The Arrangement (10 page)

She was accustomed to hiding from people, even when she was in their plain sight.

She knew no one in London, no one she would care to seek out, anyway. She did not know how to go about finding employment, though perhaps she ought to have found out as soon as her father died. She had been fifteen, after all. But she had gone to Aunt Mary instead, as any gently born lady would, and had been trapped in dependency ever since. There were employment agencies. She would have to find one and hope that her family background and lack of experience and total absence of recommendations would not make it impossible for her to find something. Anything. But what would she do while she searched? Where would she go? Sir Clarence knew the cost of a stagecoach ticket to London, and he had given her that exact amount with nothing extra, even for light refreshments on the journey.

She tried to picture herself getting down from the stagecoach in London, her journey at an end, and succeeded all too well.

She wondered if anyone in Barton Coombs needed help. The landlord at the Foaming Tankard, perhaps. Would he give her employment, even if her only payment was a broom cupboard to sleep in and one meal each day?

It was as if the vicar had heard her thoughts.

“I have made inquiries, Miss Fry,” he said, his kindly face full of concern, “but there seems to be no employment to be had anywhere here in Barton Coombs for a young lady. Or for any sort of female for that matter. My dear wife and I would be happy to have you stay with us for a day or two, but…”

His voice trailed away, and he turned his head to look helplessly at Mrs. Parsons.

“Oh, but I would not dream of imposing upon your hospitality any longer than necessary,” Sophia said. “I shall go on tomorrow’s stagecoach if I can discover what time it leaves.”

“I will pack a bag of food for you to take with you,” Mrs. Parsons said. “Though there is no big hurry. You may stay for a night or two if you wish.”

“Thank you. That is—”

Sophia did not complete the sentence, for there was a knock on the outer door, and both the Reverend and Mrs. Parsons turned their attention all too eagerly to the door of the parlor, as though they believed the knock had been upon it. And then indeed there was a tap on the door and the housekeeper opened it from the other side.

“It is Viscount Darleigh, ma’am,” she said, addressing Mrs. Parsons.

“Ah.” The vicar rubbed his hands again and looked pleased. “Show him in, then, show him in. What an honor and a pleasant surprise, I must say. I am delighted that I am home.”

“Indeed,” his wife agreed, smiling warmly as she got to her feet.

Sophia cringed back in her chair. It was too late to flee the room, though where she would flee to if she could, she did not know. At least he would not be able to see her.

His man brought him to the door and then left. The vicar hurried across the room and took his arm.

“Viscount Darleigh,” he said, “this is an unexpected pleasure. I trust you enjoyed last evening’s little festivities? It is always good to celebrate occasions like homecomings with one’s friends and neighbors, is it not? Come and have a seat, and my good wife will go and make sure the kettle has been put on to boil.”

“You are kind,” Viscount Darleigh said. “I realize how ill-mannered it is of me to come without warning when you must be about to sit down for luncheon, but I particularly wished to talk with Miss Fry. May I? Is she still here at the vicarage?”

Oh, Sophia thought, mortified, as she clutched her hands very tightly in her lap, he had
heard
. He must have come to apologize—not that anything was his fault. She hoped he would not offer to go and intercede with Sir Clarence on her behalf. It would be useless. Besides, she would not go back there now even if she could. She had been an abject nobody for too long. Destitution was better than that—a rash and foolish thought, when nothing could possibly be worse than destitution. Her stomach somersaulted within her, or felt as if it did.

Being a poor relative was about the worst thing in the world to be, she had sometimes thought. But there was worse.

“Miss Fry is here now in this very room, my lord,” the vicar said, indicating her with an arm the viscount could not see.

“Ah,” Lord Darleigh said. “And you are here too, are you, Mrs. Parsons? My manners have certainly gone begging. Good day to you, ma’am. May I beg the favor of a private word with Miss Fry? If she is willing to grant it to me, that is.”

Sophia bit her lip.

