The Arrangement (6 page)

Sophia did not notice what Henrietta did in the meanwhile. She herself was too caught up in a personal moment of surprise, and, quite frankly, she stared. It was a good thing he was blind and would not notice.

For Viscount Darleigh was everything she had observed this morning and more. He was not particularly tall, and he was graceful and elegant. He also looked well shaped and well muscled in all the right places, as though he lived a vigorous life and was fit, even athletic. He was dressed for evening with perfect good taste and no ostentation. He was, in fact, really quite gorgeous, and Sophia felt foolishly smitten. And that was just her reaction to what she saw below his neck.

It was what she saw above his neck that caused her to stare in such surprise, though. He had fair hair, a little long for fashion, perhaps, but perfectly suited to him. For it waved softly and was a little disordered—attractively disordered. It looked shiny and healthy. And his face…

Well, it was not ruined after all. There was not even the merest scar to mar its beauty. And it
was
beautiful. She did not really consider individual features, but the whole was wonderfully pleasing, for it looked like a good-humored face that smiled often, though he surely could not be feeling very happy at the moment about being so fussed. Surely, once he had been shown to a chair, he could have bent his knees and lowered himself safely to the seat without having to be hauled and maneuvered there.

Oh, but there was one feature of his flawless face upon which Sophia’s eyes focused, one feature that raised it above the ranks of the merely good-humored and good-looking and accounted for his almost breathtaking beauty. His
eyes
. They were large and wide and very blue, and they were fringed with eyelashes any girl might envy, though there was nothing even remotely effeminate about them. Or about him.

He was every inch a man, a thought that caught her by surprise and suspended her breath for a moment, for she did not have any idea what the thought meant.

She gazed at him in wonder and awe and retreated a little farther into her corner, if that was possible. She found him utterly, totally intimidating, as though he were a creature who inhabited another world from her own. She had depicted him in her cartoon earlier as a small man with a bandaged face. She would never do that again. Cartoons were for people over whom she wished to indulge a private and not always kindly laugh.

He looked up at his hosts with those blue, blue eyes. And he looked at Henrietta when Sir Clarence drew her forward to introduce her—or rather
re
-introduce her.

“You remember our dear Henrietta, Darleigh,” he said with bluff heartiness. “She is all grown up, leading her mother a merry dance and being a naughty puss for her father. She has been taken to town for the past three Seasons and might have married dukes and marquesses and earls by the dozen—enough of them have sighed over her and paid court to her, I would have you know. But nothing will do but she must hold herself aloof for that special gentleman who will come along to sweep her off her feet.
And you know, Papa,
she says,
I am as likely to find him at our own home in the country as I am in the ballrooms of the
ton
in London.
Can you imagine that, Darleigh? Where is she likely to discover her special gentleman in Barton Coombs? Eh?”

He did not often laugh, Sophia reflected, but when he did, everyone else cringed. Aunt Martha cringed and smiled graciously. Henrietta cringed and blushed—and gazed in raptures at the unmarked face of the man she had declared she would never marry if he was the last man on earth.

He really
was
blind, Sophia decided from her quiet corner of the room. She had doubted it for a moment. It had seemed impossible. But he had got to his feet again in order to bow to Henrietta, and although he appeared to be looking directly at her, in reality he was gazing just above the level of her right shoulder.

“If Miss March is as beautiful as she was six years ago,” he said, “and I daresay she is
more
beautiful as she was just a girl then, I am not surprised that she has been so besieged by admirers in London.”

He was oily, Sophia thought, frowning in disappointment. Or perhaps he was just being polite.

Everyone sat down and launched into stilted, overhearty conversation—at least, the three Marches did. Lord Darleigh merely made the appropriate responses and smiled.

He was being polite, Sophia decided after a few minutes. He was not oily at all. He was behaving like a gentleman. She was relieved. She felt predisposed to like him.

