroused, completely innocent? How very interesting. And stimulating. He had so far been seeking the company of the skilled and the sophisticated, but an innocent wife would be just as distracting provided the essential sensuality was there.
She recovered her composure with visible effort. ‘Forgive me if I cannot find it in myself to accept such a flattering offer.’
‘I think you have more common sense than to accept some romantic flummery from me,’ he said drily. ‘I could protest feelings that we both know I do not have, any more than I expect them from you. But let us be frank. I assume you have not taken some vow of chastity.’ The haughty look became a frown. ‘So who will you marry now? Some country squire? The curate? Instead you could be the sister-in-law of an earl and have the comfortable life I will give you.’
‘Let us leave aside what I might gain from such a match,’ Sophia said, her back turned to him as she stared out over the untidy garden. ‘What possible benefit could it be to you to marry a woman of my age without influence or wealth, other than to salve your conscience? Any wife will warm your bed as well as I.’
He should stop teasing her. ‘I would gain a wife with elegance of manner, intelligence, courage and poise,’ Cal said. Her cheek, all he could see of her face, became peony pink. He was laying it on rather thick—she hardly looked elegant in that gown. ‘I would have the satisfaction of knowing I have done as my twin would have wished.’ He hesitated, then decided that he owed her frankness, if nothing else.
‘I do not look for a love match. If I am to be honest, I do not think myself capable of that kind of total emotional commitment any longer. I feel, since the wreck, that part of me has been ripped away. You knew us both once, you showed some understanding of how a twin must feel—I wonder if you can comprehend that now I do not think I will ever be able to love anyone wholeheartedly again. Not my brother, and not a woman.’
Sophia moved away, her movements jerky, and came to rest with one hand grasping the frame of the door. She did not speak.
‘With you, with your maturity and our shared loss, I can hope for some acceptance of that. I am not sure I can ask it of some young girl looking for first love.’ Still she did not reply. How much was he wounding her by speaking of Dan and her lost dreams?
He thought of her faint when she had heard the news. For nine years she had clung to the promises she had made. She had been faithful and loyal, just as she had sworn that day in 1799 when he had tried so clumsily to put a stop to the betrothal that had seemed premature and ill founded. He had not sensed then any deep emotional involvement from his twin and the passing years had proved him right.
Dan should have come back and married Sophia years ago, even if he hadn’t wanted to risk her health out in India. She’d have had status, the estate, probably children by now, if he had only come home when he had had the opportunity. There was no excuse, not really. There had only been Dan’s desire to have his freedom and his total lack of responsibility towards anyone but Callum. And Cal could have made him come back and do his duty, and he knew he had not because it was good to have his brother beside him and not to have to share him with a wife and children.
He would marry Sophia if she would have him, because that was the right thing to do and it was convenient for him, but he did not want to have to agonise over her feelings. It had been hard enough dealing with his own grief and the aching void where Dan should have been.
But soon he must find a wife and settle down. Besides anything else there were two estates to consider, the one that was in trust for him until he married or reached thirty and the one that had been Dan’s on the same terms and which was now his, too. He felt depressed and weary at the thought of setting out to find a wife, courting a woman, pretending to love a woman. So much simpler to marry Sophia and solve all their problems.
It would help if he could feel any positive emotions, but they seemed to have deserted him, leaving only a black, aching hole even now, six months later. And so had empathy. He felt his brother Will’s pain at a distance; Sophia’s, hardly at all. And yet in all other ways he was back to normal. He worked hard, his brain was as sharp as ever, he had ambition, he planned for the future, he welcomed the company of friends and colleagues. He was eating properly, looking after himself and creating a home, not lurking in bachelor lodgings.
Sophia moved again, as though she checked herself from flight, and the sunlight caught the shine of her hair, outlined her figure vaguely through her thin skirts. She turned and looked at him and he saw a speculation and awareness that had not been there before. Cal felt a sudden heaviness in his groin, a stirring in his blood.
‘Well, Sophia?’ He moved closer to her until the hem of her skirts brushed the toes of his boots. ‘Shall we fix a date?’
‘Mr Chatterton—Callum—I cannot marry you.’ Sophia realised there was nothing else she could think of to say. She could not argue with his sense of duty, with his desire to fulfil a promise to his twin. But how could she accept him when it was her own folly that had allowed the betrothal to endure? Daniel could not have broken it off, not as a gentleman.
‘I realise that your feelings for Daniel might make this somewhat awkward,’ Callum continued, as dispassionately as though he was discussing the price of tea. ‘However, I will endeavour to make you a good husband. I am certain now that I will be remaining in England, which will relieve your mind on the score of either the unhealthy climate or the likelihood of long separations.’
In love with Daniel? She blinked at Callum, distracted from his ruthlessly practical catalogue. Of course, how could he know how inconstant I had been? I swore to him, so long ago, that I would always love Daniel. What else is he to assume? Appalled, Sophia realised that she could hardly disabuse him of the notion now; it would be dreadful to announce that she did not love her betrothed when Callum’s loss was still so raw.
He was saying something else. She pulled her attention back with an effort. ‘… a sensible and amiable wife and you require a husband. We could marry quietly by licence.’
‘You appear to have thought it all through very thoroughly,’ Sophia said, her mouth dry. ‘How efficient. I must confess I do not feel much inclined to be sensible, let alone amiable, just now. As for what the intelligent thing to do might be, I have no idea.’
Screaming seemed tempting. You require a husband, indeed! Certainly she did; she lay awake in the panicky small hours thinking just that thing and wondering how they would manage when their creditors woke up to the fact that there was no well-connected male in her future to pay the bills. It would be a long while before the pittance she could earn as a governess or a put-upon companion would pay off the debts. But to marry a man who was proposing out of a chilly sense of duty …
‘I cannot marry you simply because you have a kindly im pulse.’
‘I do not commit to matters of importance, of honour, on an impulse.’ His mouth curved into something that was almost a smile.
‘Certainly not a kindly one,’ she tossed back at him.
‘I am not much given to impulse,’ Callum confessed, and she became aware of his eyes on her body, assessing her.
He was so certain that she would do what he said. Sophia bit the inside of her lip to stop herself flaring up. It was ungrateful, but she was the only one who would decide what she was going to do. ‘My feelings for your brother do not concern you?’
‘No.’ He did not appear willing to expand on that. Perhaps, because he felt nothing for her, he did not care if she still loved another man. It argued that he did not see marriage as involving any exchange of deep feeling, of passion beyond the physical.
She averted her eyes from his broad shoulders and long legs and the distracting prospect of physical passion. He was an attractive man. That was not a good reason for making a marriage, especially as he would hardly be entertaining the same feelings of physical attraction for her. A wife was a warm body in a bed who would perform her marital duties and produce children. Apparently she passed muster, even if she did not drive him wild with desire.
This was as bad as the prospect of marrying Daniel had become, only colder. Sophia reminded herself that Callum was, by business and training, a trader. He was approaching marriage, she supposed, in the same way as any other contract, rationally and with good sense.
‘Financially there are problems, are there not?’ he asked.
