Harlequin Historical June 2016, Box Set 2 of 2 by Louise Allen

Author:Louise Allen
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781460398395
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2016-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

Sephora fussed around and could barely settle all of the next morning because she knew Francis St Cartmail would be here in the afternoon with his lawyer. Would he have changed his mind? Would things today look very different from what they had yesterday as he realised the extent of what he had promised and regret it? Would he simply take his troths back and leave her here, the ruin of her name too daunting even for him to try to manage?

* * *

When he did finally come she thought he looked tired, the shadows beneath his eyes darker today than she had ever seen them before.

‘Douglas.’ Her father’s greeting was cold, but when the earl’s glance found her own he smiled and she forgot everything else entirely.

‘Lady Sephora.’ Her name slipped from his tongue. ‘I hope I find you well this afternoon.’

‘Indeed you do, my lord.’ With Papa and both lawyers present she did not dare to address him less formally though she would have liked to, given the circumstances. It was not normal, she knew, for a woman to be present in such discussions of money and law, but as Francis St Cartmail had expressly requested her presence her father under duress had allowed it.

‘I have procured a special licence,’ the Earl of Douglas was saying now. ‘We can be married tomorrow for my lawyer is here to set the terms.’

‘Tomorrow?’ Was it even possible to marry legally in so short a frame of days? She could not stop her interjection.

‘If that is what you wish?’ He suddenly looked more uncertain and his eyes went to the windows.

‘It is, my lord.’

‘You cannot mean this, Sephora.’ Her father spoke now. ‘You have no dress, no invitations sent, no plan for a chapel or music or the food.’

‘I do not need those things, Papa.’ She said this as she looked straight at Francis St Cartmail and saw the stiffness in him relax. He was trying his hardest to see her safe. The least she could do was to allay his fears of her own hope of a much larger celebration.

‘Your mother will be even more horrified than she is now.’

Again the Earl of Douglas looked at her. ‘If it is a grander ceremony you wish for...’

‘I don’t.’

His hand pushed his hair back from where the darkness had fallen over his forehead and he breathed hard. He always wore his neckcloth tied high and often pulled at it with his fingers, Sephora thought. The ‘half-hanged’ explanation of Maria’s came back to her and she looked away. What sort of mark would a rope leave, both inside and out?

For a moment she imagined Francis St Cartmail naked under candlelight on their wedding night; this thought so unlike anything she had ever had before she almost blushed. In all of the years she had known Richard she had not once thought of him in any sort of a sexual way and she understood with a stinging clarity why she had not.

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