Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
“Your Grace, would you prefer chocolate or tea?”
Sophia turned at once, searching the breakfast room for the duchess being addressed. There was no other woman in it. Only Amelia and Marjorie sat at the long table, both watching her with open interest, while a footman waited beside the silver service with admirable patience.
“Oh,” Sophia said. “You mean me.”
Marjorie grinned. “You did it again.”
“I have been Your Grace for less than a day. I think I may be permitted some confusion.”
“You turned around when Peters called you that in the hall,” Amelia reminded her.
“And when Mrs. Bell greeted you upon the stairs,” Marjorie added. “You nearly looked behind a statue.”
“The statue appeared far more accustomed to consequence than I am.”
The footman’s expression did not alter, though Sophia suspected this required effort.
“Tea, please,” she told him.
“Very good, Your Grace.”
Her head began to turn before she stopped herself. Marjorie laughed into her napkin.
The breakfast room was smaller than the formal dining room, yet it still seemed enormous to Sophia.
Morning light streamed through three tall windows, falling across polished mahogany and silver dishes, and filling enough chairs to accommodate a family twice their size.
The ceiling rose high above them, adorned with plasterwork she had not noticed on her earlier visits.
Even the fire looked grander than necessary, burning in a marble grate large enough to warm a modest cottage.
Sophia sat at one end of the table and felt as though she had borrowed another woman’s place.
The Duchess of Rivermere ought to know where the preserves were kept.
She ought to remember every servant’s name, know which bell summoned whom, and enter a room without wondering whether she needed permission to sit.
Sophia knew none of those things. The wedding ended. The guests departed. Her trunks stood in chambers that now belonged to her, and every person within Rivermere addressed her as though she had become someone important merely by repeating vows before a clergyman.
Yet beneath the new title, she remained Sophia. She still disliked being observed while eating. She still preferred books to assemblies. She still had to remind herself that the house into which she had awakened that morning was now her home. The word felt too large to hold.
“Where is Uncle Benedict?” Marjorie asked, reaching for another piece of toast.
“In his study,” Amelia answered before Sophia could. “Mr. Hughes brought the morning correspondence.”
“He might have breakfasted first.”
“He generally does not when there are letters from London.”
Sophia lowered her gaze to her tea. She had seen Benedict only briefly that morning.
He greeted her with grave politeness in the corridor, inquired whether she had slept well, and informed her that urgent correspondence required his attention.
There was nothing unusual in his manner.
That should have relieved her. Instead, she felt strangely disappointed.
“We shall show you everything while he is occupied,” Marjorie announced.
“Everything?” Sophia repeated.
“The kitchens, the schoolroom, the stables, the west garden, the old tower—”
“Not the old tower,” Amelia said.
“Eventually.”
“Uncle Benedict said the stairs are unsafe.”
“He says many things are unsafe.”
“Because many things are unsafe.”
Marjorie looked at Sophia. “You see what I endure.”
Sophia hid a smile behind her cup. “I have heard a similar complaint before.”
The girls had apparently devised an entire program for her morning.
She was to be shown every important room and introduced to every person whose duties brought them into the house.
They spoke of it with such excitement that Sophia could not disappoint them by confessing she would have preferred to begin with no more ambitious undertaking than finding the library without assistance.
Breakfast ended with Marjorie declaring that the kitchen must come first because Cook had promised seed cake. The corridors seemed even longer with the girls leading her through them at speed. Servants stopped and curtsied as they passed.
Each greeting made Sophia feel as though she wore a title several sizes too large. She smiled, thanked them, and tried desperately to remember every name Amelia whispered after they had gone by.
“You remember Mrs. Bell, the housekeeper.”
“Yes.”
“And Mr. Peters.”
“Yes.”
“And Lucy.”
“Lucy?” Sophia repeated.
“No, that was Anna,” Marjorie corrected. “Lucy has blonde hair.”
Sophia sighed. “I shall offend the entire household before luncheon.”
“You will not,” Amelia assured her. “They already like you.”
“How can they? They scarcely know me.”
Marjorie looked astonished. “We told them.”
That explanation did very little to soothe her.
The warmth reached them before the kitchen itself did.
