Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
“Do you suppose frogs object to being named?”
Sophia looked up from the strawberry she was cutting into quarters. “I imagine it depends entirely upon the name.”
Marjorie crouched at the edge of the pond, with her skirts gathered carelessly around her knees and one hand braced against a smooth gray stone. “Sir Reginald.”
“A frog of discernment would object very strongly,” Amelia said.
She sat several feet behind her sister on the picnic blanket, weaving a chain of small white flowers with the grave attention of a jeweler handling diamonds.
Her bonnet remained properly tied beneath her chin.
Marjorie’s bonnet, by contrast, hung down her back and seemed to have abandoned all hope of fulfilling its duty.
“Sophia?” Marjorie demanded. “You must decide.”
Sophia pretended to consider. “Sir Reginald is a respectable name. But perhaps too respectable for a creature presently sitting in mud.”
Marjorie glanced at the frog. “He may have suffered a reversal of fortune.”
“Then we must treat him with particular kindness,” Amelia replied softly.
The frog, perhaps unwilling to have his history invented by three ladies of Rivermere, leaped from the stone and vanished beneath the water with a small, silvery splash.
Marjorie sighed. “He has escaped before I could restore him to society.”
Sophia laughed and placed the sliced strawberry upon Amelia’s plate.
The afternoon had unfolded with the gentle perfection of something Sophia knew she would remember later.
Sunlight lay warm across the meadow. A breeze moved through the long grass, stirring the branches of the willow that bent over the pond, its trailing leaves brushing the surface like idle fingers.
The air smelled of warm earth, crushed mint, and the seed cake Cook had packed beneath a folded linen cloth.
The pond itself was small, no broader than the morning room at Rivermere, and so clear near the bank that Sophia could see pale stones beneath the water. Dragonflies hovered above the reeds. Somewhere in the meadow, a lark poured song into the bright blue emptiness of the sky.
A month had passed since the wedding.
Only a month, though Sophia sometimes felt she had lived at Rivermere for years and, at other moments, as if she had arrived that very morning with her trunks, her new title, and the fearful conviction that the house might discover she did not belong in it.
Yet the strange grandeur of her position began to soften around the edges.
She no longer turned whenever someone addressed her as Your Grace.
She knew which stair creaked outside the library and which footman secretly carried sugared almonds for Marjorie.
Amelia left two novels in Sophia’s sitting room and began referring to the armchair nearest the window as hers.
Marjorie entered Sophia’s bedchamber each morning with the confidence of a creditor collecting a debt.
Even Benedict became familiar to her in ways she had not expected.
She knew the sound of his footsteps in the corridor.
She knew he loosened his cuffs when reading difficult correspondence and touched two fingers to the bridge of his nose when Marjorie’s explanations grew especially inventive.
She knew his mouth could soften when he believed no one was watching him, and that when they sat together after dinner, the silence between them no longer felt like a failure of conversation.
There were still distances. There were still words neither of them had the courage to speak.
But there were also mornings when his hand lingered at her waist as he passed behind her chair, and evenings when she looked up from her book to find his eyes already on her.
Those moments left warmth beneath her skin long after he turned away.
Sophia had begun, cautiously and with a happiness she hardly dared examine, to think of Rivermere as home.
“May I take off my shoes?” Marjorie asked.
“No.”
“I have not yet told you why.”
“You wish to walk in the water.”
Marjorie appeared impressed. “You are becoming very good at knowing things.”
Sophia smiled. “I have had excellent instruction.”
Amelia smiled down at her chain of flowers.
Marjorie extended one slipper toward the pond. “Only the very edge.”
“No farther than the stones, and you must keep your shoes on.”
“That is not nearly as adventurous.”
“Then you must endeavor to endure the disappointment.”
Marjorie stepped onto the first flat stone, spreading her arms for balance.
Sophia watched her carefully. She had chosen the spot precisely because the bank sloped gently, the water was shallow for several yards, and no tangled roots lay hidden beneath the reeds.
She also positioned the blanket close enough that neither child could take three steps without her seeing it.
Marjorie hopped to the second stone.
“Carefully,” Sophia warned.
“I am always careful.”
Amelia looked up. “That is not true.”
“It is true at this moment.”
A shadow moved across the blanket. Sophia turned, expecting a cloud. Instead, Benedict stood several yards away.
He had come across the meadow without her hearing him. His dark coat was severe against the sunlit grass, and his hat was gripped in one hand. He looked first at Sophia, then at Amelia upon the blanket. Then he saw Marjorie standing upon the stones. Every line of his body changed.
“Marjorie.”
The single word struck the afternoon still.
Marjorie’s arms lowered. “Uncle Benedict.”
“Step away from the water.”
“I am only—”
“Now.” There was no loudness in his voice. Benedict did not require it. The cold precision of the command sent Marjorie back to the bank at once.
Sophia rose. “Benedict—”
“Amelia, take your sister and return to the house.”
Both girls stared at him.
“But we have not finished the seed cake,” Marjorie protested.
“You have finished the picnic.”
Amelia carefully set aside her flower chain. Her eyes moved from Benedict to Sophia, troubled and watchful.
Sophia felt an answering unease. “There is no need to send them away.”
Benedict looked over his shoulder. A groom stood at a distance behind him, evidently summoned to help search the estate.
