He nodded, his throat tight. She understood! She knew how much he loved her.
She looked up at him, and oh, that smile! He was so grateful for that smile of reconciliation. Even if they could never marry, at least she did not hate him, and they could be friends.
“In fact,” she went on, “nothing happened between us until Lord Daniel left and you consoled me. Well… I suppose if we are being honest, something almost happened at Marshfields, did it not? But there again, you were consoling me, trying to reassureme that there was at least one person who admired me. You were comforting me, not trying to secure my affections to yourself.”
“I only ever wanted your happiness,” he said slowly, still unsure whether he could trust his voice.
“Was that why you never interfered when Lord Daniel was around?” she said, laughing suddenly.
“I did interfere, in a way. I helped him, when he could not recognise you.”
“Not recognise me? What do you mean?”
“Did you not notice? When he saw you with all your sisters, you look so alike that he could not tell which was you. I gave him a little hint when I could.‘That blue dress suits Miss Sophia’,that sort of thing.”
She sat up straight, the smile wiped from her face. “I do not look a bit like any of my sisters.”
“There are differences, certainly, but they are not enough to tell you apart. Usually with four sisters, there is a plump one, a tall one, a plain one and one with yellow hair, but the four of you all have the same colouring and shape and size. In fact, if it were not for a few wrinkles around her eyes, one might take your mother for one of you, too, and your habit of always going around together makes it worse. I had terrible trouble distinguishing you from your sisters at first. It was not until after Marshfields that I knew you every time, and I still make mistakes with your sisters. So when I saw Torbuck having the same problem, I helped him out.”
“Oh! So that was why he sat and talked to Charlotte that last evening, and ignored me, and I had put on quite my finest gown, too. I was mortified. But when you arrived, you brought him over to me, I recall. You saw that he had made a mistake and… oh! How foolish I feel now! But it never occurred to me that he would not know me.”
“How should it? To you, your sisters are all very different, but I assure you, when you are assembled as a group, you look very alike.”
“But you can recognise me?”
“I can. I would never mistake you for your sisters now.”
“That makes me wonder if that is why he ran away,” she said, with a low chuckle. “Poor man! Now I feel sorry for him. I recall a set of brothers in Norwich who looked very much alike to outsiders, although two of them truly were identical — twins, you see. But I used to make a joke of it — especially with the youngest, who had bright red hair and was quite different from the rest.‘Now tell me, which Foster are you?’I would say to him, and he always laughed about it. But how foolish not to mention it, if he truly could not tell us apart.”
“It is awkward, if one is supposedly courting a girl, yet cannot pick her out of a crowd.”
“Hmm. I suppose you are right. Well, he is gone, and I cannot say I am heartbroken over him. Whereas you…”
Simon’s breath froze. The sensible part of him deplored such talk, but he was finding it very difficult to be sensible, when she was so close, looking at him in just that way, her head tilted speculatively to one side, and such words in her mouth!
And then she made all rational thought fly out of his head by sliding down the bench to sit right beside him, placing her tiny white hand in his larger one.
“Simon, I do not want us to be enemies.”
“Nor I!”
“But nor do I want us to be friends.”
“Oh!”
“At least, notjustfriends. I know we cannot marry, and perhaps we will never be able to. Where money is concerned, Richard is implacable, and now that he has you labelled as a fortune hunter, he may never approve of you sufficiently torelease my dowry, and you may never earn enough to offer for me anyway. I understand all that. But I cannot — Iwillnot — simply let you go, as if you had never existed… as if we had never shared those wonderful kisses. What I should like is for us to be betrothed — no, do not speak yet, I implore you. Not publicly… a secret betrothal, only known to the two of us, so that I can sleep soundly at night knowing that there is one man in the world who would marry me if he could. And we can meet here occasionally and… and share kisses again, which would be lovely, would it not? And you need not tell me that it is improper, for I know all that, but at my advanced years, I feel a little pushing at the boundaries of propriety is not too heinous a crime. And when you go home, as you will before too long, we will have pleasant memories to keep us warm.” She squeezed his hand. “What do you say?”
How could he speak? His heart was overflowing with joy at her words, and even a simple affirmative was too difficult. So he answered her in the only way he could, by leaning across the narrow gap between them and pressing his lips firmly on hers.
18: A Visit From Mr Thwaite
The following day brought Simon a letter from the publisher. He liked the idea very much, and was very honoured to be entrusted with the publication of such an endeavour by a gentleman of noble family. He was sure it would be a great success, but the artistic nature of the contents and the high cost of the best quality of paper, and the finest binding, as such a prestigious enterprise would require… and so on and so forth. In short, he wanted Simon to pay the cost of publication himself.
So that was the end of that little scheme.
Simon could not be too downhearted. There were other publishers who might be more obliging, and besides, how could he think of such mundane matters when he was betrothed to his Sophie. It was not a real betrothal, he knew that, but every morning before breakfast, they met in the little gallery to talk and kiss. Mostly to kiss, if he were honest. And every day stored up more memories against the dreary day when he would have to leave Staineybank.
The day that brought the publisher’s letter brought another event, of a most unexpected nature. Simon was reading to Juliet in front of the fire in her room when Froggett came in.