So did the scents of fresh bread, roasting meat, yeast, herbs, and something sweet with cinnamon.
The passage opened into a large, busy room where copper pans gleamed on the walls and flames crackled beneath the ranges.
Maids moved between tables. A kitchen boy carried a basket of vegetables.
The cook stood near the central worktable, issuing instructions with the authority of a field marshal.
The instant Sophia entered, everything stopped. A spoon remained suspended above a bowl. A maid halted with a cloth in her hands. The kitchen boy nearly walked into the wall before catching himself.
The cook turned. “Your Grace.”
She curtsied. Everyone else followed, while Sophia stood before them in sudden, awful silence. She felt a little like a general inspecting troops, except that generals presumably knew what they expected of the troops.
“Good morning,” she greeted them.
Several people murmured the greeting in return.
The cook straightened. “We are honored to welcome you to Rivermere, Your Grace.”
“That is very kind.”
Another silence followed. Sophia became painfully aware that everyone was waiting for her to say something of consequence. She looked at the flour upon the table, the half-rolled pastry, and the row of small pies cooling near the window.
“It smells wonderful,” she offered.
The cook’s grave expression softened by a degree. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
Marjorie tugged at Sophia’s sleeve. “Tell her you like seed cake.”
“I believe Cook already knows.”
“I made certain of it,” Marjorie explained.
Sophia turned to look at her. At that precise moment, a maid entered behind them carrying a tray of abandoned teacups, and Sophia stepped directly into her path. There was a startled cry, a sharp rattle of porcelain, and then the tray struck the stone floor.
Two cups shattered and tea splashed across the tiles. Every person in the kitchen gasped. The maid went pale.
“Oh, Your Grace!” She dropped to her knees at once, her hands trembling as she reached for the broken pieces. “Forgive me. I am so sorry. I did not mean… I should have watched where I was going.”
“No, no, it was my fault.” Sophia knelt beside her. “I turned without looking.”
The maid stared at her. Sophia reached for the handle of one broken cup.
“Your Grace!” the cook exclaimed.
Another maid hurried forward with a broom. “Please, Your Grace, allow me. You might cut yourself.”
Sophia paused with her hand suspended above the glass. The girl beside her looked close to tears.
“I truly am sorry,” Sophia said softly. “I stepped into you.”
“You needn’t apologize to me, Your Grace.”
“I am the one who caused it.”
The maid blinked. Sophia rose reluctantly as the second maid began sweeping the porcelain into a pile.
She felt more embarrassed than she had upon entering the kitchen, though the atmosphere around her had shifted.
The servants were no longer staring at her as though she might issue an order of national importance.
Now several seemed to be trying not to smile.
Marjorie leaned toward the cook and whispered with no understanding whatever of secrecy. “See? I told you she was nice.”
The cook’s mouth twitched. Sophia pressed her lips together, resisting the smile that threatened in answer.
The first maid rose, smoothing her apron with unsteady hands.
“You are not hurt?” Sophia asked.
“No, Your Grace.”
“And you are certain no tea struck you?”
“Quite certain.”
“Then I am very glad.” Sophia glanced toward the broken cups. “Though I remain sorry about those.”
“They were only cups,” the cook said, her manner warmer now. “We have others.”
Sophia suspected Benedict would have noticed that household china did not simply reproduce because one wished it so. She also suspected he would have quietly ordered more before anyone could mention the loss. The thought made her smile.
Amelia took her hand. “We ought to go to the garden now,” she said. “Mr. Wilkes will be expecting us.”
“The gardener,” Marjorie explained. “He pretends not to like visitors, but he does.”
“He does not like you stepping in the flower beds.”
“That is different.”
Sophia looked once more at the kitchen staff. “Thank you for welcoming me. I promise to take greater care when turning around.”
A few smiles appeared openly now. She allowed the girls to draw her toward the door. As they entered the passage, Marjorie began explaining which garden paths were forbidden after rain and precisely why those were the most interesting ones.
Sophia listened, though she glanced back once at the bustling kitchen. The servants had returned to their work. The noise rose again, with knives on boards, pans on ranges, and voices moving easily through the room.
