Song for Sophia (7 page)

“A Tuesday.”

“And the lunar phase?”

“Waning crescent moon.”

Her voice was guileless, but her eyes snapped with the dragon fire Sophia imagined earlier. “And who fought? I cannot remember.”

“Edward the third defeated Hugues Quiéret and Nicolas Béhuchet of the French Navy. What put you on the topic?”

“Oh, I was just wondering who the great-grandson of Béhuchet was.”

Without hesitation Lord Devon answered, “Nicholas dePuis Béhuchet, the third marquis — ” His eyes narrowed and his face fell, as though he just now realized he had played right into his aunt’s demonstration. It went without saying that he had an uncanny ability to remember obscure historical facts. But what was the point?

“Oh, dear. It seems the button on my cuff has come undone. Do you mind, Wilhelm?” Aunt Louisa held up her arm, gesturing to her sleeve. Lord Devon didn’t move from his seat. She sounded so genial, without Lord Devon’s furious expression, Sophia would not suspect her simple request.

“He will not. Cannot, to be precise.” Aunt Louisa fastened the button herself with one hand and looked at Lord Devon, then Sophia. “I mean that literally. He is incapable of manual function requiring contrary motion, as you may have noticed.”

“I certainly have not,” Sophia protested, disturbed by Lord Devon’s silence.

“My nephew is indisputably a genius. Mathematics, chess, music. He reads in one night what a competent scholar does in a week.”

“That I did notice,” Sophia smiled and turned to Wilhelm, but his downcast eyes seemed to be studying the rug. “And he is present … . ”

Aunt Louisa sniffed, “He will thank me for explaining in his stead. He is a proud man, but he is not well; you do not know the least of it. Despite his standing, it is the work of a trusted few who protect his power, his freedom. Do you understand? There are those who would manipulate my nephew — ”

“You make Lord Devon out as an imbecile,” Sophia protested.

“Far from it! But his history is such that he has enemies. I would give anything to protect Lord Devon from vulnerability.”

“Then it seems you and I are not at odds after all.” Sophia turned to Lord Devon, “Do you have anything to add, Lord Devon?”

He ignored her, still staring at the rug.

“Already you see what I mean,” Aunt Louisa muttered resignedly. “He is far away at the moment, Mrs. Cooper. Wait long enough, and he will emerge from the trance with a litany on … oh, Fibonacci ratios in the woven pattern. Or if you are lucky, he will return with music. Wilhelm is a brilliant composer.”

Sophia might have taken the old dragon to task, but she could see devotion and worry behind the façade of anger. “Very well then, I shall wait.”

Aunt Louisa huffed and drew herself out of the chair. She thumped her cane on the floorboards and whispered indignantly, “He is not mad!”

“Of course not.” Sophia studied his dramatic profile, his furrowed brows and the intense gaze his eyes leveled at the floor. “And he is a benevolent, kind man.”

“On a good day.” Aunt Louisa muttered a terse goodnight and left the music room.

Sophia leaned back and tucked herself against Wilhelm’s side, content to sit and think. He had done this earlier today when he watched out the window. She guessed ten minutes, maybe a quarter hour had passed with Lord Devon behaving like a statue.

When he finally blinked and sighed, she was rewarded with a companionable squeeze across her shoulders. She didn’t know the evening air had chilled until he stood and crossed to the piano bench, leaving her right side bereft of his warmth.

He bent his head over the keys, plunked out an unusual chord progression, then before she could be disappointed, a lovely serenade came from the piano. No, more like a nocturne; sentimental, romantic, and lyrical. The melody pealed like a soprano voice, but the dark minor key stole its joy. She listened, enraptured, as Wilhelm spun elegant phrases too complex to truly remind her of the poetic Chopin, but she supposed he drew his inspiration there. And not a note out of place, every chord logical, the harmony inventive — artistry and technique married.

She waited a few minutes after he finished before asking, “Is this one new?”

“Yes.”

A simple answer for the astounding revelation that he composed music in his head then played it without flaw. “It’s beautiful, Wilhelm. Will you transcribe it for me?”

He smiled weakly, but she could see amusement — or was it pleasure — dancing in his eyes at her praise. “If you wish.”