She had to be honest about that, never mind how her pride revolted. ‘Yes. There are debts, more than we can cope with any more. I had intended to apply for a post as a governess or perhaps a companion.’
‘I expected that,’ Callum said. ‘I had not realised it was quite that bad, however. Be assured that I will take care of all of it.’
She would get by far the better part of this bargain, for she would bring Callum nothing but herself and she could not pretend that she was much of a bargain. This was the answer to her prayers. Why, then, was every fibre of her being revolting against it? It was an excellent match and any well-bred and delicately brought-up young woman would expect nothing more than what Callum was offering her. Most would snatch at it, deeply grateful to have a second chance.
But she was not anyone else, she was herself and she ached for a meeting of minds and for companionship and for love. Her heart told her to refuse, politely and firmly and put an end to this humiliation, but her head held her back from an irrevocable decision.
‘I must think about it,’ she found herself saying.
‘What is there to think about?’ Callum seemed genuinely baffled by her prevarication. ‘Is it your mother? You must have planned for her future when Dan returned. Surely there is a relative who would make a congenial companion for her.’
‘Well, yes, Cousin Lettice would be delighted to move here, it was always the intention.’
He nodded. ‘Excellent.’
‘How can you not mind that I was betrothed to your brother?’ She stretched out her hands as if she could somehow reach him through the glass wall of practicality he was erecting between them. ‘Would I not remind you of Daniel?’
Callum stared at her hands without taking them. ‘I have told you how I feel. I have come through the grief and I do hope I would not be so foolish as to be jealous of your feelings for him,’ he said eventually. ‘If you tell me that you cannot marry me because of those feelings …’ He left the sentence hanging. Her escape route.
But it would be a lie and the escape would be into deeper debt, misery for herself and Mama, difficulty for Mark. Sophia shook her head. ‘No, it is not that. I know he is … I have accepted that he is gone. It is just that this is so sudden, so unexpected. I need time.’
‘Time is not on your side. It is not as though you are a widow who has children already,’ Callum said with such flat practicality that it did not hit her until several seconds later that he was warning her that she was letting her only chance of motherhood slip by. ‘It will help you decide if you saw where you will be living. There is the town house, of course, but there are also two estates to choose from for when we are out of London. We could drive over and see them together and decide which to live in and which house to rent out.’
‘Choose?’ Everything was going too fast. ‘But Long Welling was always yours, was it not?’
‘It was managed by my father and then by Will. I have been in India, remember, and in London for six months. I have no great attachment to it and both houses are vacant at the moment.’
The house where she would live with this man. An insidious little voice was murmuring that Callum’s arms would be strong around her body and that he would always stand by her. She could experience physical passion at last. He would give her children. Security. But was it right?
‘You need time to think it over,’ he said and she realised he had hat, gloves and whip in his hands. She had been so deep in her thoughts that she had not noticed him move. ‘I will return tomorrow morning. Goodbye, Sophia.’
‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘Callum—’
‘Of course, how remiss of me.’ He bent his head and kissed her, firmly but fleetingly, on the mouth. ‘Is that what you wanted?’
‘I don’t know.’ Sophia stared at Callum, somehow managing not to run her tongue over her lips to taste him. ‘I have no idea what I want. What I ought to want. You have turned my world upside down.’
‘Excellent.’ He strode away across the lawn without looking back.
Sophia gave way to the urge to lick her lips. There was a faint trace of something alien and disturbing overlain with coffee. Excellent? ‘Oh, you stubborn, impossible man! Were you listening to me at all?’
Chapter Three
Sophia sat in the front parlour the next morning and tried to work through a muddle of thoughts. There was resentment at the way that Callum simply made assumptions about what was best for her—and the fact that he was doubtless right did not help. There was respect for his sense of duty and loyalty to Daniel and the nagging consciousness that her own duty to her family lay in making a good marriage. This marriage.
If only they had a little money and she had room to think. Her mind kept running over and over the lack of money like a dog in a turn-spit wheel. Tradesmen had been understanding about the settlement of bills since her father’s death, because of her betrothal to a son of the Hall. But for the past six months they had known that was not going to happen. Nor, unless she married well, would her brother have the influence of a great family behind him to help his career. And if she did not marry Callum, who could she marry?
The prospects locally were hardly promising—some yeoman farmers much older than herself, the curate, a widower or two, none of whom had shown any particular interest in her. There was no denying that marriage would widen her world very greatly. Mama would be happier if she was well married.
And there was the uncomfortable awareness that she found Callum Chatterton physically attractive. She could not even summon up the will to feel shocked at this, only a conviction that if he actually tried to make love to her she would be stricken with shyness. Duty and a scarce-understood desire said Marry him. Every emotional fibre of her being, coupled to pride, said, No, not when he has no feelings for me and is only offering out of a sense of duty to a man I had not even the constancy to love until death.
The crunch of gravel under wheels brought her out of her brown study as undecided as when she had drifted into it.
‘Mr Chatterton,’ the maid said and closed the door behind Callum. In buckskin breeches, boots and riding coat he should have looked every inch the English country gentleman. Instead he seemed faintly exotic, dangerous even. Perhaps it was the remnants of the tan and the way it made his hazel eyes seem green. Or perhaps it was the sense of focus about him. He was a hunter and she was the prey: all for her own good, of course.
‘Good morning, Sophia. I have the curricle—shall we drive? It is a pleasant day and we will be more able to say what we mean, perhaps, if we are free from the risk of interruption,’ he said. ‘I thought you would like to see the two houses.’
Don’t be missish, she told herself. She was never going to decide whether to marry this man if they met only to have stilted conversations in the parlour.
‘Very well. I will just go and fetch my hat.’
In the hall she said, ‘I am driving out with Mr Chatterton, Lucy. I do not wish to disturb my mother; please tell her where I am if she enquires. I may not be home for luncheon if Mr Chatterton decides to call in at the Hall on the way back.’
‘Yes, Miss Langley.’ The maid’s eyes were wide with speculation. ‘I’ll take pains not to disturb her.’
Oh dear, now she thinks she is assisting in a love affair. I just wish I did know what this was. Am I wrong to encourage Callum? But I do want to be married, to have children. If the man was someone I could like and respect. If I did not think I was imposing on him to an outrageous extent.
She was weakening, she could feel it. She could certainly respect Callum Chatterton’s achievements. He was intelligent, hard working and courageous. But could she like him? What was he like under the emotionless carapace that seemed only warmed by disturbing flickers of sensuality? Perhaps he was as cold and hard and logical as this all the time. He admitted to finding it hard to feel for other people now. I think I want him. I certainly need him. But perhaps not as a husband.
Callum was standing by the curricle when she came down and there was no groom up behind. It really would be rather fast to drive ten miles to Wellingford with him, even in an open carriage.
‘Is it not acceptable for you to drive with me like this in the country?’ he asked. Apparently her doubts were clear on her face. ‘It would be in India, if the man is approved by the family. Your mother would approve of me, I believe,’ he added with the first hint of a genuine smile Sophia had seen.