“You have heard what happened, have you, my lord?” Mrs. Parsons asked. “I do not care what Miss Fry did to cause Sir Clarence and Lady March to turn her out at gone midnight last night—she will not say and we have not pressed her on the matter. But it is a disgrace that they did it, and Miss Waddell is getting up a committee of ladies to go and tell them so. We do not usually interfere—”

“My dear,” the vicar said, interrupting her.

“We will leave you to have a private word with Miss Fry,” Mrs. Parsons said, nodding and smiling encouragingly in Sophia’s direction.

And she and the vicar left the room after the latter had led Viscount Darleigh to a chair.

He did not sit down on it.

Sophia gazed up at him in some dismay. He was the very last person on earth she wanted to see today. Not that she blamed him for what had happened. She most certainly did
not
. But she did not need his sympathy or his offer to intercede with Sir Clarence on her behalf or…

Why
had
he come?

She found his presence, especially his
standing
presence, horribly intimidating. She could hardly believe she had actually talked with him last evening, told him her most secret dreams, listened to his, just as if they had been equals. In a sense they
were
equals. She sometimes forgot she was a lady born.

“Miss Fry,” he said, “this is all my fault.”

“No.”

His eyes turned unerringly her way. “You were turned out because you foiled a plan involving me last evening. I ought to have been able to foil it myself and am ashamed that it fell to you to rescue me, a perfect stranger. I am deeply in your debt.”

“No,” she said again.

He wore a form-fitting coat of green superfine, buff-colored pantaloons, and shiny Hessian boots, with white linen and a simply tied cravat. As usual, there was nothing ostentatious about his appearance, only perfect correctness. Yet somehow he looked so suffocatingly masculine and powerful that Sophia found herself trying to press back farther into her chair.

“Can you tell me,” he asked her, “that that is
not
the reason you were turned out?
And,
I suppose, the fact that I lingered at your side after we returned to the assembly room.”

She opened her mouth to speak, thought of lying, thought of telling the truth…

“No, you cannot.” He answered his own question. “And what are your plans now? Do you have other relatives to go to?”

“I shall go to London,” she told him, “and seek employment.”

“Do you know someone who will take you in and help you in the search?” he asked.

“Oh, yes,” she assured him brightly.

He stood there, frowning down at her, his steady blue gaze only slightly to one side of her face. The silence stretched a little too long.

“You have nowhere to go, do you?” he said. It was not really a question. “And no one to help you.”

“Yes,” she insisted, “I do.”

Again the silence.

He clasped his hands behind his back and bent slightly at the waist.

“Miss Fry,” he said, “you must allow
me
to help you.”

“How?” she asked. And then, more hastily, “But it is quite unnecessary. I am not your responsibility.”

“I beg to disagree,” he told her. “You need employment if you have no other relatives to take you in. Genteel employment—you are a lady. I could ask my sisters—but it would take too long. I have a friend in London. At least, it was his plan to go there this spring. He has vast and prosperous business interests there and will surely have something suitable to offer you or be able to find you something elsewhere if I provide you with a letter of recommendation.”

“You would do that for me?” She swallowed. “Would he listen to you?”

“We are very close friends.” He frowned. “If only I could be perfectly sure he was there. The Duke of Stanbrook also talked of spending part of the Season in London. Perhaps he will be there even if Hugo is not. But where would you stay while you wait to be settled into employment?”

“I—” But he had not believed in her mythical friends.

“Hugo would perhaps take you in for a short while,” he said. “If he is there.”

“Oh, no.”

“His stepmother and his half sister live with him in his London home,” he explained. “They would surely not mind—”

“No,” she said, feeling quite distressed. It was one thing to knock upon someone’s door with a letter of recommendation and a plea for employment. It was quite another to beg to be given lodgings in a stranger’s house. “Oh, no, my lord. It is impossible. You and I are strangers. You do not know me well enough to vouch for me to that extent, even to your closest friend. It would be rash of you, it would be an imposition upon him and his mother and sister, and it is something I could not possibly bring myself to do.”

