The Arrangement by Mary Balogh
20
“Good old Sophia,” Sebastian Maycock said, putting a peculiar emphasis upon the last letter of her name. “The dog was a brilliant idea of hers. I would scarcely know I was walking beside a blind man.”
They were striding at a normal walking pace along the path to the lake. Maycock walked on the side with the rail. Vincent had Shep.
“I will not say I scarcely know I am blind,” Vincent said, “but I will say my dog has given me back much of my freedom and confidence. And yes, it was Sophia who discovered that it could be done and persuaded me to give it a try.”
“And you are having a riding track constructed?” Maycock said. “The park seems big enough to take it, I must say. You have a beautiful home here.”
“Yes,” Vincent agreed. “I am very fortunate.”
They talked aimlessly and pleasantly as they walked. Under other circumstances, Vincent thought, he would probably like the man. He was friendly and good-humored. And perhaps he was judging him too harshly. Perhaps he had not intended to be cruel. Perhaps he had not known how those careless words spoken on one isolated occasion had hurt.
“Sophia always did have a lively mind,” Maycock said when Vincent told him of her plan to have fragrant herbs and trees planted along the wilderness walk so that he could enjoy it even without sight. “I always found her rather amusing. I would take her to a gallery, and she would stand looking at an acclaimed masterpiece, a frown on her brow, her head cocked a little to one side, and comment upon some detail that could be improved. This was soon after she went to live with that dragon, Aunt Mary, and just before I went to Vienna to join my stepfather.”
Shep had stopped walking, and Vincent understood that they had reached the bank of the lake.
“Yes,” he said, “she has told me about you.”
“Has she?” Maycock chuckled. “She was a funny little thing.”
“Funny?”
Maycock must have bent down to pick up some stones. Vincent could hear one skipping over the water.
“She was rather scrawny,” Maycock said. “Thin with a pale, peaked face and big eyes. She would have looked like a boy if it had not been for all the hair. I think there was as much hair as there was Sophia, and she seemed quite incapable of taming it.”
He laughed.
“Ugly too, I believe,” Vincent said, turning to walk to his right along the bank.
“Eh?”
“She was ugly,” Vincent said. “Or so you told her.”
“Did I?” Maycock chuckled again. “And she remembers? She must do, though, if she told you. She was ugly, you know. I had promised my stepfather I would keep an eye on her, and I did. Aunt Mary was not doing it. She was a cold fish if ever there was one. Sophia amused me. I rather enjoyed taking her about London and talking with her. But I don’t mind confessing that I was offended when she imagined I had fallen in love with her. I mean, it was ludicrous, Darleigh. My mistress at the time was one of the acclaimed beauties of the demimonde. I was the envy of all the clubs. And there was Sophia … Well.” He laughed again.
“She was fifteen,” Vincent said.
“I beg your pardon,” Maycock said. “I did not mean to be offensive, laughing like that. She does not look half so bad now, I assure you. You have bought her decent clothes, as Aunt Mary never did, and her hair is under control. She has put on a bit of weight too. I daresay it does not matter to you that you did not marry a ravishing beauty, though, does it?”
“I believe I did,” Vincent told him.
Maycock laughed and then fell silent.
“Oh, I say,” he said when Vincent said no more, the laughter still in his voice, “I have offended you. It was unintentional, old chap. She is a pleasant little thing. As soon as I knew my stepfather was coming here, I thought it would be good to come and to see her again. I liked her until she tried to make an idiot of me. I daresay you are fond of her. It is hard not to be fond of Sophia. She was fortunate to find someone to whom looks are not everything. I am happy for her.”
Did he mean to be offensive? Amazingly, Vincent thought he probably did not. He was an amiable fellow, probably handsome and attractive to women. He was lacking only in the character department. Vincent stopped walking again and turned his way.
“Sophia had recently lost her father in a rather cruel manner,” he said. “He had been her only rock in a precarious sort of life, and he was not much of a rock at that. She was being ignored by the aunt with whom she had been sent to live. She was fifteen with all the insecurities and vulnerability of youth in addition to everything else. And suddenly she had a friend, someone who talked to her and listened to her and took her about to interesting places. Was it surprising that she fell in love?”
“Oh, I say—”
Vincent held up a staying hand.
“Of course you did not love her in return,” he said. “She was little more than a child. She put you in an embarrassing predicament when she declared her love. You had to explain reality to her. You could not let her continue in her delusion. And yet you did not want to hurt her. Did you?”
“She was a little scarecrow of a thing, Darleigh,” Maycock said, chuckling again. “You ought to have seen her as she was then. You would have had a good laugh, especially at the idea that she imagined I was in love with her. I laughed about it afterward. I was deuced annoyed at the time. Good God, all those afternoons I had given up for her. I thought she would be grateful.”
