The Arrangement by Mary Balogh

21

Vincent edged out of bed very carefully. Sophia had only just fallen back to sleep. She had been awake since half past three, she had told him when he awoke just before six—she had looked at the clock to see what time it was. She had apologized if it was her restlessness that had disturbed him.

“Terrified?” he had asked her.

“At least that,” she had said with something of a groan. “And excited. And … terrified.”

The reception and ball were to take place in two days’ time. As far as Vincent could tell, everything had been planned to death and organized down to the finest little detail. His sisters and their families were to arrive sometime later today, as was Flavian. Neighbors from ten miles about had been invited, some few to stay overnight on account of the distance. Of all the invitations that had been sent out, just one had been declined, and that only because the recipient had had the misfortune to fall off the roof of his barn when his wife had hullooed and waved the card from down below and distracted him. He had broken his leg in two places, poor man.

According to Andy Harrison and a few of the other men with whom Vincent had become friendly lately, there was going to be an eerie silence in the neighborhood after the Middlebury ball. There would be nothing, absolutely nothing, left to talk about. They had all enjoyed a merry guffaw at the prospect.

Vincent had hugged and kissed his wife and assured her that all would be well, that nothing would go wrong. Of course the orchestra would arrive from Gloucester. And of course all the food would be cooked on time and to perfection. Of course everyone would come. And of course it was appropriate and desirable that she lead off the opening set with her uncle. And she would not forget the steps or trip over her own feet or anyone else’s. Miss Debbins had gone over the steps with her, and she had practiced in the music room with her uncle, an experienced and expert dancer, had she not? Of course he was not sorry she had put him through all this.

“What do you mean, anyway, Sophie,” he had asked, “by saying you have put me through it all? Was it not we who decided it was time the tradition of grand entertainments in the state apartments was revived? Was it not we who decided upon the ball?”

“It is very kind of you to say so,” she had said, her voice muffled against his chest. “But I fear it was me. I wanted to prove myself capable of being mistress of Middlebury. I wanted to show everyone that I could compete with all the viscountesses back through history.”

“And you have done it admirably well,” he assured her, kissing the lengthening curls on her head. “Or you are about to do it.”

“That is the whole problem, though,” she had said. “That about to do it part. Do go back to sleep, Vincent. I did not mean to wake you. I shall lie very still, though I doubt I will sleep a wink until after the next few days.”

No more than three minutes later she was sleeping, and Vincent slipped out of bed and made his way to his dressing room. He heard Shep scramble to his feet and come to nudge his hand with a cold nose. He rubbed the dog’s head and pulled gently on his ears.

“Good morning, old boy,” he whispered, bending his head for the customary lick on the cheek. “Just a quick walk outside for you, and then I have an appointment to keep.”

Actually he had lain awake quite a bit of last night too, but earlier than Sophia. Was he going to make a complete ass of himself? He had practiced with Martin for the last few mornings, and Martin had sworn the air blue, if only figuratively speaking.

“I don’t know quite how you do it, sir,” he had grumbled, “but you do, and I don’t like it one little bit on my own account. I like it a whole lot on that smiling bastard’s account, though. Spars with Gentleman Jackson himself, does he? I hope he was not merely boasting when he told you that. It would mean he has farther to fall.”

It would also mean, if he had not been boasting, he would be a formidable opponent. And it was that fact that had kept Vincent awake, his stomach churning uncomfortably. Not that he feared getting hurt. He had grown up half wild. He had been knocked down in fistfights almost as often as he had done the knocking. He had always jumped back up and kept on swinging. No, this time it was the fear of being left feeling inadequate, of failing to accomplish what he had set his heart upon doing.

It was the fear that his blindness had unmanned him.

Pointless thoughts! But nighttime mind wanderings were the hardest to suppress.

Martin was already in the cellar when Vincent arrived there.

“You are sure about this, sir?” he asked. “I would gladly do it for you in the traditional way. I’ll have him on his back watching stars through the cellar ceiling and all the ceilings above it in no time flat.”

“Gentleman Jackson notwithstanding?” Vincent asked.

His valet said something unrepeatable.

“You do not have faith in me, Martin?”

“All the faith in the world,” Martin told him. “But I don’t know why you should have all the fun just because you are a bleeding viscount.”

“And because the viscountess is my wife,” Vincent said.

“Ah. There is that too,” Martin conceded. “If it was Sal, no fists would do but my own.”

Vincent grinned and would have said something about the continuing courtship between his valet and the blacksmith’s daughter, who had still been holding out for a wedding the last time they spoke of her. But the cellar door opened above them, and a cheerful voice called down.