He still frowned down at her.

“I am not your responsibility,” she said again. But her stomach was feeling decidedly queasy. What
was
she going to do?

The silence stretched between them. Should she say something to dismiss him? But perversely she did not want him to go, she realized suddenly. There was a terrifying emptiness yawning ahead, and she was not sure she wanted to be alone to gaze into the abyss. She gripped the arms of her chair more tightly.

“I think you must marry me,” he said abruptly.

She gaped inelegantly, and it was surprising she did not push herself right out through the back of her chair.

“Oh, no.”

“I hope,” he said, “that is an exclamation of surprise rather than an out-and-out rejection.”

And suddenly, surprisingly, she was angry.

“It was not my intention,” she said, her voice breathless. “It was
never
my intention, Lord Darleigh, to be in a sort of competition with Henrietta to see who could trap you first and most effectively. That was
never
my plan.”

“I know.” He was still frowning. “Pray do not distress yourself. I am well aware that you have set out no lures for me, that what you did last evening was done out of the goodness of your heart.”

How could he possibly know that?

“And you think you must show your gratitude by
marrying
me?” she asked him.

He stared silently for a few moments.

“The thing is,” he said, “that I
am
grateful and that I
do
feel responsible. If I had used my head, I would have refused to budge from just outside the door of the inn with Miss March and you would not have had to come to the rescue and thereby incur the wrath of your aunt and uncle. I
am
responsible for you. And I like you, even though that liking is based purely upon the strength of what you did and our short conversation afterward. I like your voice. That sounds ridiculously lame, I know. But when you cannot see, Miss Fry, sound and the other senses become far more acute. Normally one likes the look of someone to whom one feels attracted. I like the sound of your voice.”

He was offering her marriage because of her
voice
?

And was he saying he found her
attractive
?

“It is a good thing,” she said, “that you cannot see me.”

He stared again.

“You look like a gargoyle, then, do you?” he asked.

And then he did something that had Sophia gripping the arms of her chair even more tightly. He smiled slowly, and then the smile developed into something else. A mischievous grin.

Oh, all those stories about his boyhood must be true.

But he looked suddenly human, a real person shut up inside all the pomp and trappings of a viscount. And a handsome, elegant viscount at that.

And he had dreams.

“If I did,” she said, “people would notice me. Nobody ever notices me, my lord. I am a mouse. It is what my father used to call me—Mouse. Never Sophia. And for the last five years there has always been a
the
placed before the word so that it has no longer been even a name but a simple label. I am not a gargoyle, but a mouse.”

His grin had faded, though the smile remained. His head had tipped slightly to one side.

“I have been told,” he said, “that the best and most famous actors are invisible people—or mice, perhaps. They can project the character they play on stage to perfection, but in their own right they can be quite unremarkable and can escape detection even from admirers who are looking for them. And yet all the richness of their talent is contained within themselves.”

“Oh,” she said, somewhat startled. “Are you saying that I am not
really
a mouse? I know that. But…”

“Describe yourself to me, Miss Fry.”

She rubbed her hands along the arms of her chair.

“I am small,” she said. “Five foot nothing. Well, five foot two. I am small in every way. I have the figure of a boy. I have a nose my father used to describe as a button and a mouth that is too wide for my face. I cut my hair very short because … well, because it curls too much and is impossible to control.”

“The color of your hair?” he asked.

“Auburn,” she said. “Nothing as decisive as blond or raven. Merely auburn.”

She hated talking about her hair. It was her hair that had led to the destroying of her soul—though that was a ridiculously theatrical way by which to describe a little heartbreak.

“And your eyes?”

“Brown,” she said. “Or hazel. Sometimes one, sometimes the other.”

“Definitely not a gargoyle, then,” he said.

“But not a beauty either,” she assured him. “Not even
nearly
a beauty. Sometimes when my father was alive, I dressed as a boy. It was easier when … Well, never mind. No one ever accused me of being an impostor.”