Free Married to a Stranger by Louise Allen

hold her hand? They were betrothed. He caught it in his, her small hand in its tight kid glove vanishing into his larger fist. She went very still, but gradually he felt her relax beside him. It was curiously pleasant and he found himself confiding more easily. ‘I was in love, too—or I fancied myself in love. And I had not even had the temerity to approach the girl, let alone say anything to her.’
    ‘Who was she, the girl you loved?’ Sophia turned back, her expression now one of sympathy and an interest that his youthful emotions did not deserve. ‘Did you miss her very much?’
    ‘I recovered within weeks,’ Cal recalled. ‘She was a girl called Miranda who is now married to a worthy knight and the mother of a large brood of children, according to Will.’
    ‘What’s according to me?’ The earl climbed in to join them.
    ‘Village gossip,’ Cal said.
    ‘You can drop me at the end of the lane,’ Sophia said as the carriage moved away towards the Hall. She had freed her hand. ‘It is a fine day for a walk.’
    ‘But you will dine with us tomorrow, of course,’ Will said. ‘Our relatives will wish to meet you before the wedding.’
    ‘Oh. Of course.’
    Sophia seemed a little daunted, Cal thought, managing to keep the frown off his face. He needed a wife who would be able to cope with dinner parties and entertaining. Now he was going to have to keep an eye on her and not give in to the thundering headache that was building up behind his eyes.

Chapter Six
    S ophia saw the change in Callum’s eyes, even though his face remained impassive. He was not pleased with her lack of enthusiasm, she realised. His change of mood, from confiding and almost gentle to irritated, brushed across her nerves like the touch of a cold finger. Talking of his twin had made her worry again that she was deceiving Callum, that he would not feel he should marry her if he discovered that her feelings for Daniel had altered.
    Now that the die was cast and she had agreed to wed him she found that she had no wish to change her mind, although whether it was entirely relief that their money worries would be settled or a growing curiosity about this intelligent, controlled, wounded man, she could not decide. He was not going to be easy to live with, she suspected.
    ‘Tell me who I will meet,’ she asked, straightening her back. ‘I will try to remember them all.’
    ‘There are two aunts, their husbands and assorted adult offspring with spouses, one widowed uncle, a brace of spinster cousins of our maternal grandmother and our father’s two godsons,’ Will explained. ‘A motley crew,’ he added when he had finished enumerating them. ‘But Lady Atherton—Aunt Clarissa—is worth cultivating. You’ll run into her in town once she goes up again and she’s in with every hostess. She’ll get you your vouchers for Almack’s and see to your presentation next Season if my betrothed, Lady Julia Gray, cannot. The Misses Hibbert, the cousins, are an entertaining pair of bluestockings.’
    He went on, patiently explaining each relative to her until Sophia’s head spun. She was never going to remember them, she thought, and dragged her attention back to him as he concluded, ‘… godson, Donald Masterton. But that’s probably exaggerated.’
    ‘Oh, no doubt,’ Sophia said brightly, wondering just what it was about Mr Masterton, or who he was, other than a godson, come to that.
    It was not so bad as she feared when she and Mama arrived at the Hall the next evening. Sophia found herself surrounded by the younger relatives, who appeared most interested in her—or perhaps they were simply intrigued by her star-crossed romance.
    William kept up a flow of conversation with the older men, the spinster cousins had vanished into the library and the matrons were soon immersed in family gossip. Callum stood alone by the fire under the portrait of the three brothers, almost as if he was deliberately pointing up the fact that one of them was