Page 7 of A Duchess for his Family

Benedict turned to Sophia. “Miss Norton, I owe you an apology as well as thanks. I spoke harshly.”

“You were alarmed,” she supplied.

“You make generous allowances for strangers.”

“Only when they appear to love their nieces very much.”

For one strange moment, Benedict had no reply. The words settled somewhere uncomfortable in his chest. He was accustomed to being called dutiful, responsible, severe, dependable. Love was a less manageable accusation.

He bowed again, more properly this time. “You have helped my ward today, and more than that, you kept your head when many would not have done so. I owe you a debt.”

Sophia’s blush returned, softer than before. “There is no debt.”

“There is,” Benedict assured her.

Then, because the twins were watching, because his heart was still beating too hard, and because Miss Sophia Norton’s courage unsettled him in ways he had no leisure to examine, he offered each girl a hand.

“Come. We are returning to the house.”

Marjorie took his right hand with unusual meekness. Amelia took his left. As they turned away, Benedict looked back once. Sophia stood beneath the oak with a book clasped to her chest. Benedict inclined his head. She curtsied.

And as he led the children across the grass, he found himself thinking not of the broken rule, nor even of the broken branch, but of a young lady who climbed without hesitation toward danger and then dared, with perfect politeness, to argue him out of his fear.

Noise met her at once upon returning home.

“Sophia!” her mother called. “Where have you been?”

Sophia paused, guiltily conscious of her hem. “In the garden, Mama.”

“In the garden? In that gown? You have ruined it!”

“It is only a little grass.”

“A little grass,” her mother repeated, as though Sophia confessed to a political scandal. “We are to leave in less than two hours!”

Emma appeared behind their mother, with a pearl pin between her lips and a child attached to one hand. Her eyes softened at the sight of Sophia.

“You found your quiet, then?”

“For a little while.”

Frances emerged too, fastening an earring. “If you found quiet, you must tell me where it lives. I should like to send Andrew there until he admits my blue silk is superior to the rose.”

From somewhere behind her, Andrew exclaimed. “I never denied the blue silk. I merely said the rose was also becoming.”

“That is what denial sounds like when dressed as diplomacy,” Frances returned.

Sophia might have smiled, but her mind remained beneath the oak tree, on Marjorie’s brave little face, Amelia’s anxious eyes, and the tall gentleman who came striding through the grass like judgment in a black coat.

Her mother’s gaze sharpened. “Sophia, your glove is torn.”

Sophia looked at it too quickly. “A branch caught it.”

“A branch?”

“I was near the far oak.”

Her father, who had been crossing the hall with an expression suggesting he regretted leaving his study, glanced up. “The far oak?”