“Darleigh? Are you down there? And is your batman there?”

“Both of us,” Vincent called back. “Come on down, Maycock. There should be plenty of light. Martin has lit the lamps.”

“Ah, a wonderful cavern,” Sebastian Maycock said, his voice closer. “This is where you do your exercising, Darleigh? And this is your trainer?”

“Martin Fisk,” Vincent said. “Friend, batman, valet, trainer. He wears a number of hats.”

“You look impressively large,” Maycock said. “Those shoulder and arm muscles look as if they are kept in good condition.”

“I do my best,” Martin told him.

“So you think you can outspar me, do you?” Maycock laughed. “It takes skill as well as brawn. Did you know that?”

“I think I may have heard it mentioned a time or two,” Martin said.

“Right,” Maycock said. “You are stripped to the waist and ready, I see. I’ll get my shirt and boots off, and we will go at it. Darleigh warned you to bring smelling salts and bandages, did he?”

“He did mention it,” Martin said.

“A bout with no set rounds, then?” Vincent said. “A fair fight with fists only, no punches below the waist? To end when one gives in or is knocked down and unable to get up again within a reasonable amount of time?”

“That sounds fair to me,” Maycock said. “I don’t expect this to take long. I hope your cook serves breakfast early, Darleigh. There is nothing like a good sparring bout to whet the appetite. Try not to go down too soon, Fisk. Ready?”

“I am ready,” Martin said. “There. I have gathered the lanterns together.”

“Oh, spread them around again,” Maycock told him. “There are too many shadows with all three of them in the same place like that. We will be careful to avoid tipping them. Darleigh, old chap, I would advise you to sit partway up the stairs. We would not want to hit you by accident, would we? It would not be sporting.”

He laughed. The man did a lot of laughing.

“I think there is one detail you misunderstand,” Vincent said. “It is not Martin who is to be your sparring partner, Maycock. It is I.”

There was a short silence and then the laughter came again, uproarious this time.

“That is a good one, Darleigh,” he said. “There would be a massacre here in one second flat. Right. Shall we get to it, Fisk? Spread out the lamps. It is dark down here.”

“It is about to get darker,” Vincent told him. “I apparently did not explain myself clearly. It is you and I who are to spar, Maycock. Clearly a fight between us would be ludicrous under normal conditions. You can see. I cannot. The light cannot be turned on in my eyes for the next little while, unfortunately, but it can be turned off in yours. And so we will be evenly matched and it will be a fair fight. I say fight rather than mere sparring bout for a reason. When you tell a grieving, vulnerable fifteen-year-old that she is ugly, Maycock, and when you force her to see for herself in a full-length mirror, you do more than hurt her. You destroy her. When you do it to the girl who has since become my wife, then you make an enemy of me and are deserving of punishment at my hands.”

“Oh, I say.” Maycock laughed again. “That was years ago, old chap, and it was nothing more than the truth. Would you have had me lie to her? Would you have had me tell her—Oh, I say!”

“The lamps are out, sir,” Martin reported. “Three paces forward, slightly right.”

“It is as black as sin down here,” Maycock said, his voice outraged. “Light them again this instant, man.”

“I would advise you to defend yourself,” Vincent said, having moved forward three paces slightly to his right—the only outside help he would get. He used both fists and short jabs to locate his man, and then hooked a right to his chin.

“Oh, I say! This is not sporting.”

“Are your hands tied?” Vincent asked. “Are your legs chained? Are your ears stopped?”

He jabbed at the naked chest before him, hooked with a left, cut upward with a right.

To his credit, Maycock recovered himself and raised his fists to protect himself. He danced about on his feet—and he danced away out of range. Vincent’s free punches were at an end.

But of course, it was not really a fair fight. Vincent was experienced in the dark. He was experienced at using his ears and at using that sixth sense that told him when someone or something was close. Mostly it was sound—the slap of bare feet on the floor, breathing that became more labored. And, as often as not, a voice that protested or taunted, especially when Maycock landed a punch, which he did more than once, though nothing to really hurt. Nothing on the face. Vincent talked too. It was only fair.

“The trouble with you, Maycock,” he said, “is that you are a man of surfaces. You see beauty and believe a person to be beautiful. You see plainness and believe a person to be dull and lacking in all the finer sensibilities. You would see an oyster and not even suspect that a priceless pearl was within.”

Maycock was just ahead of him. He verified the fact with a series of fast left jabs, which the man countered in such a way as to leave his chin exposed to a swinging right. He went down like a log.

