“Is Lord Elfingham within?” The voice was not one that James recognised.
“Aye. With ’is ’orse like ’e always is at this time of day.” The groom sounded approving.
Certainly, James felt more welcome in the stable than he did in the house. No. To be fair, most of the guests followed the duchess’s lead and treated him as one of themselves, and the people whose acceptance mattered most were warming to him, even Hythe exchanging a few words that were not suspicious or insulting.
He rested his hand on Seistan’s withers and waited to see who wanted him. A footman, by his livery. Someone sent from the house?
“My lord,” the footman said, “I am to tell you Lord Andrew Winderfield is here to see you.”
Drew? Here? It could mean only one thing.
“We are being fetched, it seems, my Wind from the North,” he murmured to the horse.
The footman could give him no more news, except that the young lord had ordered his horses rubbed down and fed, but not stabled, for he did not expect to stay beyond a couple of hours. James gave his own orders to prepare Seistan for a journey and crossed the gardens on swift feet to hear the news.
Drew was waiting in one of the drawing rooms, making polite conversation with the duchess’s companion and Lady Sophia while watching the door.
James clasped his brother’s hand and pulled him into a hug. “Drew. Is it His Grace? Is he…?”
“Soon, the doctors say. He is sinking fast. Kaka wants you in London.”
James nodded. “I will make my farewells.”
“You must take some food before you travel,” Miss Grenford said. “I will order a collation set out in the small dining room.”
“I must thank the duchess for her hospitality,” he said to Miss Grenford, but his gaze rested on Lady Sophia. “Lady Sophia, may I have a word before I leave?”
She nodded gravely, and went off with Miss Grenford, presumably to order a collation, whatever that might be.
“Come on, Drew. You can tell me the news while I pack.”
There was not much. Most of London was empty, and His Grace their grandfather was as sour and disagreeable as ever, his disposition not in the least improved by having his toes over the edge of eternity.
“He wants Kaka to repudiate us all, marry again and get himself an English heir. He wants Matthew and John to abandon our people and come to England, without their wives, of course. He wants you married and with a son to secure the succession. He says even one of us is preferable to the Weasel, as long as our tainted foreign blood is diluted in the next generation. It’s enough to send a man off to find the darkest, least English, wife he can. A cannibal perhaps.”
James had to grin. “You are safe enough, fourth son. I am the heir to the heir.”
“Kaka has promised him you will marry a respectable English girl,” Drew said. “And the duke is insisting that our cousin Charlotte will do if your Belvoir has refused you. Or Sarah, he suggests, though he has hopes of a match for her with the Marquis of Egremont. But either cousin would do. They are both nice girls.”
“Charlotte and Sarah are barely out of the schoolroom!”
“Twenty-one. A year younger than I. They’d be wed long since, I imagine, if they had not been out of circulation mourning their brother and then their father.”
James shook his head. Their age was not important. He would not be marrying either of them.
“I have chosen my own bride,” he said, leading the way from his room, his packed saddle bags over one shoulder.
“She has accepted you? Congratulations. Can we take her with us now? We could get a special license and—”
“Not yet.” James cut him off in mid flow. “She has not accepted me yet.”
“But, James, we have no more time. It will have to be one of the cousins.”
“No. I will wait for Sophia to decide. And, Drew, if she decides against me, I will wait until she changes her mind.”
“But, James, that might be never, and our father has commanded you to wed now, before our grandfather dies.”
James stopped, turning to face Drew so he could look him in the eye. “Drew, I owe our father my obedience as a son, a soldier and a subject. Obedience to him above all others. But my first duty is to God. You agree?”
“Of course.”
“God has made this one woman for me, and me for this one woman. I will wait. She holds my heart, Drew, and for me to make promises to another woman while loving this one would make a lie of those promises even as I speak them. Kaka will understand.”
He hoped. As he led the way downstairs, he hid his doubts from his all too perceptive brother. For whether his father understood or not, James would not be changing his mind.
Once they were gone, Sophia came out from behind the curtain that concealed the stairs to the attics, followed by Cedrica. She had come up to deliver a message from the duchess, since Cedrica could certainly not go to a gentleman’s bedroom on her own, and had hidden when she realised how closely the brothers’ talk concerned her.
Listening to someone else’s conversation was abominable, but resisting was surely beyond the power of human flesh. Beyond her power, certainly. She had urged Cedrica to hide with her behind the curtain.
“How romantic.” Cedrica sighed. “Oh, Sophia, how I wish…” She trailed off, and Sophia looked back in time to see her blush even as she composed herself. “We did not give the gentlemen the duchess’s message. Shall we follow them down?”
