Married to a Stranger (Danger and Desire 3)

Cal stopped himself catching her hand again. It was pathetic that she should feel she must comfort him.

He saw the corner of her mouth move and realised she was biting the inside of her lip. ‘Were you not jealous that I was taking him away from you?’

‘No, I knew he would always be there when I needed him.’ And he had never taken Dan’s professions of love for Sophia seriously, he had thought it a mistake, right from the beginning. To be jealous of such foolishness never occurred to him. ‘And my mind was on other things too,’ Cal said.

Why should he not hold her hand? They were betrothed. He caught it in his, her small hand in its tight kid glove vanishing into his larger fist. She went very still, but gradually he felt her relax beside him. It was curiously pleasant and he found himself confiding more easily. ‘I was in love, too—or I fancied myself in love. And I had not even had the temerity to approach the girl, let alone say anything to her.’

‘Who was she, the girl you loved?’ Sophia turned back, her expression now one of sympathy and an interest that his youthful emotions did not deserve. ‘Did you miss her very much?’

‘I recovered within weeks,’ Cal recalled. ‘She was a girl called Miranda who is now married to a worthy knight and the mother of a large brood of children, according to Will.’

‘What’s according to me?’ The earl climbed in to join them.

‘Village gossip,’ Cal said.

‘You can drop me at the end of the lane,’ Sophia said as the carriage moved away towards the Hall. She had freed her hand. ‘It is a fine day for a walk.’

‘But you will dine with us tomorrow, of course,’ Will said. ‘Our relatives will wish to meet you before the wedding.’

‘Oh. Of course.’

Sophia seemed a little daunted, Cal thought, managing to keep the frown off his face. He needed a wife who would be able to cope with dinner parties and entertaining. Now he was going to have to keep an eye on her and not give in to the thundering headache that was building up behind his eyes.

Chapter Six

Sophia saw the change in Callum’s eyes, even though his face remained impassive. He was not pleased with her lack of enthusiasm, she realised. His change of mood, from confiding and almost gentle to irritated, brushed across her nerves like the touch of a cold finger. Talking of his twin had made her worry again that she was deceiving Callum, that he would not feel he should marry her if he discovered that her feelings for Daniel had altered.

Now that the die was cast and she had agreed to wed him she found that she had no wish to change her mind, although whether it was entirely relief that their money worries would be settled or a growing curiosity about this intelligent, controlled, wounded man, she could not decide. He was not going to be easy to live with, she suspected.

‘Tell me who I will meet,’ she asked, straightening her back. ‘I will try to remember them all.’

‘There are two aunts, their husbands and assorted adult offspring with spouses, one widowed uncle, a brace of spinster cousins of our maternal grandmother and our father’s two godsons,’ Will explained. ‘A motley crew,’ he added when he had finished enumerating them. ‘But Lady Atherton—Aunt Clarissa—is worth cultivating. You’ll run into her in town once she goes up again and she’s in with every hostess. She’ll get you your vouchers for Almack’s and see to your presentation next Season if my betrothed, Lady Julia Gray, cannot. The Misses Hibbert, the cousins, are an entertaining pair of bluestockings.’

He went on, patiently explaining each relative to her until Sophia’s head spun. She was never going to remember them, she thought, and dragged her attention back to him as he concluded, ‘… godson, Donald Masterton. But that’s probably exaggerated.’

‘Oh, no doubt,’ Sophia said brightly, wondering just what it was about Mr Masterton, or who he was, other than a godson, come to that.

It was not so bad as she feared when she and Mama arrived at the Hall the next evening. Sophia found herself surrounded by the younger relatives, who appeared most interested in her—or perhaps they were simply intrigued by her star-crossed romance.

William kept up a flow of conversation with the older men, the spinster cousins had vanished into the library and the matrons were soon immersed in family gossip. Callum stood alone by the fire under the portrait of the three brothers, almost as if he was deliberately pointing up the fact that one of them was missing.

Sophia wanted to go to him, slip her hand into his and stand with him, but the confiding man from the carriage outside the church had gone again and his aura of aloofness kept her away. She sighed, then straightened her shoulders—she had a duty to get to know this family who would soon be hers.

‘Where is your town house?’ one of the young women asked her.

Mrs Lambert, Sophia recalled. ‘Half Moon Street. I do not know London at all, I’m afraid.’

‘A very good address.’ Mrs Lambert approved. ‘And how many rooms does it have?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘Don’t tease the poor girl, Felicity my angel.’ That was the tall, rather saturnine young man who was the mysterious Mr Masterton. Or, rather, there was no mystery about him except in her lack of attention to Will’s explanations on Sunday morning.

Sophia smiled warmly, feeling she should somehow make up for it. ‘Things have all happened very quickly.’

‘Still, I don’t suppose it makes much difference to you, does it?’ Mr Masterton remarked. Somehow he had detached her from the others and established a tête à tête in an alcove.

‘Indeed it does! Really, Mr Masterton, Callum and Daniel might have been twins, but they were very different personalities.’