For an instant, he stood transfixed, unable to believe it. Then he flew towards her and enfolded her tight in his arms, hugging her to him as if he would never let her go. He was shaking from head to toe, but Sophie was there, he was holding her tight and the ship of despair miraculously righted itself. He had come safe ashore at last.
A muffled voice emerged from somewhere in the region of his chest. “Sorry — hard to breathe.”
At once he released her, horrified. “Oh my God! Sophie, forgive me! Are you squashed beyond repair?”
She giggled. “Not quite. Oh, Simon, I am so glad you are home!”
Home?Staineybank would never be his home, yet at that moment it felt exactly as if it were. He had indeed come home — to Sophie. Wherever she was would be home, for she was his lodestar.
“I have good news!” she burst out.
“Have you? Tell me all.”
“Richard is to recommend your design for the orangery to the duke. He cannot improve upon it, he says, and you will make at least a thousand pounds from it — I do not know how, but that is what he said.”
“Fees,” Simon said. “The architect’s fees are usually ten per cent of the total cost. Well! So perhaps it will be built in the end and you will have your ballroom.”
“And you will have some money, and you know what that means.”
“What does it mean?”
She looked up at him shyly. “We can be married, Simon. If you still want to.”
For answer he wrapped his arms around her again, although more loosely this time. “Of course I want to, but there is a small wrinkle to this pleasing scheme.”
“Is there?” Her face was raised again, and the urge to kiss her was almost overwhelming. “Is there… some obstacle?”
“Not an obstacle, exactly, but an unexpected issue. How should you like to be a countess?”
“A countess! Whatever do you mean? Is this something to do with your father? Did you see him in the end?”
“In a manner of speaking,” he said. “I saw him in his coffin, just before the lid was nailed shut.”
She gasped. “You mean — he isdead?Oh!” There was a long pause, while she gazed at a point somewhere around his middle, then slowly lifted her eyes to meet his. “Should I offer my condolences?”
“For form’s sake, perhaps, but there was not much grief on display. The ladies refreshed themselves liberally with champagne while they waited for the funeral party to return.”
That made her laugh. “How funny! Then I offer my congratulations, instead. But you will have to explain the part about being a countess, for you have two older brothers, do you not?”
So he told her of Andrew’s pact for daughters with his wife and Luke’s non-marriage. “So you see, one day, many years from now, one must hope, I shall inherit Edlesborough.”
“You will be an earl,” she whispered.
“And you, my darling, will be a countess.”
“Well! That might to some degree mitigate Mama’s disappointment that I refused the son of a marquess. Thethirdson, with no likelihood of inheriting. And while you wait for your earldom, you will be a world-renowned architect.”
“A gainfully employed one, at the very least,” he said, smiling down at her. “Well, Sophie?”
“Well what?”
“Should you like to be a countess?”
“Oh! Are you being so obliging as to offer for me, Mr Payne?”
“I am, Miss Merrington.”
“Even though we have been unofficially betrothed for some time now?”