She waited while he gathered manuscript paper and a pen then watched as his script flowed as lovely as his music. Sophia realized Aunt Louisa had been wrong: Wilhelm’s hands moved in contrary motion when he played the piano. Yet he could not fasten a button?

He titled the work:
Her Voice, In Anger and Affection
.

Unless she flattered herself, she guessed Wilhelm had given song to Sophia’s side of the argument with Aunt Louisa. If he had listened to her tone of voice and ignored her words, he would have heard just that in her inflection, anger and affection. His generous rendition of her voice would have seemed like a romantic gesture if she didn’t know better.

Sophia had been absolutely correct to guess long ago that she would find Lord Devon
interesting
. That was the least of it.

Chapter 7

In Which Virtue Is Wielded As Punishment

The young misses Elise, Mary, and Madeline boasted one of the most illustrious surnames in all England: Cavendish. A shame they behaved like barmaids. Lord Devon escorted Sophia into the drawing room to meet his three porcelain-faced nieces, all decked from head to toe in ostentatious Parisian fashion. Within minutes Sophia knew they had mortified even their liberally minded uncle. Aunt Louisa appeared to have need of smelling salts.

The youngest, Madeline, had dropped the gold chain locket swinging on her finger and cursed, “Merde!” as she doubled over to pick it up, like a cabaret girl. The effect was less scandalous on a girl of nine but unseemly nonetheless. Mary, dark and plump with unruly chestnut curls arranged in a gravity-defying coif, had desperate need of a dictionary. Sophia doubted the melodramatic girl understood the difference between the words “impertinent” versus “impotent,” and accused a footman of being the latter, to Lord Devon’s amusement. Elise, the eldest, had answered, “Why, yes, I know!” when Aunt Louisa commented that she had grown into a
bewitching, elegantly developed young woman
.

As pretty as peacocks, the three of them, with manners to match. And Wilhelm wanted Sophia to turn them into diamonds of the first water? She knew they had been raised without a mother the past nine years, but how had matters come to this?

“Make them presentable at court, and I will petition your sainthood,” Wilhelm muttered in her ear as he passed behind her.

“I might find them penniless husbands for their fortunes, Wilhelm, but do you know many deaf bachelors?” she breathed, knowing he could hear as he paced behind her.

“How long do we have?” Mercy. He muttered it right on the back of her neck, chasing shivers down her spine with his breath.

Sophia studied Elise, who at age nineteen should debut in only a few months’ time with the start of the London Season. A delay would cause speculation as to her eligibility — meaning the ton would assume she was either promiscuous or broke. “Not this year, I’m afraid. Perhaps next. How badly do you want her to make a match before twenty-and-one?”

“Eighty thousand pounds. A hundred. Double, if I must.”

Sophia wondered if Lord Devon could truly pay quadruple the fortune the few wealthiest diamonds of the first water had. He didn’t seem to be joking.

“That shouldn’t be necessary, my lord. If she remains silent, most men will take one look at her and profess undying devotion. What happens if any care to measure her character is out of our hands.”

Madeline startled everyone by dashing across the room and throwing herself into Wilhelm’s lap. He gathered her in his arms as she buried her face in his chest and sobbed.

“Hush, darling. Now what is the matter?” Lord Devon crooned. When Madeline didn’t answer, he ducked his head and whispered a quiet conversation with her, then she nodded and blew her nose in his handkerchief. Wilhelm wiped the tears dewing her absurdly long eyelashes then turned her sideways to rest on his shoulder. She curled small dainty hands around his thick arm, holding tightly as though she feared being ripped away.

“You shall have a pony, Madeline. A white one. And Philip is sailing from the Baltic; your brother sent me a wire just yesterday. You must be patient, my sweet.”

Revealing that the late Sir Eldrich Cavendish’s youngest daughter foremost mourned the loss of her pony. His two elder daughters, judging by the levity in their attitudes, mourned him not at all. He had certainly neglected their educations — a crime Sophia found unforgivable, since a woman’s eligibility in the marriage market determined her well-being for life. Which was why she owed it to Wilhelm to help the Cavendish girls catch husbands who would make them happy.

Damned miserable business.

• • •

“Grazie al cielo, la cavalleria è arrivata.”
Oh joy, the cavalry is here
. She gave Wilhelm a quelling look, communicating that he should cooperate or die an ignominious death.

