‘I should go.’ He glanced at his pocket watch. He had a good hour before he needed to present himself at the Jacobs’ household, but he didn’t want to blurt out something he shouldn’t in front of Tobias in order to fill the silence.
‘Kissyfur is going.’ Charlotte looked up at him, her dark eyes full of sadness.
‘I have to, my darling Lotte. But I am sure Tobias would love to play hide and seek with you.’ Christopher knew he was throwing his brother under the wheels of a carriage in order to prevent a meltdown, but he would promise Charlotte the earth so long as she stopped looking sad.
‘Will you play, Tobis?’
‘Of course, Lotte.’ Nobody had ever spoken to Christopher in such gentle, loving terms. Not that he wanted to hear it from one of his brothers; that would be downright awkward. But it would have been pleasant to have someone be like that with him when he was a child. His mother perhaps or their guardian after his parents had died, but there had been no one.
Christopher almost wished he didn’t have to go now; he would have loved to see his older brother stuck under a chaise longue, although undignified things probably didn’t happen to the duke. He had certainly never witnessed it.
‘When you return, come to my study.’
‘Very well.’ It gave him a few hours to come up with something to say. He supposed he would have to give his family a version of the truth, if not the whole thing. They would know he was too young, too wild to marry now, and he was sure they would understand why he had acted in the way he had. He might have already told Freddie and Edward but they’d been quite busy over the last couple of days, Freddie with his daughter, who was only a few weeks old, and Edward, who was recently married and still enjoying the early days of marital bliss. Something that Christopher didn’t overly want to dwell on. The other thing holding him back was that he wasn’t sure they would approve. Blissfully happy as they were in their own marriages, they would not understand why he did not want to be tied down to a woman who, to all appearances, was lovely and entirely respectable. They would certainly be angry at the idea of him bringing scandal to the family.
Dropping to his knees, he held out his arms. Charlotte flung herself against him, almost knocking him to the floor. He managed to keep his balance as he squeezed her tightly. ‘I will see you later for more fun and games, Lotte.’
Her whole body squirmed excitedly in his embrace, and he couldn’t stop his grin. Popular though he was with his friends, nobody wanted to spend as much time with him as Charlotte did, even if he wasn’t her favourite uncle. ‘Bye, bye, Kissyfur.’
Wriggling out of his arms, Charlotte held up her hands, waiting to be lifted by Tobias, who obliged her immediately, before flicking his gaze over Christopher. ‘A brush before you leave might be in order.’
Christopher reached up to touch his hair, which was indeed standing on end. ‘Thank you for the note.’
Tobias nodded. ‘I hope the meeting with your betrothed goes well.’ A pause and then he said, ‘Good luck, Kissyfur.’ A grin, wild and wicked, the likes of which Christopher had only seen in the mirror before, spread across his brother’s face before he whirled around and strode in the opposite direction, carrying Lotte with him. Christopher could only stare at his retreating back, wondering what the hell had just happened.
ChapterSeven
Sophia stared down at the paper in front of her. In the hour that she had been attempting to write this letter she had managed to put down the date and ‘Dear Robert,’ and that was it. Receiving a letter from her would shock Robert because of the departure from propriety, but she could think of no other way of getting the news of her betrothal to him. She could not ask her mother to write to his mother with Sophia’s version of events. Not when Mama was utterly thrilled with the news. Whether it was her daring at attempting to write to a man who was not a relative or the gravity of the situation, she did not know, but she was finding the whole thing impossible. She had not managed to come up with another word. It didn’t matter how many times she went over what she wanted to say in her head, she couldn’t convert any of it to sentences on paper. Since her visit to the Dashworths’ family home two days earlier, she had realised that she would have to stick with this farce of an engagement for much longer than she wanted. She refused to think it would be forever.
If she and Robert were to marry, and it was what she had been planning since she was a young girl, then she wanted to be completely truthful with him. He valued simplicity, which was one of the things that drew her to him, and this had the potential to be messy and awkward. If she laid it out in plain terms, hopefully, it would not seemas bad as it really was. She wanted to be the one who told him what had come to pass, and she wanted him to know the whole truth of the matter. When it came to phrasing the series of events, however, she was at a loss. If she explained what Marrisa had done, she was sure Robert would disapprove of her impetuous sister’s actions. While Sophia wasn’t thrilled with the way Marrisa had acted, she did not like it when other people criticised the people she loved. The behaviour of her sisters was one of the only things she and Robert did not see eye to eye on. Or rather, they both agreed that her sisters didn’t always think things through before doing them and that often led to chaos, but Robert never saw the funny side, and although this particular scrape did not have one, they often did.
In the dead of night, when she was pondering her future, this side of Robert did give her some disquiet, but she was sure that when he got to know her sisters better, he would see the deep well of kindness all her sisters possessed. They may be impetuous and sometimes thoughtless with their actions, but they never meant anyone any harm.
Dipping her quill in some ink, she tried again.
I hope you are enjoying the lovely weather we have had so far this spring.
There. That was more words. Granted, they did not get down to the crux of the matter, but she could hardly blurt out her extraordinary news within the first sentence. It also wasn’t the most exciting of starts to a letter, although that wasn’t really the point either.
Before she could begin a second sentence, the door burst open, the shock of it causing her to draw a thick, dark line over the only words she had written. The whole thing would need to be started again.
‘He is here,’ announced Marrisa. ‘He has arrived.’
Marrisa was practically glowing with excitement. Sophia hadn’t seen her so excited since the cook had served her favourite syllabub two days in a row. ‘My goodness. Who?’
‘Your betrothed, of course.’
Sophia glanced at the clock on the mantlepiece; it surely could not be that time already. If it were true, then she had spent two hours writing one line, which she had promptly ruined, and there was no time left to prepare. She’d picked out a dress to wear, one that was newer and revealed a little less flesh than the one she was currently wearing. She’d imagined having a good half an hour to sit in her room and calmly think through everything she needed to say to this stranger. But the clock showed her that Lord Christopher was exactly on time and she was the one who would be rude if she did not go to him straight away.
She dropped the quill, crumpling up the paper, wincing at the waste as she did so. But no one could see that she had started a letter to Robert. Even her wayward family might not approve of that one. ‘Do you think you could entertain him?’
‘I could but Mama and Cressida are already in the sitting room with him, and I saw Annie run off to fetch her poetry. I do not wish to alarm you overmuch but she was muttering about how he looked like a man with good taste. I fear the epic poem might be on its way and I am sure you can remember verses five to fourteen, if not the exact wording, then at least the sentiment.’
Sophia paused on the threshold of the writing room. Her room was up two flights of stairs and along a corridor. Even at her fastest speed, she would not be quicker than Annie. Lord Christopher may not be her real betrothed, but could she really subject him to Annie’s recital? It wasn’t so much that Annie’s writing was bad; it was just thatit wasn’t good either. Add to that the length of her poetry and people had been known to resort to dramatic escapes to get away from her recitals.
‘Why are you hesitating? Did you not hear of the horror that awaits your future husband if you do not attend him quickly?’
‘She is not that awful.’
