An hour later Francis was standing by one of the tall and opened windows at the less crowded end of the room. He wished he could have gone outside to enjoy a cheroot, but oft-times at other balls he had been waylaid in the gardens by women wanting to share more than a word with him. Tonight he did not wish to chance it.
A hand on his arm had him turning and Sephora Connaught stood beside him, a look of pleading on her face and her voice low.
‘I am glad to have this small fortune of finding you alone, Lord Douglas. I have written you a letter, you see, which I should have given you before when we spoke. The marquis let me know he had sent a card with our thanks, but I wanted the same chance myself.’
She bent to extract a paper from her reticule and handed it over. ‘Don’t read it until you are home. Promise me.’
With that she was gone, tagging on the back of a group of giggling women walking past, her mother to the other side of the procession.
The older lady caught his glance at that moment and held it, steely anger overlying puzzlement. Tipping his head at her, Francis turned, the letter from her daughter held tightly in his hand.
* * *
Sephora hoped she had done the right thing by giving him her missive. Please God, do not let him show it to his friends so that they might all laugh at her, she prayed, as her mother’s arm came through hers and Richard joined them.
She had not been able to leave Francis St Cartmail’s bravery to the ministration of Richard’s thanks. She owed him some sort of personal expression of her gratitude and her relief.
The fact that she hoped he might reply, however, made her squeeze her jaw together and grimace. It was the look in his eyes, she thought, that had convinced her to approach him, that and the blazing scar upon his cheek. He’d been hurt badly and she did not wish that for him. Even the scratches she had placed there herself were still visible.
Unfortunately she knew her mother had seen her speaking with the earl, but Elizabeth would say nothing of it within Richard’s hearing distance. Maria was chattering away and laughing and Sephora was so very glad for her sister’s joy in life. She wondered where her own joy had gone, but did not at that particular moment wish to dissect such a notion.
Over against the pillars on the other side of the room the number of beautiful women around Francis St Cartmail seemed to have multiplied. She recognised Alice Bailey and Cate Haysom-Browne, two of the most fêted debutantes of this Season, and both were using their fans with the practised coquetry of females who knew their worth.
‘Have you enjoyed the night, Sephy?’ Her father was beside them now and his pet name for her made her smile.
‘I have, Papa.’
‘Then it is good to see you happy after your awful fright.’
Just a fright now? She frowned at his terminology, thinking her parents had no idea of the true state of her mind.
‘The marquis has decided to stay on for a while, but we thought to head for home. Richard has people to connect with, I suppose, now that his father is sick.’
‘You saw the duke a few days ago. How does he fare?’
‘Not so well, I am afraid. He and your Aunt Josephine are retiring to the country. I hope that he will at least get to experience the occasion of his only son’s wedding in November before...’
He stopped at that and a constricting guilt of worry tightened about Sephora’s throat. Uncle Jeffrey was a good man and he had only ever been kind to her, but she did not wish to shift her nuptials to Richard forward six months so that his father might live to see it. The very thought made her feel ill.
It was as if she stood on a threshold of change and to cross over it meant that she would never ever be able to come back. She was also unreasonably pleased that Richard would not be accompanying them homewards in the carriage this evening. Such a thought gave her cause to hesitate, but she could not explore the relief here in the glittering ballrooms of the ton.
Her mother was watching her closely and further afield she saw the wife of Lord Wesley, Adelaide Hughes, looking across at her with interest.
The cards of her life were changing, all stacked up in random piles, the joker here, the king of hearts there. A twist of fate and her hand might be completely different from the one that she had held on to so tightly and for so very many years.
The water beneath the Thames had set her free perhaps, with its sudden danger and its instant jeopardy. Always before this her life had flowed on a gentle certain course, barely a ripple, hardly a wave.
She was glad she had given Francis St Cartmail her letter, glad that she had mustered up the courage and seized the chance to do something so very out of character.
The Connaught wraps were found by the footman in the elegant entrance hall of the Hadleigh town house and moments later they were on their way home.
* * *
Francis poured himself a drink and opened the windows to one side of his library. Breathing in, he shut the door and reached for the pocket inside his jacket before sitting down behind his wide oaken desk.
The parchment was unmarked and sealed with a dab of red wax. There was no design embossed into it and no ribbons either. He brought the paper to his nose. The faint smell of some flower was there, but Sephora Connaught had not perfumed her letter in any way. It was as if the sheet of paper had simply caught the fragrance she wore and bore it to him.
He smiled at such fancy and at his deliberate slowness in opening it. Breaking the seal, he let the sheet of crisp paper unfold before him.
Francis St Cartmail...
Her written hand was small and neat, but she had made her ‘s’ longer in the tail than was normal so that they sat in long curls of elegance upon the page.
His entire name, too, without any title. A choice between too formal and too informal, he imagined, and read on.
I should like to thank you most sincerely for rescuing me from the river water. It was deep and cold and my clothes were very heavy. I should have learned to swim, I think, and then I could have at least tried to rescue myself. As it was, I was trapped by fear and panic.
This is mostly why I have written. I scratched you badly, I was told, on your cheek. My sister, Maria, made a point of relating to me the damage I had inflicted upon your person and I am certain the Marquis of Winslow would not have made it his duty to apologise for such a harm.
It is my guilt.
I think that this rescue was not easy for you either, for Maria said you looked most ill on exiting the water. I hope you have recovered. I hope it was not because I took the very last of your breath.
I also hope I might meet you again to give you this letter and that you will see in every word my sincere and utter gratitude.
Yours very thankfully,
Sephora Frances Connaught
Francis smiled at the inclusion of their shared name in the signature as he laid his finger over the word. He could not remember ever receiving a thank-you letter from anyone before and he liked to imagine her penning this note, each letter carefully placed on the page. Precise and feminine.
Did she know anything at all about him? Did she understand what others said of him with the persistent rumours of a past he could not be proud of?
Leaning forward, he smoothed out the sheet and read it again before folding it up and putting it back in his pocket, careful to anchor it in with the flap of the fabric’s opening. A commotion outside the room had him listening. It was late, past midnight and he could not understand who might arrive at his doorstep at this hour.
When