“Sheer luck,” he said, scrambling to his feet. “I just wish I could have you in Jackson’s Boxing Saloon for one minute on my terms, Darleigh. We would soon see who is the superior fighter.”

“And Gentleman Jackson and all your friends and acquaintances would applaud your superior talents,” Vincent said, knocking him down again.

It was hard to judge exactly where his chin was and where his face. Vincent had tried to avoid the face. There was a family to be confronted above stairs. There was a public reception and ball in two days’ time. But he thought that this time he had connected with Maycock’s nose.

Maycock got up again. At least he was no coward.

Vincent took a hard punch to the jaw, reeled for a moment, and danced back out of reach.

“You saw a lonely young girl, who was uncared for by her guardian,” he said, “and you saw ugliness even though she worshiped you. I cannot even see the grown woman, but I do see all the beauty that is within her, and it dazzles my mind’s eye.”

“Perhaps it is cruel to be truthful,” Maycock said irritably. “If you think it matters, Darleigh, I will apologize to her. I have already told her that she is no longer ugly.”

The man just did not understand, did he? He was probably incapable of understanding. Vincent knocked him down again and he bobbed up within a second or two.

“I have seen her pain as well as her beauty,” Vincent said. “The pain of believing herself to be ugly and unlovable.”

“If you had eyes, Darleigh,” Maycock said, “you would realize—”

Vincent knocked him down with a blow intended to keep him down.

It did.

There was silence except for the sound of his own heavy breathing.

“Maycock?”

There was merely a dull groan.

“A lamp, sir?” Martin asked.

“Yes, light one, please, Martin.”

“He is not quite unconscious,” Martin reported a few moments later.

Maycock groaned again.

“Here, let me help you up,” Martin said. “Sit on the stairs here. I can sympathize. I have tried it with him, without any success. I used to knock him down as often as he knocked me down when we were lads, but that was when he could see. He is more deadly now.”

Vincent had found a towel and was drying himself off. He could tell that Martin was ministering to Maycock.

“Any damage?” he asked.

“Just a trickle of blood from the nose,” Martin said. “It will look a bit like a beacon for the next day or two. A little red and raw about the chin. Not a single black eye. The chest and arms will be sporting bruises in a variety of colors for a while, but no one will see them beneath his shirt.”

“I was brought down here under false pretenses,” Maycock said.

“You were brought down here for punishment,” Vincent told him. “I might have had Martin tie you down, you know. Instead you were given a fair fight.”

“Fair!” Maycock said testily. “You made an ass out of me.”

“I hope so,” Vincent said and grinned. “The simplest explanation we can give upstairs, I believe, is a version of the truth. You and I had a friendly sparring bout after you very sportingly suggested we do it in total darkness.”

“I do not enjoy being made a fool of,” Maycock said.

“No one does,” Vincent told him. “But only you and I and Martin need know it happened. And Sophia. I will tell her.”

He heard feet climbing the stairs. The door at the top opened and then closed again.

“He was no sniveling coward,” Martin said. “I am glad of that. Every time I heard him go down I willed him to get up again.”

“Was it unfair?” Vincent asked.

“Not as punishment,” Martin said. “He is not badly hurt. Just his pride. And he certainly does not get the point, does he?”

“I think he is incapable,” Vincent agreed.

“You are going to have a nice bruise on your jaw,” Martin said. “Here, let me press this wet towel to it. I said she looked like a boy, sir. When you told me you were going to marry her. Do you need to have a go at me too?”

“You have redeemed yourself since,” Vincent told him. “And you did not say it to her and would never have done. Ouch! That is sore. Besides, she probably did look like a boy, my poor little scarecrow, with her shorn hair. It is growing.”

“You don’t want to exercise further this morning, I take it, sir?” Martin said. “I’ll go on ahead to have your bathwater carried up, shall I?”

“Yes, please, Martin.”

He flexed his knuckles, which felt nearly raw, and he flexed his jaw, which was going to hurt for a while.

He loved her, he thought. The idea popped out at him as if from nowhere.

Well, of course he loved her. She was his wife and they were comfortable together. They talked and laughed together. They were wonderful in bed together, and she was a few months with child by him. Of course he loved her.

But, no. That was not what that sudden thought had meant.

He loved her.

And she still dreamed of her cottage in the country.

Sophia had slept late, and now it seemed to her she would never catch up. Though what there was to catch up with, she was not quite sure. With just two days to go to the reception and ball, everything that needed to be done had been done, and now it was simply a case of waiting for everything to happen and hoping that nothing would go wrong and that nothing had been overlooked.

