There was no reason for Simon to stay any longer, so as soon as Froggett returned to the room, he went out into the hall, and stood irresolute. Where should he go? He was not minded to work on his designs, nor was Juliet likely to be good company. The library wing was liable to bring him into the orbit of Hammond and Pyott, and possibly the duke or Richard, but the prospect of male conversation was not enticing, either.
“Are you in need of assistance, sir?” Froggett said, emerging from the breakfast parlour again.
“No, thank you,” he said, turning promptly into the Blue Parlour and thence through a series of chambers to the chapel wing. The chapel… Godley went out for his morning walk at this hour, so the chapel would be deserted. Simon went in, sat on the servants’ bench at the back and, by long habit, bent his head in prayer.
Into the silence came a muffled sound. Someone was weeping.
Low sunlight flooding in illuminated every corner of the chapel, and unless the weeper was hiding behind the altar, he was quite alone.
Another sob.
Jumping up, he strode the full length of the chapel, peeked behind the altar, just to be sure, and then back to the centre. No one was there, yet someone was crying nearby.
“Who is there?” he called.
The sounds stopped. Then a tremulous voice from above. “Mr Payne? I am up here.”
Above the door, he now saw, was a narrow gallery, partly hidden by an intricately carved latticed wooden screen. He could just make out a pale face peering down at him through the gaps.
“Sophia? Wait…”
He flew out of the chapel, up the nearest stairs and onto the landing where the door to the gallery should be. No door. For a moment, he panicked, then realised that what he had thought was a tapestry was merely a curtain, and behind it was—
“Aha!”
Inside, it was gloomy, and her dark gown made her almost invisible on the bench where she sat, were it not for the white, tear-stained face she turned to him.
“Oh, Sophie! My poor darling! I am so sorry.”
Without a single thought in his head except that she was in distress and needed comfort, he sat beside her and scooped her into his arms. She burrowed into his chest, bursting into fresh tears and sobbing as if her heart would break. Or perhaps it was already broken, which made him so angry at Torbuck’s fickleness that he would cheerfully have throttled the fellow, were he present. The only outlet he had for his rage was to hug her tightly to him, and rock her gently, murmuring into the top of her head, which was conveniently within reach.
“Hush now, sweetheart, hush. All will be well, have no fear. Sshh, now, my dear. He is not worth so many tears.”
At that, she lifted her head and looked up at him. “Oh no! Indeed, he is not. I do not cry forhim, faithless, deceitful rogue that he is.”
Another spasm of crying overtook her and for a while she said nothing more.
When he could bear it no longer, Simon said, “Then what troubles you?”
“I truly thought… when he came all this way to find me… but yet again, a promising man just disappears, and each time, I am a little older, a little more securely on the shelf.”
“You will find a husband one day, Sophie.”
“No!” she cried, sitting up a little straighter. “That is just it, time is running out. You cannot understand, I suppose, being a man, what it is like to have your hopes constantly raised and then dashed, time after time after time.”
“Actually, I believe I can. I have been qualified as an architect for almost ten years now, and any number of potential clients have approached me. They tell me what they want, I make some sketches and then… then they disappear, just like your suitors. My hopes have been raised and dashed, I imagine, at least as often as yours.”
“Oh. Then youdounderstand. But I will not allow it to be the same. How old are you, Mr Payne?”
“I am thirty years of age.”
“Then you still have many years in front of you to make your name in your profession, whereas I am eight and twenty. I have been out in society for eleven years, I have danced at one hundred and forty-two balls and—”
“Have you?” he said, enchanted with the precision of the number. “One hundred and forty-two? Do you count them as you go along… number seven… number twenty-four… number one hundred and forty-two? That one was the Marshfields ball, I suppose.”
“It was. I keep notes about them in a little book. What I wore, who I danced with, that sort of thing.”
“That is charming! Is it private? Or would a friend be permitted to see it?”
