The Firstborn

Chapter Nine

Sophia uttered a whispered reprimand and gently batted George's hand away as he attempted to tug on the strings of her bonnet. All around them were the sounds of feet shuffling into place, of skirts being arranged, and of various coughs and utterances hidden behind handkerchiefs and gloved hands. Someone banged their knee on the edge of a pew, a sound swiftly followed by a muffled curse and capped by a hushed scolding for daring to use such language where the Lord could hear them.

Sophia bit her lip to keep from smiling. George sat on her knee, his grasping fingers making another reach for her bonnet as the last of the parishioners settled into place and Reverend Fenton signaled for them to reach for their hymnals. Everyone stood, a full minute passing as the bodies that had shifted into their seats creaked and groaned their way back to their feet, and the singing began.

The music distracted George long enough for Sophia to shift him onto her hip while she thumbed through the pocket-sized hymnal with her other hand. The song was halfway over by the time she found her place, but she joined in with enough enthusiasm to hear her voice carry up to the church's vaulted ceiling, but not so much that she would bring any unwanted attention on herself.

She sat in the back of the church, quite near to the door and all of its drafts. Only one other person shared her row, Mr. Ludlow spending so many of his days in close proximity with his pigs that no one cared to sit too close and unintentionally draw a portion of his particular odor onto themselves.

Once the hymns had been sung, the congregation returned to their seats, the shuffles and coughings and muttering beginning anew as Reverend Fenton stepped up to his pulpit and nodded serenely until the last of the whispering trailed into silence. Sophia found she could not look at him for more than a few seconds before the smug superiority contained in his expression set her heart to beating more rapidly. And so she tucked George against her side, rubbed her hand up and down his back as he pushed his fingers into his mouth, and allowed her gaze to wander over the heads of the parishioners sitting before her.

There were the same bonnets and powdered wigs as always, belonging to the same faces with the same chins that always raised an extra inch when she happened to be nearby. She spotted Lissy and her mother, Mrs. Granger, several rows ahead, and Mrs. Kirkland—that pretentious purveyor of fine teas and things—sat beside her portly husband in a pose that would have caused a figure of Crown Derby porcelain to feel inferior in her presence.

As Sophia continued to rub George's back, her gaze continued to roam until it arrived near the front of the church, where the front rows were occupied by the town's betters: namely Lady Rutledge and the Reverend's own family.

She was about to allow her attention to return to George's head—a head that had taken up a heavy and blessedly somnolent residence on her shoulder—when Josiah Fenton turned slightly in his seat, enough to glance behind him and catch Sophia's gaze with his own.

At first, she thought that, like herself, he was simply taking a moment to relieve a bit of boredom and peruse the expressions of those around him. But his grey eyes found her through the forest of snoring fathers and twitching children, his expression inscrutable as he dipped his chin, a small nod in her direction.

Stymied as to how else to respond, she returned the slight nod, though her gaze soon searched the faces of those around her to see if anyone had witnessed their silent communication. As far as she could tell, no one had, but she could not suppress the apprehension she felt at having been so blind to Mr. Fenton's attention until now. Lady Rutledge had warned her of the young man's interest in her, so it could not be argued that he had been cautious enough to ensure that no other person became aware of his intentions towards her.

His intentions...

She swallowed, loudly, a gulp of sound that seemed—to her ears, at least—to shatter the relative silence of the congregation as they listened to the Reverend's dry sermonizing. Would Mr. Fenton go against the wishes of his own family? For she was sure that no one in that family would care to see their eldest son and brother aligned with someone who, in their eyes, bore the weight of idle gossip as if it were truth.