Nothing had been overlooked. They had even ridden yesterday, she and Vincent, to call upon Mr. and Mrs. Latchley—he was the unfortunate tenant farmer who had fallen off his barn roof. Yes, they had ridden, she on one side of Vincent, mounted on a sidesaddle on the quiet mare to which she had graduated, Mr. Fisk on his other side, and Mr. Fisk had even remarked at the end of the return journey that they could scarcely have walked the distance in less time.

She liked Mr. Fisk after all. For all his blunt, gruff manner, she often thought she detected something resembling a smile back inside his eyes when he looked at her.

They had persuaded Mr. Latchley to allow them to send the traveling carriage to bring him and his wife to Middlebury on the day of the ball. They would find him a sofa in a safe corner of the ballroom, they had promised, where he could recline and rest his splinted leg while he watched the festivities and chatted with his neighbors. Mrs. Latchley in the meanwhile could dance and stroll about with her friends. They would stay overnight, of course, and be taken home the next day.

Sophia was not hungry. She would miss breakfast, she decided, though she knew she ought not. She had a baby to feed as well as herself. Perhaps a little later. In the meanwhile she would steal a few minutes for herself outside. It looked like a chilly morning, but it was not actually raining. She took a cloak with her.

She strolled in the parterre garden for a while, reluctant to go farther. Her family and Vincent’s were late risers by her standards, but they would be up soon, if they were not already. She must not be gone too long, then. And there were more people arriving today.

She had family of her own! She tested the new thought, and found it as warmly satisfying as ever. She had an uncle. She had an aunt and uncle and cousin besides, and they would remain a part of her life because she would refuse to let them go. Some might call her foolish. They were not particularly likable people, none of the three of them, and they had certainly not been good to her, beyond the fact that for three years they had provided a roof over her head and food for her stomach. But she would not hold a grudge. She simply would not. Just as she did not hold a grudge against Sebastian. He was an amiable, weak, rather self-absorbed man, and he certainly had not been worthy of a young girl’s devotion, but he was somehow a part of the small dregs of her family, and she was content that he be there.

She was about to return to the house when she became aware of someone hurrying up the driveway on foot. A woman. She turned onto the straight stretch between the topiary trees, and Sophia, seeing that she was Agnes Keeping, went to meet her. It was early for a morning call, but it was a welcome one.

“Agnes,” she called when they were within earshot of each other.

Her friend was smiling brightly and waving a folded paper.

“I could not wait until a more respectable hour,” she said, all out of breath. “The post came early, and so I have come early. I have heard from Dennis after I had given up hope of ever hearing from him again. Men are the more hopeless of correspondents, are they not?”

Sophia smiled, and they both stopped walking. Who was Dennis?

“Dennis Fitzharris,” Agnes explained. “My cousin-in-law. The publisher.”

Ah, the cousin. But Agnes had not said he was actually a publisher. Sophia raised her eyebrows.

“He wants to publish your first Bertha and Dan story,” Agnes told her. “And he wants to look at more. Here. Read for yourself.” And she thrust the folded letter into Sophia’s hands.

He did indeed. He wanted to publish the book. He liked it, both the text and the pictures. He thought it would delight children, and he thought there would be a fair market for it as there were so few books published just for children, especially books that were so thoroughly and amusingly illustrated. He suggested publishing it under the name of “Mr. Hunt, Gentleman,” since Viscount Darleigh would doubtless not wish to have his title associated with something so apparently trivial, and Lady Darleigh would not wish to be considered vulgar. He offered a sum that sounded to be generous enough as an advance against future sales.

Sophia looked up into Agnes’s smiling eyes and smiled back. Grinned back, actually. And then they were both laughing and hugging each other and dancing in a circle on the driveway.

“Is it vulgar to be an authoress?” Sophia asked.

“Dreadfully, my dear,” Agnes replied. “It is even worse to be a book illustrator. Is there a word more derogatory than vulgar? If there is, you are it, or would be if you allowed your name to appear on the cover of your book.”

“The cover of my book.” Sophia stared at her arrested. “My book. Mine and Vincent’s. Oh, Agnes!”

“I know,” Agnes said. “Wonderful, is it not? But I must hurry back. I told my sister I would be gone no longer than half an hour. I have promised to help her sew new trim onto her best evening gown for the night after tomorrow, and she is convinced the job will occupy both of us for the whole day, horrid thought.”

She turned and hurried back the way she had come, and Sophia made her way back to the house.

“Have you seen my husband?” she asked the footman in the hallway.

The footman believed his lordship was with Mrs. Pearl and Lady March in the morning room, but as Sophia hurried along the corridor of the west wing, he was just leaving the room and closing the door behind him.

“Vincent,” she cried.

