Married to a Stranger (Danger and Desire 3)

ould not have noticed how haughty Mrs Hickson was to her and the pursed lips of some of the older women.

That sort of snobbery had never occurred to her when she’d agreed to marry Callum, perhaps because there were so many other objections to worry about. Sophia smiled and chatted, sipped Mr Hickson’s rather inferior champagne and fumed inwardly. She might be a country nobody, but her family was perfectly respectable. Her father had been a gentleman, she had connections to a number of noble families—distant, it was true. The wretched women had no business to speak as though Callum had married the scullery maid.

She recalled how the inquisitive ladies had reminded her of a flock of starlings at the dinner party when she had first met some of Callum’s family. These old witches were just the same, snapping at their prey with no concern whether it might be hurt by their spite. Sophia eyed Mrs Hickson’s profile across the room and thought of the prints she had bought. How satisfying to draw the whole flock of them as starlings, pecking some unfortunate creature to death.

‘Would you like to come into the City this morning?’ Cal stood at the foot of the stairs and watched Sophia coming down. She had the faint air of the cat who had stolen the cream and he rather suspected he was looking a trifle smug himself. He had stayed in her bed last night, dreamlessly, and when he had woken at dawn the candles had guttered out and Sophia was sleeping like the dead beside him.

But under the physical satisfaction that still warmed him from last night, and again early that morning, was the lurking knowledge that a marriage consisted of more than compatibility in bed. Shakespeare had written something about the marriage of true minds, hadn’t he? That was what he had to find with Sophia in order to make her happy. A marriage of true minds. He had to trust enough to let down his guard with her and pray that she would do the same with him.

‘I don’t want to come with you if you frown like that,’ she said, reaching the lowest step.

‘I was thinking about Shakespeare,’ Cal admitted and she shook her head in bafflement, dark ringlets quivering. ‘I could show you St Paul’s and the Mansion House and the Tower and then we can go down to the docks and you can see our ship.’

‘Ours?’ He liked the way her mouth curled, half-teasing, half, he was certain, genuine pleasure.

‘We will pretend it is all ours,’ he promised.

‘The post, sir.’ Hawksley came down the hall with a laden silver salver. ‘And breakfast is ready, ma’am.’

‘Thank you for enduring last night. At least it means you have met most of the relatives who come to town regularly,’ he said as they sat down.

He thought Sophia’s smile looked forced for a moment. Perhaps she was tired; he had certainly kept her awake last night. ‘And the day after tomorrow is our own reception,’ she said. ‘We have had a gratifying number of acceptances.’ Her smile became stronger. ‘I fear it will be a sad crush.’

‘Excellent. And you have a new gown?’ He knew she had, he had asked Chivers in secret and looked at the simple column of deep blue silk with its sweeping over-skirt of spangled gauze. The sapphires he had bought her to go with it were hidden in his room. Would she read the message in the heart-shaped gem that made a pendant to the necklace?

‘I have one I am very pleased with, if truth be told,’ she confided. ‘Callum, it will not hamper your career that I have no useful connections, that no one has ever heard of me?’

‘Good Lord, no.’ Cal grounded his coffee cup with a clatter. ‘Whatever put that nonsense into your head?’

Sophia would not meet his eyes. ‘I overheard someone last night saying what a pity it was that you did not marry Lady Piercebridge’s daughter.’

‘Daphne? She’s a pretty peahen and I never had the slightest interest in her.’ He reached across the corner of the table, put his fingers under her chin and tipped her face up so she was forced to look at him. ‘You, my love, are the only woman I have ever wanted to marry.’

Sophia’s face relaxed into a smile and Callum realised what he had said. My love. But she did not pick up on it. She would surely think it was just an endearment, not the honest truth. When this reception was over and she saw how well she was fitted to be his wife, how easily she was accepted as his hostess, then perhaps she would be confident enough to believe him when he told her he loved her. And he would have two more days to woo her first, two more nights to make love to her.

‘Well, Sophia? What is it to be first? Our ship or the horrors of the Tower of London?’

‘Oh, the Tower, definitely. And then we can be cheered by the sight of the ship.’

The warmth that crept through him as she laughed and spoke so happily of ‘we’ shook him. That moment all those months ago when she had roused herself from her shock over the news of the wreck and Dan’s loss and had touched his cheek with her fingertips, forgetting her own distress, murmuring her concern that he be warm again, came back to him. His destiny had been there, then, waiting for him.

‘Callum? Are you all right?’

‘Yes,’ he said, smiling into the questioning blue eyes. ‘Never better.’

Chapter Twenty

‘Oh where has Callum got to?’ Sophia realised she was wringing her hands and made herself stop before she split the seams on her fragile kid gloves. ‘In fifteen minutes people will start to arrive!’

‘He said he had forgotten something and had gone back to Half Moon Street,’ the Earl of Flamborough said. Will leaned on the banister and looked down into the hall of his town house in Cavendish Square from the sweep of landing outside the ballroom. ‘He can’t be much longer. If the worst comes to the worst I’ll head the receiving line with you and tell them all he has been rushed to the dentist.’

As she knew he intended, her brother-in-law’s nonsense made her laugh. ‘Oh, Will! What would Julia say to you deserting her?’

‘My betrothed would immediately find another man to flirt with, never fear—but there, you see? Here he is.’

And there, to her relief, was Callum indeed, entering in a dramatic swirl of black and crimson as his evening cloak caught the draught from the open door. He handed a mysteriously large parcel to a footman, was relieved of hat, cloak, gloves and cane by another and then stood in the middle of the hall, tipped back his head and looked up at her. ‘There you are.’

‘There you are,’ Sophia retorted. ‘Will was fabricating tales to explain your absence.’