Page 6 of A Counterfeit Engagement

For a moment, Sophie turned away with a blush of painful confusion.

But the absurdity of the whole situation left her with little choice but to laugh.

“It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Your Grace. I only wish it were under better circumstances. Do you have any idea why your family seems to think we are engaged?”

“Not the slightest,” Jonathan said. “And I must apologise to you for the rudeness that I fear my aunt and cousin have engaged in. We spoke moments ago, and I should not wish you to think I share their — concerns. And still less the manner in which they choose to express them.”

Sophie offered him a smile. “There is no harm done,” she said. “Or at least, no harm done to me. I fear your relations have suffered many moments of dismay in their concern over our supposed engagement.”

Jonathan was startled into a laugh. Her perfect balance of quick wit and good humour rather reminded him of Sarah.

“May I have the next dance, Miss Anderson?” Jonathan asked. “I am afraid it is not just my family that believes us to be engaged. It is seemingly all of London and the fashionable world. We will need time and conversation to unravel this tangle.”

“I would be delighted,” Sophie said. Privately, she was rather curious to see how a duke danced, and at close range, too.

Jonathan offered Sophie his arm. She took it, and they walked to the edge of the dance floor.

“Do you see the girl of eighteen in the white dress there?” Jonathan asked her as they approached and began the stately measures of the dance. “That is my sister, Sarah.”

“She looks very amiable,” Sophie said. “Perhaps you would like to introduce her to my sister Isabel. If nothing else, we may come out of this debacle with new friends.”

Jonathan smiled at her. “I should be delighted. Is Isabel the blonde girl I saw standing by you earlier, wearing a grey gown?”

“The impossibly beautiful one? Yes, indeed. I should like to give her a London Season above all things, but I am afraid my mother cannot afford it.”

“I have seen no one to compare with her, even in London,” Jonathan agreed. “If she had a Season, she would receive a truly terrifying number of proposals. I hope your sister is a sensible young woman.”

“Strangely enough, she is. It is unaccountable. I am sure that I would be vain and silly if I were half so beautiful as Isabel is.”

“Surely not,” Jonathan said. “I am confident your own loveliness has not made you otherwise than sensible and clever. No one privileged enough to observe you could think anything wanting.” The next beats of the music brought them away from each other as they exchanged with other couples.

Jonathan was not sorry for it. He could not think what had come over him to speak so intimately to a woman he had only met that night. It was most unlike him.

Sophie forced herself to breathe deeply and evenly, glad of the chance to hide her face from him in the whirl of the dance.

Do not be hurt, she told herself. He only means to speak gallantly, to give you a little pleasant flattery, and not to wound you.

By the time they were reunited, her expression was merely one of friendly ease.

Jonathan watched her with a level of admiration he was surprised to feel. She danced well, with evident pleasure in the graceful movements of the form, and he felt himself elevated in his own enjoyment in the dance by the influence of hers. A pity to return to business, he thought, but we must.

“What do you think, Miss Anderson? How shall we go about resolving all this confusion?”

Sophie cocked her head to the side and smiled at him. “It will be simple enough, I trust. If we appear together in a friendly spirit and mutually contradict the reports, the gossips will have to believe us in the end. After all, they can hardly force us to marry.”

Jonathan laughed. “I suppose it must be so simple,” he said. “I must confess that I was rather dreading speaking to you and confessing my family’s folly, but you make it all perfectly easy. I have not known a new acquaintance so easy to talk to in quite some time.”

“Oh?” Sophie said, surprised. “I had thought much the same of you, Your Grace. It is easy to speak frankly to you, somehow. I find it quite refreshing.”

The last measures of music brought the song to a close, and Sophie and Jonathan joined the other guests in sincere applause for the musicians’ skill. Under the cover of the noise, Jonathan bent close and whispered into Sophie’s ear.

“Shall we speak out on the balcony? We can make our plans more discretely there.” Sophie nodded and followed him out into the cool night air. To her relief, the duke left the doors well apart. It would not be necessary to remind him of the demands of propriety.

“As you know, your aunt and cousin are here,” Sophie began. “We could speak to them together.”

Jonathan winced. “Only if you wish,” he said. “I am sure they have insulted you quite enough already. But that is a good start. Is there anyone here who is a particularly accomplished gossip? They might assist us in correcting the report, both here and in London.”

“There is a cousin of mine,” Sophie said thoughtfully. “Her family’s main seat is in the north, but she visits here occasionally. I think she may even be here now. You may know her from London — her family is quite wealthy. Her name is Mary Collins.”

“We rarely move in the same circles, but I believe we have met,” Jonathan agreed absently. Mary Collins — a gossip if ever there was one. Indeed, she would be perfect to help get the word out. “I did not realise that you and she are cousins.”

