Catherine took her arm and led her about as soon as Eden had escorted her into the drawing room and presented the two women to each other. Moira was with them by the time they had circled the room, talking to everyone as they went, and had come eventually to where Kenneth and Eden stood with Nathaniel.
“Well, Sophie,” Kenneth said, “our fate is in your hands—at least Rex’s and mine are. What stories are you burning to share with Moira and Catherine?”
“Oh, none at all,” she said. “One would hate to be a bore in company, and what would be duller than a recitation of how perfectly respectable and upright and sober you always were, Kenneth? And Rex too, of course.”
They all laughed.
“Especially when I know it to be true already,” Moira said, “and have never been in any doubt whatsoever.”
“But there must be some interesting stories about Nathaniel and Eden,” Catherine said. “You must regale us with those sometime, Sophie. Is your name Sophia, by the way, and these men have taken the liberty of shortening it?”
“I am Sophie to my friends,” she replied, smiling warmly about her. “And I believe I am among friends.”
“Sophie it is, then,” Catherine said. “Rex came home after meeting you a few mornings ago and talked about you all through breakfast. How I admire you for following your husband to the Peninsula and cheerfully enduring all the discomforts and dangers there. You really must tell us some stories. Will it embarrass you? Or bore you? Are you always being asked to entertain fellow guests in such a way?”
“Not at all,” Sophie said. “But you must not let me go on and on. Stop me when you have heard enough. Have you heard of the time when Nathaniel and Eden and Kenneth rescued my horse and me from a muddy grave?”
The men all chuckled. “The only part of you that was not a shiny brown, Sophie,” Eden said, “was the whites of your eyes. And I am not even quite sure about those.”
“Nat’s scarlet regimentals suffered irreparable harm,” Kenneth said.
“Not so. Sophie brushed them clean when they were dry,” Nathaniel said. “It was the least she could do, of course.”
Trust Sophie, he thought, to begin with a story that showed her in such a disadvantageous light. He remembered the incident vividly—the slippery ooze of her as he had hauled her up onto his horse before him. The unpleasant smell of her. Her good-natured laughter when almost any other woman would have been having a first-class fit of the vapors.
Rex joined them before she finished that story, and they spent a whole hour unashamedly reminiscing. They did a great deal of laughing, Sophie as heartily as the rest of them. Catherine and Moira moved away after a while, summoned to the pianoforte to accompany some impromptu singing.
It was only after they had left that Nathaniel noticed the contrast between their appearance and Sophie’s. They were both taller than she, both elegantly dressed and coiffed in styles that were fashionable and becoming. But Sophie’s lack of elegance had never detracted from their fondness for her. She had an inner beauty that needed no outer adornment.
He did wonder, though, now that he had noticed the contrast, why Sophie looked almost
shabby.
Did she care so little about her appearance? Or was her pension smaller than a grateful government had had any right to offer her? Or had Walter left debts? But Walter had not appeared extravagant. He had not played deep at the tables. Besides, he had an elder brother—Viscount Houghton—who would surely have taken care of any debts.
It was really none of his business, Nathaniel thought, bringing his mind back to the conversation. Sophie might look as shabby as she pleased and still look good to him and be pleasant company.
It was a wonderful evening, Nathaniel decided as it progressed. He would never make the mistake—none of them would—of glamorizing those years of war, of imagining that they had been a happy time. War was not a happy thing. It was their understanding of that fact that had led them all to sell their commissions after Waterloo. But they had made much of life during those years, more aware than they had been either before or since that life could end at any moment. And there had been some enjoyable times or some less enjoyable ones that they had nevertheless chosen to look upon with a sense of humor—and to remember in the same way.
And it was during those years that they had made the enduring friendships that they celebrated tonight. Life would be altogether less rich if he had never known Eden or Ken or Rex. Or Sophie. Strangely Sophie had seemed more of a friend than Walter, who had always been quiet and somewhat aloof. One had never felt one quite knew him, though he had been an amiable enough fellow. And Sophie had been devoted to him.