“Mr. Harris will accompany you,” Benedict said to the girls. “Go.”
Marjorie opened her mouth again, but Amelia caught her hand. That more than Benedict’s command silenced her. Amelia always knew when an argument ceased to be a place for children.
“We are sorry,” she whispered.
“You have done nothing wrong,” Sophia said at once.
Benedict’s jaw tightened. Amelia glanced at him and then drew Marjorie toward the groom. Marjorie went reluctantly, looking back twice before the tall grass concealed them. The meadow seemed unnaturally quiet once they had gone.
Benedict waited until the groom and the twins were out of earshot. Then he turned to Sophia.
“What were you thinking?” The question was spoken with such contained fury that she felt it like a physical blow.
Sophia folded her hands before her, chiefly to prevent herself from clenching them. “I was thinking the girls might enjoy a picnic.”
“Beside a pond?”
“It is just a small pond.”
“It is water.”
“Yes, Benedict. I observed that.”
His eyes flashed. “Do not make light of this.”
“I am not.”
“You brought two children here without a nurse, a maid, or anyone capable of assisting you if something occurred.”
“I brought them to a place I examined before I allowed them near the water,” Sophia replied. “The bank is shallow, there is no current and I remained close enough to reach either girl within seconds. I did not simply turn them loose and hope for the best.”
“Marjorie was standing in the water.”
“She was standing upon a stone because she wanted to see the tadpoles,” Sophia explained. “I thought it better to teach her where she might safely put her feet than to pretend she will never approach water unless we are watching.”
He frowned. “The judgment was not yours to make.”
“They may also fall from horses, tumble down stairs, choke at dinner, or be struck by a branch in the garden. Shall we forbid them every room and field in England?”
His face hardened. “You think this amusing.”
“I think your fear has made you unreasonable.”
“My fear keeps them alive.”
“No,” Sophia retorted, her voice rising despite every habit that urged her toward quiet. “Your love keeps them alive. Your fear prevents them from living.”
Benedict went very still. Sophia’s pulse hammered, but she could not call them back.
She had watched the girls for weeks. She had seen Marjorie pause at every gate and glance toward the house before daring to cross it.
She had seen Amelia refuse invitations before they were fully offered, as though wanting anything might burden those who cared for her.
“They are children,” Sophia continued. “They ought to play near ponds and stain their gloves and return home with foolish stories. They ought to have adventures.”
“They have already lost both their parents,” he reminded her. The roughness beneath his anger caught at her, but he did not soften.
“That is precisely why they should be allowed happiness,” she replied. “Their childhood has already been made smaller by grief. You need not make it smaller still.”
“And you need not endanger them merely to prove yourself more indulgent than I am.”
Sophia stared at him. “Indulgent?”
“Careless, then.”
The word struck deeper than it ought to have done.
Careless.
She, who woke in the night wondering whether Amelia had seemed too quiet at dinner.
She, who learned every rule of Rivermere because she feared disturbing the lives she had entered.
She, who married a man she barely understood because two grieving children had looked at her as though she might become the difference between loneliness and home.
“You… believe I was careless with them?” she asked incredulously.
“I believe you did not consider the danger, yes.”
“I considered nothing else.”
“If that were true, you would never have brought them here.”
Heat rushed into her face. “You are so determined to protect them from every possible hurt that you have forgotten they must be children before they can become anything else.”
“They are my responsibility.”
“And mine.”
“No.” The word came too quickly.
Sophia felt everything within her become quiet. Benedict seemed to hear it only after it had left him. His expression shifted, but she no longer knew whether it was anger or alarm.
“What do you mean, no?”
“They are my wards,” he told her. “I have been responsible for them since before you came to Rivermere.”
“And I am your wife.”
“That does not give you the right to tell me how they are to be raised.”
For one suspended moment, Sophia could hear nothing but the faint ticking of insects in the grass.
The pond, the willow, the abandoned picnic…
all of it appeared very far away. She thought of the vows spoken a month earlier.
She thought of Amelia leaving books in her room and Marjorie climbing into her bed before breakfast. She thought of every servant who called her Duchess and every tender, dangerous hope she permitted herself to form.
She’d believed she belonged to them. How foolishly easy it had been.
Sophia swallowed against the tightness in her throat. “Perhaps you should not have married me, then.”
Benedict’s face changed. She wanted him to deny it. The longing was immediate and humiliating. She wanted him to cross the space between them, take her hands, and tell her she had misunderstood everything. Instead, anger moved faster than tenderness.
“Perhaps it was a mistake.”
Benedict’s breath stopped. All the fury disappeared from his face at once, leaving something stark and stricken behind it.
“Sophia—”
She bent and snatched up her gloves from the blanket. Her fingers trembled so badly that one slipped into the grass, but she would not stoop for it.
“Sophia, wait.”
She turned away. He said her name again, no longer as a command but as something nearer a plea. She could not answer. If she opened her mouth, all the hurt gathering beneath her ribs would escape, and she would not give him the humiliation of watching her break over a marriage he regretted.
Sophia rushed toward the house. The grass brushed damply against her skirts. Behind her, the willow leaves whispered over the pond, and the abandoned linen stirred in the breeze.
Benedict did not follow… or perhaps he did.
Sophia did not look back to discover it.