Chapter One
“I yearn for a daughter I can be proud of,” Lysander, Earl of Montmarche said. “I long for my offspring to be respected and admired.” He remained calm by sheer force of self-discipline, because shouting at his only female progeny when lecturing her about the need for decorum could prove counterproductive.
His lordship nonetheless longed to bellow and curse, as his own dear papa had bellowed and cursed. Montmarche craved in truth to use language that would inspire Sophronia to feats of mimicry hitherto undreamed of by an English female, much less one only ten years old.
“Lady Sophronia is incorrigible, my lord.” Miss Dagmire cast a glance at her unrepentant charge such as teetotaling aunties reserved for habitual drunkards. “She cannot be reformed, despite my unrelenting efforts. My reputation as a governess will be imperiled should I make further attempts. You may consider this notice of my intent to vacate my post.”
Lysander allowed that announcement to hang in the air long enough that Miss Dagmire’s confident air curdled into pugnacity. He could forbid her to go, but as she’d said, she had failed. They all failed where Sophronia was concerned.
Meaning he had failed.
But he would not give up.
“You will remain until I can find a replacement.” He’d learned three governesses ago to demand that consideration. The summer Sophronia had been without direct supervision, she’d gone swimming in the mill pond by moonlight, smuggled a pony into the conservatory, and tried to build her own tree house.
“Your lordship will need only long enough to write me a character,” Miss Dagmore retorted.
Sophronia stared mulishly at her toes, sitting still as a mouse in a room full of cats. A leaf had caught in one of her braids, and her pinafore bore a green stain at the back.
“If you expect a glowing character when you’ve given up less than three months after taking a position, then the least you can do is remain until the wedding celebration has concluded. You may be excused.”
Miss Dagmire sniffed, curtseyed with less than studied grace, and marched for the door.
When Lysander was alone with his daughter, he let another silence build, though Sophronia was learning how to deal with even those. She remained quiet and motionless, and more than all of her disobedience and wayward behavior, the silence tore at him.
Your mother would despair of you. Unfair, because had Marie lived, Sophronia would have had her mother’s loving hand to guide her. Lysander would have had a wife’s counsel to guide him, and no pony smuggling or moonlit swims would have occurred.
“Have you anything to say?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, Papa, but George can smoke cigars and he refused to let me have a puff of one of his. He is my brother, so if he won’t share with me, then nobody will.”
George is a man . How many times had Lysander resorted to that excuse? “He is two-and twenty, you are ten. At ten, he did not smoke cigars. I did not smoke cigars at such a tender age, and I still regard them as an execrable habit. In all of England, I doubt there is a ten-year-old female who willingly partakes of cigars.”
She turned a hopeful, pansy-blue gaze on him. “Will you teach me how to smoke when I’m eleven?”
The moment ought to have been comical, a small, grass-stained female bargaining her way to hoyden-hood with her titled father.
“You stole from me,” Lysander said. “Took a cigar without permission from my humidor. You left the nursery without permission—”
“I had permission, Papa. Miss Dagmire takes tea at 3 o’clock. If I complete my sums early then I am allowed to sit in the garden beneath the nursery windows for twenty minutes while Henderson sits with me. Henderson meets me in the garden, so I nicked your cigar when I was—”
She bowed her head and hunched in on herself.
“At least you admit your crime, though your honesty is the smallest of consolations amid a sea of disappointments, Sophronia.” What am I to do with you?
Lysander no longer posed that rhetorical question. Sophronia’s suggestions in response had included sending her to live in America with the bears , banishing her to the home farm all summer , or making her dress as a boy and work in the stables.
The child was as unlike her father as it was possible for offspring to be.
“I’m sorry, Papa.”
Don’t be sorry. Be normal. Be a little girl who reads fairytales and practices walking about the schoolroom with a book on her head. Every governess seemed to feel that skill was an imperative accomplishment, along with needlepoint, small talk, and sitting still.
Lysander was saved from trotting out the rest of his usual sermon by the sound of carriage wheels on the drive. Sophronia’s head jerked up, but she remained otherwise motionless.
“The wedding guests are due to start arriving at any moment,” he said. “Your stunt is as usual exquisitely timed to cause maximum disruption, but don’t think to escape punishment, Sophronia. You stole from your own father, and that requires more than a mere apology.”
