The Arrangement (31 page)

“Will she?”

“Feeling overwhelmed?” he asked.

“We are sitting here,” she said, “and I can see the house. It is …
vast
. And behind us is the village, and all around us are neighbors who must be called upon and conversed with and invited here. And I am looking over at the state apartments and remembering that there used to be grand entertainments and balls there and that we are now master and mistress here. And I am thinking that we really ought to put on some of those entertainments again, and I am—I do not rightly know
what
I am.”

“Overwhelmed.” He squeezed her hand. “I know the feeling. But everything does not have to be done in a day, you know. Or even a week or a month. Shall we pay our first visit this afternoon? Just one? To the vicarage, perhaps?”

“Yes,” she agreed. “Very well. Perhaps the vicar and his wife are as kind as Mr. and Mrs. Parsons.”

“I have met them,” he told her. “They are amiable.”

He squeezed her hand once more and released it.

“Shall we go in for breakfast?” he suggested. “Ah, and I promised to apologize abjectly on Martin’s behalf—both for his appearance this morning and for his particular choice of vocabulary in your hearing.”

“It looked to me,” she said, “as if you were both thoroughly enjoying yourselves.”

“Oh, we were,” he assured her. “We always do. There are worse parts of one’s body to lose, Sophie, than one’s eyes.”

Perhaps it was even true. He thought of Ben Harper and the rages he had sometimes been unable to control during those years at Penderris Hall because his legs were useless and unwilling to obey his commands.

He stood and picked up his cane and offered his arm.

“You may inform Mr. Fisk that he is forgiven,” she said, “and you will beg his pardon from me, if you will, for I ought not to have been there. I will not go again. I will respect your privacy and his. You may assure him of that.”

Trust Sophia to be concerned about the feelings—and privacy—of a servant. For that was what Martin was officially, though in reality he was Vincent’s dearest friend. Or coequal with the Survivors, perhaps, though he spent considerably more time with Martin than he did with them.

T
he first month of her new life at Middlebury Park was exhausting, often bewildering, for Sophia. She learned to find her way about the house; she became acquainted with the servants, particularly the cook and the housekeeper, with whom she had dealings almost every day; she studied household inventory and accounts until she understood them and could even talk intelligently about them; she visited her neighbors with Vincent and was visited in return. She got to know her new family. Ellen and her husband and children had arrived three days after them, and Ursula and her family came one week after that.

She had tramped alone about the huge park and viewed every part of it with a critical eye. Construction of a graveled path to the lake was almost complete despite a wetter-than-usual month. There had once been a wilderness walk through the hills behind the house, she had discovered, though by now it was far more wilderness than walk. It could be cleared out again, though, she decided, made safe and level underfoot, and bounded by a wrought iron rail—or perhaps a more rustic wooden one would be better for terrain that was supposed to resemble a wilderness. And there could be fragrant trees and bushes planted there—rhododendron, lavender, and others. She
wished
she knew more about plants. But fragrant plants would be important since picturesque prospects from the hill over the park and surrounding countryside were not going to mean anything to her husband.

Vincent meanwhile was no passive member of the family and household, as he seemed to have been before his marriage. He spent a great deal of his time closeted with his steward and various tenants or traveling about the estate with the former. And he was becoming acquainted with neighbors he had scarcely known before.

They were doing for each other what they had agreed to do. Sophia was well cared for. She was no longer the mouse, though often she longed to be quiet and alone. She was
Sophia
or
Sophie
or
my lady
. And Vincent was no longer cosseted at every turn. Soon he would be able to move about far more freely.

Their marriage could be deemed a success. And there were the times they spent alone together, though they seemed rare enough to Sophia—except for the nights, of course, which had continued lovely. She had even accepted the incredible fact that he found her attractive.

One afternoon Vincent’s sisters and their families had taken a picnic tea to a castle a few miles distant, and Vincent and Sophia were in the music room, where he had been giving her a lesson on the pianoforte. It had not been much more successful than the others, though she had learned how to pick out a correct major scale no matter which note she began on. Why there had to be both white and black notes to confuse the issue, she did not know.

Miss Debbins, Vincent’s music teacher, was spending some time with her brother in Shropshire, though she was due back soon. Vincent was sure she would be delighted to take on Sophia as a pupil too.

“More than delighted actually,” he had said. “You can
see
and she will be able to teach you to read music. She has had to be endlessly patient and inventive with me.”

He was playing his violin now while Sophia sketched fairies at the bottom of a garden. She found them more difficult to do than a dragon and a mouse but not as difficult as Bertha and Dan, who never looked on paper quite as she imagined them in her head. But she would persevere. The children loved the stories she and Vincent told them almost every evening, and they screamed with glee over the pictures.

Once in a while she stopped to watch her husband and to stroke a hand over Tab’s back. Her scrawny, ugly tabby cat had turned sleek in the weeks he had been here.

Shep was not living with them yet. When the farmer who owned the dog had known what Viscount Darleigh wanted it for, he had insisted that the animal would need some basic training first and that he was the best one to do it, since he had a lifetime of experience. Once that was done, then he would come over daily, with his lordship’s permission, and together they would work out the finer points of the training while dog and master familiarized themselves with each other.

He was enthusiastic about the idea and did not see any reason why it would not work though he had never trained a dog for just such a purpose before.

