“If you recite another recipe for stain removal or boot-blacking in my presence, young lady, I will be annoyed.” Letty softened her words with a smile.
“’Tis who I was for many years.”
“But it is not who you are now,” Letty added firmly.
Sophie nodded and ate her own toast while Letty read the morning paper and fed Timmy. It was a routine they followed daily, and still, she had yet to adjust.
You could not walk out of one life and into the next—this one so different, there were no similarities—and not take time to adjust… even years.
“Fee-Fee!” Timmy yelled, waving a finger of toast at Sophie, who in turn poked out her tongue, which had him laughing.
At three, he was now talking constantly, running about the place, and getting into mischief if not watched. His blond hair was darkening, and those eyes were the exact color blue that her mother had.
“Now, Sophie, I want you to go to Morton’s bookshop today and collect a book I have ordered, then select something for yourself. I have already called the carriage. Bea is visiting, and we will take Timmy into the gardens while you are gone.”
“I don’t need any books, Letty.” She rarely went anywhere alone and had no wish to do so now. “It is a recipe for disaster to send me out there to commit some social indiscretion that will ruin us.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You have better manners than most of society. Now, you will go there and do this for me,” Letty said firmly. “It is time for you to do things on your own.”
“Can’t a footman collect it for you?”
“No. You will go with your maid and gain your independence.”
“I don’t want independence.” In fact, what she wanted was to return to the country with Timmy and never leave it again.
“And yet I wish for you to do this for me.”
Letty rarely used that tone with Sophie, so she knew her sister-in-law was serious. Blowing out a loud breath, she looked at Timmy. This life he had was nothing like the one he’d been born into. Unlike her, he would never remember those horrible days.
“Very well, if I must.”
Looking around the sunny dining parlor of the Monmouth town house, Sophie still found it hard to believe this was her home.
Two years ago, she and Letty had taken steps to secure their futures, and while what they’d done still terrified her, she felt no shame over it.
Sophie’s concern was her ability to keep up the facade of playing a lady for the rest of the season. Letty had tutored her for hours on every facet of society, and so far, she had fooled everyone. But how long could she keep it up? A day would come when she slipped, and then what would happen?
“I insist you purchase yourself a book, Sophie. Money is no problem, and I know you like to read, so don’t tell me otherwise.”
Lifting Timmy down from his chair, she lowered him to the floor. Sophie then busied herself wiping his hands.
“I know, Letty, but when you have not had money, it takes time to get used to having some.”
“To the garden?” Timmy said, looking from her to Letty.
“Yes, we will go there now, darling,” Letty said.
“Letty—”
“Now, dear, we have been through this before.”
“I know—it just never gets any easier.”
“Are you unhappy, Sophie?”
“No, how could I be when Timmy and I no longer face a future of poverty?” She watched him walk to her sister-in-law and hold out his hand for her to take. “It is just that I am so scared of failing. I fear exposure and then the ridicule and humiliation that would surely follow.”
“Oh, Sophie?—”
