Sophia blew her nose for the hundredth time. She tossed the used handkerchief into the wicker basket beside her and leaned back on the settee, pulling the knitted blanket up to her chin and moaning. I can’t even go skating without catching a cold . . . This did little to aid in her argument to Father that she was a strong woman who didn’t need to be coddled by a man. Her eyes fell on the vase of greenhouse flowers that Carver had brought her two days ago when she had fallen ill, and she smiled. Well, at least I don’t have a fever anymore.
“Back already?” Mother’s voice floated into the parlor from the hallway.
Sophia’s pulse pounded at the guest’s familiar voice. She scooted her legs off the settee, set aside her book, and arranged the blanket over her pale blue skirt to keep warm, but also to hide the wrinkles. She ran her hands over her hair, brushing her bangs into place and smoothing the escaped wisps. She tugged on her blouse to be certain it was free from creases and pinched her cheeks, hoping their rosiness would distract from the crimson hue of her nose and shadowed eyes.
“Well, I did promise my stepfather I’d visit a few times a week, so here I am.”
Sophia slapped her cheeks one last time and demurely folded her hands in her lap, her heart giving a strange flutter in anticipation of seeing Carver.
For yesterday’s visit, she was too weak to do much conversing, but Carver had brought her a stack of new poetry books from her favorite corner bookshop on King Street and spent the afternoon reading to her, his speech never stumbling over the complicated verses. After a few hours under his thoughtful care, her heart was very much in danger.
“She is in the parlor. I’ll show you to her, but I am afraid that I must excuse myself again as I have a prior engagement,” Mother answered, their footsteps sounding nearer.
Mother swept through the doorway in a cloud of burgundy brocade. “Mr. Ashton is here for a short visit. Please do not exhaust yourself. I’ll send the tea in before I depart. And before you protest, coffee is not healthy for you at the moment. Herbal tea will open your lungs. We want to make certain you are well enough for Beatrice’s party tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Mother.” She gave Carver an apologetic shrug. “I tried.”
“Never you mind on my account. I already had my pot of coffee this morning. But today, I thought you might enjoy something a little more relaxing and less dangerous than skating or walking into gaslight poles,” he said with a small bow as their eyes met. “Or even poetry.”
Sophia stifled a giggle and instantly regretted it as it turned into a violent sneeze. She covered her nose with her hand and desperately looked around for her fresh handkerchief, which had magically disappeared. Where is it?
Carver slid his handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her, averting his eyes to afford her some privacy. “God bless you.”
“Thank you,” she murmured into the cloth, her cheeks flaming. That’s an image he won’t get out of his mind for a while.
“I’ve got quite the game for you,” Carver announced, settling on the divan across from Sophia, leaning back on the cushions as he crossed his legs and arms.
“Oh?” She attempted to discreetly dab her nose, but there was no way to be dainty about it.
“Yes, a little game that I like to call, Five Questions to Become Better Acquainted with Your Fiancé!”
Sophia shook her head, her laughter dying at the thought of Prescott and his return creeping closer with every passing day and she still hadn’t a plan that didn’t involve marriage. If only she had a maidenly aunt in the country in need of a companion, which seemed to be the solution for every desperate heroine in her novels. “Clever. Well, let’s have some tea then and get started.” She smiled her thanks to Belle as she rolled the tea cart beside the settee.
Belle curtsied and moved behind Carver’s divan on her way to the door. She sent Sophia a wide-eyed look and grin that acknowledged Sophia’s comment this morning about Carver’s handsome looks that sent heat scurrying up Sophia’s neck as she reached for the tea.
“A spot of tea will always add pleasure to a cold day,” he replied as Sophia poured him a steaming cup of rose hip tea.
“Sugar?” She paused with the tongs poised over the sugar cubes.
“Four please,” he stated as she began plunking the cubes into his teacup. “Though you best make it five.”
“You are essentially having tea with your sugar.”
“Life is short and, let’s be honest, tea is better with sugar, especially when it smells rather medicinal in nature.” He cleared his throat and rubbed his hands. “Shall we begin?”
She worried her bottom lip, attempting to think of anything to ask. “What’s his favorite color?”
“Really? You are going to waste your very first question on what his favorite color is?” He snorted. “Priorities, Sophia!”
“It is important. What if I wanted to buy him a wedding gift and I didn’t even know what his favorite color was?” Sophia crossed her arms, frowning. “If we are going to play this game, you cannot mock my questions, no matter how simple they may sound to you. I have my reasons for asking.”
