Page 58 of A Duchess for his Family

A few smiles appeared openly now. She allowed the girls to draw her toward the door. As they entered the passage, Marjorie began explaining which garden paths were forbidden after rain and precisely why those were the most interesting ones.

Sophia listened, though she glanced back once at the bustling kitchen. The servants had returned to their work. The noise rose again, with knives on boards, pans on ranges, and voices moving easily through the room.

The house still felt enormous, and the title still felt borrowed. But as Amelia’s hand stayed tucked in hers and Marjorie hurried ahead to announce their arrival to a gardener who had not yet seen them, Sophia felt, for the first time that morning, a little less like an impostor in another woman’s life.

Perhaps belonging did not arrive all at once. Perhaps it began with broken cups, an honest apology, and two little girls who had already decided she was home.

Benedict had been reading the same sentence for several minutes when laughter drifted through the open window. He looked up.

The sound was bright and distant, carried into the study on air scented with roses and newly cut grass. Marjorie’s laughter came first, unmistakable in its freedom. Amelia’s followed more softly. Then Sophia’s joined them.

Benedict’s pen stilled above the page. His writing table had completely disappeared beneath correspondence. Letters from tenants waited beside estate accounts, invitations competed with reports from his steward, and a solicitor in London required an answer to a matter which had already occupied more time than it deserved. He ought to have continued working. Instead, another burst of laughter reached him.

Benedict rose. From the nearest window, he could see only the edge of the terrace and a portion of the south lawn. He crossed into the adjoining morning room, where the tall glass doors stood open behind pale curtains stirring in the breeze.

Voices approached along the garden path. Benedict remained behind the curtain. He told himself he did so because his appearance would interrupt whatever the girls were doing. Marjorie would abandon the subject entirely in order to explain herself, and Amelia would immediately become concerned that they had disturbed him.

It had nothing to do with his wish to observe Sophia when she did not know he was there.

The girls appeared first. Marjorie caught Sophia by one hand and pulled her toward the garden’s most extravagant part, where roses spilled over low stone walls and foxgloves rose in purple towers along the path. Amelia held Sophia’s other hand, though she walked with considerably more dignity than her sister.

“You must see this part,” Marjorie announced. “It is the best, except for the closed-up well, but Uncle Benedict says we are not to go there without someone sensible.”

“Which is why we have brought you,” Amelia announced.

Sophia glanced between them. “I am flattered by your confidence.”

“You climbed a tree,” Marjorie reminded her. “That proves you are sensible in emergencies.”

“It may prove precisely the opposite.”

Marjorie ignored this. As Benedict had known she would, she began explaining everything at once, starting with the names of flowers she remembered and the names she had invented for those she did not know, which paths flooded after rain, and which rosebush had once caught Benedict’s coat and refused to let go.

“It did not refuse,” Benedict murmured behind the curtain. “It was a thorn.”

Sophia laughed. She looked different in the garden than she had at the wedding. She seemed softer and less self-conscious about the title, which made her turn whenever a servant addressed her. The morning light touched her hair, and the breeze moved the hem of her pale gown around her ankles.

Amelia remained close beside her, speaking now about the gardener and the patch of lavender their mother had once preferred. Sophia listened as though nothing in the world could be more important.

She did not hurry the child. She did not fill the pauses Amelia required before continuing. When Marjorie interrupted, Sophia answered her without allowing Amelia’s quieter words to be lost.

Benedict felt something warm and painful move beneath his ribs. He’d told himself the marriage was for the girls, that Sophia would bring gentleness to Rivermere, and laughter into rooms that had been too quiet for too long, and that Amelia and Marjorie needed someone who understood them in ways Benedict never quite trusted himself to do.

He had been right. Marjorie pulled Sophia beneath an arch thick with white roses. Amelia followed, still holding Sophia’s hand. For a brief moment, the three of them stood framed by blossoms and green leaves, already belonging to one another with an ease Benedict could never have arranged through rules or careful planning.

Sophia looked back toward the house. Benedict slipped farther behind the curtain before she could see him. A moment later, Marjorie drew her onward, and the three figures disappeared into the garden’s brightest part.

Benedict remained where he was long after their voices faded. He made decisions all his life by weighing consequence against necessity. He trusted reason, duty, and facts which could be placed plainly before him.

Yet as he returned to his writing table, the correspondence no longer seemed quite so urgent. The laughter remained with him. And for the first time since the vows had been spoken, Benedict allowed himself to acknowledge what he had already begun to feel.

Perhaps marrying Sophia was the right thing to do.

Chapter Fifteen

“Mind the delphiniums, Miss Marjorie. They have suffered enough from your affection.”

“I only touched one.”