The house still felt enormous, and the title still felt borrowed.
But as Amelia’s hand stayed tucked in hers and Marjorie hurried ahead to announce their arrival to a gardener who had not yet seen them, Sophia felt, for the first time that morning, a little less like an impostor in another woman’s life.
Perhaps belonging did not arrive all at once. Perhaps it began with broken cups, an honest apology, and two little girls who had already decided she was home.
Benedict had been reading the same sentence for several minutes when laughter drifted through the open window. He looked up.
The sound was bright and distant, carried into the study on air scented with roses and newly cut grass. Marjorie’s laughter came first, unmistakable in its freedom. Amelia’s followed more softly. Then Sophia’s joined them.
Benedict’s pen stilled above the page. His writing table had completely disappeared beneath correspondence.
Letters from tenants waited beside estate accounts, invitations competed with reports from his steward, and a solicitor in London required an answer to a matter which had already occupied more time than it deserved.
He ought to have continued working. Instead, another burst of laughter reached him.
Benedict rose. From the nearest window, he could see only the edge of the terrace and a portion of the south lawn. He crossed into the adjoining morning room, where the tall glass doors stood open behind pale curtains stirring in the breeze.
Voices approached along the garden path.
Benedict remained behind the curtain. He told himself he did so because his appearance would interrupt whatever the girls were doing.
Marjorie would abandon the subject entirely in order to explain herself, and Amelia would immediately become concerned that they had disturbed him.
It had nothing to do with his wish to observe Sophia when she did not know he was there.
The girls appeared first. Marjorie caught Sophia by one hand and pulled her toward the garden’s most extravagant part, where roses spilled over low stone walls and foxgloves rose in purple towers along the path.
Amelia held Sophia’s other hand, though she walked with considerably more dignity than her sister.
“You must see this part,” Marjorie announced. “It is the best, except for the closed-up well, but Uncle Benedict says we are not to go there without someone sensible.”
“Which is why we have brought you,” Amelia announced.
Sophia glanced between them. “I am flattered by your confidence.”
“You climbed a tree,” Marjorie reminded her. “That proves you are sensible in emergencies.”
“It may prove precisely the opposite.”
Marjorie ignored this. As Benedict had known she would, she began explaining everything at once, starting with the names of flowers she remembered and the names she had invented for those she did not know, which paths flooded after rain, and which rosebush had once caught Benedict’s coat and refused to let go.
“It did not refuse,” Benedict murmured behind the curtain. “It was a thorn.”
Sophia laughed. She looked different in the garden than she had at the wedding. She seemed softer and less self-conscious about the title, which made her turn whenever a servant addressed her. The morning light touched her hair, and the breeze moved the hem of her pale gown around her ankles.
Amelia remained close beside her, speaking now about the gardener and the patch of lavender their mother had once preferred. Sophia listened as though nothing in the world could be more important.
She did not hurry the child. She did not fill the pauses Amelia required before continuing. When Marjorie interrupted, Sophia answered her without allowing Amelia’s quieter words to be lost.
Benedict felt something warm and painful move beneath his ribs.
He’d told himself the marriage was for the girls, that Sophia would bring gentleness to Rivermere, and laughter into rooms that had been too quiet for too long, and that Amelia and Marjorie needed someone who understood them in ways Benedict never quite trusted himself to do.
He had been right. Marjorie pulled Sophia beneath an arch thick with white roses.
Amelia followed, still holding Sophia’s hand.
For a brief moment, the three of them stood framed by blossoms and green leaves, already belonging to one another with an ease Benedict could never have arranged through rules or careful planning.
Sophia looked back toward the house. Benedict slipped farther behind the curtain before she could see him. A moment later, Marjorie drew her onward, and the three figures disappeared into the garden’s brightest part.
Benedict remained where he was long after their voices faded. He made decisions all his life by weighing consequence against necessity. He trusted reason, duty, and facts which could be placed plainly before him.
Yet as he returned to his writing table, the correspondence no longer seemed quite so urgent. The laughter remained with him. And for the first time since the vows had been spoken, Benedict allowed himself to acknowledge what he had already begun to feel.
Perhaps marrying Sophia was the right thing to do.