Eyebrows raised, Cal studied the men. ‘What, Ransome, do you mean.’ He was the only large fair-haired man close by. Jared grunted assent. ‘You would call him beautiful?’
‘Of course I wouldn’t. But the ladies do. Heard those two who are hanging on his every word rhapsodising over him when I was coming back from the stables. So beautiful, such a profile, oh those blue eyes,’ he mimicked in an unlikely falsetto that made Cal snort with laughter. ‘And he thinks he’s God’s gift to the female sex too. Look at him modestly exerting all that charm. Makes me want to apply the toe of my boot to his perfect backside.’
‘Jealous, Jared?’ He studied Ransome with covert interest. So that was what women thought made a beautiful man was it? Beside him his friend snorted. Ransome shifted, his gaze over the heads of the pair of worshipful bridesmaids. What was attracting his interest? Then he saw Sophie, laughing, as she turned away from Sir Tobias, caught the predatory, almost smug, expression on Ransome’s face as he looked at her and saw her expression freeze into a mask when she saw the man’s attention on her.
Jared, alert at his side, turned at the hiss that escaped him. ‘What is it?’
‘Nothing. My imagination, merely.’ Sophie, dismissing her lover as a beautiful man. What had she said about him? I was mistaken in him. From the evidence that Cal had gained that morning he labelled that man selfish and clumsy in the bedchamber and there in front of him was boundless arrogance hidden behind a handsome façade and practiced charm. He had arrived with Sir Toby who admitted he hadn’t seen Ransome in years and Sophie, who had seemed completely well until the moment Ransome stepped down from the curricle, had suddenly vanished pleading a headache.
No, it was not his imagination, surely? But if he was right, then what was Ransome doing here? It wasn’t by Sophie’s invitation, that was certain, not with the way she was reacting to him. Cal put down his glass and, beside him, Hunt did the same.
‘Who are we going to kill?’
‘No-one. Stop it, this is not the back streets of Buenos Aires. Stay here, I am simply going to be the gracious host.’
Ignoring Jared’s snort Cal strolled over and insinuated himself in the group around Ransome, who promptly stopped gazing earnestly into the eyes of Miss Belinda Wraythorne (sweet nature, large inheritance, unfortunate teeth) and nodded respectfully to his host.
‘You’ve fine stables here, Calderbrook. Your uncle gave us a thorough tour and I have to confess to being green with envy. And that was just the facilities. The bloodstock is superb. Lord Peter was telling me you have your own stallion for stud purposes.’ He broke off and looked apologetically at the young women. ‘Forgive me, I should not mention farmyard matters before ladies.’ His smile caressed Lady Penelope Beauville (pretty, lively, impoverished family, excellent connections) and she blushed and dimpled back.
Jared’s desire to plant his boot on Ransome’s buttocks seemed perfectly reasonable to Cal. He showed his teeth in an approximation of an agreeable smile. ‘My uncle built up the bloodlines when I was in my minority and I have simply carried on from a distance.’ Lord Peter was coming towards them and he turned, opening the group out in invitation.
It was the first time he had seen his uncle here in Cal’s ancestral home since he had left England and it struck him unpleasantly how very much at home the older man appeared, how naturally his manner had become that of the host.
‘Ransome complimented me on my stables and their occupants,’ Cal said. ’I was just saying how much the strong bloodlines owed to the days when you were in control here.’ He took great care with his expression, and his tone, but his uncle’s gaze sharpened. No fool, Lord Peter. ‘That must seem a long time ago now.’
‘A very long time,’ his uncle agreed, but his gaze flickered to his wife, holding court from the central sofa and then to his son, one foot on the edge of the hearth-stone, his elbow on the mantle-shelf, entirely relaxed and at home. ‘We all look forward to seeing you re-established here with your wife.’
‘And daughter,’ Cal said, easing in the gentle reminder that he was capable of siring children and that an heir must surely follow.
‘A ready-made family?’ Ransome interjected. ‘I had no idea you had previously been married, Calderbrook. How delightful for Soph… for Miss Wilmott to have a stepdaughter.’
Now, had that slip with Sophie’s name been an accident or quite deliberate? Cal looked across to where Sophie stood, her straight back turned to them, and let his affection show in his expression. ‘Sophie is going to make a wonderful mother and she has already made a great impression on Isobel.’ And that was something else he must tackle before much more time passed. Isobel had spent quite long enough contemplating how much she was going to hate her new mother, hate him for remarrying and plotting how to punish them both.
The familiar sharp pang of love for the child gripped him. She was brave and intelligent and a real little fighter, combining the toughness from both parents with her mother’s looks and ability to twist the unwary around her little finger. She was his and he adored her and she terrified him. How did one protect your child in this big, dangerous world full of carefully disguised sharks such as Ransome? But at the moment it was not on his daughter’s behalf that he needed to load his shotgun, it was his betrothed’s.
Chapter Seventeen - Where the Duke Suffers
Jonathan was talking to Cal. The fear prickled up and down Sophie’s spine and she could feel her feet almost twitching with the urge to turn around, see what was happening behind her.
But the conversational tone did not change, there was the occasional ripple of amusement and no sound of fist hitting jaw. Jonathan obviously had the sense not to antagonise Cal. Gradually she felt her shoulders relax and the social chit-chat came more easily. After all, what had she to worry about? Someone might be attempting to assassinate her husband-to-be, the child who would be her stepdaughter hated her, she would have a dangerous man sleeping in her sitting room that night, she was carrying on a secret correspondence with an enquiry agent and her former lover was blackmailing her. A normal house-party at a ducal mansion, no doubt.
And now she must tackle her hostess, behaving in a manner that would be tactless and insensitive if the woman was innocent, and possibly dangerous if she was not.
Sophie took a glass of ratafia that she did not really want and made her way over to Lady Peter who was, for the moment, alone on the sofa. ‘How nice, I have so much been wanting to talk with you.’ She sat down, sipped her drink and waited, as was only proper, for the older woman to speak.
‘You like what you see of Calderbrook Hall, Miss Wilmott?’
‘It is magnificent and yet I am sure it will be a wonderful home when it is lived in by a family again. It must owe a great deal to your direction of affairs while Lord Peter was the Duke’s guardian. How difficult to manage two great houses at the same time.’
‘I would not describe Pointings Manor, our own country home, as a great house.’ Lady Peter’s voice held no great affection. ‘It is considerably smaller and older. Very easy to leave while I was needed here.’
‘It must have been a sacrifice, even so. And what devotion to duty, to raise what must, in effect, have been another son, when all the time your own, the elder, would not be the heir of all this.’ Her gesture took in the drawing room, the house, the entire ducal estate.
‘When one marries a younger son, one marries his sense of duty to the family.’
‘Of course. And then for the Duke to be abroad in such dangerous and far-flung places! Again, duty must have come to your aid and impelled you to raise Mr Thorne so that, if the worst happened – ’ That could have been more tactfully put, Sophie! ‘– your own son could rise to the occasion as the heir. I must say how much I admire you for that.’
The silence that followed that crashingly tactless observation was so prolonged that Sophie risked a sideways glance at her hostess. Lady Peter was biting her lower lip, a demonstration of emotion that seemed extreme for such a rigorously controlled woman.