The Firstborn

Chapter Fifteen

Sophia surveyed her belongings spread out on the bed before her.

All in all, it didn't amount to much. One trunk was all she had needed for both her things and George's, though she imagined that Haughton and his sister were of the sort to require an entire coach for their luggage alone every time they chose to travel.

She picked up the first of her gowns and laid it in the trunk. She knew, of course, that a maid could be called for such a task, and one who would most assuredly finish the job with greater skill and in a timelier manner, but Sophia glanced at the bell pull with reluctance. She didn't want to alert anyone to her flight, at least not until her bags were packed, her bonnet secured to her head, and George duly fed and watered for the journey ahead of them.

But it couldn't be a true escape, since someone would have to call for the carriage to be brought around, and then there would be such a fuss, she was certain...

She tossed a shawl into the trunk and followed it with a pair of gloves. It had been a foolish decision to come here, to accept Lord Haughton's invitation and place both herself and George beneath his roof. Had she honestly believed that the infuriating man had changed his ways since he'd first barreled his way into her cottage in Stantreath? And his sister had been all that was gracious and kind, and yet the entire time they'd been merely plotting another way to extricate George from her possession.

Except that George wasn't really hers in the first place, she realized, and slumped down onto the edge of the bed.

Here they were, the aunts and uncle of this child fighting over who would raise him and where he would be brought up, and all while the babe's own parents gallivanted about the country, without an apparent care in the world for the mess left behind them.

Sophia picked up another glove and slid the satin between her fingers. Despite the faint stains at the cuff and a small hole near the thumb, it had been a fine accessory in its day. In fact, it had belonged to her mother, she remembered. The cream-colored satin had matched well with her mother's ball gown of pink and ivory silk.

Those had been the days of balls and assemblies, of standing in the doorway of her parents' bedroom with Lucy, watching their mother dress for another evening of cards and music at the house of a neighbor. Those had also been the days when Sophia had still dreamed of having a season in London, of wearing new gowns and learning to dance and perhaps finding a husband to marry and with whom she would eventually start a family.

Carefully, she folded the glove and its mate and tucked them into the trunk. Six years had passed since the death of her parents. A fever, swift and inimical, had taken them both, and only a few hours separating their last breaths. Then, while still buried deep in her grief, she had endured the reading of the will, the dispersal of the house and the lands and her family's fortune, the majority of it passing to a distant cousin in Wales they had never met. And a few weeks after that? She and her sister found themselves living in a run-down cottage and subsisting on a mere fifty pounds a year.

A knock on the bedroom door pulled Sophia out of her reveries. She stood up, smoothed her hands down the front of her skirt, and sniffed. "Come in."

Bess's dark head appeared in the doorway. Her smile faltered as she eyed the clothes strewn about the room, before her gaze settled on the open trunk beside the bed. "Ah, I thought I might find you thus." She opened the door further and let herself inside. "One of the maids told me you'd been up since quite early, and that you'd begun to pack once George was taken down to the kitchen for his breakfast."

Sophia glanced down at the trunk, then at the door and the portion of wall above it. She didn't want to have this conversation now. She didn't want to have this conversation at all, but there was no way to avoid it before she and George made their return to Stantreath.