“Well, Nat,” Rex said at last, “when do you begin your brotherly matchmaking maneuvers in earnest?”
Nathaniel grimaced. “I hope that will be more Margaret’s task than mine,” he said. “But tomorrow night, actually. The Shelby ball. I have been assured it will be one of the great squeezes of the Season. I shall escort the girls, of course. Ede has promised to dance with them both.”
“On the strict understanding that Nat will not slide a pair of marriage contracts under my nose immediately afterward,” Eden said with a grin.
“Who would want you as a brother-in-law anyway, Eden?” Kenneth asked, raising his quizzing glass to his eye.
Nathaniel looked at Sophie. “One of my sisters is still unmarried,” he told her, “and so is a cousin who is my ward. I have brought them to town with the express purpose of finding husbands for them.”
“Nat has been tamed, Sophie,” Rex said. “Would you have believed it of him?”
“And you do not know the half if it, Rex.” Eden winced theatrically. “Nat came to town after being incarcerated in the country for almost two years, simply panting for a taste of all the joys freedom can bring, and yet after just one night of pleasure—the object of his pleasure handpicked by none other than myself, I would have you know—he has declared it to be against his conscience or his religion or something ever again to employ a—”
“Ede!” Nathaniel said sharply. “There is a lady present.”
“Nonsense!” Eden laughed. “Sophie is not—well, actually she is, of course. But she is also a good sport, are you not, Sophie? Have I offended you?”
“Of course you have not,” she said cheerfully. “I heard a great deal that was far more explicit in past years.”
“Well, I certainly object to having my sexual peccadil loes discussed in a lady’s hearing, Ede,” Nathaniel said, deeply mortified. “My apologies, Sophie.”
“You could make a fortune in blackmail if you set your mind to it, Sophie,” Kenneth said with a grin.
Sophie lost her good-natured smile. “That,” she said sharply, “is not even a good joke, Kenneth. Nathaniel’s apology was unnecessary. But I will hear yours now, if you please.”
Nathaniel gazed at her with interest while Eden and Rex grinned and Kenneth apologized with exaggerated abject-ness. She was serious. He had forgotten that side to her character. Almost eternally good-natured, she had very occasionally surprised them by scolding them and demanding apologies from them. There was the time, for example, when they had been joking about a fellow officer who had been cuckolded by a superior on whom he had been fawning for months in the hope of advancement. There was nothing amusing, she had told them in just the voice she had used now, about infidelity in marriage or about an unhappy man’s misery.
They had all given the demanded apology—with considerably more sincerity than Ken was showing now.
Their group broke up then with the announcement of supper. Rex’s twin came to lead Sophie in and she declared that it was eminently unfair to the rest of mankind that there should be two such identically handsome men in the world. Nathaniel offered his arm to Daphne and she took it with a smile.
“How pleasant to see you again,” she said. “You have brought some sisters for the Season? I daresay they are beside themselves with excitement.”
“Oh, indeed,” he said. “It is one sister and one cousin, actually. I shall be escorting them to the Shelby ball tomorrow evening.”
“Splendid,” she said. “I shall keep my eyes open and send Clayton over if there should be any danger that one of them is facing the dreadful misfortune of having to sit out a set.”
“Thank you,” he said. She was laughing, but he knew she meant it.
The guests began to drift away quite soon after supper since no special entertainment had been arranged for the evening. Catherine and Rex had been determined, apparently, that it be an informal evening for friends to converse with one another.
Nathaniel handed Sophie into his carriage well before midnight. He was glad of it. He was feeling tired and would welcome a good night’s sleep, especially when there was the ball to face the following evening. He yawned and realized how unmannerly he must appear. Sometimes one forgot to behave with Sophie as one would with any other lady.
“You are tired,” she said.
“A little.” He took her hand and drew her arm through his. “Town life is a great deal more tiring than country life. Do you live here all year?”
“Yes,” she said. “But I do not go to parties and balls every evening all year round, you know. I live a rather quiet life.”