‘Yes, she would,’ she agreed, as he helped her up into the seat. ‘Mama would approve of any eligible man who showed an interest in me now, let alone you!’ she added and provoked a small huff of amusement from him. She had been evasive last night when her mother had asked her about Callum’s visit. Mrs Langley had been left, she was guiltily aware, with the impression that he had called briefly to see how Sophia was getting on.
There was so much she was feeling guilty about. If she could only let go and just do her duty … Callum handed her the reins while he walked round to mount on the other side.
‘And, yes, this is a trifle fast, but not so very bad in the country.’ She handed the reins back, taking care not to touch his hands as she did so. She wanted her mind unclouded by the disturbing frisson of physical awareness that brushed her senses when she looked at him—to touch him would be worse. If only she knew what was right.
‘It is certain that you will remain in England?’ she asked as Callum looped the reins and turned on to the road to Wellingford.
‘I was not certain, when we left India, but now the position in London is confirmed. One of the directors was travelling as supercargo and spoke to me at length about my career and the opportunities with the Company. He survived the wreck and I believe I owe much to his influence in gaining this post.’
‘He would not have exerted himself if you did not merit it,’ Sophia said. ‘I am glad you will stay in England. I certainly do not wish to bring up children in the Indian climate; I have heard too many stories of the illnesses they succumb to.’ For a long time she had told herself that was why she had not pressed Daniel about marriage; now she knew it had been an excuse.
‘Ah, we are discussing children now?’ Sophia looked sideways and found Callum was smiling. Faintly, it was true. She realised she was staring at his mouth and switched back to looking straight ahead. ‘Should I take that as a promising sign?’
‘Not necessarily,’ she said, wary that this was going too fast again. ‘I am merely considering all aspects of your proposal.’
‘But if you are convinced I am not returning to India you will marry me and if you think I might go back, you will not have me.’
‘Callum Chatterton, you are harassing me! I said no such thing and this is not a matter to be bargained over.’
‘Very well, let me be clear then. I need an heir; I would like several children, in fact. But I would not expect you to live in India and certainly not bring up a family there.’
‘And I would not wish to spend long periods separated from my husband.’
‘Flattering,’ he remarked and she jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow, suddenly the small girl again.
‘I did not mean that!’
‘I can assure you, that eventuality is highly unlikely to occur.’ When she did not reply he added, ‘I am prepared to promise you that I will not take a posting in the Far East again without your express approval. You see how convinced I am that you will suit me?’
‘Why, thank you, sir,’ Sophia muttered and caught sight of that elusive smile again. But would you suit me? Does that really matter?
‘Here is the turning to Wellingford village.’
‘And Daniel’s estate,’ Sophia said, pulling herself together. This is where she would have lived if she had married Daniel.
‘Yes. It is years since I’ve been there. I have no idea why Grandmama left this one to Dan and the other to me. She used to reside here and Great-Aunt Dorothea had Long Welling. There have been tenants in until recently, so they should both be in good repair, but as for decoration, I have no idea.’
‘Paint and fabrics are easily dealt with. The question is, which feels best to you.’ But her heart was beating a little faster at the prospect. A home of her own, finally. I am deciding on marrying a man, not a house, she reminded herself. There were any number of changes one could make to a house, but not to a grown man, not one as single-minded and stubborn as Callum Chatterton. But she must stop thinking about this as a marriage of love, or even affection. This would be a marriage of convenience with most of the convenience on her side. It would be up to her to accommodate herself to him, not the other way around.
‘There.’ Callum reined in the pair at the crest of a small hill. The valley opened up before them, green and lush; the fields were interspersed with coppices and a larger beech wood crowned the opposite hill. Smoke rose from the chimneys of the village and on the slope directly across from them sat a neat brick house.
‘What do you think?’
‘It looks smug,’ Sophia said instantly, startled out of her reverie by the force of her reaction. ‘So symmetrical and tidy.’ Two windows either side of the front door, five on the floor above, five peeking out from the roof behind the parapet. The drive swept round at the front in a perfect circle with a central flower bed. Service buildings flanked the house in carefully balanced order on either side. It was like a doll’s house or a child’s drawing.
‘And that is wrong?’ Callum was studying it with his head on one side. ‘Everything looks so different after India, I am still not used to it. Except the Hall, of course—that just feels like home.’
‘Shall we look at this one inside?’
‘Isn’t that rather shocking?’ Callum kept his face perfectly straight, but she guessed he was teasing her.
‘I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,’ she said. ‘Driving around in the curricle is rather fast, going into an empty house alone with a man is shocking. But I have come this far; I may as well give you my opinion on the inside as well if you think it would help you make a decision about the house. Your house.’
Callum moved the horses into a walk again and they wended their way down the hill, along the village street where they were much stared at, and up the opposite slope to the gates.
Close to, the air of immaculate formality was reduced somewhat by a rather ragged garden, a drive in need of weeding and dull window glass. Callum drove round to the deserted stables, tied up the pair and offered her his arm as they walked back to the front door. ‘The last tenants left two months ago,’ he said. ‘Will did not re-let because he knew I’d want a free choice.’
‘This feels like intruding,’ Sophia said with a shiver as they stood in the front hall. ‘I half-expect someone to appear and demand to know what we are doing.’
‘Yes.’ Callum threw open the doors on either side. ‘Odd, is it not? When Grandmama lived here it always seemed a friendly enough place. The rooms are well proportioned and the view good.’
Sophia followed him. ‘I suppose we should look at the kitchens and servants’ quarters.’
Those proved to be perfectly satisfactory. Callum did not, to her relief, suggest they look at the bedrooms. ‘It is a very good house,’ Sophia said as they returned to the front door.
‘And you do not like it.’
‘It is not for me to say,’ she responded, earning a sideways look from those penetrating hazel eyes. ‘Do you?’
‘Not much. It is … dull. I cannot imagine us living here.’
‘What are houses in India like?’ Sophia asked, steering the conversation away from marriage as they went back to the stables.
‘The Europeans live in single-storied houses called bungalows, with a wide and shady veranda around the sides. You spend a lot of time out on the veranda. When I was holding court I would sit there and the petitioners would assemble in the courtyard in front. In the evening that is where we would all sit and talk and drink.
‘There are wide windows covered with slatted shutters to let in the breeze, and each room has a big fan in the ceiling that is moved by the punkah-wahllah, a man who sits outside in the passageway and pulls the string with his toe. The bathroom has a door to the outside so the water carrier can come and fill up the tanks and take away the waste. The kitchens are separate because of the heat and the risk of fire. Servants are very cheap so one becomes lazy easily,’ he added.
‘How?’ Sophia asked. Callum, she thought, would not take to a life of indolence. Now, recovered physically from his ordeal, he gave her the sense of suppressed energy. Or perhaps it was simply impatience with her indecision.
‘Oh, you could be carried everywhere if you wanted. You reach out for your glass and someone puts it into your hand. You forget something and a bearer scurries off to get it the moment you frown, apologising as though it was his fault and not yours. Some of the mem-sahibs—the European wives—had constant battles with their cooks, wanting them to make English dishes. If you get used to Indian food it is much easier.’
‘Would you want Indian food in England?’ she asked, seized with trepidation at the thought of explaining dishes she did not understand to a temperamental English cook or, worse, a French one. Stop thinking like that! It is not my problem. Not yet.