“The relationship is a distant one,” Sophie said. “And of course, we have not been to town since Father was killed. There is no reason they would speak of us.”

“I see,” Jonathan said thoughtfully. “And you think she may be in Seaton now?”

“I am not certain of it,” Sophie said cautiously. “Her mother and mine keep up a correspondence, and she said something of the sort in her last letter. It was not clear. Wait — look!” Sophie said suddenly, and pointed down over the balcony.

“That is Miss Collins, to be sure,” Jonathan said, looking down at her.

She was wearing a rather stunning set of diamonds, one he recalled seeing on her at a London party.

He believed he knew the rather insipid looking young woman next to her as a particular friend and hanger-on of Miss Collins.

He was almost ready to call out to her when the sound of his own name silenced him.

“— and the Duke of Belford doesn’t suspect a thing,” Mary Collins was saying smugly to her friend, Miss Williams.

Jonathan and Sophie exchanged a shocked glance and kept silent, listening.

Miss Williams giggled foolishly. “Really, Miss Collins, it is too bad of you! And to drag me all the way down here, too! How could you dare to do it?”

“My dear Miss Williams, I had to show you the results of my cleverness, didn’t I?

You see it worked perfectly. The report of their ‘engagement’ is everywhere, and his aunt and cousin swallowed it without question.

They are doubtless making poor Sophie’s life a misery even as we speak.

And, of course, they will turn on the duke with their complaints next. ”

“Lord, it makes me want to burst out laughing! And just think — when the duke is done untangling all the confusion, you can go to him and comfort him,” Miss Williams suggested.

“Precisely,” Mary Collins said smugly. “And after fearing a connection to Sophia Anderson, of all people, his family will fall down in gratitude for me and all my vulgar new-money pounds sterling.”

Jonathan turned away from the balcony and gestured Sophie to come with him. “I don’t want them to overhear us,” he said to her in an undertone.

Sophie followed him willingly, her thoughts caught in a whirl.

Her cousin was behind all the confusion of the past days!

It was almost past belief. But, she remembered unhappily, she had always thought Mary rather selfish.

Only she had not thought her as conniving and cynical as this showed her to be.

“I am shocked,” Sophie said finally. “I had not thought…it had not occurred to me that all this confusion could be by design.”

Jonathan shook his head in disgust. “No, nor I. And I will not stand for it.”

Sophie looked at him, startled by the cold, controlled rage she heard in his tone. There was a tightness in his face that utterly belied the calm, easy character he had shown to her before. She was almost frightened by his intensity.

“What will you do?” Sophie asked him quietly.

“I hardly know what I can do,” Jonathan said.

“The insult is intolerable enough, but if it were only that, I suppose I would merely swallow it and walk away. Yet that is the least part of the matter. If Mary Collins would dare to do so much, what manipulation might others engage in? My sister is to have her coming out this Season. Might they even dare to target her? I would give anything to make it known that I will not tolerate such interference in my family’s affairs, yet I hardly see what I can do to make it so.

It is not as though I can duel her,” he finished bitterly.

“No, that you cannot,” Sophie agreed quietly. “Nor can I think of anything rational to suggest, or any real comfort to offer. I can only say that I will not soon forgive her for playing such a trick on us.”

Jonathan looked oddly startled by her simple words. “A trick…” he repeated softly. A smile touched his lips, although it seemed to have little to do with good humour. “Miss Anderson, I must take my leave of you. There is much to think about.”

And with no more than that, he turned and was gone.

“Goodbye, Your Grace,” Sophie said softly to his back.

It was over, then. There would be no time for their sisters to meet.

He had his idea, and would no doubt sort it out as high-handedly as he would have duelled Mary Collins, if only he could.

And no thoughts of asking her opinion on a matter that concerned them equally need interfere.

Sophie sighed. I will be reasonable , she reminded herself. I will be grateful for an end to all the confusion and unpleasantry, and not mourn the loss of excitement. Still less the loss of a chance acquaintance of one evening only.

The night was cool and lovely, and strangely empty without him.

Sophie stayed on the balcony for some minutes.

She could not have said anything she was thinking.

She was only there, living in a bubble of time where nothing seemed to change and no thoughts seemed necessary.

Finally, she turned and went back to the crowded dancefloor.

It was necessary that her absence should not be noted.

It would have caused her mother and sister some concern.

She spotted them easily among the crowd and smiled carefully as she approached.

“Are you enjoying the evening, Isabel?” she asked her sister warmly. Isabel replied with equal warmth, and in the flow of conversation, no one remembered to ask what she had been doing out on the balcony. No one noticed any change, any disillusionment or grief, in her features.

The Anderson family did not leave the public assembly early. Indeed, they were one of the last families to say their farewells and start on the way home.