“Do you?” He looked at her in the near darkness. “Are you ever lonely, Sophie? Do you miss Walter? Pardon me, what a very foolish question. Of course you miss him. He was your husband.”
“Yes.” She smiled. “I do not miss that way of life, though. It was uncomfortable when all is said and done. And I am not lonely. Not really. I have some good friends.”
“I am glad,” he said. “I would have expected you to go to live with Houghton or with your own family. But of course a town house was part of what the government coughed up after Walter was decorated. You like it well enough to live there all year?”
“I am more grateful than I can say,” she said, “to be able to live independently of either my brother-in-law or my brother, Nathaniel. I am very fortunate. Walter did not leave me well-off enough to live alone, you know.”
And she was a proud woman too, he thought. She preferred modest independence to comfortable dependence on wealthier relatives. Her own family was very wealthy indeed, he believed.
The carriage stopped. They had arrived at her house already? He was feeling very pleasantly tired, though he repressed the urge to yawn again.
“Invite me in for tea?” he asked, smiling.
“When you are just about asleep?” she said, laughing.
“I am too tired to go home to bed,” he said. “Ply me with tea and talk, Sophie, and then I shall walk briskly home and be fast asleep before my body hits the bed.”
“You are as mad as you ever were.” She clucked her tongue, though she was still laughing. “Come along, then. Though I must persuade you to drink chocolate rather than tea. Tea keeps a person awake, as does coffee.”
“Does it?” he said. “I must remember that the next time I am suffering from insomnia.”
He really must be mad, he thought a couple of minutes later as he followed her inside her house, having dismissed his carriage. He listened to her instruct the manservant who had opened the door to have a pot of chocolate sent up to the sitting room before going to bed. She would lock up after Sir Nathaniel had left, she told the man.
He followed her to the sitting room. It was very much as he might have expected—small, cozy, tasteful without being in any way fussily feminine.
“This is pretty, Sophie,” he said as she stooped to pat her dog, who had jumped up eagerly from the hearth to lick her hand and fan the air with its tail.
“Thank you.” She smiled. “I had so much pleasure furnishing a home of my own after all those years of moving from billet to billet, trying not to accumulate one belonging more than was necessary. It is so lovely to be always in one place.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “It is. I went home, you know, only because my father was too ill to manage without me—I had left and bought my commission in order to get away from unrelieved domesticity. But you are right. It feels good to belong and to be surrounded by one’s own things.”
“It is strange,” she said, fingering a porcelain ornament, “how things can come to be part of one’s identity. I would not go back if I could, Nathaniel. Would you?”
“No,” he said. “Not for a moment. It is good to reminisce. It is good to renew old friendships. But I like my life as it has become.”
They smiled comfortably at each other before she gestured to a love seat and sat on a chair some distance away. The dog, with a sigh of contentment, had resumed its place on the hearth.
“I like both Catherine and Moira,” she said. “They did tell me to call them by their given names, you know. I approve of them.”
“In what way?” he asked. “They are both beauties, of course.”
“They are both strong women,” she said. “Or so it appeared to me on such short acquaintance. Rex and Kenneth need strong women, women of character. You all do.”
He smiled at her. “You saw us at our worst, Sophie,” he said. “I am almost ashamed to remember.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “And at your best too. Tell me about your sisters. You have more than the one, do you not?” The chocolate had arrived and she poured him a cup and carried it across to him.
“Come and sit beside me,” he said. “My eyes are too tired to focus on you at such a distance. Yes, five, and Lavinia, who easily counts for five people on her own.”
She brought her cup and saucer and sat beside him on the love seat. “Lavinia is the cousin?” she asked. “She is a handful? Poor Nathaniel.”
“She refuses even to think about the necessity of taking a husband,” he said.
“Oh dear.” She sipped her chocolate.
“And her father, my uncle, was insane enough to decree that she could not come into her fortune until her thirtieth birthday,” he said.
“Ah. One of those,” she said. “One hopes for your sake that Lavinia is not a scant eighteen or younger.”