Chapter Nine
Hightower House, London,
March 15, 1815
Sophie watched the Earl of Banallt tuck the woman’s hand under his arm. Her chest constricted. Mr. Tallboys was right, then. Banallt was going to marry Miss Fidelia Llewellyn. Why should she mind that Banallt had moved on? Hadn’t she expected and hoped he would?
The couple walked, arm in arm, up the stairs, and as Sophie watched them her entire history with Banallt came back. For a time, he had been her only friend during a dark and unhappy period of her life. The way he moved was familiar to her: the elegance of his clothes, the too-long hair, the eerie flatness of his eyes. She was glad they had renewed their friendship. She ought to be equally glad he had found a woman he wanted to marry. In the courtyard, the groom clung to the back of the carriage as the coachman drove the vehicle back onto the street, heading, no doubt, for the mews.
“Is it you, Vedaelin?” Banallt said, tilting his head to see who was there as he ascended the stairs with Miss Fidelia Llewellyn on his arm. The sun was in his eyes and he could not see them well, Sophie realized. He paused. “It is you. Your Grace.” He grinned. “This is a pleasant surprise.” Then he noticed John. “Who’s that with you?”
Banallt and Miss Llewellyn came up the final stairs to join them on the landing. Sophie edged away.
“Mercer.” Banallt hesitated. Only an instant. Almost not a hesitation at all. His gaze moved from John to her. His eyes shuttered, and he drew Miss Llewellyn closer to him. Sophie hoped he would find happiness with her.
“What are you doing here, Banallt, making a liar of me?” the duke asked. “I’ve just been telling Mercer and his sister that you are never here. And now you appear with Miss Llewellyn.” He bowed to the young woman. “Charming, as always, to see you, miss. How is your dear mama?”
“Your Grace.” Miss Llewellyn curtseyed. “Very well, thank you.”
Banallt said, “Are you just arriving or just leaving?”
“Arriving,” Vedaelin said. “And only just. The Mercers are letting a house of mine on Henrietta Street. We’ve walked here from there.” The two men shook hands. Banallt glanced at Sophie, but she averted her eyes at the last moment and avoided directly meeting his gaze. She’d give anything to have not come here, or at least to have arrived after the carriage so they could have turned back before it was too late. “Have we come at an inconvenient time?” Vedaelin asked. The duke did not care to go, that was clear. “I’ll show Mercer and his sister Hightower another day.”
There was another hesitation from Banallt, but he didn’t take up Vedaelin’s excuse. “Nonsense.” He headed for the door without another glance at her or at John. “I am delighted to see you, Your Grace. Come in, do please, come in.”
King stood aside as Banallt walked in with Miss Llewellyn and Vedaelin. Outside on the landing, John gave Sophie a look she was careful to return as blandly as possible. “There’s nothing for it, Sophie,” he said. Strain marked the edges of his mouth. “I won’t insult the duke by leaving now. Not when he’s practically insisted.”
“Of course not,” she said.
He gestured for her to proceed him, and she went in with him on her heels. Banallt had already taken off his hat and put it into the waiting hands of the formidable King. “What am I doing here?” he repeated to the duke, smiling. A genuine smile from Banallt took your breath, and this one was genuine.
Sophie kept to the corner, out of the way as King took coats, hats, and gloves. At last, though, the monstrous butler, who she knew couldn’t bear to hurt any living thing, came round to her and she had no choice but to slip free of her coat. Her arms trembled. She blocked off the emotions racing through her. This was nothing. Meeting an old friend, that’s all.
Wasn’t this what she’d wanted all along? For Banallt to find happiness with another woman? She looked everywhere but at Banallt and Miss Llewellyn. Veins of pale pink striated the white marble floor. The windows flanking the door were mullioned in three parts, the middle pane higher than the outer ones, with diamond panes of glass. The same pink-veined marble had been used for the columns that flanked the interior entrance to the house. Overhead, cherubim rested on clouds in a domed blue sky. To the right, past the marble columns, a staircase spiraled upward. Red and white tulips filled a Chinese vase in a marble-lined niche.
“I maintain a presence here,” Banallt was saying to Vedaelin in his familiar drawl. Banallt had always been vital, and never more so than now. He was a difficult man to ignore. Sophie’s heart thrummed with the force of his personality. “As well you know.” His eyes moved from the duke to John and, at last, to Sophie. She kept her distance from them and wished vehemently that she could just disappear. Oh, to have that power just once in her life. She would call on it now, to be sure.
“Miss Llewellyn,” John said. He hesitated before taking her hand and bending over it. He’d lost his usual smile, and Sophie couldn’t help thinking he, too, must feel the discomfort of being here.
“Mr. Mercer, Mrs. Evans.” Miss Llewellyn was a tall girl, but slender, and of a height that went well with Banallt’s. And John’s, for that matter. “I’m very pleased to see you both again.” Sophie had to admit that Miss Llewellyn’s manners were faultless. She turned her exquisite smile on John. She wore a white gown trimmed with pale yellow. Matching ribbons with tiny silk flowers were threaded through her dark hair. A white rosebud was pinned to her bodice. She touched the rosebud now. “Thank you for the flowers, Mr. Mercer. They were lovely.”
Flowers? Sophie looked at John, astonished.
Her brother bowed. “You’re quite welcome. You were a lovely partner at supper last night.”
Miss Llewellyn’s attention stayed on John. Sophie’s brother was a handsome man; handsome enough that even a woman as lovely as Miss Llewellyn might look twice. But whatever had possessed him to send the young woman flowers? What a farce that would be if Miss Llewellyn fell in love with John. Banallt would never permit it. But if he did? She would be Banallt’s relation.