“Cosa? Qual è il problema?”
What? What is the matter?
Lord Devon answered in Italian as he approached the library table, observing the books strewn about, Mary’s red-rimmed eyes, Madeline’s pout, and Elise’s absence. He turned to Sophia for an explanation, and the heat of her temper steaming through her calm façade must have told enough about how the girls’ lessons were going.

“Ridi come se avessi detto qualcosa di molto divertente.”
Just laugh as though I said something very amusing
.

Lord Devon sank into the chair next to hers — the chair Elise had vacated moments earlier in a tantrum. He chuckled, shaking his head, then threw his head back and laughed in lusty peals. He sounded entirely sincere, as though someone tickled his ribs. Mary and Madeline watched with wide eyes, and Elise crept from her hiding place behind a bookshelf.

Lord Devon wiped a fictitious tear and sighed, then leaned in and said in a reminiscing tone, “È sufficiente?”
Was that satisfactory?

Sophia burst with a low giggle in her throat and covered her mouth with her hand, looking at him with a smirk as though he had said something outrageous and witty. “Si, lei ha dimostrato il mio punto. Grazie.”
Yes, you just illustrated my point. Thank you
.

“What? What is so funny?” Madeline whined, looking between her Uncle Wil and her governess.

“Yes, why don’t you share what is so sodding hilarious,” Elise groused, halting behind Lord Devon’s chair as though she expected him to leap up and defer to her.

Instead he stretched and leaned back, settling in. Sophia wanted to kiss him when he lifted the Italian dictionary and dropped it into her upturned hands. “Why don’t
you
tell me what is so sodding hilarious, Elise?”

He paused to look at each of his nieces in turn, demanding their attention. “Because it sure as hell is not having the privileges of three spoiled little girls revoked until they produce passing marks in their schooling. No, that can’t be what was so
sodding hilarious
.”

Elise gasped, her brows furrowed in an expression unflattering on her innocent doe-ish face. Sophia was tempted to gape as well. Occasionally she forgot about his volatile temper and brusque manners.

Lord Devon whispered, “Is this is where you apologize, Elise?”

She made a noise like an angry hen. “To the
governess
?”

“That should not be necessary,” Sophia interjected as she stood. “I thought I saw a copy of Fordyce’s Sermons over there. I suppose the Misses Cavendish would rather memorize sermons than conjugate verbs in Italian.”

She walked away to a shrill chorus of “No, no please!”

Sophia found both volumes and let them drop the last four inches onto the table, making an ominous thud, complete with a small billow of dust wafting from the gilt-edged pages, a testament to her less-than-illustrious career as a housemaid. That was not lost on Lord Devon, whose lips pulled in a small smile.

Mary leaned forward, reading the title:
Sermons to Young Women, by James Fordyce, D.D
. The girls were obviously not acquainted with Dr. Fordyce’s pearls of wisdom, having no idea the punishment Sophia had in store for them was much worse than Lord Devon’s threat to revoke privileges. Sophia would sell her own mother into slavery to spare herself from reading even the table of contents.

“Miss Rosalie, what do you suppose will earn my nieces passage into the dining room this evening?” Lord Devon stood and walked to Sophia’s side.

She pretended to think about it. “How about reciting sermon number six, the section titled,
On Female Virtue, with Domestic and Elegant Accomplishments
.”

“And what must each recite in order to return to her regularly scheduled studies?”

“Section nine,
On Female Piety
.”

His eyebrows went up and she thought he swallowed a smile. “Very well. A shame they will be indisposed today. I came to see if you could use my assistance with dancing lessons. Do you like the new Austrian waltz popular in London last season?” The girls gasped and sighed through his comments.

“The
Lustenau
? My favorite. A bit far in the folk style, but rather romantic.”

“Perhaps we shall have to practice alone until they are prepared to join us.” He held his arm out for Sophia.

“I am surprised those volumes survived the inferno,” he quipped, referring to the chauvanist philosophy books Sophia had tossed into the fire grate. She had hated him then, supposing he believed in female subjugation before she learned the truth — that he merely had a perverse sense of humor.

“I was saving them for a particularly cold night.”

He smiled sideways and she watched that infuriating dimple on his scruff-dusted cheek. Such rough-hewn strokes had carved his face in a cross between a Roman patrician and Norman invader, as though one wily gypsy had spiced his ancestry of aristocratic blood.