Chapter 23 Despair #2
So his thoughts revolved, as the sun gradually lowered and the gallery fell into gloom again.
It was as if he was aboard a benighted ship in a storm, tossed this way and that by the waves, and with no more power to right the ship than the barnacle still clinging to the hull.
Unresisting, he allowed his mood to be thrown this way and that, never settling, never even close to settling.
He barely heard the door open — there was no more than a half-imagined click. It was her perfume he noticed first, and then a soft step at the far end of the gallery.
“Simon?”
A thousand emotions roiled through him like a summer storm. He was not ready to face her, not yet! Perhaps he would never be ready, but she was there anyway.
He jumped up, turned to face her, made some strangled sound deep in his throat. Dear heaven, but a man could die of happiness at the sight of her… or die of grief, more likely. Was it possible to die of a broken heart? He was about to find out. Why could she not leave him alone?
She smiled, that glorious smile that he loved and remembered so well. Inside him, the pain receded. No hurt was so acute when she was so close to him, just a few steps away, and smiling as warmly as the sun.
The smile faded, replaced by anxiety. “Are you all right?”
No, he was not all right. Possibly he would never be all right again. But he needed to know, once and for all, where he stood. “Is he…? Are you…? Will he…?”
“Lord Daniel? He has gone, and good riddance.” Before he could assimilate this shocking response, she smiled again. “I turned him down.”
For an instant, he stood transfixed, unable to believe it.
Then he flew towards her and enfolded her tight in his arms, hugging her to him as if he would never let her go.
He was shaking from head to toe, but Sophie was there, he was holding her tight and the ship of despair miraculously righted itself. He had come safe ashore at last.
A muffled voice emerged from somewhere in the region of his chest. “Sorry — hard to breathe.”
At once he released her, horrified. “Oh my God! Sophie, forgive me! Are you squashed beyond repair?”
She giggled. “Not quite. Oh, Simon, I am so glad you are home!”
Home? Staineybank would never be his home, yet at that moment it felt exactly as if it were. He had indeed come home — to Sophie. Wherever she was would be home, for she was his lodestar.
“I have good news!” she burst out.
“Have you? Tell me all.”
“Richard is to recommend your design for the orangery to the duke. He cannot improve upon it, he says, and you will make at least a thousand pounds from it — I do not know how, but that is what he said.”
“Fees,” Simon said. “The architect’s fees are usually ten per cent of the total cost. Well! So perhaps it will be built in the end and you will have your ballroom.”
“And you will have some money, and you know what that means.”
“What does it mean?”
She looked up at him shyly. “We can be married, Simon. If you still want to.”
For answer he wrapped his arms around her again, although more loosely this time. “Of course I want to, but there is a small wrinkle to this pleasing scheme.”
“Is there?” Her face was raised again, and the urge to kiss her was almost overwhelming. “Is there… some obstacle?”
“Not an obstacle, exactly, but an unexpected issue. How should you like to be a countess?”
“A countess! Whatever do you mean? Is this something to do with your father? Did you see him in the end?”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said. “I saw him in his coffin, just before the lid was nailed shut.”
She gasped. “You mean — he is dead? Oh!” There was a long pause, while she gazed at a point somewhere around his middle, then slowly lifted her eyes to meet his. “Should I offer my condolences?”
“For form’s sake, perhaps, but there was not much grief on display. The ladies refreshed themselves liberally with champagne while they waited for the funeral party to return.”
That made her laugh. “How funny! Then I offer my congratulations, instead. But you will have to explain the part about being a countess, for you have two older brothers, do you not?”
So he told her of Andrew’s pact for daughters with his wife and Luke’s non-marriage. “So you see, one day, many years from now, one must hope, I shall inherit Edlesborough.”
“You will be an earl,” she whispered.
“And you, my darling, will be a countess.”
“Well! That might to some degree mitigate Mama’s disappointment that I refused the son of a marquess. The third son, with no likelihood of inheriting. And while you wait for your earldom, you will be a world-renowned architect.”
“A gainfully employed one, at the very least,” he said, smiling down at her. “Well, Sophie?”
“Well what?”
“Should you like to be a countess?”
“Oh! Are you being so obliging as to offer for me, Mr Payne?”
“I am, Miss Merrington.”
“Even though we have been unofficially betrothed for some time now?”
He exhaled slowly. “Well… that was all very improper. Lovely, of course, but most irregular, since I had nothing to offer you. But now I have a good allowance from my brother so—”
“Oh, that is kind of him!”
“It is no more than my father should have done all these years. If he had treated me as he ought and not interfered, I should have been established and independent by this time. But now I have money and prospects, and I need not hold back. So… will you marry me, Sophie?”
“Mr Payne, I am disappointed at the brevity of your proposal. Lord Daniel’s was much longer.”
He chuckled. “You deserve better, I know, but I am not very good with words, I regret to say.”
“Oh, neither was he, for he told me in plain terms that he would dispense with the ‘flowery nothings’, as he described them. Not that I wish for flowery nothings, but a little animation does not go amiss.”
“Do you want me to tell you that I love you? I can do that all day long, if you like.”
“That would be delightful, but you have a much more effective way of demonstrating your love.”
“Ah. But first, you must answer my question.”
“Which question was that, Mr Payne?”
“Will you marry me?”
“Ooh, I shall have to consider the matter—”
“Minx!”
“—very carefully. Matrimony is a solemn undertaking and one cannot rush into—”
“I am going to account that as an affirmative.”
“—anything precipitately.”
“Sophie.”
“Hmm?”
“Stop talking.”
“Make me.”
So he did, and there was silence in the chapel gallery for a very long time. Then, from somewhere near his left ear, he heard a whisper.
“Yes.”
“Um… what?”
“Yes. I will marry you, Mr Payne.”
“Obliged to you, Miss Merrington.”
She chuckled, and pulled his head nearer to hers again. After that, not another word was spoken.