“You brought them here for a tour of Hightower House, did you?” Banallt said easily.
“Yes, indeed,” Vedaelin said. “Mrs. Evans has embarked on a study of London architecture. I had the brilliant idea of bringing them here to see Hightower House. There is your Caravaggio and your library to show them, too.
“And here you are.” He addressed his goddaughter with rather a sharp look, Sophie thought. “Fidelia, my dear, if you wish to go to your mama, please do.”
Fidelia leaned against his arm. Her cheeks had faint spots of pink. “Are you going to show them yourself, Banallt?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’ll stay with you, if that’s agreeable.”
Banallt looked at Fidelia with his eyebrows raised. “Certainly,” he said.
Hightower House was beautiful beyond all Sophie’s expectations. From the exquisite marble in the entrance to carved wooden walls in the corridor, the house was made to overawe. Banallt led them up the gentle spiral of the stairs and gave them a commentary on the architectural history. Inigo Jones had rebuilt the rear of the house in the previous century, and more recently, Adam had been hired for the interior.
Sophie kept a step behind the men and Miss Llewellyn, who stayed near Banallt. Although, from Sophie’s vantage, she noticed the young woman looked over her shoulder at John rather too often.
The Caravaggio, Rest on the Flight into Egypt, hung in a drawing room three times the size of theirs at Henrietta Street. Sophie was soon lost in examining the painting. She hardly noticed when the others wandered away. She remembered when Banallt had told her he’d bought it. At the time, she’d thought he’d paid a frightful price—one that would have kept Rider Hall staffed and her in comfort for the rest of her days. The painting was lovelier than she had imagined. She could stand here for hours and not take in all there was to see. She jumped when Banallt said, “Do you admire it as much as I said you would?”
She cocked her head. “I think I do, my lord.”
“The angel reminds me of you,” he said, lifting a hand toward Caravaggio’s barely draped angel. Sophie turned her head toward him, her eyebrows raised. “A compliment,” he said. “I intend it as one and it is one. Please take it as such.”
“As you wish,” she said stiffly.
Banallt remained silent. His eyes searched her face. “I thought we’d gotten past our difficulties. Does it pain you so much to be near me?”
“It is…uncomfortable to be here.” She glanced around. Her brother and Miss Llewellyn were conversing at the other end of the room, near a globe that John was slowly turning with the tip of his index finger. He lifted his head at something Miss Llewellyn said and made a sharp gesture. Vedaelin was sitting on a leather chair before the fireplace, hands folded over his stomach. “The duke assured us you were never here,” she said in a low voice. “Had I known you would be here, we would not have presumed.”
She walked away without giving Banallt a chance to reply and found herself confronted with a portrait of a woman she belatedly realized must be the late Lady Banallt. An exquisite blonde looked down from the portrait with blue eyes the color of the sky and sapphires on her ears and around her slender throat. Her smile hinted at some internal sadness. A black crepe bow still draped the frame. Her heart felt too big for her chest. Had this beautiful woman loved her husband? Had Banallt broken her heart the way Tommy had broken hers? When she turned away, Banallt hadn’t moved away from the Caravaggio, but she felt his gaze nonetheless.
Banallt raised his voice to say, “I’m told Mrs. Evans is devoted to reading. Shall we discover her opinion of my library, Vedaelin?”
Before they left, she spared one last look at the woman whom Banallt had married and, for all intents and purposes, abandoned the way Tommy had abandoned her. She was right, she decided. Lady Banallt did look sad.
The library at Hightower House was exactly as Banallt had described it to her: spacious with comfortable places to sit and read and filled with thousands of books, all of which were morocco bound with a small impression of Banallt’s coronet on the lower spines. His collection included novels, exactly as he had claimed. She even found hers among them. All ten of the novels she wrote during her marriage were behind glass and at eye level. How strange it was to know that Banallt had read them before he knew her. And stranger still to think he had bought the ones that came after.
“Your sister may come here anytime she pleases,” Banallt was telling John. She remembered his voice, reading her words aloud. He had a marvelous reading voice. He turned to her. “Borrow whatever books you like, Mrs. Evans.”
She lifted a hand to the glass, remembering the stories and the circumstances under which she had written them. Banallt came to her side again, leaning a shoulder against a panel of the shelves. “You have them all,” she said.
“Yes.” His head rested against the glass, his arms crossed over his chest. “The pride of my collection.” He opened the glass door and reached for The Murder of Gilling Fell. He held it open, balanced on his palm. “I had this one already in my collection. When I read it, I never once suspected I would one day meet the authoress.” He lowered his voice. “Does your brother know about your novels?”
“Of course not.”
“Are you writing still?”
She shook her head.
“That seems a shame.” He closed the title and took out a second one, turning pages. “Ah, the adventures of Beatrice, one of my favorites of yours.”
She shut the book and took it from him. “All that is behind me.” Drat his eyes. She could never look into his face without the risk of losing her soul. She replaced the book on the shelf but ran a finger down the spine, taking care not to look at him. “I don’t need to pay the grocer or the butcher from my pocket anymore.”
“Have you set aside pen and paper forever?” He’d managed to come quite near her, and she was trapped between the shelves and him. Not trapped. At any moment she could slide away and put a more comfortable distance between them. She touched his neckcloth. King’s cravat had been perfect. Banallt’s was not. Her fingers shook. “Miss Llewellyn is lovely,” she said.
“Yes, she’s quite beautiful. I have a dozen inquiries a month about her.”
“But her heart is taken, isn’t it?” Her knees were actually shaking.
His eyebrows rose. “You know?”
“I think it’s a good match, Banallt.”
“Do you?”
“Yes,” she replied. But she was lying.