“Well, I suppose you would just have to guess on that one.” Carver took a tentative sip. “Yes, five lumps was definitely the right decision . . . rose hip tea tastes like the way my grandmother’s perfume smelled.”
“That explains your mocking. It was to cover the fact that you don’t even know the answer yourself.” She tossed her throw pillow at him, which he easily dodged.
He rolled his eyes. “Men don’t really sit around and talk about their favorite colors.” He paused, tilting his head. “Wait . . . do women?”
“Of course we do as it relates to many things, especially while shopping.” She smiled at his astonishment. “Mine is yellow, like the color of a golden finch.”
“Mine is cornflower blue, like your eyes.”
Sophia clutched her teacup, attempting to keep her color down and hide how pleased she was at his compliment. With her sisters always about, she was hardly ever given notice, much less praise from a gentleman caller. He is not a caller. Her grip tightened on the teacup, her knuckles whitening over the painted blue roses. “What is the first thing that Prescott does when he returns home after a long day at the office?”
He scratched the top of his head. “You keep asking difficult questions. Well, if Prescott still follows the pattern he set during my youth, the thing is, he usually doesn’t get home from the office until after eight o’clock every evening. When he does, he just shuts himself in his study, reading his newspaper and has his dinner brought to him on a tray. He was quite the recluse, even when my mother was still alive.” He cleared his throat. “After she passed, he brought me to his club for dinner one night a week—as if that completed his duty to me.”
“Oh.” She dropped her gaze and took a sip of tea to disguise her sorrow for Carver’s boyhood. While hers had been filled with laughter and light with her siblings, his had been spent alone.
“Next!” Carver announced, breaking the somber mood.
Taking his lead, she decided not to press him further on the subject of his mother’s marriage to Prescott. “Well, even though Prescott is an eremite at home, do you think there is a chance at all that he might learn to enjoy traveling once married?”
Carver grimaced. “I’m afraid not. That dandy has sent me on every business trip that has ever been required of Payne and Fairfield Shipping Company. He would rather catch pneumonia than to hop on a train or ship to travel to anywhere that isn’t to the office and back to the family mansion.”
“Until the moment he becomes engaged to me.” She muttered, her confusion over the man growing. Not that I am complaining. I wish he could stay away for a year.
Carver reached for her hand, mistaking her confusion for despondency. “The only reason Prescott is going on this business trip currently is because it is for the biggest customer the shipping company has landed in ten years, and your father essentially begged him to go. So much so that Mr. Fairfield even put it into the contract for your—” He stopped short and reached for his cup of tea, gulping it.
“Contract for my what? Why would a contract have anything to do with me?” Sophia pressed the back of her hand to her cheek, the room suddenly too hot with the mention of a contract.
He cleared his throat with a cough and lifted his empty cup to her. “It isn’t my place to say, but please, ask your next question.”
“What could my father possibly have that Prescott desires to be written into a contract?”
“You mean, besides his beautiful daughter’s hand in marriage?”
“I am under no false impressions of my so-called beauty.” She gripped the teapot and poured him a second cup, adding the five lumps of sugar. Was there another reason Prescott decided to wed her? “Does he have any interest in getting to know me at all before we get married?”
“I—uh, there is no telling how long this trip will last.” Carver ran his hand over the back of his neck.
She nodded, handing him the filled cup in its saucer. “He doesn’t. That’s good to know that his declaration of love was a complete falsehood.” As I suspected.
“Sophia—”
She rose, dropping the blanket to her feet in her haste, avoiding Carver’s piercing gaze. “If you don’t mind, I think I would rather not talk about Prescott anymore.”
He rose with her, remorse in his chocolate eyes. “As you wish. What would you like to do?”
“I’d like to take a walk.”
“But your cold?”
“Will be gone in a few days. I simply must get out of this house, with or without you.” Sophia marched to the closet in the hall that the servants used for the house’s winter garb, pinned on a hat and slipped into her cloak.
“Your mother is going to be furious with me.” Carver lifted his coat from the hall tree.
“My mother doesn’t need to know.”
* * *
Carver trotted down the stone steps after her, his hand encircling her petite wrist, turning her to him. “I sincerely apologize that the game distressed you.”
She shook her head, tears brimming. “Of course it didn’t.”
