‘I don’t know. Perhaps. I might not be good enough.’
‘Then we can struggle with it together,’ Sophia said. Best perhaps not to push him, there were some painful memories involved. ‘Here comes Chivers, I’ll order luncheon to be sent up.’
She had thought Callum healed after Daniel’s death. But it seemed the scars were still tender and the hurt lurked close to the surface. Then she recalled the look in his eyes when he had raised his head and seen her watching him. Perhaps, after all, she was helping him, just a little.
‘I will just read, I think,’ Sophia said. ‘I don’t want to bend over a drawing book at the moment.’ The truth was, she was itching to pick up a pencil, but how could she, in his own study, after what Callum had just told her?
‘You are not bored, I hope?’ He laid aside his pen. ‘I thought of having a dinner party next week. And now you are making calls we will start to receive any number of invitations.’
‘No, I am not bored,’ she promised him. If truth be told, despite her longing to make friends, the thought of plunging into London society was just a little daunting. So long as she could draw, then she would not be bored.
Callum was scrupulous in avoiding her bed. At first Sophia told herself that she was glad to have her bedchamber to herself and that it was delightful to be able to curl up in bed and read for as long as she wanted to, just as she had before she had married.
After four days these protestations were wearing somewhat thin. The truth was, she knew that she wanted the closeness that lovemaking brought even more than she wanted the frustrating pleasures that her husband’s touch brought her. There was something more, she knew that, but somehow she could not reach it, nor could she bring herself to abandon all reserve and allow him to completely overwhelm her.
For that was what it would be, she suspected. If she once yielded utterly to Callum, then she would no longer be herself, the woman she had been. She would feel for him more than she wanted. Certainly more than a man who had married out of duty would want.
But she needed to hold Callum and to be held and she needed the nearness that she had experienced when he had soothed her pain and allowed her to sit quietly in his study while he worked.
In an effort to fill the void she drew with an almost feverish urgency, tearing off pages and throwing them on the fire in frustration at their inadequacy to express what she saw and felt.
The sketches she had drawn of the imaginary, adult Daniel almost followed the still lives, the portraits of the servants and views from the windows onto the fire, but something held her back from destroying them. At first she thought it was because they were rather better than she had thought when she was creating them, then she had to admit that she kept them because they were uncannily like Callum. With a sigh she tucked them under the cover of her portfolio. What she really wanted was to draw her husband, but he was hardly at home these days and when he came back in the evening it was always with a pile of papers and work to be done after dinner.
‘Madam?’
She glanced up. There was Andrew with a salver. ‘The second post, madam.’
And there they were, the first of the expected invitations. Sophia spread them all out and looked at the dates. None of them were on the same night, all of them could be, and doubtless Callum would say, must be, accepted. A musicale, a soirée, a reception and a dinner party. She reviewed her wardrobe and decided that she was adequately gowned for all these. There was nothing for it but to put on her best behaviour and do Callum credit.
Andrew moved around the room, quietly, efficiently repairing the small untidinesses she had created, then whisked out. The house ran like clockwork. Callum’s house, Callum’s servants who hardly needed to refer to her, although, of course, they did. Callum’s contacts and friends and superiors who she must cultivate for the sake of Callum’s career.
Stop it! she thought. He had rescued her from spinsterhood and paid drudgery and given her a life of ease and security. He had saved Mama from genteel poverty and, as soon as Mark was ordained, he would make sure that Will found her brother a good parish, even if Mark had bored and patronised him on their wedding eve.
But, ungrateful as it was, she missed her old life. In Hertfordshire she had managed the house, the budget. She had contrived and schemed and kept them going, somehow. She could see who she wanted of her friends and she could draw whenever the mood took her. She had been free and her mind had been exercised to its utmost.
There was a snap and Sophia looked down to see the pencil held tight in her fingers was broken. But she still had this, still had her art. She opened the portfolio again. It was good, wasn’t it? Or was she deluding herself? Was she simply a moderately talented young lady? If her art sold, then she would know she had talent, know there was something that remained of the old Sophia. Dare she put it to the test?
‘I am working at home this morning,’ Callum said as Sophia poured him a second cup of coffee at breakfast, six days after she had told him that she was not yet with child. ‘I thought perhaps you would like to go for a walk in Green Park this afternoon. Unless you have more shopping to do.’
‘Oh, yes, thank you. I would like that very much.’ Sophia heard the excitement in her own voice and wondered at herself. Her husband—the husband to whom she had been married for two weeks and two days, she reminded herself—had suggested a walk and she was so pathetically grateful for the simple treat that she sounded as though he had offered her a box at the opera for a year or a carriage and pair for her own use.
‘It would be pleasant to stretch my legs,’ she added in a more moderate tone. ‘I had thought to go to Hatchard’s, and I have some trifling shopping, but I can do that this morning, it is nothing of importance. I must buy more silk stockings, I laddered a pair at Mrs Sommerson’s musicale last night.’
‘Very well. I will see you at luncheon at one o’clock.’ Callum folded his newspaper, picked up his coffee cup and went out, leaving her to finish a mental shopping list. It proved remarkably difficult. Tooth powder, a nice big bath sponge … I should tell him that he can come back to my bed. Stockings. Better get silk ones and some cotton ones. Shall I go and tell him now? But it will make it sound as though I am lusting after him. But I miss him … Don’t think about it. Tooth powder …
Chapter Fourteen
/> Sophia was still brooding on the best way to convey that she was ready to welcome Callum back to her bed as they walked the short distance down Half Moon Street to cross Piccadilly and enter Green Park. Callum certainly appeared to be in an amiable enough mood. He had complimented her on the luncheon, admired the moss-green walking dress with darker green pelisse and matching bonnet with grosgrain ribbons.
Now there was nothing for it but to meet his eyes when he guided her across the road and turned back from flipping a coin to the crossing sweeper. ‘I—’
‘I think perhaps we should discuss the … disagreement we had on the subject of mistresses,’ Callum said. Sophia was so taken aback that she stumbled on the kerb and he had to catch her hand to steady her. ‘I rather lost sight of my sense of humour,’ Callum continued. He kept hold of her hand, which was rather pleasant. ‘Or perhaps I should say that you touched my conscience on a sore spot. You have not mentioned it again, but I sense it is not forgotten.’
‘Forgotten? No, I have not forgotten. I was … tactless and naïve. Why should you have a guilty conscience about having a mistress in India when you had no obligations elsewhere?’ Sophia freed her hand, slid it into the crook of his arm and let him guide her down the diagonal pathway.
‘I did not say it was logical.’
‘I thought you were—logical, I mean. The organised brother, the sensible one.’