‘I could always employ an Indian cook, I suppose,’ he said.
‘Of course,’ she said, politely, and then saw the amusement in his eyes. ‘You are teasing me, are you not? Seeing how far I would be prepared to accommodate your whims.’
‘Whims? A man’s dinner table is almost the most important priority.’
‘What is more important?’ Sophia asked. ‘No, do not answer that! I walked right into it.’
‘I cannot imagine what you mean.’ Callum sounded all innocence. But the man had a sense of humour, thank heavens, even if he was using it to bait her with.
Sophia tried to recall the brothers nine years ago. Daniel was usually laughing and joking. He rarely took anything seriously, except when they were together. Callum, as he had grown up, had become quieter, more intense. More private, she supposed. Or perhaps he was simply being tactful and not intruding on his twin’s courtship.
At least, he had kept out of it until that last day when he had tried to stop her tying herself to Daniel. Why had he done that? At the time she had been too hurt and indignant to puzzle over it, too distressed at Daniel’s departure to worry about what Callum thought. He had been perceptive, it seemed, and had had his twin’s best interests at heart. The love had not lasted—at least, not on her part. She could not guess at Daniel’s feelings.
She brought her mind back to the present and found Callum was taking a back lane through the woods. ‘This is charming. And mysterious,’ she added as they came out of sunlight into shade. The great beeches soared on either side; their smooth grey trunks rose like pillars in an outdoor cathedral, and the tracks that led off on either side wound their way deep into the wood.
‘I came this back way because I wanted to see if the house is still as I remember it, and this is the way we came when I was a child,’ Callum said. ‘You are going to love it or hate it, I think. It is not possible to be indifferent.’
The lane became a track, swung round to the right and opened up into a wide clearing. To the left there were views over the valley and a decent metalled carriage drive heading off to the valley road. To the right stood the house. Or, rather, there it grew, for it was hard not to think about it as anything but organic, rooted in the earth. It was built mainly of soft pinkish-red brick with a section of white stone that looked as though it might have been robbed from a ruined castle, and here and there were the signs of an oak frame, twisted with age. The roof was of clay tiles, moss-covered and irregular, and chimneys sprouted in profusion.
‘I love it.’ Sophia stared, enchanted, not realising that she had put out her hand until she found she had covered Callum’s bare fingers. He did not move away, and after a moment he curled his fingers into hers. She wished she was not wearing gloves, could feel the texture of his skin, whether he was cold or warm, sense his pulse. She gave his fingers a little squeeze, needing to share the moment.
‘I like it, too. I have only a vague recollection of it; we did not come here very often, for Great-Aunt had fallen out with Grandmama and was a trifle eccentric.’ He freed his fingers and jumped down to tie the reins to a branch. ‘Shall we see if it is as welcoming inside?’
‘You feel it? The welcome?’ That was good: they seemed to be in agreement over it. I am thinking as though I have decided. Too fast … I need more time. He is a stranger after all these years.
Callum reached to lift her from the seat, his hands hard at her waist, and she caught her breath as his eyes darkened. He let her down, slowly. Her toes brushed against his boots, her hems must have touched his thighs. Her heart thudded and she was uncertain whether it was more with nerves or desire. ‘I am down now,’ she said after a moment when he still held her.
‘On terra firma?’ His thumbs just brushed the underside of her breasts and a strange aching shiver ran through her.
‘I am not certain I have been on that since you walked back into my life,’ Sophia confessed and Callum laughed and released her.
He opened the door with a huge old key that had been left under a stone by the path and stood aside for her to enter. The house was not musty exactly; rather it smelled of old wood and fabric, faded lavender and the ghost of wax polish and wood smoke. It creaked a little as they stood there.
Somehow it swept away her jittery nerves. ‘I love it,’ Sophia repeated as they stood in the hall. ‘It feels warm, as though it wants to hug us.’ It sounded fanciful as soon as she said it, but Callum did not laugh, only looked at her a trifle quizzically.
‘Perhaps it does. It sounds almost alive. Listen. Like a ship riding at anchor,’ he murmured. ‘Shall we explore?’
They wandered through the old house, drawing back the curtains, peering into cupboards, finding odd flights of stairs that went to one room only, almost falling down the cellar steps.
Sophia caught Callum by the wrist as he peered down the precipitous, dusty steps into the dark beneath. ‘Don’t you dare go down there! Do you remember that day we played hide and seek together at the Hall and I hid in the wine cellar and you and Daniel pretended you didn’t know I was down there and locked the door?’
‘And left you to those great big hairy spiders and the mice and the mouldering skeletons that hung in chains, which is what you accused us of when we relented.’
‘Did I say mouldering skeletons?’ She tugged him firmly back into the kitchen passage and closed the door.
‘No, that’s what you were screaming about when you threw a bottle of Papa’s best crusted port at Dan’s head.’
‘You caught it.’
‘Of course,’ he said and for a moment there was something unspoken, more than just the recollection of a childhood prank. Callum had saved the port, saved his brother from a possibly serious injury and her from the consequences. ‘If you will not let me explore downstairs,’ he said, ‘I dare you to come up to the bedchambers.’
‘Why?’
‘To assess their suitability and condition.’
‘You did not want to look at them at Wellingford,’ she said.
‘We had agreed by then that we did not like the house. There was no point.’ He cocked his head to one side and studied her. ‘Are you suspicious of my motives?’
‘Yes,’ she said frankly.
‘My dear Sophia, if I was intent on seducing you I could do it as well on the drawing-room sofa, the kitchen table or here and now.’
‘You could? Is that not very uncomfortable?’ Disturbing images flitted through her imagination. Callum raised one dark brow and took a step forwards. Sophia threw up both hands. ‘Oh, no, that was not a challenge! Come along then, let us see what is upstairs.’
Finally, they arrived in a great bedchamber dominated by a four-poster of age-blackened carved wood, so high that there was a wooden stool set to help the sleeper climb into bed.
‘Well?’ Callum stood in the middle of the room, hands on hips, and studied her face.
‘I adore it,’ Sophia confessed. ‘I want it. But that is quite irrelevant; I cannot marry a man because I have fallen for his house.’
‘Liking the house is surely on the positive side of the scales. There are other reasons to marry. You would not permit me to attempt to seduce you downstairs, but this is a proper bedchamber and a very comfortable-looking bed.’
‘You are not going to seduce me!’
‘Am I not?’ Callum tossed his hat and gloves on to a chest and came purposefully towards her.
‘You are far too much a gentleman to seduce a virtuous lady,’ Sophia said with all the conviction she could muster.
‘Certainly not one I have no intention of marrying,’ he agreed.
Sophia edged around a stool. ‘But I haven’t said yes yet.’ It came out as an undignified squeak.
‘True. May I not kiss you? Are you quite certain you wouldn’t like to be kissed, Sophia?’
‘Well, yes,’ she said so promptly that he blinked. ‘Now don’t look so shocked! I am curious. Here I am at six and twenty and I have hardly been kissed, certainly not for ten years. The prospect of a good-looking man demonstrating how it is done properly is undeniably intriguing.’
