Page 37 of A Duchess for his Family

“There are no necessary accessories.”

“A shawl,” Emma continued, ignoring her. “Something light, in case the evening is cool.”

“Pearls,” Frances decided. “Very simple ones. We must not allow the gown to compete with her.”

Sophia stared at them. “There is no we.”

Both sisters looked at her.

“There is always a we,” Emma said.

Frances placed the gown carefully back into the box. “We shall go to Madame Delacroix tomorrow.”

“We shall do no such thing.”

“After luncheon,” Emma added. “The children will be settled by then.”

“I have not agreed.”

Frances smiled with dangerous sweetness. “No, but you will.”

Sophia looked from one sister to the other and understood, with sinking certainty, that Benedict’s apology had created a conspiracy. The gown rested between them, lovely, expensive, and impossible to ignore.

She picked up his letter once more.

I saw the gown and thought it would become you.

Sophia traced the edge of the paper with her thumb.

“Only accessories,” she acquiesced.

Frances clapped her hands. Emma smiled.

“And nothing extravagant,” Sophia warned.

“Certainly not,” Frances agreed with such innocence that Sophia knew herself already defeated.

She looked down at the gown once more. It was still far too costly and entirely unnecessary. It was a gift she ought not to have accepted from a man whose every kindness seemed capable of reaching places within her she had guarded for years.

Yet beneath the confusion, beneath the discomfort and alarm, something softer stirred. He listened. Not perfectly, perhaps. Benedict Langley did very little by halves, and his solution to excess had apparently been to offer her unlimited choice. But he understood that she wished to remain herself.

And, more dangerously still, he appeared to like what she was.

Chapter Ten

“Your Grace, the carriage is this way.”

Benedict scarcely heard his footman. He had just stepped from his solicitor’s office into the noise and pale brilliance of the afternoon, with his gloves in one hand and several tiresome legal matters still arranged in orderly succession within his mind, when movement across the street arrested him.

Madame Delacroix’s door opened. Emma emerged first, followed by Frances, both attended by a shopgirl carrying boxes tied in broad ribbons. Then, Sophia stepped into the sunlight.

Benedict stopped. There were moments in which the world altered without warning. A carriage rattled past. Hooves struck the stones. A costermonger called from the corner, and the wind carried the mingled scents of dust, horse, warm bread, and summer flowers from a nearby stall.

Yet Sophia seemed to stand apart from all of it. She wore a pale yellow bonnet, and the ribbon beneath her chin stirred in the breeze. Her expression was animated as she replied to something Frances said. Her smile was open and unguarded. She looked like a ray of sunshine given human form. The thought was so uncharacteristically fanciful that Benedict might have rejected it, had he been capable of thinking anything else.

He forgot the carriage. He forgot the solicitor. He forgot, for several wholly indefensible seconds, that gentlemen did not stand motionless upon pavements staring at young ladies across crowded streets.

Then Sophia turned. Her gaze found him at once. Her smile vanished.