She agreed. A footman had directed the brothers to a parlour where servants had laid out the food Cedrica had ordered. When Sophia and Cedrica arrived, Lord Andrew was perched on the arm of a chair, waving a bread roll in the air to emphasise a story he was telling about leaving London at first light. He straightened, looking around for somewhere to put the roll.
“Her Grace asked me to tell you she will be with you shortly, my lords,” Cedrica told them. Her Grace had been still in her bath when Cedrica and Sophia had arrived with their news, and had sent a message by her maid. “Please, Lord Andrew, relax and enjoy your meal.”
“May I have that word, my lady?” Lord Elfingham asked.
Sophia let him lead her to a corner, far enough away from the other two for some privacy. “I wish you safe travel, Lord Elfingham,” she said.
“Lady Sophia, I hope—”
Sophia interrupted, raising her hand. She needed to tell him that she could not marry him; that he should marry Lady Charlotte and please his grandfather. Charlotte was a nice girl, and would make a good duchess.
What came from her mouth surprised her. “I cannot give you an answer yet, my lord.”
His face lit, and he clasped her hand and lifted it to his lips. “You shall have all the time you need, my heart.”
“You must not call me that.” She shot a glance at Cedrica and his brother, but they had turned their backs and were laughing together at some joke.
“It is no more than the truth. I go to London, but I leave my heart here.” He made an impatient gesture. “Ack. It sounds so trite, Sophia. Why does my tongue stumble when I am with you? It is apt enough at other times.”
Could it really be true? Men lied, Sophia knew. Ballinger had sworn he had broken off with his mistress and would be a faithful husband. Michael had sworn he would come back safely, to make her his bride.
“Your grandfather wishes you to marry your cousin.”
“I will not marry my cousin, Sophia. I will not marry either of my cousins.”
“You need to wed before your grandfather dies.” She felt the ready colour rise in her face. “I have been listening to gossip, but it is true, is it not?”
James shrugged. “A wife who is accepted by the ton would ease our way, but we shall contrive. I do not intend to tie myself for life to the wrong woman, just to silence a few sharp tongues. I fell in love with you that day on the London road, and love you more as each day passes, and if I have to wait for you, then what are a few months measured against a lifetime in one another’s arms?”
His eyes were dark pools into which she fell forever, and somehow, he had possessed himself of both her hands, sending delicious shivers up her arms to tingle in her breasts and settle in her… In lower regions.
He sounded sincere, but…
“I cannot come with you, James. I need time. I had no idea… You must give me time.”
He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed the clasped knuckles, scattering her thoughts still further. “You shall have all the time you need. I ask only that you trust yourself, as I trust you.” His tone turned stern. “I think poorly of those who have led you to discount yourself, my heart.”
She could not think. She could barely even breathe. For a moment, she had wild ideas of scrambling into her riding habit and leaving immediately for London with James and his brother.
But Lord Andrew spoke, and the spell was broken.
“James, I am sorry, but the roads are treacherous, and we must leave now if we are to reach London before nightfall.”
After that, there was no more time. The duchess and Lord Aldridge arrived just in time to escort the brothers to the front door. Aunt Eleanor commanded James’s attention, sending messages to James’s aunts and the Earl of Sutton, his father.
Aldridge admired the string of horses that had been brought up from the stables—Seistan and more of the same long-backed, narrow-headed breed, all with the same metallic sheen to their coat, though their colours varied.
“You’ll not use post horses I take it?” Aldridge asked Lord Andrew.
“We have a mount and a couple of spares each,” Lord Andrew confirmed. “We’ll change off twice between here and London, perhaps three times. They have the stamina for it. The mud is not what they’re used to, but they are great of heart.”
The two men said their farewells and mounted, their spare horses left to run free beside them. Lord Andrew lifted a hand and put heel to horse, but James hesitated and caught Sophia’s gaze. Again, she felt the quiver through her body, impelling her down two or three steps and out onto the carriageway.
James bent to take the hand she lifted to him.
“Safe journey, my lord,” she said.
He lifted her hand to his lips, turned it over, and placed a kiss in the palm. “James. Call me James, my heart, as you did a moment ago.”
Sophia blushed. “Safe journey, James,” she conceded.
“And safe return?”
“And safe return,” she whispered.
The moment stretched, broken when Lord Andrew kneed his horse into a swift trot. James let Sophia’s hand go, she stepped back, and he was away, following his brother and the other mounts across the bridge and down the causeway to the road that led to London.