“Certainly you should! That fellow with the kennels — he paid for the designs, even though they were never built.”
“He paid me fifty pounds, that is all. It barely covered the cost of travelling to his estate, let alone my drawing paper. And since then, nothing,” he said frowning. “People enquire, they meet me, I do a few preliminary sketches and then they simply vanish.”
“What might we get to rent out the whole house?”
“I have not the least idea. We will enquire when we go back to London.”
“That could be any day,” she said glumly. “The duke will settle for Richard Merrington’s designs for the orangery, I am sure of it. He is just using you to come up with the ideas. Mr Merrington will modify them slightly, that is all, for he has nogood ideas of his own. Did you see his original plans? Dreadful! Quite dreadful. Not elegant, like yours. But he will copy yours, and the duke will send us packing and then we shall be reduced to taking paid employment! The humiliation of it!”
“Matters are not yet so desperate,” he said gently.
“They would not be if you would only marry one of the Merrington girls. Ten thousand apiece, thanks to the duke! Five hundred a year! Just think how well we should live on such an income. And this son of a marquess comes here with his fancy clothes and his smiles, and makes up to Sophia and you do nothing at all to stop him.”
“What would you have me do, Juliet?” he said impatiently. “He is a far more eligible match than I am ever likely to be. Sophia wants nothing more than to marry, and I will not stand in the way of her happiness.”
“She could marry you, silly boy! Five hundred a year… we could afford fires in the bedrooms.”
“You would make me a fortune hunter, sister. It would be dishonourable.”
“Honour! We cannot eat honour, Simon. Oh, go away, do. Slide that tray a bit nearer before you go, will you? I might have a bite to eat before I sleep.”
“The snipe is very good. Did they send you any lobster? They did!”
“Snipe! Lobster!” She sighed. “I hope the duke takes a very long time to make his decision.”
15: Abandoned
Simon slept badly again, and he was beginning to understand why. When a man’s dreams, both waking and sleeping, are filled with a certain face and a certain smile and a certain pair of luminous eyes, the conclusion is inescapable. No matter how many times he sternly told himself he was not in love with Sophia — that he could not afford to be in love with her — still he could not get her out of his head.
Despite this, he held no dislike of Lord Daniel. He was something of a coxcomb, of course, with his fancy clothes and a certain air in his manner of walking and his speech that marked him as a son of the nobility, an air which Simon had either lost or never managed to acquire. But the fellow admired Sophia and was prepared to chase round the country in pursuit of her, and Simon could not fault him for that. If he were to marry her and make her happy, then he might have her with Simon’s goodwill.
So although he rose early and unsettled, he was not truly unhappy. A little sad that such a lovely woman would never be his, but there had never been the least possibility of it, so her lossdid not weigh him down. In a few more days, perhaps, all would be settled between them, and that would be the end of it. Simon would go back to London with a little ache in his heart where Sophia had crept, almost unnoticed, into his affections, but he would be kept too busy trying to earn money to feel any grief. Or so he told himself.
He passed an hour or two sketching details for the gallery — there was something mesmerising about ceiling designs, so that was mostly where his efforts went — and then Robert appeared with his washing water.
“Heard the news, have you, sir?” he said cheerfully, mopping up a little spillage.
“What news? Not the baby? Or Mrs Richard?”
“No, no, nothin’ amiss there. No, it’s that markiss’s son — Lord Daniel.”
It was just as well that Simon was not carrying anything at that moment, for he would surely have dropped it. “What has happened to Lord Daniel?” he croaked, as a myriad possibilities, all of them hideous, passed through his mind.
“Gorn, ain’t he.”
His eyebrows flew up. That was the last thing he had expected.
“Gone? What do you mean, gone?”
“Just that, sir. Sent for his carriage at first light, and lord,thatcaused a rumpus in the stables, with every last groom havin’ to be dragged from his bed, the horses not best pleased either, and his coachman not in his bed at all and havin’ to be searched for all over. Found him in the dairymaid’s cottage, if you please, and his lordship standin’ in the yard waitin’ for him. Don’t fancy he’ll last two minutes once he gets his master home. And away they went, oh, more’n an hour ago now.”
“Where has he gone?”
“Don’t know. No one knows, or if they do, they’re not telling. But he’s gone, right enough.”
Impossible to make any sense of it. Why would Lord Daniel suddenly turn tail and run away, when all was going on so prosperously with Sophia? It was unfathomable. The obvious answer of an urgent message from home could not apply, because the servants would know of any messenger arriving in the middle of the night.
Puzzled, he dressed in haste and made his way hopefully to the breakfast parlour, where he might hear more.