‘Are you always so honest?’
‘I hope so.’ Of course, to allow Callum to kiss her when they were not even betrothed was a shocking and unwise thing to do, but she had been wanting to kiss him for the past hour at least, despite that.
Partly it was curiosity, as she had admitted. But mainly it was the good-looking gentleman himself. He annoyed her, he teased her and she sensed a deep inner darkness in him that he was hiding and showed no signs of wanting to share. On the other hand he would, she was certain, make her a good husband and, when she was not feeling like she wanted to shake him, she found him curiously easy to get along with. Perhaps it was simply the shadow of their childhood acquaintance.
Sophia bit her lip and looked at him standing there patiently for her to make up her mind. As patient as a cat at a mouse hole, she thought.
‘Shall we get rid of that bonnet?’ She began to untie the bow, her fingers all thumbs. ‘If you are considering marriage, you must expect your husband to want to kiss you,’ Callum remarked. Sophia turned her head away, unable to think of a single sensible thing to say. She was beginning to find her focus was oddly blurred, as if she might be coming down with a fever, and it was difficult to read his face. ‘But, if this is making you uncomfortable …’
‘No. I would like to be kissed, I think,’ Sophia said, placing her hat beside his on the chest. It was only a kiss, after all. Another fast thing to be doing, but hardly something to be frightened of. It was ridiculous, at her age, never to have been kissed properly. ‘But that’s all.’
‘I thought you might say that,’ Callum said. She had no time to wonder whether that was a joke or whether he was deadly serious before he pulled her into his arms.
Chapter Four
It was a disturbingly pleasant sensation, being held by Callum Chatterton. Part of her was shocked at being so intimately close to a man, but it was hard to summon the appropriate outrage when she was being held fast against his body and he was tipping up her chin to look down into her face. After all, she had asked for this.
He was very good-looking, even more so close up. Now she could study the fine lines of his lips, the subtle colours in his hazel eyes, the uncompromising masculinity of his bone structure. He was not a pretty youth, he was a man, complete with a bump on his nose which looked like a break, several small scars and faintly tanned skin that gave him a most exotic air.
Callum let her study him, his face as serious as hers must be, then he bent his head and took her mouth. Sophia almost jumped at the intrusion of his tongue between her lips, the pressure that opened them to him. Was this normal? It felt indecently intimate. She quivered and his arm tightened around her, supporting her, almost, not quite, constraining her. He felt very determined.
She could taste him, which was shocking. And she could smell him, which was even more so. He was clean, of course, but under the smell of ironed linen and good soap there was something dangerous and faintly musky, overlain by spice and sandalwood.
He was holding her very firmly, which might have been frightening. Sophia flirted for a moment with a feeling of alarm, the instinct to struggle, then let herself relax into Callum’s hold. He was too strong to fight. His mouth was insistent now and she let him do as he wished, and, increasingly, what she wished, as her tongue learned to play with his.
It made her body feel most strange. There was an ache, low down, and the urge to mould herself tightly against him there as though that would ease it. She realised that his body was hard against her belly and that was … worrying. It made the ache worse and so did pressing against him. Then Callum’s hand cupped her breast and he began to play with her nipple through the fabric of her bodice and the ache turned into a stab of sensation that had her whimpering into his mouth.
This is far more than I expected. Far more. But it was a fleeting thought, easily dismissed. This was the man she was going to … no, might marry. She must learn to respond to his lovemaking. Then the kiss deepened, became more demanding, and Sophia lost awareness of everything except the sensation that was singing through her, the strength of Callum’s hold, the urgency of their bodies. So this was proper kissing … She was drowning. It was overwhelming.
‘Sophia?’
‘Oh.’ Callum had stopped kissing her. How long had she been standing there, her brain reeling, her heart pounding and her senses quite disordered? What must he think of her? She wanted to run and hide, from herself as much as him.
‘Have you ever been kissed before?’
She blinked and he came into focus. He looked pleased with himself and faintly amused. Amused by her old-maidish ignorance, she supposed.
‘Not like that, no.’ It seemed she could articulate, at least.
‘Dan never—’
‘Certainly not. We kissed … but it was different. We kissed a little and held hands. He put his arms around me. He touched my … my breasts once.’ She felt her cheeks getting hot. She wanted Callum to kiss her again, to touch her. And he knew it. He must be feeling sorry for her, poor frustrated spinster that she was.
Gradually her pulse calmed and she felt her colour rising under that steady gaze. She had very little experience of men, but she knew he was aroused. That was only to be expected, she supposed. But had he thought she was so … so desperate? Frustrated? Potentially wanton that she needed to be kissed until her legs trembled?
She felt the anger sweep through her and know it was for herself, not really for him. She had been frustrated and she had not realised. She had been desperate for a man’s caresses. What might she have done if he had not stopped—or would the apprehension that was trembling just under the confused desire have made her flee?
‘Are you all right?’
‘No,’ Sophia said. ‘No, I do not think I am all right. What have you done to me?’
‘Kissed you,’ he said. ‘There is some basic attraction between us, I think.’ From the way he smiled he seemed to find that amusing. ‘Sophia, that was passion, that is all.’
‘Very basic,’ she snapped. ‘I am obviously far more ignorant and innocent than the women you are used to associating with,’ she added bitterly. ‘I did not want passion! I only wanted a kiss in a decent manner. There was no need to virtually ravish me,’ she hissed and slapped him, hard, right across his handsome face. She might not be heavy, but she was fit and tall and she put a great deal of feeling into the blow. It rocked him back on his heels, she was pleased to see.
Callum lifted one hand to his face and touched his cheek with his fingertips. ‘A decent manner? That was the sort of kiss that lovers exchange. The sort of kiss married couples exchange. If I had wanted to ravish you, believe me, we would be on that bed by now.’
Bereft of words, Sophia turned and walked down the stairs and out into the sunlight. And now she was going to have to sit beside Callum for half an hour, so close that she could feel the heat of his body next to hers and all the while he would be smirking with male superiority over reducing an ignorant spinster to such a pitiful puddle of need.
The horses looked up and whickered softly at the slam of the front door and she stared at them in sudden speculation. Perhaps she was not trapped here after all. She could drive a gig with one horse. How much more difficult was it to drive a pair? These had been well exercised and seemed biddable enough.
She ran across the clearing, untied the reins and climbed up on to the high seat. It took a moment to sort out two pairs of reins, but she had been watching Callum’s hands as he drove and she found the knack of it.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ He had come out at last, but there was the width of the clearing between them now. ‘Sophia!’
‘Get up.’ Sophia clicked her tongue and the pair responded as Callum began to run. She slapped the reins down and they broke into a trot, then a canter. As the carriage swayed up the rutted track she heard a shout behind her, but by now she was too concerned with not overturning the curricle to heed him.
The track sloped uphill, which helped, and she had the pair steady by the time it turned on to the road. They settled into a walk again and she did not try for more speed. As it was, the instinct to hang on to the side of the vehicle with her free hand was hard to fight.
But the pair’s docility calmed her. It left her with nothing to do but brood on what had just happened. How could he? Why did he not ask? But he did, in a way, a small voice cut into her tumbling, angry thoughts. He asked to kiss me, it was not his fault that I was so shamefully carried away by it. I gave myself up to his kisses far too easily. I did say I agreed.
