It took many hours of talking before Simon could be brought to appreciate the change in his fortunes. It was Juliet who brought it home to him, as they talked in Simon’s room that evening. He was ready for bed, but she was too agitated, and was still fully dressed.
“Now you can marry well, brother.”
The thought hit him like an arrow — he could marry Sophia! But…
“What do you mean, marry well?”
“Someone young and pretty, with a good dowry. You could go to Almack’s and take your choice.”
“I have already made my choice.”
“Sophia Merrington? You could do better than that! The Merringtons looked down their superior noses at you when you were merely an aspiring architect, so why would you want anything more to do with them? At last you can take your place in the world as a gentleman, and choose an appropriate wife for a future earl.”
Simon huffed in annoyance. “I am still an aspiring architect, and I cannot imagine a more appropriate wife for anyone than Sophia.”
“Well, I suppose she is the sister of a future duke,” Juliet conceded graciously. “But why do you persist in this idea of being an architect? You do not need a profession any longer.”
“I like designing houses,” he said, in surprise. “Besides, whatever Andrew may have done in the past, there is still the possibility that he will father a son, so I do not depend upon the inheritance. He has said he will make me an allowance, which is of far more interest to me, I assure you. Assuming that Father cannot interfere from beyond the grave — although I would not put it past him, the devious old weasel — I shall be able to build my career properly, without worrying about the price of coal. Andrew has said he will tell his friends about me, so I could be inundated with business before long.”
“So… we just go on as before?” she said, sounding dubious. “We go back to Finsbury Square and carry on as if nothing happened?”
“No, because I shall be married, I hope, and will be a proper architect at last,” he said patiently. “Juliet dear, you do not need to return to Finsbury Square if you dislike the idea. You could live here, or in the Payne town house. You could go to Almack’s yourself.”
“Me, prance around alongside girls of seventeen? I hardly think so! Oh, Simon, it is all very well for you — you are a man and respectable and you will be very wealthy one day, but I am still the daughter of a woman who behaved so scandalously that her husband divorced her. I still cannot find out anything about her, you know, not even whether she is alive or dead.”
The topic had been much discussed around the dinner table that evening, but Andrew had only been eight at the time hismother had been banished, and nothing had ever been said about divorce.
“Father forbade any mention of her,” Andrew had said. “We knew something bad had happened, and we learnt the bare bones of it later. Well, it was all in the Peerage, so there was no hiding it, but as to why, no one knew the truth.”
Two days later, the lawyers arrived, a veritable army of sombre men in black, who took over the State Dining Room for their business, since Andrew still kept the library locked up. The day after that, the late Earl of Edlesborough was buried with appropriate ceremony and very little grief. The gentlemen and lawyers went off with the coffin, perhaps to assure themselves that his late lordship was securely underground, while the ladies sat in the countess’s parlour drinking champagne.
Afterwards, there was a reading of the will, in which neither Simon nor Juliet were mentioned, which was enlivened by the governess, trying to be unobtrusive at the back of the room, while being assailed by a fit of the hiccups. This caused an outbreak of giggles amongst the well refreshed ladies, and put everyone in the right frame of mind for the cold collation which followed.
“Poor Miss Towers!” Juliet said, through a mouthful of pastry. “She would not have been here, except that Andrew wanted Ruth to be there, and she was needed to keep Ruth in order. Whereas she was the one needing to be kept in order.”
“I think the champagne may have been flowing a touch too freely,” Andrew said, “but it was just what everyone needed to lighten the mood. The will was incredibly tedious. All those long defunct settlements to be raked up and people long since gone who knows where to be left a watch or five pounds. Why on earth Father never updated it I cannot imagine. It has not been touched since he married your mama more than thirty years ago.”
“Two pounds for old Timothy Blaine — that was a particularly amusing point,” Simon said. “He was dead before I even left Edlesborough.”
“Was he?” Andrew said. “Retired, certainly, after he had that apoplexy amongst the red currants.”
“Definitely dead,” Simon said. “I used to visit him, you know. He had such interesting tales about the village he grew up in, somewhere in Ireland. He dropped down dead in the Plough, over a particularly energetic game of hood skittles. I went to his funeral. These pastries are delicious. What is in them?”
“Lobster,” Andrew said, suddenly convulsed with laughter. “It seemed appropriate, under the circumstances.”
Nobody could be found who disagreed with him, and by the time they all dispersed to dress for dinner, not a single lobster patty remained uneaten.
***
Sophia had much on her mind. Not unnaturally, her thoughts were often with Simon on his brave journey to talk to his father, who was not occasionally stern but generally benign, as her own father had been, or even grouchy and unpredictable, like the duke, but was something altogether horrid. A man who could repudiate his son, at the age of fifteen, and leave him to depend on the charity of others was the most despicable of men, and his later behaviour, in turning away prospective clients so that his son could never rise in his profession, was unconscionable. His own son! And even if he had other sons to console him, did he not have a duty to take care of all of them, even the ones he did not like very much?
The question of Simon raised an awkward dilemma in her mind. Her supposed betrothal to him was a private arrangement between the two of them, a delicious secret that kept her warmat night and tranquil during the day. But she had never in her life had a secret from her sisters before. Mama might not perhaps be apprised of every last detail of her conversations with gentlemen, or the interesting things that occurred on occasion during a walk with one, but her sisters knew of everything that happened in her life, just as she knew of everything in theirs.
Now, for the first time, there was a matter that she could not discuss with anyone, and those long and impassioned kisses in the chapel gallery were by no means the least of it. She was not foolish enough to suppose that anything could ever come of this betrothal. It was all pretence, she was perfectly aware of that. One day, he would leave Staineybank and she would stay, and very likely they would never meet again. When that happened, she must try not to mind it so very much. Whatever the future might hold, she had some wonderful memories to sustain her through the dark years to come, as she slid inexorably into settled spinsterhood.
Her other problem was one which could be addressed, however, and discussed openly with her sister. If it was true that the four of them looked very much alike to outsiders, perhaps that was why, over so many years, potential suitors had melted away. A man who admired the girl he danced with at an assembly might arrive on her doorstep the next morning, enthusiastic and ready to be beguiled, only to find himself faced with the daunting challenge of picking a barely-remembered lady out of a crowd.
But what could be done about it? Simon had said that‘ usually with four sisters, one has a plump one, a tall one, a plain one and one with yellow hair’, and that was all very well, but none of them could change their height or hair colour. She determined to ask the younger men of the household. Mr Godley, however, merely turned beetroot red and backed away when she raised the subject.
