Toby looked at her. ‘Idiot.’
‘I am, aren’t I?’ Suddenly it was funny and they were both laughing and the tension and exaggerated terrors fled.
‘And I will be there, so if you do commit some outrageous crime, like goosing a handsome footman or drinking out of your fingerbowl, I will distract attention in a dramatic manner and no-one will notice.’
‘How?’ Sophie, found her handkerchief and mopped her eyes.
‘I’ll goose a footman too, or thrown my fingerbowl over my dinner partner – we’ve always scraped through disasters, Sophie, we’ll survive this. And once you are a duchess no-one can judge you, short of the royals, and possibly an archbishop.’
‘Or my duke,’ she murmured, sobered again.
‘Calderbrook is in love with you, you will be able to twist him round your little finger.’ Toby shifted off the desk and went to sprawl on the sofa.
‘He is not.’
‘Then why is he marrying you?’
‘Because he has come back from a very unconventional life and he wants someone acceptable, with whom he gets on, but who isn’t just out of the schoolroom. He matches all the criteria on my shopping list for a husband and I, apparently, match his for a wife.’
‘Love you or not, he can’t expect you to know how to be a duchess right from the first, not unless your father had been a duke and you had learned at your mother’s knee. Besides, he’s setting the ton on its heels himself, so you could be goosing an entire flock of footmen and no-one would notice.’
‘Is he?’ Sophie paused halfway through sticking a row of wafers on her little package of material to seal it. ‘What has he done?’
‘Just being mysterious is enough. First there was all the speculation about his daughter, lots of old pussies hissing about that. Then it turns out that he married her mother with the utmost respectability in Boston, in America. So now they are gossiping about whatever nameless sins he has committed that meant he had to stay away for so long.’
‘If they were nameless they will have a hard time naming them,’ Sophie snapped. ‘At least no-one is claiming that Cal is an imposter.’
‘They’d try that because it would be a delicious scandal – if it wasn’t for the fact that his uncle and cousin acknowledge him,’ Toby admitted. ‘But the Thornes have the most to lose and they accepted him from the first, so that juicy bone isn’t for chewing.’
‘He needs to marry and settle down and become respectable before his daughter is old enough to hear any of this nonsense,’ Sophie mused. ‘She seems very bright and little pitchers have big ears.’
‘You see? It will be easy. You are respectable, everyone likes you, so you can save your duke from scandal and he will fall madly in love with you,’ Toby said and grinned evilly. ‘You will present him with a brood of little dukelets and become a byword for conjugal bliss. Ow!’
Sophie’s engagement diary hit him squarely in the midriff, but she found, even as she threw it, that she was laughing again. Whatever else went wrong in her life, Toby was the rock she could depend upon. Dukelets, indeed.
‘Say something, Sophie.’ Step Papa was smiling, almost laughing at her.
‘I… It is large, isn’t it?’ The length of Calderbrook’s south front rose like a cliff along the far side of the lake. Hundreds of windows glinted in the sun, columns topped by a pediment rose all four floors at the centre, crisp white stone seemed to reflect back heat, even at the distance of half a mile.
They were arriving at Calderbrook the day before the rest of the guests so that Sophie could relax, Cal had said. Relax? She searched for something less gauche to say as the carriage wheeled left on to the bridge across the lake. ‘It is exceedingly handsome, but not as large as Longleat or Blenheim. Which makes it more…’ Home-like was not the phrase she was searching for. ‘More approachable. I like it already.’
They were watched for, of course. Four be-wigged and liveried footmen appeared before the carriage had come to a halt and Cal followed behind them, running down the sweep of front steps then striding towards the coach.
He was looking every inch the duke, Sophie saw. His new wardrobe must have arrived – and thank goodness she had taken great care with her toilette that morning. He would have nothing to blush for when his staff set eyes on their new mistress for the first time.
A footman positioned himself at the carriage door as it came to a halt, swung it open and bent for the step, but Cal was before him at the opening, both hands held out to Sophie. ‘Welcome to Calderbrook, Miss Wilmott.’
All she saw was his smile and the warmth in his eyes and how handsome he looked. What a relief it was to be received like this when she had been so nervous! Sophie got to her feet and held out her hands to meet his. ‘Thank you, Your Grace.’
Her new, tight, elegant, little shoe caught in the hem of her equally new walking dress with its unfamiliar quilted hem and she tripped, stumbled and fell out of the carriage, into Cal’s arms, bonnet and reticule flying.
He caught her, of course. It was like crashing into a door, albeit one that took two steps backwards on impact. He felt solid and strong and safe and, as her fingers gripped broadcloth and silk, expensive. Ducal. He even smelt ducally expensive in a subtle kind of way. And she had just made a complete spectacle of herself in front of a platoon of footmen and, she saw over his shoulder as they clung together, the entire staff, trooping down to line the steps.
Chapter Twelve - Where Sophie Reviews the Troops
Cal set her back firmly on her feet, took the reticule and bonnet from the expressionless footman who had retrieved them, and handed them to her. ‘Are you unhurt?’
Sophie nodded, words failing her. She managed to set her bonnet on her head and tie the ribbons in a passable bow.