The Suitor by Mary Balogh Page B

been since before she came here to live two years ago. It was still owned by the Hunt family, about whom she had heard many stories, perhaps because Vincent Hunt, the only son, had unexpectedly inherited a title and fortune a few years ago. It was the stuff of fairy tales, except that it had a sad component too, as many fairy tales did.
    She liked to look at the house and imagine it as it might have been when the Hunts lived there—the absentminded but much-loved schoolmaster, his busy wife and three pretty daughters, and his exuberant, athletic, mischievous son, who was always the best at whatever sport was being played and always at the forefront of any waggery that was brewing and always adored by old and young alike—except by the Marches, against whom his pranks were most often directed. She liked to think that if she had lived here then, she would have been friends with the girls and perhaps even with their brother, although they were all older than she. She liked to picture herself running in and out of Covington House without even knocking at the door, almost as if she belonged there. She liked to imagine that she would have attended the village school with all the other children, except Henrietta March, her cousin, who had been educated at home by a French governess.
    She was Sophia Fry, though her name was rarely used. She was known by her relatives, when she was known as anything at all, and perhaps by their servants too, as the mouse. She lived at Barton Hall on sufferance becausethere was nowhere else for her to go. Her father was dead; her mother had left them long ago and since died; her uncle, Sir Terrence Fry, had never had anything to do with either her father or her; and the elder of her paternal aunts, to whom she had been sent first after her father’s passing, had died two years ago.
    She felt sometimes that she inhabited a no-man’s-land between the family at Barton Hall and the servants, that she belonged with neither group and was noticed and cared about by neither. She consoled herself with the fact that her invisibility gave her some freedom at least. Henrietta was always hedged about with maids and chaperons and a vigilant mother and father, whose sole ambition for her was that she marry a titled gentleman, preferably a wealthy one, though that was not an essential qualification, as Sir Clarence was himself a rich man. Henrietta shared her parents’ ambitions, with one notable exception.
    Sophia’s thoughts were interrupted by the sound of horses approaching from beyond the village, and it was soon obvious that they were drawing some sort of carriage. It was very early in the day for travel. It was a stagecoach, perhaps? She stepped around the trunk of the tree and half hid behind it, though it was unlikely she would be seen from below. Her cloak was gray, her cotton bonnet nondescript in both style and color, and it was still not full daylight.
    She saw it was a private carriage—a very smart one. But before she could weave some story about it as it passed along the village street and out of sight, it slowed and turned onto the short driveway to Covington House. It stopped before the front doors.
    Her eyes widened. Could it be …?
    The coachman jumped down from his perch and opened the carriage door and set down the steps. A man descended almost immediately, a young man, tall andrather burly. He looked around and said something to the coachman—Sophia could hear the rumble of his voice but not what he said. And then they both turned to watch another man.
    He descended without assistance. He moved surefooted and without hesitation. But it was instantly obvious to Sophia that his cane was not a mere fashion accessory but something he used to help him find his way.
    She sucked in a breath and hoped, foolishly, that it was inaudible to the three men standing some distance below her. He had come, then, as everyone had said he would.
    The blind Viscount Darleigh, once Vincent Hunt, had come