She managed a wry smile. Now she knew something about herself that was a revelation. She had felt physical desire and she had also been frightened by the force of it, the sheer physical power of him. His brother had never made her feel like this, needy and shy and confused and almost out of control of where her passions might take her. Memories of Daniel had not made her want to moan with frustration. The gentlemen she encountered at the modest country gatherings had never tempted her in the slightest, she admitted as she negotiated the village street and a flock of sheep. Her body kept murmuring that it expected more. Sophia tried not to listen to it. More meant surrendering everything to Callum Chatterton.
‘Confound the woman.’ Cal stopped at the top of the hill and surveyed the lane down to the village; it was mercifully free of wrecked carriages. The breath rasped in his lungs from running for a mile, but he took a grim satisfaction that he was not panting. He had dragged himself from the lethargy of grief and had thrown himself into physical activity, those past months in London. Boxing, fencing, riding. Sex. They had all helped heal him, helped bring some balance back as well as strengthening his body.
He surveyed the road. If Sophia had got this far, then she was probably sufficiently in control to get home safely. He had chosen steady horses so he could concentrate on her and they had been well exercised. Now he should stop worrying that she had broken her neck and face the fact that he had badly mishandled that kiss. She truly was an innocent and he had shocked her, not so much by what he had done, but by the reactions he had provoked in her.
He had not set out to shock her, Cal told himself as he strode down the hill and into the inn yard. He had intended to kiss her, with restraint, and convince her that marriage to him was nothing to be afraid of. And then she had quivered in his arms and he had sensed the innocent natural passion and sensuality so he had given a mental shrug and found himself taking, demanding, far more than he should.
Sophia’s total surrender in his arms would be flattering if it were not for the fact that she had probably simply been overwhelmed by the novelty of it all. And now the physical desires he had been suppressing when he was near her were all on the surface again. The taste of a woman, the feel of her in his arms, was as powerful as a drug. No, not just a woman. This woman. He wanted Sophia Langley very badly indeed.
‘ Anari murkha,’ he muttered in Hindi. ‘Worse than a fool.’
‘Sir? Sorry, sir.’ An ostler emerged from the stables.
‘Not you.’ Cal unclenched his teeth and tried for a more pleasant tone. ‘I require a horse to get to Flamborough Hall; I’ll have a groom bring it back later today.’
Having to deal with a suspicious ostler who could not understand why a gentleman should arrive sweaty, horseless and without his card case or more than a crown in his pocket, and then riding a slug of a nag home, did nothing to improve Cal’s mood.
He had tried to be honest with her. He could not find it in himself to love, to risk caring so deeply, ever again. Life was too uncertain—how could he cope if he allowed himself to feel for her and then lost her?
Did she understand the difference between physical passion and love? He did not want to hurt her, break her heart all over again. And yet … An errant smile curled the corner of his mouth as he thought of Sophia’s reaction to his kisses and caresses. She had felt glorious in his arms, despite her inexperience.
He was still musing on that as he rode up to the front of the Hall and tossed the reins to the groom who ran forwards to take them. ‘This belongs to the Black Swan in Long Welling. Have someone take it back at once, will you?’
‘Yes, sir. Miss Langley called with the curricle, sir. Wilkins drove her home.’
‘She has won her wager, then,’ Cal said lightly. ‘Most improper. You and Wilkins won’t speak of it, I trust.’
He strolled into Will’s study, his mind full of interesting memories which his body, relaxed by vigorous exercise, was eagerly endorsing.
‘There you are! How did it go?’ His elder brother tossed down his pen and looked up, his expression lightening. ‘You look better—so much colour in your face. Sophia said yes, then?’ Will had been enthusiastic when Cal had returned to the Hall and told him of his intention to marry Sophia. Cal suspected that he had been worried about the Langleys, but had been unable to penetrate their polite reserve.
Cal found himself staring at the triple portrait of the three brothers that hung over the fireplace. There was the man Sophia had loved. He forced his attention back to Will. ‘At first she said, maybe. We went for a drive and decided we did not like Wellingford and we did like Long Welling. Then there was an … incident and now I do not know.’
‘Incident?’ Will’s left brow arched up.
‘Incident,’ Cal repeated, returning a look devoid of expression. ‘She will, however, be marrying me whether she likes it or not.’ He looked away from his brother’s speculative gaze to Dan’s painted smile. Once, just thinking about Daniel had been enough to trigger the instinct that he was there, listening. Now the void inside echoed with emptiness. He stamped down on the feeling.
‘I will let her sleep on it,’ he added. It was tempting to go straight over to the Langleys’ house and have this out, but years of negotiating contracts had taught him to wait and keep the other party guessing. Sophia was angry and embarrassed now; by morning he would wager she would be unsettled.
I need an heir; I would like several children, in fact. He had said that to her and, until the words had left his lips, he had not realised that they would be true at a deeper level than the simple need for a successor. And the way she spoke about children made him think she wanted them, too. He glanced back at the portrait. A wife and children. More hostages to fate.
There was a silence, then Will said, ‘She deserves happiness.’
‘Of course,’ Cal agreed. He would do his best to make her content, just as long as she did not expect love.
Sophia paced up and down the bedchamber floor. I will say no, she thought, sinking down on the end of the bed. It was shameful how he had made her feel—wanton and vulnerable and yearning. And ignorant. She was playing right into Callum Chatterton’s wicked, clever, hands. He had not been shaken to the core by that kiss, that was for sure. Mr Chatterton knew what he was doing. No doubt being bedded by him would be a shattering experience. Not that he was likely to enjoy it much, for she could hardly measure up to the skills of the women who had been his mistresses over the years.
A husband who loved his wife would not be disappointed in her ignorance, would be faithful to her. But this was to be a marriage of convenience and under those circumstances a wife was not supposed to take any notice if her husband took a mistress.
Which was not fair. But then life was not fair and she was not some young girl who could afford to dream of fairytales and princes.
She would refuse to marry him. He affected her too much on too many levels. She desired him, he had demonstrated that clearly enough. There had been moments today when she had simply relaxed and enjoyed being with him. He could make her like him and that would hurt if he would not let her close to him. He reminded her of Daniel and of a long-ago innocent time and of her own guilty conscience.
Sophia threw the window open and leaned her elbows on the sill, shivering a little in the cool night air. It washed over her heated skin and with it came a sobering flood of reality. She could fume and plan and curse Callum Chatterton and her feelings about him all she liked, but her own fate was not the only thing at stake here and her anger over what he had revealed to her of her own nature and desires was almost irrelevant.
Even if she found paid employment she would never earn enough to pay off their debts and keep Mama in genteel comfort. Her mother and brother would have to sell this house, pay off the bills and settle together in whatever humble parish Mark found himself. But if she was married into the Chatterton family, then a whole world of influence would be opened up to her brother, her mother would bask happily in the assurance of status and connection and she could have a family of her own.
The same results might come if she married someone else, of course, but it was a daydream to imagine she could easily find another eligible suitor at the age of twenty-six, shut away in the depths of the country with no dowry and no connections.