He had been an officer in an artillery regiment during the Peninsular Wars, she had learned. A very young officer. He had been blinded in battle. It was only later that he had inherited his title and fortune from an uncle. It was a good thing too, for there had been very little money in the family. Recently he had left his home in Gloucestershire after his mother and sisters had tried to force a bride upon him. They had all been agreed that it would be best for him, for any number of reasons, if he had a wife to care for him. Clearly he had disagreed, either with the general principle or with their specific choice. He had stayed away for some time, and no one had known where he was until he had arrived at Covington House this morning, as Mrs. Hunt had predicted he would in letters she had written to various ladies in the village.

He had once been plain Vincent Hunt, and Sophia had weaved stories about him. He had been a leader among the youth of the village, good at all sports and the ringleader of all mischief. One night, for example, after Sir Clarence had boasted of a red carpet he had walked across to enter some grand house in London, he had painted the steps outside the front doors of Barton Hall a scarlet red.

Now he was a very grand gentleman with a different, imposing name. And he was a very well-mannered gentleman too. He scarcely stopped smiling and making polite, noncommittal replies to all the pomposity that was being said to him despite the fact that Aunt Martha and Sir Clarence were almost openly and really quite embarrassingly courting him, and Henrietta was simpering. It was actually rather hard to simper effectively before a blind man, but she was doing quite well at it.

When the conversation finally threatened to flag, Henrietta was sent to the pianoforte to dazzle the viscount with her talent on the keyboard. And then she was directed to sing as she played and went through a repertoire of five songs before remembering that the music for the sixth, her particular favorite, was in her mother’s private sitting room, where she had been practicing earlier in the day.

“Go up and fetch it,” her mother said, turning her head in Sophia’s direction.

“Yes, aunt,” Sophia murmured as she got to her feet.

And she was aware of Viscount Darleigh, a look of slight surprise on his face as he raised his eyebrows and turned his eyes her way. She would have sworn he was looking directly at her, though she knew it could not be so. But for that moment, before she left the room, she felt a little less anonymous than usual. And she found, before she reached the staircase, that she was scurrying rather than walking like a dignified lady.

They had not, of course, been introduced.

“W
hen you stepped into the drawing room with me,” Vincent asked as the carriage swayed its way over the short distance between Barton Hall and Covington House, “was there someone else there in addition to Sir Clarence and Lady March and Miss March?”

“Hmm.” There was a pause, during which Martin was presumably thinking. “Apart from the butler, you mean?”

“A woman,” Vincent said.

“I can’t say I noticed,” Martin told him.

“Someone was sent for more music,” Vincent said, “and she said
yes, aunt
before going. It was the first and last I heard of her all evening. She must walk very softly, for I did not hear her return, though the music certainly arrived. She was obviously not a servant. She called Lady March
aunt
. But we were not introduced. Is that not strange?”

“A poor relation?” Martin suggested.

“I daresay,” Vincent agreed. “But it would have been good manners to introduce her to a guest anyway, would it not?”

“Not necessarily if you were a March,” Martin said.

“
Go up and fetch it,
her aunt told her when Miss March wanted the music,” Vincent said. “There was no
please
. And, worse, there was no name.”

“Hmm,” Martin said. “You are not betrothed yet by any chance, are you?”

“Eh?”

“They have serious designs on you,” Martin told him. “Be warned. The servants are not very close-lipped in that house, a sure sign the Marches don’t inspire a great deal of loyalty.”

“Serious designs,” Vincent said. “Yes, I believe the servants may be right about that. I shall tread with great care during the coming days. In particular, if I should happen to hear the fateful words
I understand
and
I do not mind
come from Miss March’s lips, I shall flee to the tip of Land’s End.”

“You had better have a boat with you,” Martin said. “That might not be far enough.”

