‘Let me see.’ Mr Tanner jotted some figures down, added them up and passed the paper to Sophie. ‘Unless we become involved in excessive travel costs that should cover it. With a ten percent advance if that is possible?’
‘Yes, of course.’ It was better than she had feared. ‘I brought some cash with me.’ She handed it over, received a receipt and then saw the flaw in her careful anonymity. ‘How do you report to me?’
‘Do you have access to The Morning Post?’ Sophie nodded. Mama read it and virtually every household she knew took it along with The Times for its more relaxed style and coverage of social events. ‘If there is something to report I will place an advertisement signed Green Door and addressed to Miss X. If you are in Town you can visit me, or if not, write with instructions on where I may send a report, or a representative if that would be safer.’
It all seemed so organised and ordinary, Sophie thought, as she and Mary climbed into a hackney carriage and drove back towards the Strand. She had experienced more embarrassing interviews with her doctor. Then she shifted uncomfortably on the lumpy seat as a cold trickle seemed to track down her spine. This was nothing like a visit to Doctor Felbrigg – he never suggested sending a “large associate” round to deal with a rash or an earache.
‘Sir?’
Cal focused on the man who stood before him, his expression decidedly nervous. Had he been frowning? He made himself smile and saw the assistant relax too. ‘I am Calderbrook.’
The assistant snapped to attention. ‘Your Grace.’ Another man appeared with a chair which he set reverentially next to the counter before effacing himself. ‘How may we assist you?’
‘A present for a lady. A betrothal gift.’ He had no difficulty interpreting the beatific smile on the man’s face. A duke, a duke about to marry, a duke about to spend a lot of money. Jeweller’s Heaven.
Cal sat and discussed his ideas and looked at one piece after another while the wary, suspicious, instinct that had kept him alive as he circled the globe kept nudging for his attention. Sophie close up, deliciously flustered, earnestly explaining about buying him a present on a budget, had disarmed the immediate flare of mistrust. Now he wondered just how well he knew the woman who was about to become his wife in a few weeks. She was clever, he knew that. Clever enough to throw him off the scent if she was up to something. Her story about finding a present at a good price was plausible, yet there was something in the way she had reacted in the second that she recognised him… For a moment, veiled as she was, he thought her recoil was one of fear.
The days before the house party passed with uncanny speed and smoothness. Responses flooded back, several people took up the offer to add another guest and two bridesmaids would be accompanied by their sisters, while Cal invited another three gentlemen. ‘We’ll be about thirty, I imagine,’ he said casually. ‘Jared’s gone down to make sure everything is in order.’
Sophie was not sure she liked the silent Mr Hunt with his unfathomable brown eyes and swordsman’s grace. He saw too much and he looked as though he had a short, sharp method of dealing with problems. Given that the advertising columns of The Morning Post remained stubbornly free of notices from Green Door she could only hope that she was not going to prove a problem for him to deal with.
Lady Christabel Faversham, her best friend, and the only married lady amongst her bridesmaids, slipped onto the bench next to her beside the Serpentine two days before the departure for Calderbrook. ‘I thought it was you, Sophie darling. What are you doing here? I thought you would be locked up with dressmakers until the last minute.’
Sophie turned to kiss the proffered cheek. She could hardly tell the truth, that looking at dabbling ducks was soothing and she hoped it would enable her to present a calm and tranquil façade to the world, even if her mind was paddling in circles as fast as the ducks’ feet beneath the surface.
‘I escaped. Even Mama has to stop writing lists sometime and I think – hope – that the moment has come. Although as I came out for this walk I had to pretend not to hear a faint cry of bedroom slippers from upstairs.’
‘How are you?’ Crista tipped her head on one side to study Sophie. ‘Happy and harassed or panicking? He is very gorgeous, your duke.’
‘Um,’ Sophie agreed. He was. Utterly gorgeous. And very intelligent and, she suspected, ruthless.
‘Scared? You know, if your mama hasn’t explained things, I am more than willing to. There is nothing to be worried about. Actually, there’s a lot to look forward to.’ Her smile was cat-with-the-cream smug.
I hope so, it couldn’t be worse than the first time. And Cal is… ‘Goodness no, I am not at all worried or nervous about that.’ Eager, yes. Terrified, yes. ‘It is just, oh…’ She flapped her hands, trying to catch the elusive comparison. ‘You know when we were children and made ice slides in winter? You run and jump on and you slide and slide and it is wonderful until you realise you don’t know how you are going to stop at the other end?’
‘Ye…ss,’ Crista said dubiously. ‘I think so.’ She was probably far too well-behaved to have ever done anything of the kind.
‘Well, I feel like that. I am sliding along at great speed and everyone tells me how wonderful it all is, and Cal is kind,’ I think, I hope, ‘Only I hardly see him and when I do he is rigorously proper and Mama is always there too. And I am hurtling towards the wedding day with a man I hardly know and then…. What? A lovely soft snowdrift or an icy gravel path?’
‘You will be a duchess, that is the what. And your Cal will be there all the time for you to get to know and he will be gloriously improper a
nd everything will be wonderful.’
No, Sophie thought, nothing is ever wonderful, not once the bloom is off innocence and trust. With that gone very good and exceedingly pleasant are the best to be hoped for. After all, that was why she had drawn up her careful list of characteristics of the ideal husband, the realistic qualities, not the fantasy qualities that daydreams spoke of.
‘That’s better,’ Crista said as they kissed goodbye. ‘You are smiling now. And don’t forget to send samples of your wedding gown fabric today so I can wave it at Madame Prunel and make sure we do not clash horribly. And I will see you at Calderbrook in three days time. I cannot wait!’
Sophie walked home, her maid at her heels, and tried to make herself believe that before the end of the week she would be in the house that would become her new home, with the man who would be her husband. Cal had told her airily that she had no need to worry about a thing. His aunt would act as hostess, of course, as it would be most improper for her, an unmarried lady, to preside, so she could relax and become familiar with the house and staff at her leisure.
‘Men,’ she snapped at Toby who wandered in an hour later, casual as ever in the household in which he had run tame since boyhood.
‘What have I done now?’ He perched on the edge of her writing desk and began to play with the strips of blue silk and blonde lace that lay beside the notepaper.
‘You? Nothing, or at least, provided you don’t get ink on those, you will not have done. Let me have them so I can wrap them up with this note for Crista. But tell me, do you think I will have nothing to worry about and can relax and enjoy myself at this house party?’
‘You have nothing to do except look lovely, smile a lot and try and look modest about catching a duke.’ He folded the scraps and slid them into the folded paper she held out.
‘I take it back. You are as dense as Cal and Step Papa. I have never been to the house before, the servants will all be weighing me up and finding me wanting, Cal will turn into a horrible stuffy duke the moment he sets foot on his ancestral acres again and I will commit some hideous faux pas which will demonstrate how unfit I am to be a duchess.’