He looked in her direction, cocked his head to one side, and frowned.

“What is it?” he asked. “You sound distressed.”

“Merely breathless,” she told him. “The postman just brought a letter to Miss Debbins’s house, and he wants to publish us, Vincent, though not under my name because it would be vulgar.”

His expression did not change except that his frown perhaps deepened.

“He?” he asked her. “The postman? What would be vulgar?”

“Using a woman’s name on a cover,” she explained. “Apparently it is not done. And you might consider it trivial to have your title there. So he suggests just plain Mr. Hunt, Gentleman.”

“Kind of him,” he said, grinning suddenly. “Sophie, who on earth is he? And what on earth are you talking about? What do the postman and Miss Debbins have to do with whatever it is?”

“Nothing whatsoever,” she told him.

He laughed outright and, after a moment, she joined him.

“The letter was to Agnes Keeping,” she told him. “She sent a copy of Bertha & Dan and the Adventure of the Cricket Ball on the Church Spire to her late husband’s cousin in London, do you remember? And it turns out that he is a publisher and that he loves the book and wants to buy it and publish it under the name Mr. Hunt, Gentleman to save you from embarrassment and me from vulgarity. He wants to publish it, Vincent, for children all over the country to read and look at. And he wants to see more.”

The smile was arrested on his face.

“He wishes to publish your books, Sophie?”

“Our books.”

“Then it had better be under the names Mr. and Mrs. Hunt or not at all.”

“Do you think?”

“I think.”

And then his smile deepened again and he opened his arms—he had neither Shep nor his cane with him—and she threw herself into them. They closed tightly about her, and he swung her off her feet and about in a wide circle. He set her down a considerable distance from the morning room door and facing in the opposite direction.

He was laughing. So was she.

“Are you happy about it?” he asked.

“Are you?”

“Yes.”

“Me too.”

And then her smile faded. The light was not brilliant in the hallway, but there was quite enough of it to show her that the left side of his jaw was swollen and discolored.

“What happened?” She cupped her hand very lightly against that side of his face. He winced and pulled back.

“I collided with a door?” He made the answer sound like a question. He also raised one hand to touch the area gingerly with his fingertips.

She took the hand in hers and turned it over, palm down.

“Your knuckles too?”

“It was a heavy door,” he said.

She took his other hand from his side and held it in both of hers.

“A very heavy door,” he said.

“What happened?”

“A sparring bout in the cellar,” he told her. “Maycock came down this morning, and we thought it would be diverting to spar with each other. Maycock suggested very sportingly that we make the odds more equal by doing it in darkness, and Martin doused the lamps. Maycock came out of it rather worse than I did, unfortunately for him, but it was to be expected. I have had more experience with darkness than he.”

He grinned at her.

She searched his blue eyes, which gazed so nearly directly back into hers.

“It was not a friendly bout, was it?” she asked him. “It was about me?”

He did not answer for a while.

“You were fifteen, Sophie,” he said. “You were hurting and fragile, and he trod all over your heart with nailed boots. Worse, he trod all over your self-esteem. He convinced you that you were ugly when you were in reality one of the most beautiful little creatures ever created.”

“Oh, Vincent.” She felt a tear drip off her chin to be absorbed by her cloak. Another was trickling down her other cheek. “It was all a long time ago. He means no harm, you know. He just does not have strong sensibilities. There was no need to punish him.”

“Yes, there was,” he said. “I may be without sight, Sophie, but I am still a man. And when my woman needs defending, I will defend her.”

My woman.She had a momentary image of a caveman, hanging on to his woman by the hair with one hand while in the other he wielded a club to beat back caveman number two. Perhaps she would sketch it one day.

But she understood his need to be as other men were—Vincent Hunt, who had always been a leader among boys, at the forefront of every game and wild exploit. He had probably been at the forefront of every youthful fistfight too. She could not squash him by telling him that Sebastian was really not worth his wrath.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “Thank you, Vincent. Do you have any ointment on those knuckles? Or on your jaw?”

“Martin knew better than to suggest any such thing,” he told her.

Another male thing, she supposed.

“Well,” she said, “I shall kiss them better.”

Which she proceeded to do.

He had fought for her. In the darkness. And won. And then concocted a story to explain all the bruises and raw knuckles so that no one would know the truth except the three men who had been in the cellar. And now her.

She ought not to be pleased. Nothing was ever gained by violence. His generosity in marrying her and his kindness since then had healed her. And she had grown up in five years. The violence had been unnecessary.

She was pleased nonetheless.

Vincent had fought for her.

Because she was his.

And because she was one of the most beautiful little creatures ever created.