“We cannot walk three abreast on this lane,” Henrietta said no more than half a minute later, and her voice was betraying her this time. She sounded distinctly petulant. “I am afraid we must go back after all, my lord. Mama and Papa will be anxious at my absence. I did not realize how far you had brought me from the inn. Do let us return.”
“They will see that I am with you and be consoled, Henrietta,” Sophia said. “They will see, as will everyone else, that the proprieties have been observed.”
She could not remember another occasion when she had addressed a whole sentence to Henrietta.
Viscount Darleigh turned his head to smile at her. She was almost sure that she could read relief in his face.
Poor gentleman. Everyone was trying to marry him or arrange for him to marry someone else. During the half hour she had sat alone in the assembly room she had listened to the conversation around her, almost all of which was about Viscount Darleigh. She had already heard again that his mother and his sisters were urging him to marry and were actively matchmaking for him. People here were speculating about who in the neighborhood might suit him, since he had been plain Vincent Hunt until recently and did not appear to be at all high in the instep and might prefer someone who was familiar to him. The names of Miss Hamilton and Miss Granger had loomed large in the speculations. And, of course, the Marches were trying to net him by any means within their power.
Everyone noticed their return to the assembly rooms—and that was scarcely an exaggeration, if it was an exaggeration at all, for there was no set currently in progress to distract even those who would have been dancing. Everyone turned from their conversations to look from Viscount Darleigh to Henrietta to … her, Sophia Fry. Her aunt’s and uncle’s faces were a sight to behold. They looked first identically relieved and joyful as they beheld their daughter returned after so long in the company of Viscount Darleigh, her arm still drawn through his, and then they looked … astonished and chagrined and a number of other things they had not expected to look. For there, her arm drawn through the viscount’s other arm, was … their mouse.
And this time she was invisible to no one. She felt a curious mix of extreme discomfort and triumph.
The orchestra played a decisive chord as a signal to the dancers that a new set was about to begin, and the moment passed. All was well, depending upon one’s perspective, of course. There had been no impropriety after all, for there had been two ladies with the gentleman and so their walking outside, even along a quiet alley, had been quite above reproach.
A fast and furious dance began.
Henrietta hurried toward her mother.
Viscount Darleigh pressed Sophia’s hand to his side when she would have slipped it free.
“Miss Fry,” he said, “thank you for your concern for Miss March’s reputation. It was careless of me to walk so long and so far with her, but she did not wish to return, you see. I ought to have insisted, of course. May I escort you to the refreshment table? I believe I can even remember the way.”
He smiled. And she knew, despite his gallant words, that he was thanking her for rescuing him. He must have understood, almost too late, the danger in which Henrietta had placed him.
“Thank you, my lord.”
She was about to add a but and make some excuse before scurrying away. But she paused to consider. She could walk to the refreshment table with him, perhaps even stand there with him for a few minutes conversing while they ate or drank. She might, for a fleeting moment out of her life, be like any normal woman. No, not a normal woman. She might be like a privileged young lady who had attracted the attention of a viscount and a beautiful man, even if only for a few minutes, to be forgotten an hour later.
And then, not having spoken up immediately, it was too late to make excuses. They were on their way across the room together.
Sophia set the shawl over the back of an empty chair as she passed and avoided looking at her aunt and uncle, who were, of course, looking at her, as was almost everyone else.
It was a dizzying, alarming, exhilarating experience—to mention but a few of the emotions she could identify.
He was an utter idiot. Why did he forever allow the women in his life to manipulate him and rule him? Sometimes it was benevolent, or at least intended to be. Other times it was distinctly malevolent. Yet the only time in recent memory he had stood up against it, he had done so by running away. This time, though he might have stopped when he and Miss March were outside the inn, with the firm and truthful explanation that he would not compromise her by taking her any farther into the darkness, he had allowed her to lead him back to what he remembered as a very dark, deserted alley behind the main street of the village.
Was he never to be a functioning adult, able to think and act for himself, free of the influence of any woman? He had not always been like this, surely? He had been a distinctly independent boy. He had allowed himself to grow into a weakling—or at least he was in danger of doing so.
He was more grateful than he could say to Miss Fry, who, he suspected, had come very deliberately to his rescue, though he was not sure why. She was Miss March’s cousin, was she not? Or was it Miss March she had been rescuing? Either way he was grateful—and intrigued. He had been able to hear her quite clearly just now, he realized, when she had said thank you, my lord, though she had spoken in the same low voice she had used to her aunt last evening. She must know the secret of making oneself heard above a din by pitching the level of one’s voice below it rather than trying to shout above it, as most people did.