“Poor fellow!” Simon said. “It must have been a great trial to him.”
“A greater trial to Rowena, I should imagine. She, after all, is the one who has gone through the inconvenience of beingenceinte, and then suffering the trial of labour, and must now be called upon to sustain the infant, until such time as a wet nurse can be engaged. I confess, none of it inspires me to hasten into matrimony.”
“I thought your greatest ambition was to marry,” he said in surprise. “Has your sister-in-law’s experience soured you?”
“Not exactly, for I must marry,” she said sombrely. “What else is there for a gently bred woman to do with her life, after all?”
“Juliet has never married, nor seems to feel the need for it,” he said, after a moment’s thought. “She is quite content to be a spinster.”
“Only because she has you,” Sophia said at once. “She devotes herself to a man just as she would as a wife.”
He had no ready answer, indeed he was so flummoxed by the thought, that he neglected to secure Sophia’s company fordinner which was announced shortly thereafter, and was obliged to sit between two of her sisters. Fortunately, the excitement of the new baby meant that conversation was general around the table and he was not required to talk beyond the gentlemanly obligation to enquire if he was required to reach any dishes for them.
After the withdrawal of the ladies, the gentlemen’s talk was more sober. The duke’s disappointment in the baby’s sex was repeated again and again, no matter how many times Mr Hammond and Mr Pyott pointed out that Mrs Richard had conceived so soon that she would certainly have another baby on the way before too long. But Mr Godley’s well-meaning pronouncement that it was God’s will did not mollify the duke in the slightest, and an explosion of rage sent the chaplain scurrying from the room.
“Foolish man!” the duke muttered, when his ire had subsided to mere smouldering embers. “I cannot imagine why I put up with him. I shall write to the bishop and tell him to send him somewhere… the navy, possibly. He can be a ship’s chaplain, and see if that knocks some sense into his head. Or the army! Ha! He can go and preach to Napoleon, if he likes. I cannot abide a prosy parson, always prattling on about God’s will. God’s will, indeed! As if I am not perfectly aware of God’s will. Have I not suffered under His will for these many years? Damnable business! I should have liked another son before I die, but I suppose the wretched man would tell me to be grateful for what I have. Not a single living child of my own, that is what I have. Four sons and three daughters of my blood, and all gone to the churchyard. Well, maybe Richard and Rowena will fill the nursery again, and give me the heir I need.Damnablebusiness. Where has the port got to? Send it up this way, will you?”
It seemed likely that the duke would settle down to get well foxed, so Simon slipped away as soon as he decently could.Sooner or later, the duke would remember the orangery and ask to see the new designs, but this was not an auspicious moment, when the man was so upset.
As soon as he entered the White Drawing Room, one of the Merrington sisters approached him to ask him about Marshfields. For a moment, he panicked — was it Sophia? But then he realised it was not. Maria or Augusta, he thought, for Charlotte was a little different… her nose, he suspected, although he could not be sure. But there was one way to find out. His sketchbook, with the drawings of the ball at Marshfields, was still sitting on a table, and there were a few sheets still unused. After asking a footman to find him a pencil, he began to draw.
“Why do you keep looking at me?” she said suspiciously. “You are not takingmylikeness, are you?”
“Indeed I am, Miss Merrington. I should like to take the likeness of all four of you on one sheet, and then you may each of you add your name to it. It will make a fine picture, I think.”
She clapped her hands together excitedly. “Charlotte! Maria! Sophia! Come here, for Mr Payne is going to draw all of us.”
Ah, so this was Augusta. The others had been chatting in low voices to each other, their heads of identical light brown hair close together, but now they rose and twittered across the room.
“Draw us?”
“All of us?”
“At once? How exciting!”
Their voices were slightly different, but he would need to know them much better before he could distinguish one from another by their speech alone. Sophia… yes, he could be sure of Sophia, but the other three still troubled him.
“How would you like us to sit?” one of them said. Was it Charlotte?
“Perhaps if you all sit on this sofa, I can bring over a chair from which to observe and draw you,” he said.
Giggling, they arranged themselves, then realised they were in the wrong order and shuffled themselves about. Now Sophia was at one end of the sofa, not in the middle. Were they in age order? He rather thought they were.
“But what pose do you wish us to assume?” one of them said… Maria, perhaps.
“No pose.”
“But you want us to be still, presumably? So we must adopt a pose.” Charlotte, he thought.
“No need. Just do as you normally do. Talk to each other.”
Even though they talked incessantly as a rule whenever they were together, the instruction to talk silenced them. They sat, pulling puzzled faces at each other, while he pretended to draw, for he had no wish to capture them with such unnatural expressions. But gradually their natural ebullience rose to the surface, and they began to talk again. His pencil flew over the paper as he attempted to capture their differences. No, he had not quite caught them. He turned the page and began again.
“Is it done?” Sophia said, as they all fell silent and turned hopeful faces to him.
“Not yet. It will take me a few attempts to perfect it.”
By the fifth attempt, he was reasonably satisfied, and yes, there were definite differences. Charlotte’s nose was a shade more pronounced, Augusta’s mouth was a little wider, Maria’s chin a touch more pointed and his Sophia’s eyes—