She turned back into the room and found her sketching pad and began to draw. A church interior, the long aisle, a challenge in perspective, a man at the far end, waiting at the altar rail, his face a blur.
‘Mrs Callum Chatterton,’ Sophia said to herself. ‘I suppose I had better get used to it.’
Chapter Five
By three o’clock the next day Sophia was hard put not to range up and down the parlour like a caged animal. Where was Callum? There was no sign of him, not so much as a note. Had he changed his mind and decided that after yesterday when she had slapped him, insulted him, stolen his horses and abandoned him in the middle of the woods that she was impossible, duty or no duty?
When the clock struck the half-hour she could stand it no longer. ‘I must go out for a walk, Mama,’ she said. She stuffed the half-hemmed pillowcase that she had been mangling into the workbasket and almost ran out of the room. She snatched up a straw villager hat, jammed it on and was out of the front gate before she could think where she was going, or why.
She stepped straight out into the little lane, aiming for the stile into the field opposite and the footpath through the woods. The sound of hoofbeats only registered when the horse was almost upon her. No one cantered down here—Sophia spun round and the rider wrenched the animal to one side, but not before it caught her with its shoulder and knocked her to the ground.
Sophia sat in the mud at the edge of the lane, her hat over one eye, and tried hard not to scream. It was too much. This was her best afternoon dress, worn in the expectation of receiving a proposal of marriage. Her bottom hurt where she had landed on it, her heart was thudding like a steam engine and she wanted to give in and weep.
Instead she found herself being hauled to her feet by a man who was becoming all too familiar. ‘What the devil do you think you were doing? Don’t you ever look where you are walking? You could have been killed!’ He looked as furious as she felt.
‘You were going too fast, Mr Chatterton,’ Sophia snapped back. ‘Or perhaps you cannot control your horse any better than you control your lusts?’ She pushed her hat straight and glared at him.
Callum stared back, his eyes narrowed, his mouth grim. He looked dangerous, irritated and impatient. ‘Where were you going?’
‘Out. For a walk, if it is any of your business.’ He was still holding her with a big hand wrapped around each arm, just above the elbows. ‘Will you kindly let me go?’
He ignored her demand. ‘Out? When you were expecting me?’
‘Expecting you, Mr Chatterton? Why should I be? I assumed you would not make another assault on my virtue in my own home.’ As she said it she felt something contract inside. Was this really the man who had made her drunk with desire, so incoherent that she could not think? Yes, it was and being this close brought back an unsatisfied ache to add to her discomfort.
‘You should have been expecting me to come and finalise the arrangements for our marriage,’ he said, his voice even. It was infuriating that she could not get him to raise his voice and show some emotion, even if it was anger.
‘Oh. You still intend to marry me?’ Thank goodness.
‘Do you mean to be deliberately provocative, Miss Langley?’
‘Yes,’ she said, lifting her chin. I might have to marry him—I do not have to like him.
‘And what are you attempting to provoke, I wonder?’ he said, his voice silky smooth. A quiver of something that was not quite fear and not quite desire went through her and she knew he sensed it from the way his eyes narrowed and his mouth curved.
‘Some genuine emotion,’ she flashed. ‘Not cold duty, not manipulative lust, not sarcasm. The truth. Do you truly want to marry me or not, Mr Chatterton? I should warn you, I meant it when I said we have considerable debts. And Mama will need support; I do not expect my brother to be able to do that.’
The question hung there in the warm air. Then Callum smiled. ‘Yes, I want to marry you, Sophia. I think it is the right thing to do. I think we can deal well together. I cannot pretend that I love you, that I ever will love you. And I do not ask that you will love me—how can I expect you to be so fickle as to forget Daniel that easily? And, in any case, I suspect love to be a much overrated emotion. That does not mean I will not do my utmost to be a good husband to you. And I understand about the debts.’
She tried to block the surge of guilt at his mention of Daniel. It was easier to think how he had made her feel yesterday. How, shamefully, she wanted him to make her feel today. The desire to touch him, to feel those muscles shifting under her hands, to smell his skin again, to taste him against her lips … She was going to marry him, so those sensual promises would be her reward for doing her duty. She only hoped that if the need to provide for her family had not been so great she would have had the strength to refuse him and that she was not doing the right thing for all the wrong reasons.
She twisted away, but something must have shown in her face, for Callum caught her by the shoulder and turned her back to face him as he untied her mangled bonnet strings and removed the crumpled hat. His hand as he brushed her hair back from her face was gentle and she closed her eyes against the intent in his, breathing in the smell of horse and leather and the spicy scent she was coming to know as Callum.
‘I wish to marry you, Sophia Langley, because I believe it is the best thing for both of us. I also wish to marry you because I promised my brother I would look after you if anything happened to him.
‘And I believe that you know you will marry me and, not surprisingly, you are angry and frustrated at having your hand forced by someone else telling you what is right for you. Especially when that other person was somewhat clumsy yesterday.’
‘I—’ He had summarised it perfectly. So efficient, Callum Chatterton. ‘You have left me very little to say, sir.’
‘That was my intention. You could say, yes,’ he suggested.
‘Yes. Yes, I will marry you.’ Surrendering to the inevitable was an odd sensation. A sort of dizzy relief mixed with fear.
‘Excellent.’ Callum bent his head. She held her breath, closed her eyes. He kissed her, lightly, on her cheek.
Sophia gave a strangled gasp of disappointment, relief, surprise, but his hands still held her upper arms. She opened her eyes to find his face already far enough away for her to read the cynical amusement in his eyes. He knows I want him to kiss me properly. How humiliating.
‘Later, Sophia,’ Callum murmured.
‘You know how to tease, do you not?’ she asked, almost tempted into smiling at his effrontery. There was a noise behind her, some kind of disturbance, but Callum continued to hold her. ‘Sometimes it makes the conclusion sweeter,’ he murmured.
‘Sophia Grace Miranda Langley!’
‘Mama.’ It sank in that she was standing—or perhaps sagging—in a man’s arms in the middle of the public highway, her skirts mired, her hat gone and her hair a tumbled mess.
‘Thank heavens! Oh, how wonderful!’
‘Mama?’
‘Come inside, both of you, before someone comes along.’ Mrs Langley flapped her hands as though rounding up chickens.
Callum stooped to hand her the bedraggled villager hat, tossed his horse’s reins over the gatepost, replaced his own hat—which, of course, he had safely in his hand—on his head and opened the gate for her. Elegant, controlled, serious. If he so much as let his lips twitch she would … No, he would not make such a tactical mistake. No giving way to smug triumph or foolish passion for him.
‘Thank you, Mr Chatterton,’ Sophia said with as much frigid politeness as she could manage.
‘My pleasure, Miss Langley.’
‘I fell in the lane, Mama. I will go and change.’ She whisked upstairs, leaving her suitor to break the news to her mother. With any luck Mama would be over the worst of her transports of joy by the time Sophia rejoined them in the parlour.
‘Here you are at last.’ Her mother beamed at her when she finally came down, some composure restored along with a fresh gown and tidy hair. ‘Well! There are many details to arrange, but I am sure we can work everything out over the next month or so.’
