At Home. Now, he potentially had both his parents thinking Sophie was beneath him. ‘I suspect my aunt did not send a favourable report. And I do not intend to have any of his interference in my marriage.’
His mother nodded as she withdrew a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. She gave a shuddering sigh before she continued. ‘Perhaps you are wise. It is best your bride meets your father without knowing about your sister or me.’
‘Why? I would have thought Hannah would want to go to my wedding.’
‘Your bride-to-be is the one who was supposed to be keeping your engagement quiet, but before twenty-four hours were up, she announced it to the packed Assembly Rooms in a very dramatic fashion. If she meets your father, she might suddenly take it into her head to blurt out about Hannah and her engagement.’
‘There were circumstances beyond her control.’
His mother gave a faint shudder. ‘Can you trust this Sophie with the secret? With your father in the same city as me? After all these years? Don’t you care about your sister and her happiness?’
‘Mother! You are speaking about the woman who will be my wife. If I didn’t trust her, I would hardly marry her.’
His mother raised her hands in supplication. ‘Let me get your sister properly married first. After that, your father can’t touch her. Please, for Hannah’s sake. I’ve told you how vengeful your father is. How he hounded me and wouldn’t rest. How he refused to hand over any of my dowry. He will destroy Hannah out of sheer spite, if he realises the true reason why you travelled up here. I know he will. Is this such a little request to ask of you?’
Richard pressed his lips together. The excuse would serve. The last thing he wanted was Sophie having to deal with his mother’s unwarranted snobbery on her wedding day.
On the way back from the Bishop’s, he had stopped at John Ormston shipping agents on the quayside and booked two first-class tickets to Hamburg, reserving the best cabin. Sophie and he could spend the summer touring Germany and Austria, taking the waters in various fashionable resorts. For Sophie, he’d brave the crossing. The agent promised as-smooth-as-glass sailing at this time of the year. They could return in the autumn, in time for Hannah’s wedding. It would give his mother enough time to realise Sophie was his wife, rather than a woman who could be snubbed.
‘I agree, Mother. I will tell Sophie everything eventually … when the time is right, but she will dance at my sister’s wedding.’ He glared at his mother. ‘It will mean you and Hannah will not be able to come to my wedding.’
Tears glimmered in his mother’s eyes. ‘I knew I could count on you to understand, Richard. It means I fulfil my final promise to my beloved and see our daughter properly settled. It has been a worry and a bother for many years. Hannah’s future must come first. You will explain that to this bride of yours. You have a title and an inheritance. Dear Grayson’s daughter has nothing but her beauty and sweet nature. She must make this match.’
Richard nodded, knowing his mother had made a choice, the same choice she had made years ago when she had chosen bringing up Hannah over maintaining any contact with him. Her excuse was that he was his father’s heir and his father would never have allowed him to go. His mother could never understand why he kept in contact with his father after knowing the truth about how she was treated. But his father was his father and he loved him for his eccentricities and for the way he had been there when Richard needed him as a boy.
‘Happy to oblige.’
Sophie stood next to Richard before the high altar in St Nicholas’s church, waiting for the ceremony to begin. She grasped the tiny nosegay of baby’s breath and rosebuds, which her stepmother had managed to procure in time from the florist, tightly to her bosom and drew a quick breath. Yesterday at this time, she had just agreed to play in the cricket match, and today she was a properly attired bride.
Everything seemed to happen at such a speed, once she received Richard’s note that the wedding was set for eleven this morning because of the Bishop’s commitments.
Jane, her lady’s maid, had been up until the early hours making sure the ball dress was properly altered and the veil securely attached to her newest straw bonnet. When she looked at herself in the full-length mirror just before going downstairs, she had to agree with Jane’s assessment that she was fashion-plate perfect. It might be a rushed wedding, but the bride would not disappoint the crowd.
Sophie wrinkled her nose. Not that there were many gathered when she arrived in her stepmother’s carriage.
The large Gothic interior of St Nicholas’s church loomed around her. Cold and silent. Her footsteps had echoed when she walked to the altar. Besides her stepmother, Jane and Richard’s valet, the church was empty of witnesses.
‘Are you all right?’ Richard asked in an undertone. ‘You appear pale.’
‘I think my corset is one notch too tight, but I won’t lock my knees and faint. I’ve no desire to collapse at my wedding like my friend Judith did.’
‘I will catch you if you faint.’
‘I believe you would.’ Sophie pasted a smile on her face. Richard was here and that was all that mattered.
The Bishop began to intone the words of the service and Sophie turned to look at her bridegroom and make a memory.
Richard stood upright with a very serious expression on his face. He answered the Bishop in a loud ringing voice, whereas Sophie found it difficult to utter the words above a whisper.
‘Those whom God hath joined together let no man put asunder.’
The Bishop’s words as he concluded the ceremony sent a shiver down Sophie’s back. And the enormity of what she had just done hit her. For better or for worse, she had married Richard Crawford and was now Lady Bingfield.
Until a few weeks ago, they had been strangers. Not like Henri, who had known Robert for years before they married, or even Cynthia, who had known her new husband for a year before they eloped. All she knew was that she had to do it or face ruin. She couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing Richard again and she couldn’t trust herself to stop the next time. She was so glad that Richard had given her a choice.
She would make it for better, she decided. She would be a good wife.
Richard raised her veil and placed a chaste kiss on her lips. The gentle touch did much to settle her nerves. He did want her as his wife.
‘It is done,’ she said, looking into his burning-gold eyes.
‘Let no man put asunder,’ Richard replied with a determined set of his jaw. ‘We are properly married, Sophie. No one can remark now. Shall we go and have the wedding breakfast your stepmother prepared, even though I’d prefer to get straight to the wedding night?’
Sophie’s cheeks heated as his warm voice did things to her insides. ‘You mustn’t say such things, even in jest.’
He lowered his voice as his hand squeezed her waist. ‘But I am thinking them. Know that I am counting the minutes until I get you alone and in my bed.’
‘Hush! My stepmother will hear and she was up nearly all night making the wedding breakfast. She even made her famous seed cake.’
‘I am honoured. I will eat a slice