Vincent opened his mouth to say more. But what was the point? Even now Maycock could think only of the effect Sophia’s declaration had had upon him. Did the fact that she still remembered not alert him to the fact that she had been deeply hurt?
How did one avenge that poor little fifteen-year-old Sophie? By pushing the man in the lake? It could probably be done. There would be the element of surprise, after all. But it seemed somehow childish. And it would not be satisfactory.
How else, though? He was blind.
And then he had the germ of an idea. He put it aside for the moment.
“There are boats in the boathouse,” he said. “Perhaps you would like to take one out one day if the weather holds.”
“I may do that,” Maycock said. “There is nothing like a bit of exercise to get the blood pumping. I may take Henrietta with me. She looks decorative even if she does have a sharp tongue.”
“What do you do for exercise?” Vincent asked. “Ride? Spar? Do you go to Gentleman Jackson’s when you are in London?”
“I am one of his star pupils,” Maycock said. “I always drop my man. Sometimes he grants me a round or two with him, which he does not do with everyone, I would have you know. There is nothing like watching a decent mill, is there? Oh, sorry. You cannot watch, of course.”
“You must come down to my exercise room one morning,” Vincent said, and he indicated to Shep that they would return to the house. “My valet, once my batman, is also my trainer. He loves to spar. He is good at it too—he is built like a barn. It frustrates him that he almost never has anyone worthy of his skills close by. Perhaps—”
“It sounds as if he is my man,” Maycock said. “You had better tell him to bring the smelling salts along, though, Darleigh. He will need them.”
“I shall tell him.” Vincent smiled. “Though it may be his opinion that you will need them.”
Maycock laughed.
“I am glad I came,” he said. “I am going to enjoy being here. And I must remember to assure Sophia that she is no longer ugly. Decent clothes and a decent hair style can do wonders, can they not?”
Martin would call him an idiot and a nincompoop and lunatic and other, even less complimentary, things, Vincent thought. Though, no, he would probably not when he knew the circumstances. The only thing Martin would not like was the fact that he would not be the one sparring.
It was the middle of the following afternoon before Sophia was alone with her uncle. She had shown the state apartments to her aunt and uncle and Henrietta, all of whom had agreed that they were really quite impressive, even if it was a shame that they were wasted upon an owner who was blind. She had had a brief conversation with Sebastian when he walked into the music room after luncheon while she was stealing a half hour to practice a particularly challenging exercise Miss Debbins had set her. Why her fingers had the annoying habit of turning into ten thumbs as soon as she sat on the pianoforte bench, she did not know. But if Vincent could conquer the harp—and he was well on his way to doing so—then she could conquer the pianoforte. She could at least learn to be competent.
“Sophia,” Sebastian said, “you are becoming quite the accomplished lady.”
“I doubt I will ever display these particular skills in public,” she said.
“You used to sketch,” he said. “Some of your drawings were wickedly clever.”
“I illustrate stories now,” she told him. “Children’s stories. Vincent and I make them up together for the amusement of his nieces and nephews. And I sketch the pictures and make books of them.”
“Do you?” He smiled, and his eyes crinkled attractively at the corners. “You must show them to me. I went to Vienna to visit my stepfather, you know, and stayed longer than I intended. The entertainments there were endlessly distracting. By the time I came home, the dragon was dead and you had gone to live with Aunt Martha. It must have felt a bit like being tossed from the frying pan into the fire. I ought to have gone to see you. We were fond of each other, I remember.”
“I did not know you had gone away,” she told him, turning on the bench to look more fully at him. “But I was glad you stopped coming, Sebastian.”
“Because I called you ugly?” He pulled a face and then smiled again. “But you were, Sophia. Someone has done something with your hair since then and you have pretty dresses, and you are not quite as thin. Your looks have improved. I would not describe you as ugly now.”
“But you see, Sebastian,” she said, “I liked you, and I believed you.”
“How could you not?” He laughed, a sound of sheer amusement. “Your glass must have told you that I spoke nothing but the truth. That was a long time ago, though. You come very close to being pretty now.”
Ah. Praise indeed. She smiled back at him.
“You will be relieved to know,” she said, “that I no longer love you, Sebastian. I must go and fetch my bonnet. I am to go walking with Uncle Terrence.”
“Well,” he said, opening the door for her, “I am happy to know you feel no lingering disappointment, Sophia. Darleigh must be more to your taste.”
“Because he cannot see me?” she asked.
He laughed as though she had made a joke.
It was amazing what a difference five years could make to one’s understanding. He was handsome; he was charming; he was amiable. He lacked all empathy for others.
