‘In what way?’ Disengaging his hands, she sat with hers in her lap. She felt suddenly cold.
‘They are gentlemen. I doubt Douglas has much of a notion of the word at all. Did you see the way he just left without discourse or acknowledgement? A gentleman would have at least tarried to make certain you were alive. At that point you barely looked it.’
Sephora remembered vomiting again and again over Francis St Cartmail as they had waded in from the deep, seawater and tears mixed across the deep brown of his ruined jacket. He wore a ring, she thought, trying to recall the design and failing. It sat on the little finger of his left hand, a substantial gold-and-ruby cabochon.
‘I took you from him at the water’s edge, Sephora. My own riding jacket suffered, of course, but at least you were safe and sound. A groom found a blanket to put around you and I sent for my carriage and marshalled all those about us into some sort of an order. Quite a fracas, really, and a fair bit of organisation to see things in order on my part, but I am glad it has turned out so well in the end.’
Sephora mused over all the things Richard had done for her, all the help and good intentions, the carriage filled with warm woollen blankets, his solicitousness and his worry so very on show.
She began to cry quite suddenly, a feeling that welled from the bottom of her stomach and swelled into her throat, a pounding, horrible unladylike howl that tore at her heart and her sense and her modesty. Unstoppable. Inexplicable. Desperate.
Her mother rushed over and took her in warm arms and Richard left the room with as much haste as he could politely manage. Sephora was glad he was gone.
‘Men never have an inkling of what to say in a time of crisis, my love. Richard was indeed wonderful with his orders and his arrangements and his wisdom. We could not have wished for more.’
‘More?’ Her one-worded question fell into silence.
He had not dived into the water after her, he had not risked his life for her. Instead he had simply watched her fall and sink, down and down into the greying dark coldness of the river without breath or hope.
Richard had done what he thought was enough and he was her betrothed. She had never met the Earl of Douglas and yet Francis St Cartmail had, without thought, jumped in to save her there amongst the frigid green depths.
She had no touchstone any more for what was true and what was not. Her life had been turned upside down by a single unselfish act into question and uncertainty and lost in the confusion of reality—these seconds, these moments, this morning with the sun coming in through wide windows and open sashes.
If Lord Douglas had not come to her, she would have been lying now instead on a cold marble slab in the family mausoleum, drowned by misadventure, the unlucky tragic Lady Sephora Connaught, twenty-two and a half and gone.
Her nails dug into the skin above her wrists, leaving whitened crescents that stung badly, and she liked the pain. It told her she was alive, but the numbness inside around her heart was spreading and there was nothing at all she could do to stop it.
After the rescue at the river Francis removed his sodden jacket and lay down on the day bed in his library, closing his eyes against sickness. Everything upon him was wet, but just for this moment he needed to be still.
It always happened like this, suddenly, shockingly, placing him out of kilter with all that was around him and sending him back to other moments, other times, other places that he never wanted to remember.
Even the change of environment did not banish the panic, though it made the waiting easier here amongst his books and his throat stopped feeling quite so blocked and swollen.
‘Have a drink, Francis. Then if you do happen to die on us you will at least have the rancid filthy taste of the Thames gone from your mouth.’ Gabriel handed him a large glass of brandy filled to the rim as he sat up and took two generous sips before placing it down.
‘This has...happened before. It’s not...fatal. It’s...just damn...unpleasant.’ He was still shaking and his voice reflected it, ice in his bones and shards of glass in his head. He was so very tired.
‘Why?’ One word from Lucien, hard and angry. ‘It’s the Hutton’s Landing affair, isn’t it? That damn blunder with Seth Greenwood and somehow his death is your problem forever.’
Francis shook his head.
‘It’s the...mud.’
‘The mud?’
‘The mud that covered us. The memory comes back sometimes...and I can’t fight off the feeling.’
‘God, Francis. You went to America as one man and came back as altogether a different one. Richer, I will agree, but...altered in a way that makes you brittle and you won’t let us in to help you.’
Francis tried to concentrate, to sift through all of the extraneous matter and find out what was important.
‘Who was...she?’
‘The girl you pulled from the Thames? You don’t know?’ Lucien began to smile. ‘That was Lady Sephora Connaught, the uncrowned “angel of the ton”, the woman who every other female aspires to become like...and one who is engaged to Richard Allerly.’
‘The Marquis of Winslow. The duke’s son?’
‘His only son. The golden couple. Both sets of parents are good friends. Bride and groom-to-be have known each other since childhood and the relationship has matured into more. It will be the wedding of the year.’
Gabriel on the other side of the room was less inclined to sugar-coat it. ‘Allerly is an idiot and you know it, too, Luce, as well as being a damned coward.’
For the first time in an hour Francis felt his shivering lessen with this turn of topic. ‘How is he a coward?’
‘Winslow was there, damn it, right behind his would-be bride. He watched as that untrained horse of hers upended her over the balustrade and sent her tumbling down into the river.’
‘And he did...nothing?’
‘Well, he certainly didn’t take a leap from a high bridge into a deep and fast-running river without thinking twice. Cowering against the stonework might be a better description of his reaction. The skin on his knuckles was white from the grip.’
Lucien looked as though he found Gabriel’s description more than amusing. ‘Allerly was there soon enough though when you got her to the bank, Francis, I noticed he tried not to get mud on his new boots as he all but snatched her from you.’
‘Hardly snatched,’ Gabriel countered. ‘It did look as if the girl knew who her saviour was at least and it took the marquis a while to get her to let you go. Her bodice was ripped, too. Her beloved took a good long look at what was on offer beneath before taking off his own jacket to cover her. Sephora Connaught’s mother, Lady Aldford, looked less than pleased with him.’
For the first time in hours Francis relaxed. ‘It seems as if Lady Sephora made quite an impression on you both.’
Gabriel took up the rebuttal. ‘We are happily married men, Francis. It’s you we hope might have noticed her obvious charms.’
‘Well, I didn’t. I was shaking too much.’
He leaned back against the sofa and drew a blanket across himself before finishing the rest of the strong brandy. The name was familiar and he tried to place it.
‘Lady Sephora Connaught. How is it I know of her?’
‘She is Anne-Marie McDowell’s youngest cousin.’
Anne-Marie. He had courted her once a good many years ago, but she had died of some quick sickness before they could take the relationship to the next stage. He’d got drunk when he’d found