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“If I’d told our mother what I was about,” he said, “she wouldn’t have come.”
“I came,” Lady Warford said slowly. “That is, I believed I’d come to see what could be salvaged of Clara’s . . . trousseau.” Her eyes filled. “For that horrid wedding. To that awful man. And you . . .”
“She saved me, Mama,” Lady Clara said. “She saved me. Twice.”
Lady Warford turned to her daughter. Her gaze was pure love. It made Sophy’s heart ache. Her mother had never looked at her in that way . . . when Mama was about . . . when she remembered she had children.
She gave Lady Warford the brandy. She drank. She stared into the glass for a time. No one spoke. Sophy’s heart was pounding so, everyone must hear it. It pounded so, she thought she’d faint. But she made herself stand perfectly straight, and kept her expression exactly as it ought to be. Politely interested. Deferential, but not too much so. Dressmakers must always keep the upper—
“I think, perhaps,” Lady Warford said. She paused. “I think perhaps I can . . . like her.”
Her children said, at the same time:
“Oh, come, Mother!”
“Really, Mama!”
Lady Warford’s gaze lifted to Sophy. “It is perfectly unreasonable to expect me to love you on short acquaintance,” she said. “However.”
They waited.
“However, you have done me . . . a great kindness.” She paused and composed herself. “A very great kindness, which is impossible to repay—and really, it’s most provoking of you. But you are presentable at least. And your sister is a duchess. That is no small thing. In any event, there’s never any stopping Harry when he takes it into his head to do something.”
“Will that do, Sophy?” Longmore said. “It’s not quite what you wished for, but for the present, I think it’s the best she can do.”
Sophy swallowed a sob. “Yes, it will have to do,” she said. “I shall try to make her love me more—but in the meantime—yes, it will do—I shall make do—because—because I should be so very wretched without you.”
She flung herself into his arms.
On Friday, the day after the Queen’s last Drawing Room of the Season, Miss Sophia Noirot and the Earl of Longmore were married by special license in the red drawing room of Clevedon House. The party in attendance was rather larger than the group at hand when the duke had been married. This time, along with the bride’s sisters and niece and most of Clevedon’s aunts, Lord and Lady Warford and their other five offspring looked on.
Sometime later, after the wedding breakfast, after the marquess and marchioness had returned home and were thinking their own thoughts in her sitting room’s quiet, Lord Warford said, “Is that a new frock, my dear?”
“Yes, yes, it is,” Lady Warford said, surprised. Her husband, to the best of her recollection, had never taken any notice of anything she wore. He noticed the dressmaking bills, and sometimes grumbled about them, but that was all.
“Very becoming,” he said gruffly. “Reminds me of the girl I married.”
She colored a little. “Does it, indeed?”
“Yes.” He rose and closed the sitting room door and locked it.
And then some things happened, which made her forget to mention a curious thought she’d had, to do with her new daughter-in-law’s eyes.
After the wedding breakfast, the newlyweds set out for Lancashire, the sisters having decided Society needed time to forget Madame Veirrion before meeting the new Lady Longmore.
Longmore and Sophy stopped for the night at the Angel Inn, some thirty miles from London.
And it was there and then, after he’d laboriously taken off every stitch she wore, and made love to every naked inch of her, and while he lay defenseless in a state of post-coital bliss, that she disentangled herself from his embrace and sat up and said, “There’s something I have to tell you.”
“There always is,” he said.
“I should have told you before the wedding,” she said. “Marcelline was appalled that I hadn’t.”
“A confession?” He raised himself onto his elbows. “Murder perchance? A mad husband in the attic? But no, you were a virgin.”
“That’s all the purity you get,” she said.
“I’m not a great devotee of purity,” he said. His gaze drifted to her breasts. The lamplight made them seem to glow, like two beautiful moons. But not quite full moons. More like three-quarter, with a delicious uptilt, like the uptilt of her nose.
“Look at my eyes,” she said.
“In a minute,” he said. “I’m admiring your breasts. I think I could write a poem about your breasts. That’s how splendid they are. And about your bottom. It’s completely perfect. You ought to model for statues of Venus. But I don’t want a lot of lechers ogling you. I’d rather keep you to myself.”
“I do love you,” she said.
“You ought to,” he said. “I suit you perfectly.”
“You do. You understand me. And that’s why I’m sure you won’t take this the wrong way.”
“This sounds ominous,” he said.
“Nothing frightens you,” she said. “Look at my eyes.”
He looked.
“Well?” she said.
“They’re remarkably blue. An uncommon color.”
“It’s the DeLucey blue.”
“Obviously runs in the family,” he said. “Funny, how your older sister didn’t end up with them, but her daughter did.”
The great blue eyes widened.
He stared at her for a moment. “Was that the confession?”
“Yes. You knew?”
“Sometimes,” he said, “I can put two and two together. All those hints you’ve dropped about your past. I knew there had to be a story, but I was too busy trying to seduce you to try to squeeze it out of you. But today, it suddenly became clear.”
“Today,” she said. “Before, during, or after the ceremony?”
“Does it matter?”
“Yes, because Marcelline said I married you under false pretenses.”
“Well, that would have added to the fun, but it isn’t true. I knew exactly what I was getting into. I’ve always known, I daresay. I knew you weren’t like anybody else. I knew you weren’t boring.”
“No one has ever accused the DeLuceys of being boring,” she said.
“But I didn’t see the whole picture until everybody had gathered for the wedding,” he said. “Then there you all were: you, the duchess, Leonie, and Lucie. I remembered Lady Durwich talking about the DeLuceys. I recalled the way you answered her, making a li
ttle joke of it. I recalled the way you launched into that long, boring description of my sister’s dress.”
“To put you off the scent,” she said.
“It worked,” he said. “Until today. Then it became as clear as clear. And I thought, ‘By Jupiter, this day just keeps getting better. My marriage is going to give Society a heart attack. They’ll think the Revolution is at hand or the Apocalypse is nigh. I’ve persuaded the most delectable bit of devil in female form to lie about loving, honoring, and obeying me for the rest of our lives—’ ”
“That wasn’t a lie,” she said. “Except for the ‘obey’ part.”
“ ‘And she’s a Dreadful DeLucey. I’ve married into a gang of them.’ My heart soared. And I almost did myself an injury, not laughing.”
The corners of her mouth began to curl. “I was fairly certain you wouldn’t mind,” she said.
“Mind? It’s perfect.”
“You’re perfect,” she said. “And I think you deserve a reward for not falling down laughing, and breaking the solemnity of the occasion.”
“It about killed me.”
She slid back down and into his arms. “A big reward,” she said. “There’s just one thing.” She stroked over his chest and downward.
“Anything,” he said.
“No One,” she said, “Must Ever Know.”