Her uncle was waiting for her in the entry hall.
“I can see why Middlebury Park is considered one of the showpieces of England,” he said as she approached. “Your mother-in-law showed me the state apartments a short while ago.”
“And the park is just as magnificent,” she told him, preceding him through the front doors and down the steps. “I shall take you to the lake, and if you are feeling energetic, we will walk about it to the cedar alley and the summerhouse. At a casual glance one might assume that the park ends with the trees beyond the lake, but it does not.”
He offered his arm and she took it. He looked less like her father now that she had seen him a few times. He did not have her papa’s charm of manner or endearing smile. On the other hand, he had elegance and perfect manners.
“We had better keep to the path while we can,” she said.
The morning had been marred by a drizzle that had left the grass wet, but the clouds had moved off soon after noon and it was a pleasant afternoon with only a slight nip of autumn in the air.
“And the path is new?” he asked her. “It blends very well with the scenery. It was your idea, Sophia?”
“Vincent was confined to the parterre gardens unless there was someone to take his arm,” she said. “It must not be a good feeling to be so dependent upon other people, must it? Or to be confined to one small plot of ground.”
“Yet that is a child’s lot in life,” he said quietly, almost as if he was talking to himself. “Which is all well and good if the child is cherished and nurtured to an independent adulthood. One of the enduring pains of my life was losing three children in early infancy, Sophia. I used to envy my brother. No, jealousy is the more accurate word. We broke off with each other when we were still very young men. It was not his wild ways—they were his business. It happened when he stole—or so I described it to myself at the time—when he married the lady I had thought was mine. Did you know that of your mother? And they had you and you lived. I resented that. I resented him and I resented you. If you have hated me, Sophia, it is no less than I have deserved.”
Her mind was numb with the shock of what he had said. Her father had never told her what happened between him and his brother. Her assumptions had not been the right ones. Had her mother ever regretted not marrying her uncle?
“I offered to take you when your mother left, you know,” he said. “Or perhaps you do not know. Already by that time my wife and I had lost two of our own children.”
“You offered to take me?” She looked up at him in some amazement.
“My brother’s way of life seemed hardly fitting for a young child,” he said, “especially when your mother was no longer with you. But of course he said no. I do not blame him. I would have said the same thing in his place. But no bridges were mended between us. My offer and his refusal only seemed to make things worse.”
They were silent while Sophia digested these matters. How little children knew about the adult dramas being played out around them.
“Whoever designed the lake,” he said, “with the island just so and the temple, certainly had an eye to the picturesque. Are there boats?”
“Yes,” she said, but she hoped he would not suggest going over there. She had not been since that afternoon when Vincent had taught her to float and when they had made love in a new way and she had fallen all the way in love with him.
They turned to walk past the boathouse and about the perimeter of the lake.
“We were a ramshackle family, Sophia,” he said. “I do not know quite why it was, but none of us had a great deal of affection for any of the others, though your father and I were the best of friends while we were growing up. I suppose it was all as much my fault as my brother’s and my sisters’. I have a tendency to be aloof. My wife once accused me of being cold, and I was wounded because I did not feel cold. But when I considered her accusation after the quarrel, I had to admit that my actions lent themselves to that interpretation. I would always rather hover at the fringe of any action than delve right in and become a part of it. Perhaps that is why I became a diplomat rather than a politician or a military officer.”
Sophia said nothing. There did not seem anything to say.
“Ah,” he said as they walked beyond the lake and past the trees on its far bank. “I see what you mean. And I see why the designer of the park put the alley here, out of sight of the house. A person can be private back here. It is a good place to stroll and think, or a good place to bring a book. And you see how my mind works? Those are the first things of which I thought. It is also a private place for lovers to stroll.”
“Yes,” she said.
“Do you stroll here with Darleigh?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said. “Sometimes.”
A few times they had walked to the summerhouse and she had brought a book to read aloud while they sat there. Once it had rained a bit while they were there, and Vincent had remarked that the sound of rain on a glass roof must surely be one of the coziest sounds in the world. And he had drawn her onto his lap, and she had set her head on his shoulder, and they had sat in silence until the rain passed.
The memory could bring a lump to her throat, as so many memories did.
But he wanted to be free. She was just one more woman who wanted to look after him. And he had overheard the conversation she had had with his sisters about her drawing of the cottage that had once been her dream.
Yet she was with child. They would remain together. She would not leave him now, and she was as sure as she could be that he would not leave her.
They had a good life together. They were friends. They talked and laughed together. They were lovers. They were to have a child, whom they both wanted. They had family and good neighbors and a few close friends. They had … everything.
