Married to a Stranger

It would help if he could feel any positive emotions, but they seemed to have deserted him, leaving only a black, aching hole even now, six months later. And so had empathy. He felt his brother Will’s pain at a distance; Sophia’s, hardly at all. And yet in all other ways he was back to normal. He worked hard, his brain was as sharp as ever, he had ambition, he planned for the future, he welcomed the company of friends and colleagues. He was eating properly, looking after himself and creating a home, not lurking in bachelor lodgings.

Sophia moved again, as though she checked herself from flight, and the sunlight caught the shine of her hair, outlined her figure vaguely through her thin skirts. She turned and looked at him and he saw a speculation and awareness that had not been there before. Cal felt a sudden heaviness in his groin, a stirring in his blood.

‘Well, Sophia?’ He moved closer to her until the hem of her skirts brushed the toes of his boots. ‘Shall we fix a date?’

‘Mr Chatterton—Callum—I cannot marry you.’ Sophia realised there was nothing else she could think of to say. She could not argue with his sense of duty, with his desire to fulfil a promise to his twin. But how could she accept him when it was her own folly that had allowed the betrothal to endure? Daniel could not have broken it off, not as a gentleman.

‘I realise that your feelings for Daniel might make this somewhat awkward,’ Callum continued, as dispassionately as though he was discussing the price of tea. ‘However, I will endeavour to make you a good husband. I am certain now that I will be remaining in England, which will relieve your mind on the score of either the unhealthy climate or the likelihood of long separations.’

In love with Daniel? She blinked at Callum, distracted from his ruthlessly practical catalogue. Of course, how could he know how inconstant I had been? I swore to him, so long ago, that I would always love Daniel. What else is he to assume? Appalled, Sophia realised that she could hardly disabuse him of the notion now; it would be dreadful to announce that she did not love her betrothed when Callum’s loss was still so raw.

He was saying something else. She pulled her attention back with an effort. ‘… a sensible and amiable wife and you require a husband. We could marry quietly by licence.’

‘You appear to have thought it all through very thoroughly,’ Sophia said, her mouth dry. ‘How efficient. I must confess I do not feel much inclined to be sensible, let alone amiable, just now. As for what the intelligent thing to do might be, I have no idea.’

Screaming seemed tempting. You require a husband, indeed! Certainly she did; she lay awake in the panicky small hours thinking just that thing and wondering how they would manage when their creditors woke up to the fact that there was no well-connected male in her future to pay the bills. It would be a long while before the pittance she could earn as a governess or a put-upon companion would pay off the debts. But to marry a man who was proposing out of a chilly sense of duty …

‘I cannot marry you simply because you have a kindly im pulse.’

‘I do not commit to matters of importance, of honour, on an impulse.’ His mouth curved into something that was almost a smile.

‘Certainly not a kindly one,’ she tossed back at him.

‘I am not much given to impulse,’ Callum confessed, and she became aware of his eyes on her body, assessing her.

He was so certain that she would do what he said. Sophia bit the inside of her lip to stop herself flaring up. It was ungrateful, but she was the only one who would decide what she was going to do. ‘My feelings for your brother do not concern you?’

‘No.’ He did not appear willing to expand on that. Perhaps, because he felt nothing for her, he did not care if she still loved another man. It argued that he did not see marriage as involving any exchange of deep feeling, of passion beyond the physical.

She averted her eyes from his broad shoulders and long legs and the distracting prospect of physical passion. He was an attractive man. That was not a good reason for making a marriage, especially as he would hardly be entertaining the same feelings of physical attraction for her. A wife was a warm body in a bed who would perform her marital duties and produce children. Apparently she passed muster, even if she did not drive him wild with desire.

This was as bad as the prospect of marrying Daniel had become, only colder. Sophia reminded herself that Callum was, by business and training, a trader. He was approaching marriage, she supposed, in the same way as any other contract, rationally and with good sense.

‘Financially there are problems, are there not?’ he asked.

She had to be honest about that, never mind how her pride revolted. ‘Yes. There are debts, more than we can cope with any more. I had intended to apply for a post as a governess or perhaps a companion.’

‘I expected that,’ Callum said. ‘I had not realised it was quite that bad, however. Be assured that I will take care of all of it.’

She would get by far the better part of this bargain, for she would bring Callum nothing but herself and she could not pretend that she was much of a bargain. This was the answer to her prayers. Why, then, was every fibre of her being revolting against it? It was an excellent match and any well-bred and delicately brought-up young woman would expect nothing more than what Callum was offering her. Most would snatch at it, deeply grateful to have a second chance.

But she was not anyone else, she was herself and she ached for a meeting of minds and for companionship and for love. Her heart told her to refuse, politely and firmly and put an end to this humiliation, but her head held her back from an irrevocable decision.

‘I must think about it,’ she found herself saying.

‘What is there to think about?’ Callum seemed genuinely baffled by her prevarication. ‘Is it your mother? You must have planned for her future when Dan returned. Surely there is a relative who would make a congenial companion for her.’

