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Chapter Seventeen
Walpole entered the study and bowed despite repeated assurances that such ridiculous formality was unnecessary. ‘You have a caller, my lord.’
‘Oh, good grief, not another one. I thought I told you to tell the villagers that the Misses Gilbert are still not receiving visitors yet.’ Now that her aunt was lucid, Sophie was spending almost every waking hour with her and quite a few more when her body screamed she should be asleep. She was dead on her feet and her aunt had barely risen from the dead. ‘What part of convalescing do those nosy idiots fail to understand?’
‘This gentleman isn’t from the village, nor is he here to see the Misses Gilbert. Mr Stephen Bassett is here expressly to see you, my lord.’ Walpole bowed again as if kowtowing was something he had always done in this house as a matter of course. It was clearly going to be a hard habit to break him of. Rafe blamed his long-lost and dead as a doornail cousin, who probably favoured the rule by fear approach of leadership. In the absence of any real respect, he supposed that was the only way the odious scoundrel ever got any.
‘I do not know a Mr Bassett.’ Although something about the name Stephen Bassett rang a bell for some reason. He scrunched up his face while he searched his memory then offered the butler a one-shouldered shrug when he drew a blank. ‘What the blazes does he want?’
‘It is regarding the sale of the estate, my lord, and he is insistent it is urgent.’
Rafe groaned. ‘Of course it is.’ With everything else going on this past week, he had forgotten about the sale—or depressing lack thereof—because the alluring witch upstairs and her devoted familiars had thwarted it at every turn. The stack of letters he had written to all the potential buyers the whinging Whittleston Rebel Alliance had scared away was still piled on his desk seven days on, because he had neglected to post them. Why he hadn’t was a mystery when they annoyed him every single time he glanced at them, never mind that his odd reaction to the comely distraction upstairs made it imperative he sell fast too. That was an attachment and a complication he did not need when his long-planned quiet life was also within reach, hence he had been keeping his distance since the odd incident with the cravat. When good manners dictated he couldn’t keep that distance, Rafe made sure they were chaperoned by Archie. His boisterous brother made the perfect boundary between his irrational urges and the vixen who stirred them because there was not a cat’s chance in hell of acting on them with Archie glued to Sophie instead like a limpet.
‘Does Mr Bassett want to complain about my plans for the estate like everyone else in this godforsaken hole? Because if he does, can you inform him that I only see whingers on days without a Y in them.’
‘Actually, I might be in the market to buy it, old chap.’ Much to Walpole’s horror, a dark-haired gentleman of about Rafe’s age sauntered through the door. ‘For the right price, of course.’ The stranger held out his hand as he strode towards the desk. ‘Stephen Bassett.’
Quietly impressed at the bare-faced cheek of the fellow, Rafe took it and shook it.
‘This is a large estate close to London. The only one, I believe, currently on the market.’ Rafe allowed his eyes to wander to the stack of correspondence on the desk so that Bassett’s followed, then shrugged. He really did need to post all those blasted letters now, he supposed. More for Sophie’s sake than his own. He’d promised her the final choice out of two and a promise was a promise. Especially when she would have to live cheek by jowl with the decision. ‘Assuming you also make me an offer—’ He tapped his stack of unposted correspondence with all the confidence of a man teeming with offers. ‘I should first like to know what you intend to do with my estate, Mr Bassett.’ He didn’t want to care. Shouldn’t care when he owed this place nothing and could not wait to be shot of it, but to his complete surprise, he did.
Her again.
Blasted woman was getting under his skin!
‘What do I intend to do with it?’ Bassett looked baffled that Rafe had even asked the question. ‘Why live in it, of course.’
‘I do not care, Sophie!’ Her aunt was agitated and belligerent, exactly as she had been for the last three days. After nearly ten days of being so frail she could barely stay awake for more than a few minutes, she was finally well on the road to recovery. Her appetite had returned, she was building up her strength and the hacking cough which had made the doctor so worried had completely subsided. While such robustness was good to see, and a huge weight off Sophie’s mind, it was also wearing. There were only so many ways to placate her without telling her the truth and she had always been a bad and demanding patient. ‘I want to be in my own bed in my own house!’