Why was everything such a heavy word?
“It is a good marriage, Sophia?” her uncle asked.
“Yes.”
It was. She was not lying.
“I have sensed that it is,” he told her. “It is quite clear that you are fond of each other. Did you choose him deliberately and go boldly after him?”
“Is that what Aunt Martha told you?” she asked.
“I would not blame you if it were true,” he said. “It is how most of us get our spouses. But it was not so in your case, I would guess. I suppose Henrietta wanted him, or Martha and Clarence wanted him for her, and somehow you got caught in the middle and he married you. At least, that is my interpretation of the story they told.”
“There was an assembly,” she told him, “and Henrietta persuaded Vincent to take her outside for some air. She drew him along a little-used alley. I went after them with a shawl I pretended to think was hers.”
He laughed softly.
“And there was a horrid fuss, I suppose,” he said, “and Darleigh offered for you to save you from the wrath of Martha.”
“I did say no,” she told him. “But he persisted and persuaded me that our marriage would benefit him as much as it would me. It was not true, of course, but I married him anyway.”
“No, it was not true,” he said. “I believe he has benefitted more than you, Sophia.”
“What nonsense.” She laughed. “I might very well be in the gutters of London if it were not for Vincent.”
He stopped walking in the middle of the alley and looked down at her.
“Tell me you are not serious,” he said. “Martha did not threaten to turn you out, did she?”
“It was already done,” she told him, “in the middle of the night following the assembly. I went to the church and the vicar found me there next morning. Vincent came to the vicarage when he heard.”
Her uncle closed his eyes, and his free hand came to rest on hers on his arm.
“Ah, Sophia,” he said, “I have been much to blame. Sebastian told me that Mary was neglecting you shamefully when you lived with her. I was busy in Vienna and dragged my feet about coming back to England to find out for myself. And then she died and Martha took you in. She had Henrietta, who was much the same age as you, and I chose to believe that you would have companionship and would be far happier than you had been. I ought to have known better. I really ought. I have asked discreet questions of a few acquaintances in London, but whereas they can all confirm Henrietta’s presence at numerous ton events during the past few Seasons, not a single one of them has ever even heard of you. You were not given a come-out? You were not taken to any balls or other parties?”
“No,” she said. “Aunt Martha was afraid people would remember Papa and how he came to his end.”
“Ah,” he said. “The fault is mine. But it is too easy to beg your pardon.”
They had resumed walking and were drawing near the summerhouse.
“If people cannot beg pardon of one another,” she said, “then nothing can be forgiven and wounds fester.”
“Have you been deeply wounded, Sophia?” he asked her. “Have I wounded you?”
“Yes.”
She heard him draw a slow breath and release it.
She was glad he did not choose to enter the summerhouse. He turned, and they strolled slowly back along the alley.
“And now,” he said, “it is too late for me to do anything to really help you. You do not need my help. You have Darleigh.”
“And his mother and grandmother and three sisters and their families,” she said. “I have no one of my own, Uncle Terrence. Only Aunt Martha and Sir Clarence and Henrietta, with whom I hope for a cordial relationship though it will never be a warm one. And perhaps you.”
“Your family has let you down abominably,” he said. “Perhaps it would be better for you to turn your back on the lot of us, Sophia.”
“As you and Papa did with each other?” she said. “As both of you seem to have done with your sisters? Families ought not to be like that. All I want is a family to love and a family to love me. My own family. Is it too much to ask?”
“I do not have much experience at warmth,” he said.
“Can you try?” she asked him. “You said your greatest pain was the loss of your children. You have a niece. I can be no substitute for your own sons and daughters, but I crave your love. And I long to love you.”
She swallowed and heard an embarrassing gurgle in her throat.
He stopped walking again and turned to her.
“Sophia,” he said. “I do not believe I have ever known anyone as lovable as you. Perhaps my own children … But they are not here and never will be. I am not good at hugs.”
“I am,” she told him, and she put herself into his arms and wrapped her own about his waist and rested one side of her face against his shoulder.
His arms came tight about her, and they stood motionless for a long time before releasing each other.
“Forgive me?” he said.
“Yes.”
“And let me be a part of your present and your future?”
“Yes.”
“Do you love him, Sophia?” he asked. “Can you console me by telling me that it is a really good marriage?”
“Both,” she said.
It was really good. They would remain together because of their child, perhaps in time because of their children. But it would not be just their children holding them together. Oh, she would not believe that. They would be a family. They would love one another as families ought. And she and Vincent would show their children the example of love and companionship and tolerance.
“Darleigh is a very fortunate man,” he said.
She smiled and took his arm.
“We will miss tea if we do not return soon,” she told him.