‘I intend us to marry in two weeks’ time,’ Callum said, perfectly polite, perfectly implacable.
‘But that is no time at all!’ Sophia gasped.
‘I would have thought you had already waited long enough,’ he said with a lift of one eyebrow. He swept on without waiting for her reply. ‘I will go to London tomorrow, deal with various pressing Company matters and make sure the house is readied for your arrival. I will speak to the butler and have him find a maid for you. I must do some shopping. Then I shall return to the Hall for the wedding.’
Was there no hesitation, not even for a second? Sophia wondered, watching the hooded eyes, the long fingers lying apparently at rest. This is your marriage you are talking about, she wanted to say to him. Our future. How can you be so calm?
But Callum swept on. ‘The wedding will be by common licence and, under the circumstances, very quiet. Six months has passed, Sophia is in half-mourning, there should be no adverse comment, but I would not wish to attract gossip. I trust two weeks will be sufficient time for your cousin to join you, Mrs Langley? Sophia said that was the plan for a companion.’
‘Yes. Dear Lettice can come at any time; she will be delighted, I know. But Sophia’s bride clothes—’
‘She may shop all she likes in London,’ Callum said. He did not shrug, Sophia thought, but he might just as well have done.
‘So romantic,’ she muttered and saw by the lift of an eyebrow that he had heard her. She raised her voice. ‘And if I do not like the house you have in London, or the servants?’ Of all the arrogant, cold, practical men! ‘I thought we were going to live at Long Welling. I like Long Welling,’ she added rather desperately. Her friends were close, St Albans was a familiar and friendly little town that she knew her way around. How was she going to cope, all alone in London with just a virtual stranger of a husband for company?
‘My business requires me to be in London for the present,’ Callum said in a tone of finality. ‘It will take time for Long Welling to be got into a state to be our country home. If you dislike the London house, we will move to another. If the staff fail to please you, you may dismiss them.’
But we cannot dismiss each other, she thought. Yet would it have been any better with Daniel? He would have been almost as much a stranger as Callum and there would have been the disillusion of acknowledging that their love had evaporated with time and distance. Here, at least, there were no illusions to begin with.
‘You will not object if I do that?’ she asked, curious at this willingness to accommodate her. Obviously his emotions were not at all engaged with any of this, not even the house he had been living in for six months.
‘The home will be your concern.’
Well, that was plain enough. It sounded lonely, though. Oh, pull yourself together, Sophia, she scolded. There will be balls and parties when the Season starts and exhibitions and libraries before then—the whole of London to explore. You will make friends soon enough. She was shaken by yesterday’s experience and today’s fall and her resilience was low, worn down by months of worry, that was all it was.
‘It all sounds wonderful,’ she said with a polite smile. Callum stared back at her, his gaze steady and unreadable under level brows. He made her a slight bow. Acknowledgment of her compliance? A genuine desire to marry her—or just a cynical satisfaction at getting his own way?
Sophia felt a little shiver run through her and the smile stiffened on her lips. Opposite her, the man sitting at his ease in the wing chair lowered his lids over the clear hazel eyes and she realised she could not read his thoughts in the slightest. Then he looked up again, directly at her, and she saw the heat and the desire in his look and knew she could interpret one thought at least: he was thinking about yesterday afternoon. Was desire to be the only heat in this cool marriage? She shivered.
The falling notes of the hymn died away. The choir, who a moment ago had looked like a flock of cherubs, their innocent, well-scrubbed faces turned up towards the stained glass window of the east end of the church, became once more a group of freckled village boys, nudging each other as they sat down in the ancient oak stalls.
No doubt they had mice in their pockets and catapults hidden under their cassocks, Cal thought, amused by the normality of their barely disciplined naughtiness. Beside him Will cleared his throat and on his right hand Sophia closed her hymn book.
In a moment they would leave the high box pew and walk down the aisle to shake hands with the vicar who would be marrying them in three days’ time.
And Will and I can both get dead drunk tonight, Cal hoped. He was tired. Beyond tired, he thought, contemplating restless nights, hectic days and miles of travel.
Now all he wanted was sleep and to get this wedding over with. He had done everything that was needful, he thought. At the East India Company offices he had consolidated his position in a post that brought status, a doubling of what his salary had been in India and the opportunity for endless profitable investment in return for his total commitment to the Company’s interests.
He had reorganised his house in fashionable Mayfair to receive its new mistress. The rent was high—twice what he would have paid in the City—but they were going to move in the best society, not mingle with the cits. He had given his most superior butler carte blanche to appoint a fashionable lady’s maid and to make all ready for his return and he had come back here and endured Mrs Langley’s endless list-making and insistence on discussing every aspect of the wedding in wearisome detail.
Then there was a rustle of silk beside him as he walked up the path between the leaning gravestones and he looked down at Sophia, silent in lavender at his side. He held the lych gate for her and then offered his arm as they waited for the carriage to draw up. It was necessary to stand there and shake hands with some of the congregation who had gathered round, to agree that after such a terrible accident, such a tragedy, that it was a blessing that he was comforted by the support of Miss Langley, who had so bravely put aside her own grief to marry him.
No one appeared to think it strange that she should marry the wrong brother. It was the most logical solution, several people opined and, they added, when they thought they were out of earshot, very gallant of him to step in and prevent Miss Langley being left a spinster.
Cal was quite certain she had heard those whispers. Sophia’s chin was up, there was colour in her cheeks and her eyes were sparkling with what he strongly suspected was anger, not chagrin.
‘Don’t take any notice of them,’ he said when they were at last free to walk across to the carriage.
‘I do not like to be pitied,’ Sophia said.
‘Nonsense, they are jealous,’ Cal retorted. ‘At least, the ladies are. They all wish they could marry me.’
‘Why, of all the conceited men!’ She cut him a sideways glance. ‘You are jesting? Aren’t you?’
‘Certainly not. You have only to eavesdrop a little. I’m a son of the Hall—and Will has not yet produced an heir; I must be as rich as Golden Ball if I am in the East India Company and, according to Mrs Whitely, I have powerful thighs. Now what do you think she means by that?’
‘That your breeches are too tight,’ Sophia flashed back. ‘Mrs Whitely is a very foolish woman.’
‘She is certainly an outrageous flirt.’ The Whitelys had been amongst Will’s dinner guests last night and Cal had enjoyed an interesting passage with her in the conservatory. The lady certainly exhibited both experience and a willingness to demonstrate it, but even with the lingering frustration of controlling himself with Sophia, he had felt disinclined to oblige her amongst his brother’s potted palms.
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Louise Allen
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: A SHOCK PROPOSAL Sophia Langley’s life is in turmoil. When she learns of her estranged fiancé’s death in a shipwreck, the last thing she expects is for his twin brother, Callum Chatterton, to make a shock proposal! Her inner romantic objects to a marriage of convenience – and brooding Cal makes it very clear that’s all it can be.Yet to save her family Sophia accepts with trepidation – and a highly inconvenient trembling of desire for her reluctant husband! Danger & Desire Shipwreck, Scandals and Society Weddings