And there it was. The demand she had made near hourly since yesterday too. It was exhausting fobbing that off. Exhausting and stomach churning. The guilt at lying and the reality of what Sophie had to eventually say had given her acid.
Aunt Jemima threw back the covers. ‘I am not staying in that horrid man’s house for one more night!’
There was clearly no more eventually because the time had come. ‘That man saved your life, Aunt.’ Sophie locked eyes with Dr Able across the bedchamber. He was busying himself mixing medicines, but he was here tonight in case her aunt took a turn on hearing the bad news they all agreed couldn’t be put off any longer. Not when her friends knocked on the door insistently every single day without fail, and she and Rafe had run out of excuses not to allow Aunt Jemima visitors. Especially Archie who seemed determined to sneak in via any means possible whenever their backs were turned, convinced he could cheer her up and back to her old self in no time if only they would let him. They hadn’t because the youngest Peel was incapable of keeping a secret and they both knew that all the forewarnings in the world would not prevent him from accidentally blurting it all out within seconds. ‘If it hadn’t been for his bravery, you would have died.’
‘What?’ Her aunt paused in her attempt at getting out of bed to stare at her.
Sophie took her hand, wishing there were an easier way to soften the blow she was about to deliver. ‘You have been so poorly, so very poorly, and distressed that I did not wish to burden you with more. But I lied to you, Aunt, when I said you had had one of your turns while we were out walking.’ Unseen over her aunt’s shoulder, the doctor had abandoned all pretence of working to watch the proceedings carefully, and he nodded when Sophie hesitated, reassuring her that the time had come. Aunt Jemima had made exceptional progress fast, he had said. He couldn’t be certain that this blow wouldn’t send her recovery backwards, but he thought it unlikely that she would die on the spot from the shock of it. He also had a potent sleeping draft standing by—just in case.
‘What are you talking about?’ The panic in her eyes added to Sophie’s guilt. ‘If I didn’t take a turn on the lane then what happened?’
‘There was a fire...at the cottage on the day of the barricade. You were trapped inside, and I could not get to you. Rafe... Lord Hockley...risked his own life to get you out.’
‘But...’ Aunt Jemima stared down at her arms as if noticing the healing cuts, bruises and blisters for the first time. ‘A fire?’
Sophie nodded.
‘Was it bad?’
She nodded again and squeezed her aunt’s instantly limp hand. ‘We were both lucky to get out alive.’
The elongated pause was gut-wrenching while her aunt digested this.
‘And my house?’
‘Is gone, Aunt. Rafe’s staff and the villagers tried their hardest to save it, but the flames spread too fast through the old beams and there was nothing to be done.’ She would spare her all the gory details of that for another time. For now, as Dr Able had suggested, she would stick to the bare minimum as little more would go in because it was all so much. This was her aunt’s worst nightmare come true. She was homeless—yet not in the way she had originally feared. Somehow, being evicted seemed like the kinder option now that the worst had happened. At least then she would still have her things.
‘But we are safe and that is the main thing.’ Sophie would focus on the positives—because there were positives if you dug deep enough and she would cling to those like driftwood in a storm. ‘Even Socrates survived unscathed. And the good news is Lord Hockley has promised to rebuild your cottage—the plans have already been drawn and the foundations will soon be laid.’ Just as soon as Ned and Rafe’s staff finished clearing the site of debris. ‘And he has made sure that it will be all yours this time. The deeds will be in your name. No court in the land would ever be able to make you leave it so all your worries about the future are over.’
‘But I do not want a new house... I want my old house. The house I grew up in.’
‘I know...’ She wrapped her arms around her aunt and rocked her like a baby. ‘But there was nothing to be saved so we must rebuild. We are safe and still together and we must make the best of things. We have a great deal to be thankful for...’