‘Well, yes, Cousin Lettice would be delighted to move here, it was always the intention.’

He nodded. ‘Excellent.’

‘How can you not mind that I was betrothed to your brother?’ She stretched out her hands as if she could somehow reach him through the glass wall of practicality he was erecting between them. ‘Would I not remind you of Daniel?’

Callum stared at her hands without taking them. ‘I have told you how I feel. I have come through the grief and I do hope I would not be so foolish as to be jealous of your feelings for him,’ he said eventually. ‘If you tell me that you cannot marry me because of those feelings …’ He left the sentence hanging. Her escape route.

But it would be a lie and the escape would be into deeper debt, misery for herself and Mama, difficulty for Mark. Sophia shook her head. ‘No, it is not that. I know he is … I have accepted that he is gone. It is just that this is so sudden, so unexpected. I need time.’

‘Time is not on your side. It is not as though you are a widow who has children already,’ Callum said with such flat practicality that it did not hit her until several seconds later that he was warning her that she was letting her only chance of motherhood slip by. ‘It will help you decide if you saw where you will be living. There is the town house, of course, but there are also two estates to choose from for when we are out of London. We could drive over and see them together and decide which to live in and which house to rent out.’

‘Choose?’ Everything was going too fast. ‘But Long Welling was always yours, was it not?’

‘It was managed by my father and then by Will. I have been in India, remember, and in London for six months. I have no great attachment to it and both houses are vacant at the moment.’

The house where she would live with this man. An insidious little voice was murmuring that Callum’s arms would be strong around her body and that he would always stand by her. She could experience physical passion at last. He would give her children. Security. But was it right?

‘You need time to think it over,’ he said and she realised he had hat, gloves and whip in his hands. She had been so deep in her thoughts that she had not noticed him move. ‘I will return tomorrow morning. Goodbye, Sophia.’

‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘Callum—’

‘Of course, how remiss of me.’ He bent his head and kissed her, firmly but fleetingly, on the mouth. ‘Is that what you wanted?’

‘I don’t know.’ Sophia stared at Callum, somehow managing not to run her tongue over her lips to taste him. ‘I have no idea what I want. What I ought to want. You have turned my world upside down.’

‘Excellent.’ He strode away across the lawn without looking back.

Sophia gave way to the urge to lick her lips. There was a faint trace of something alien and disturbing overlain with coffee. Excellent? ‘Oh, you stubborn, impossible man! Were you listening to me at all?’

Chapter Three

Sophia sat in the front parlour the next morning and tried to work through a muddle of thoughts. There was resentment at the way that Callum simply made assumptions about what was best for her—and the fact that he was doubtless right did not help. There was respect for his sense of duty and loyalty to Daniel and the nagging consciousness that her own duty to her family lay in making a good marriage. This marriage.

If only they had a little money and she had room to think. Her mind kept running over and over the lack of money like a dog in a turn-spit wheel. Tradesmen had been understanding about the settlement of bills since her father’s death, because of her betrothal to a son of the Hall. But for the past six months they had known that was not going to happen. Nor, unless she married well, would her brother have the influence of a great family behind him to help his career. And if she did not marry Callum, who could she marry?

The prospects locally were hardly promising—some yeoman farmers much older than herself, the curate, a widower or two, none of whom had shown any particular interest in her. There was no denying that marriage would widen her world very greatly. Mama would be happier if she was well married.

And there was the uncomfortable awareness that she found Callum Chatterton physically attractive. She could not even summon up the will to feel shocked at this, only a conviction that if he actually tried to make love to her she would be stricken with shyness. Duty and a scarce-understood desire said Marry him. Every emotional fibre of her being, coupled to pride, said, No, not when he has no feelings for me and is only offering out of a sense of duty to a man I had not even the constancy to love until death.

The crunch of gravel under wheels brought her out of her brown study as undecided as when she had drifted into it.

‘Mr Chatterton,’ the maid said and closed the door behind Callum. In buckskin breeches, boots and riding coat he should have looked every inch the English country gentleman. Instead he seemed faintly exotic, dangerous even. Perhaps it was the remnants of the tan and the way it made his hazel eyes seem green. Or perhaps it was the sense of focus about him. He was a hunter and she was the prey: all for her own good, of course.

‘Good morning, Sophia. I have the curricle—shall we drive? It is a pleasant day and we will be more able to say what we mean, perhaps, if we are free from the risk of interruption,’ he said. ‘I thought you would like to see the two houses.’

Don’t be missish, she told herself. She was never going to decide whether to marry this man if they met only to have stilted conversations in the parlour.

‘Very well. I will just go and fetch my hat.’

In the hall she said, ‘I am driving out with Mr Chatterton, Lucy. I do not wish to disturb my mother; please tell her where I am if she enquires. I may not be home for luncheon if Mr Chatterton decides to call in at the Hall on the way back.’