When she woke, Sophia was disoriented, dazedly wondering where she was. The room was richly but heavily furnished in dark depressing colours that did not much improve when she sat up and lit the candle beside her bed with the tinder and flint left ready.
The fire was burning merrily, and hot water steamed in a jug on the washstand. Someone had clearly already been in the room. Sophia slipped out of bed and wrapped herself in the shawl from the foot of the bed.
The door opened, and a maid entered with a tray containing a teapot from which a luxurious aroma rose. “There you are, my lady. Feeling better, I’ll be bound.”
“Yes, thank you.” She was aching and bruised from the travel, even in the well-sprung and luxurious Haverford coach. “The maid who came with me? How is she?”
“Still asleep, my lady. Lady Sutton said as how we was not to disturb her, such a day she had. So, I am to do for you, my lady. Shall I lay out your clothes? Do you wish for me to bring breakfast?”
Sophia could see through a chink in the curtains that it was light outside, so it must be after eight o’clock. “Perhaps I should go down and join the family,” she said.
“The family has had their breakfast, my lady,” the maid explained.
Sophia sent the maid for a tray while she washed and dressed as much as she could without someone to do her buttons.
The next knock at the door was not the maid, but Charlotte, Sarah, and James’s sister Ruth. “Rosemary would be here, but she is sitting with Grandfather,” Ruth told Sophia. “She is most anxious to greet her new sister.”
“James left at first light to visit the Archbishop,” Charlotte said, “and swears he is not coming home until he has a license.”
“Charlotte, I hope you do not mind…” Sophia trailed off. What did one say to the woman whose potential husband one had stolen?
“Mind? You marrying James, you mean?” Charlotte enveloped her in an enthusiastic hug. “I could just kiss you. I was never going to agree to Grandfather’s plan, of course, but now Grandfather will stop suggesting it. And Mama and Uncle Sutton, too.”
Another knock at the door brought Lady Sutton, who asked to be called Aunt Grace, and James’s other aunt, Lady Georgiana.
“Call me Aunt Georgie, Sophia,” that lady said, “as the other girls do.”
“What do you have to wear for your wedding, Sophia?” Charlotte asked.
Sophia had packed the dress she had chosen for the charity ball, but when she showed it to the ladies, they were at one accord in rejecting it.
“It is the wrong colour for you, Sophia,” Sarah said decisively. “What do you call it? Brown? Cream? We can do better than that.”
In short order, Sophia found herself in the middle of preparations for her wedding, as the ladies brought one dress after another for her to try on until Aunt Georgie and Aunt Grace whispered together and left the room, returning a short while later with Aunt Georgie’s friend, Miss Matthewes, an elegantly-dressed lady of a similar age to the two aunts. She was carrying a gown in a light silk the soft blue-grey of the sea at dusk, figured with shapes woven so that they gleamed in the light against the muted background. White lace trimmed the low curve of the bodice and the high waist, and finished the cuffs and the flounce below the multiple pleats in the skirt.
They held it up in front of her, and she smiled at her reflection in the mirror. Yes. This one.
“And we will not need to alter it,” Miss Matthewes said with a satisfied nod. “You and I are much of a size and height.”
“I cannot wear your dress, Miss Matthewes!” Sophia faltered.
“Call me Aunt Letty,” Miss Matthewes insisted. “The dress is quite new. And it looks better on you by far than it did on me. I liked the colour when we saw it at the store, but Georgie should have had it made up for her, not for me.”
“Wrong blue for my eyes, Letty. I said that at the shop. But I quite agree; it is just the thing for our new niece. You will be kind enough to let us give it to you, will you not, Sophia?”
What could she say? She managed to stammer her thanks, and Ruth said, “Now all we need is James and a license.”
James was a long time returning home.
Washed, perfumed, and with her hair elegantly dressed, but still in her own gown rather than the one chosen for her wedding, Sophia was taken upstairs to meet Rosemary and the two schoolroom boys and to pay her respects to the duke.
“For we do not know how much he can hear, though he is unconscious,” Ruth told her.
Everyone welcomed her, even the servants smiling as they passed her in a hallway or entered the duke’s sitting room where she sat with her new family, sharing in their vigil.
Lunch was served, and still no James, but as the food was cleared, he appeared, a small rotund cleric trotting at his heels. He crossed directly to Sophia. “I have it, my heart, and the Archbishop’s own chaplain to perform the ceremony.”
After that, things moved very quickly. James proposed marrying in the grand salon downstairs, but Sophia suggested the duke’s bedroom. “For Ruth says he may be able to hear us, and surely it will give him comfort to know that you are safely married, James.”
“And to an English girl of impeccable heritage,” the Earl of Sutton—Father—said, grinning. He winked at Sophia. “Even if she is more than half French.”
The ladies carried Sophia off to prepare her, producing fine clocked stockings and delicate slippers in white silk, and a corset richly trimmed with lace and ribbon plus a fine lawn petticoat intricately tucked and embroidered white on white.
Sophia had never worn anything so delicate and feminine. “I cannot,” she protested, even as she stroked the offerings.
“You don’t want Elfingham taking off your gown to see the plain things you have with you,” said Aunt Georgie bluntly. “Give the boy a thrill.”
“Georgie!” Aunt Letty scolded, at the same time as Aunt Grace warned, “Remember the girls!”
Sophia consented to the shocking garments, blushing at the thought of James seeing them. Perhaps touching them? Her colour rose higher as her imagination considered what might come next, with not much more to go on than the occasional careless comment from matrons who considered her too old to protect from their more salacious discussions.
Aunt Georgie said shrewdly, “I imagine young James knows what he’s about, Sophia. Leave it to him.”
In the gloom of the room, the old man lying still on the bed, James’s bride shone like the star over the nativity, and everything faded except for her.
James hoped she heard the joy in his voice as he said his vows. She repeated hers with firm assurance. The ring he placed on her finger was a Winderfield ring, worn by one of the duchesses of his line. Would she have preferred a new one? He would shower her with as many as she wished, he vowed to himself as he bent to kiss her, keeping the salute light and brief so he did not embarrass her in front of their interested audience.
Ruth crossed to the bed and peered at the duke’s face. “He is breathing more easily and… is he smiling?”
James saw no change, but the chaplain was impressed. “My Lord Archbishop shall be pleased to hear that Lord and Lady Elfingham have received His Grace’s blessing. I shall pray for an easy passing for the poor man, you may be sure.”
His sisters and cousins swept Sophia off into the next room, Rosemary exclaiming over the ways this wedding differed from the ones at home in the mountains. The chaplain, after a torturously long exchange of courtesies, announced that he could not stop for a meal and must get back to Lambeth Palace, and Andrew volunteered to take him.
At last! James started through to the sitting room, with every intention of extracting his new wife and taking her off to their room, but the duke coughed and then fought to take another breath, setting off a flurry of activity. Was this the end? He cast an anguished glance at Sophia and joined the group praying in the sitting room.
The crisis passed, the duke sinking back into the slowed breathing that had been his state for days. James examined Sophia hopefully but hesitated at the dark smudges under her eyes. “You are exhausted, my heart. Go to sleep, and I will send a servant if there is any change.”
In the duke’s bedroom, James had greeted her with such joy that her doubts seemed foolish, but they came back to her that night after he had sent her to bed alone, while he kept vigil with his brothers and sisters.
A servant came for her in the early hours of the morning. As soon as she was called, she knew.
“Lady Sutton, Lord Sutton asked me to fetch you.”
The old man had gone out with the year, and she—who had woken less than twenty-four hours ago as Sophia Belvoir, had been Lady Elfingham for fewer than ten hours.