Page 24

“Pleasure to see you, Mr. Price,” she said quickly. She tried to curtsy, but her saturated skirts were too heavy.

“You as well, Miss St. Quinton.” The solicitor, still wearing his inscrutable, deep smile, descended the final step. He ducked into his carriage and disappeared behind the closing door.

As soon as she crossed the threshold, Sophie heard the rapid drip-drip-drip of her skirts, her hat, her elbows, her hair—her—soiling the polished floors. Wait … Polished? And there were pink magnolias and purple crocus, trimmed and arranged in a vase on the clean tabletop. Surely she hadn’t been that distracted when she left for her ride.

“Soph—” Lady St. Quinton interrupted herself with a gasp. She froze in the corridor and clasped her hand over her mouth. “What in heaven, child?”

“What was Papa’s solicitor doing here?”

A myriad of problems. A heart scored open and raw with pain, and that was her question. Delightful.

“You will catch cold, Sophie, really!” Mama bustled into the nearest room and yanked the bellpull.

Sophie removed her hat, and when she went to hand it to the footman, a rivulet of water poured off the brim. “Sorry,” she mumbled.

“Anne,” Lady St. Quinton was saying, using the voice of alarm usually reserved for her husband’s health, “Anne, see to it that Sophie gets warm and dry this instant.”

Just one look at the sour-faced lady’s maid made Sophie want to turn around and go back out into the storm. “I’m fine,” she said through gritted teeth.

“No, you most certainly are not,” Mama said. “And once you are restored to health, we have something of importance to discuss, young lady.”

Nothing could rattle Sophie just now. She had reached that point, at which her body resigned itself, of its own free will, to numbness. To feel was to ache. To love … To love was to suffer.

As Sophie climbed the stairs after Anne, she was glad of her duty-driven search for a husband. She never wanted to let another person into her heart. She couldn’t hold anything more.

Anne prepared a hot bath and refreshed the fire, the flames licking high enough to make Sophie’s skin itch, even from a distance. As soon as she was alone, Sophie threw open the window and collapsed, naked, into bed.

The door wrenched open soon after. “Sophie! Why aren’t you in your bath? Wh—”

Rapid footsteps crossed the room, and the open window skittered shut. Sophie felt the loss of the cool, rainy air immediately. She burrowed her face more deeply into the pillow, but the darkness showed her flashes of her dream, of Barnard lying on that blood-soaked deck. She rubbed her eyes roughly. “I’ll get in in a moment, Mama. It’s too hot.”

“It’s meant to be hot, Sophie. You’ll catch cold from this incident. What were you thinking, staying out in such weather? Does your groom not possess the good sense to keep you out of harm’s way?”

“It’s not his fault.” Her eyes burned. “Why was Mr. Price here?” she asked again, her words muffled by the pillow. Something gone awry with the estate was the last pinch she needed.

“Just a routine call. Sophie, really, I insist you get into this tub.”

Sophie yanked off the sheet and stomped into the copper tub, forcing herself to sit down with a slosh, even as the water scalded her rain-dampened skin. “There. What has you so agitated?”

Lady St. Quinton, who had spun around to hide from her daughter’s nakedness, teased the back of her hair with long fingernails. “Who’s to say I am agitated?”

You haven’t fussed over me like this in ages. You give all your energy to Papa, and then to your misery, until there’s none left.

Sophie cupped the steaming water in her right hand and ladled it over her shoulder, taming gooseflesh. “You only act like this when your nerves are troubling you.”

“Word has reached me that you attended a certain gallery on Pall Mall.”

Sophie bit back the filthiest four-lettered oath she knew. She pressed her fingertips over her eyes. “You cannot be serious. Anne—”

“It was not your maid that informed me.” Lady St. Quinton spun to face her. “I was rather of a mind to put her out for such an omission, but cooler heads have prevailed. I suppose she might not be privy to the implications of such an outing. She has not been a lady’s maid long, after all, but you …” She sighed. “You should certainly see the harm in it. I must caution you against keeping company with him.”

“Just what do you think will happen? Have you ever even spoken to the man? No, of course you have not.” She wasn’t sure why defending Mr. Balfour came so easily. She was even less certain why she had need to, why people so readily found fault with a man she had known only for a gentleman.

“I don’t need to speak with him to know his kind. To know what harm he could do to other interested suitors.”

“His kind?” Sophie sat upright in the tub. “Why, he is good enough for the Penneys, it seems!”

“The Penneys are in dire need of marrying their daughter into wealth, an unfortunate circumstance which you are so fortunate as to plainly be naïve to!” Lady St. Quinton’s voice was shrill, and her hand trembled where it lay over her throat. “Are you incapable of gratitude, Sophie? Of counting the Lord’s blessings, and being thankful for all your father has done so that you might be here today?”