“If a dog can be trained to respond to a whistle or a shout of command and take a whole herd of sheep to a particular spot over a long distance and past all sorts of obstacles and even through narrow gateways,” he had said, “then there is no reason he cannot do it for a man holding his leash, is there? I’ll stake my reputation on it as the best sheepdog trainer in the county. And no one ever accused me of modesty.” He had laughed heartily and pumped Vincent’s hand up and down and beamed at Sophia.

“That sounds a good enough guarantee to me, Mr. Croft,” Vincent had said. “Thank you.”

“Ouch!” Sophia said now as he played a sour note. He was trying to learn something Ellen had played over and over for him on the pianoforte last evening, something by Beethoven.

He lowered his violin.

“Tab is not howling,” he said. “My playing cannot be that bad, Sophie.”

“I heard one bad note out of how many?” she said. “Five hundred? Of course, one bad note is all it takes to ruin the effect of the whole thing.”

“A critical audience is all I need,” he grumbled, “when I am trying to learn something new. My repertoire is woefully small.”

“Play it again,” she told him, “and play that note correctly.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She smiled as she sketched an upturned flowerpot with a little door and a round window with checked curtains fluttering out of it—a fairy shelter. A fairy wand propped the door open. She loved teasing him—and being teased. They liked each other. It was a wonderfully warming feeling. It sustained her through days that were frequently not easy for her. His family was kind, even affectionate, and they were careful to defer to her as Vincent’s wife. She liked them all, without exception.

But they were not her
own
family.

Only Vincent was her own.

She liked almost all the neighbors they had met. And those people seemed actually glad to know them. They looked with sympathy and some admiration upon Vincent, who was well able to be charming. And they received her with deference, as though she were doing them some honor. How could she
not
like them all?

The viscount before the last—Vincent’s grandfather—had opened the park to all comers once a week, they had been told by some of their older neighbors, so that everyone could enjoy strolling on the lawns and having a picnic by the lake and relaxing in the summerhouse and trudging up over the hills. Vincent had suggested that it happen again, and Sophia had agreed with him—and added the suggestion that perhaps next summer they would organize a picnic for everyone, with games and contests and entertainments and prizes. The neighborhood was apparently already abuzz with both items of news. The park was to be open on Saturdays as soon as the lake path had been completed.

It was only afterward that it struck Sophia—she might not be here next summer.

Someone had mentioned too the grand balls that had occasionally been put on in the state apartments, and Sophia herself had promised that they would happen again. Perhaps even this year, Vincent had added. Perhaps after the harvest, when everyone would be in a mood to celebrate if the crops were good, as they showed every promise of being.

As with their storytelling, they seemed to thrive upon building on each other’s ideas. But how
on earth
was she to go about planning a harvest ball and a summer picnic—if she was here to plan it, that was? Sometimes she almost lost her courage. But she would not allow herself to do that. She had been given this one chance to … to
live
her life, and she would not squander it.

She had had a few riding lessons. She had worn her breeches, to the obvious shock of her mother-in-law and the amusement of Vincent’s grandmother. So far she had ridden only a quiet pony and only in the paddock behind the stables. Vincent had taught her how to check the pony over, and he had taught her how to mount and sit correctly. He had adjusted the stirrups so that her feet fit comfortably in them. He had taught her how to hold the reins and what they were for—they were
not
to clutch as though her life depended upon not letting them go. She had felt alarmingly far off the ground—and he had laughed when she had said so and reminded her that she was on the back of a
pony
. He had walked her about the paddock, his free hand trailing along the fence. After a while, he had let her go on her own. But of course, the head groom had kept a very careful eye upon her, as he had from the start. Vincent had taught her how to dismount. By now she was mounting and riding alone, but still only in the paddock and with both the groom and Vincent hovering over her.

She was proud of herself nevertheless and exhilarated by her own courage. But how could anyone be reckless enough to climb onto the back of a real horse and coax it into a
gallop
or even a canter?

All her new clothes had arrived from London, and Rosina had gone into raptures over them as she unpacked them and hung them lovingly in the wardrobe or folded them neatly into drawers.

“Enough for one day,” Vincent said now, lowering his violin. “I am going to have to beg Ellen to play that piece again so that I know I am learning it correctly. I would not want to do poor Beethoven a greater disservice than I am doing him anyway by choosing his music. Once I have it properly learned, then I will be able to enjoy it and start to feel it. I will awe you with my talent. Can you swim?”

“No.” She was woefully lacking in accomplishments.

“Do you want to learn?”

“Now?”

“It is not raining again, is it?” he asked. “Amy and Ellen were convinced the sun was going to shine all day.”

“It is still fine out there,” she said. “I think I am a little afraid of water.”

“All the more reason to learn to swim,” he said. “On the far side of the island the land slopes gradually into the lake, or so Martin told me when we went there once. The water is likely to be shallow enough back there not to terrify you. Of course, we would have to get to the island. Can you row a boat?”

“No.” She laughed.

“Then I will have to do it.” He grinned at her as he put his violin in its case and snapped it shut. “That should be an adventure.”

“I will close my eyes and cover them with my hands,” she said, “so that I will not see disaster looming.”

“Me too,” he said. “Let us go and get some towels.”

“What are we going to swim
in
?” she asked him.

“Apart from water?” He raised his eyebrows. “I suppose you can swim in your shift if you are afraid I will see too much should you not wear even that. Leave your stays behind, though.”