They were home already. What a very strange day it had been. He had arrived here before dawn with the happy idea of relaxing quietly for a few days and doing some serious thinking before going back home to Middlebury Park to take command of the rest of his life. And then—

He laughed as Handry set down the steps of the carriage and he climbed down outside his front door without assistance.

“Miss Waddell and her welcoming committees,” he said.

“I was upset you did not invite me to come and listen to the vicar’s welcome,” Martin said.

They both snorted with laughter.

“Actually, you know,” Vincent said as he made his way up the steps to the front door, “it was touching. They were all so much a part of the fabric of our childhood, Martin. And kindlier, more well-meaning people one could not hope to encounter. It is unkind of us to laugh at them, except that our laughter is well meant too. We were fortunate to grow up here.”

“That we were,” Martin agreed cheerfully. “There are some of Mam’s cakes left, sir. Would you like one or two with a drink?”

“Hot milk, if there is some, please, Martin,” Vincent said, making his way to the sitting room. “And one cake, please. Your mother has certainly not lost her touch, has she? One of her cakes is worth four of anyone else’s.”

Goodness, he must be feeling nostalgic. What had he just asked for?
Hot milk?

He was actually glad he had been discovered here. He had been a bit ashamed or embarrassed or … or
something
to be seen blind like this when these people had known him as he used to be. But that had been foolish of him. His morning visitors had been kind and, solicitous though they had been over his blindness, they had still treated him as a thinking, functioning adult. They had been happy to reminisce about the past, when his father was schoolmaster here and his mother was active in the church and the community and Vincent and his sisters had been growing up with all the other village children and getting into all sorts of mischief with them. Vincent too had been happy to remember and had joined in the conversation with some enthusiasm.

He sighed as he sat back in his chair by the fireplace. Dash it, but he was tired. Tired without having even exercised today. That, no doubt, was part of the problem.

And tomorrow evening there was to be an assembly at the Foaming Tankard. Vincent grinned as he remembered the petition Miss Waddell had coaxed eleven people to sign protesting the name of the inn when it changed hands—Vincent must have been about six at the time. The inn had once been the respectably named Rose and Crown.

An assembly.

In his honor.

He tipped back his head and laughed aloud. Who but the citizens of Barton Coombs would put on a dance for a blind man?

He must not relax too much into this unexpectedly pleasant interlude, though, he thought as Martin brought in his milk and cake. For Sir Clarence March had made it perfectly clear that his daughter would welcome a marriage proposal from him, and Lady March had extolled her daughter’s virtues and accomplishments. Miss March herself had simpered. They all meant to have him, and what the Marches wanted, they often got, though they had obviously failed miserably with a few dozen dukes and marquesses and earls—were there that many in existence, even if one included the married ones?

He was going to have to watch himself.

Henrietta March had been exquisitely pretty as a girl and had shown promise of extraordinary beauty when Vincent last saw her. She must have been about fifteen at the time. She was dark-haired, dark-eyed, and shapely, and she had always been fashionably, expensively clad in clothes made by a dressmaker—or modiste in Sir Clarence’s vocabulary—who came down from London twice a year. Miss March had always had a French nurse and a French governess, and had never mingled with the children of the village. The closest she had ever come to conversing with them was at her birthday parties, when she stood in a receiving line with her mama and papa and nodded and murmured graciously in acknowledgment of the birthday greetings of all those who filed respectfully by.

Vincent might have felt sorry for her if she had not embraced haughtiness and an air of superiority quite independently of her parents. And his guess was that she had not changed. Certainly she had shown no sign of it this evening. That music her mother had sent for had arrived, but she had not uttered a word of thanks to the mystery woman who had brought it. Her cousin?

Who was she? She had not even been introduced to him or been included in any of the conversation. Her only spoken words all evening had been
yes, aunt
. But she must have been there all the time.

He felt rather indignant on her behalf, whoever she was. She was apparently a member of the family, yet she had been ignored except when there was an errand to be run. She had sat all evening as quiet as a mouse.

It ought not to bother him.