“Yes, Papa.”
But how to make the punishment fit the crime? When George had started pilfering brandy and cigars, he’d been fourteen, and Lysander had overlooked the transgressions. Boys experimented, and better that they experiment before they were packed off to learn the usual vices at university.
He came around his desk to loom over Sophronia. She did not have his height, yet anyway, for which God be thanked.
“You will write an essay about the Great London Fire,” he said. “You will research the devastation, the lives and houses lost, the impact on London thereafter. You will present the fruits of your scholarship to me at this time tomorrow, not a blot on the entire page. You will have no pudding with your supper for the next week, and you will no longer be allowed to travel from the nursery to the garden on your own.”
With a house full of guests, permitting that folly would have been madness.
“But may I still sit in the garden? Please, Papa. It’s only twenty minutes.”
She loved to be out of doors, much as her mother had. Maria, I don’t know what to do.
He laid a hand on Sophronia’s slender shoulder and gently squeezed. “You may sit in the garden…”
The child drew in her breath and squirmed under his hand.
Dear God, not this too. “Sophronia, you have already fallen short of standards by stealing. Do not think to lie to me now. Has Miss Dagmire resorted to corporal punishment in her frustration with you?”
Sophronia looked up and stared at him as if he’d slipped a complicated French phrase into the conversation.
“Does she beat you?” Lysander asked, kneeling down to his daughter’s eye level. “Do not think to lie, child, or I’ll have Henderson inspect your unclothed person.”
Sophronia pulled the leaf from her braid. “Miss Dagmire does not beat me. She applies a birch rod for the sake of my soul. She gives me twelve stripes, though I deserve thirty at least, and if I think to earn your sympathy by complaining to you she’ll give me twelve more.”
The carriage wheels on the crushed shells crunched to a halt. The flood of guests had begun, and the mischief Sophronia would be tempted to get into would be limitless.
“Henderson will not simply supervise you in the garden,” Lysander said. “She will attend you at all times, because you cannot be trusted to comport yourself as a lady ought. You are excused. Tell Miss Dagmire to await me in the schoolroom after I’ve greeted my guests.”
And tell her to pack her bags.
Sophronia popped off her chair. “I’m to write an essay on the Great Fire, not have any pudding, and keep company with Henderson. Is there anything else, Papa?”
Anymore, Lysander saw his daughter mostly to rebuke her. She seemed eager to leave his company, and he had guests to welcome. Still, the moment called for some further comment, some paternal display.
“If you are well behaved for the duration of the wedding party, then I will consider allowing you to resume your riding lessons.”
Sophronia launched herself at him, lashing her arms about his waist, squeezing him as if he’d conjured a magic coach drawn by matching pink unicorns.
“Thank you, Papa! I shall be the best girl ever, and you will be so proud of me!”
She skipped from the room as no lady ought to skip, pausing at the door to beam at him, before closing the door much too enthusiastically. A carriage door banged shut immediately afterward, and hoofbeats clip-clopped in the direction of the stables.
Lysander paused long enough to regard himself in the mirror over the sideboard. He did not look like a man who’d fought two domestic skirmishes, discovered grounds to sack another governess, and delivered stern terms of surrender to the rebellious infantry.
He looked like a man who very much still missed the wife who’d died ten years ago. Maria smiled down from her place over the mantel, eternally serene, ever the woman who’d captured his heart. She’d been stealthy and sweet about it, until Lysander had looked up from his bacon and eggs one morning two years after the wedding, and realized that he’d fallen in love with his countess.
He wanted that for his children. A solid, happy match of esteem, affection, and abiding respect.
He didn’t particularly want to remarry himself, but Sophronia’s latest prank removed the last doubt. He’d considered the list of guests invited to his niece’s wedding carefully, and with matrimony in the air, he would select a suitable step-mama for his wayward daughter.
That he’d have to marry the lady could not be avoided. If Lysander believed in one tenet above all others, it was that a man born to privilege must never shirk an obligation to a dependent. He owed it to his daughter to remarry, before the dear child burned England to cinders, and sent her father’s dignity up in flames as well.