He leaned toward her, brushing his thumb under her thick lashes. At her widened gaze, he dropped his hands, at once recognizing that he was being far too intimate. He cleared his throat and shoved his hands into his pockets. “Then why are you crying?”
“I know you meant well, but this truly is all a game to Prescott and my father, and I do not wish to play. Don’t they think I have dreams of my own?”
Carver clenched his jaw. He had been so caught up in trying to speak only kind things about his stepfather to keep his mind from wandering back to Sophia, he had neglected to remember that this situation was not ideal for either of them. “My stepfather is a fool for ignoring you.”
“I do not wish for his attention.” She dropped her hand from his. “Perhaps I am still too weak for a walk.”
He couldn’t allow her to return home in worse spirits than he had found her in. “Would you rather a carriage ride?” He gestured to his gig, the scrawny stableboy holding the reigns looking bored and cold. “I’m sure it would do the horse good to get moving in the cold air and Isaac would like to go back inside,” he added, shifting his shoulder into her, nudging a small smile from her. “It’s too beautiful of an afternoon not to take a drive . . . and let’s be honest, your mother’s meeting will last at least another hour, and I know you have no desire to be home alone with your thoughts at the moment.”
Sophia lifted a single brow. “And how on earth could you know how long Mother’s meeting lasts?”
“Because my mother used to attend the same meetings and I always ducked out of the house to avoid all the chattering ladies.”
She laughed and slipped her arm through his and allowed him to guide her across the drive into his gig.
Carver dug into his pocket and tossed the stableboy a coin. “Thanks for looking after her.”
Isaac lifted his cap to them, flashing his shock of red hair, and trotted back into the carriage house.
He helped her into the seat before joining her, tucking a plaid about them. She shivered and scooted closer to him.
“Do you mind?”
His heart hammered at the closeness of her, her scent of gardenia all too enticing. “Not at all.”
The gig glided onto East Bay Street and Sophia kept her gaze on the gentle lapping waves as her curls whipped in the wind.
“Looking out onto the harbor always makes me think that even though everything seems hopeless now, maybe I could have a new life far away from here.”
“What do you mean? Like run away?”
She pressed her lips into a firm line. “In a fashion.”
Carver draped his arm about her shoulder as another shudder went through her body. “Are you not content with your life?”
“I love my siblings—Jane most of all—but they are all busy with their families. And my parents mean well in refusing me to allow me to expand my tutoring, but it does not sit well with me.” At his quizzical look she added, “I used to teach my sisters, and now I volunteer at the girls’ orphanage as well as with my nieces and nephews, helping them with their English studies, focusing heavily on literature and poetry. Those who care to learn, have all excelled under my watch.” She smiled softly in a way that drew his attention to her lips and rosy cheeks. “Even my nephew Elton, who was set against anything poetic, but after I found a method of teaching that he not only enjoyed but understood, he graduated top of his class.”
“And even with such results, your parents still refuse your request to teach?”
“Without their blessing, their friends will support them and refuse me the work. What else is there for me to do but wed a rich man who will better my family’s standing in society? There is nothing deemed respectable for a woman of my social stature to do to support herself.” She fiddled with her lace cuff before continuing slowly, “I am trapped. And my parents are leaving me no choice.”
“Your parents wouldn’t disinherit you, or throw you out from their protection. . . so, surely, you could have some say in the matter?”
She released a short, bitter laugh. “Carver, I left to meet Jane for tea and shopping and when I returned home, I was told I was engaged to marry your stepfather. As for the birthday dinner party they were supposedly throwing in my honor, something they rarely did after it became clear I was not to be a glowing debutante with scores of suitors, was in reality an engagement party to announce our upcoming nuptials. I would hardly call that having a say in the matter.”
He mulled over her sentence, anger flowing through him at her situation. “No. I can’t say you did, but know this, any man would count himself fortunate to have you by his side.”
Sophia wiped away at her cheeks as he turned the gig toward the park.
“Will I be able to see you tomorrow?” he asked at last, breaking the silence.
“Perhaps in the afternoon. I have a dress fitting in the morning and then Beatrice’s afternoon party.”
Dress fitting . . . for her wedding. Carver gripped the reins, making his horse toss his head in his desire to break free. But, like his mount, he had to rein himself back from speaking his mind and heart. Five weeks for him to squelch these feelings. She was promised to Prescott, and there was nothing the two of them could do about it. But, until then, his stepfather would expect him not to neglect her. “May I escort you to Miss Beatrice’s party?”