‘I think whenever you tell your parents I’d rather not be around, if it’s all the same to you,’ said Sophy, and she was only half-joking. Whatever her aunt’s reaction, she would bear the brunt of it somehow or other.
‘So, tell me what you’ve been doing,’ Matthew kept her tucked into his side as they marched on. The cobbled road across the bridge was deep in snow by now, the evidence of horses clear enough in the furrows left by cart and coach wheels and the odd steaming pile of horse manure. Most folk had wisely retired indoors, and the normally bustling town was hushed and still. Even the river was quieter than usual, the sound of the paddle-wheel blades on the tugboats beating the water muffled, and the smell of industrial smoke suppressed by the falling snow.
They talked all the way to the vicarage, slipping and sliding once or twice and convulsed in giggles when one or the other of them nearly went headlong. Somehow they reached home without mishap, both of them flushed and bright-eyed as they scraped the ice and snow from the insteps of their boots on the mat of the porch before Matthew opened the front door and they stepped into the warmth of the hall, just as Mary came out of the drawing room. Her eyes flashed from Matthew’s laughing face to Sophy’s, and then back to her son’s as she said sharply, ‘What are you doing home at this hour?’
‘Mr Routledge closed the office early due to the snow.’ Matthew bent down to place Sophy’s valise on the floor before helping her off with her coat. Neither of them were surprised that Mary hadn’t acknowledged Sophy’s presence in spite of it being four months since she had left for her last term at school. ‘I met Sophy near the bridge and we’ve walked home together.’
‘I can see that.’ Mary moved closer, sniffing, her long thin nose practically quivering. ‘Have you been drinking?’
‘Drinking?’ Matthew said in surprise.
‘Alcohol, boy. Alcohol.’
‘The innkeeper made us all a hot toddy when we stopped for a while at Washington,’ Sophy said quietly. ‘The coach driver said it would keep the cold out.’
Matthew, no vestige of laughter remaining and red in the face from being called ‘boy’, spoke stiffly. ‘You shouldn’t have had to travel by McCabe’s coach, Sophy. Father should have come and collected you. It’s not right, a young lady journeying by herself.’
Mary opened her mouth to speak, took in her son’s angry face and thought better of it. But she would privately reprimand Matthew later for speaking to her that way in front of the girl. Sophy had now been elevated from child to girl in her mind, and with her maturing, the fear which had begun years ago when she had seen how beautiful her niece was becoming had been magnified a hundred times. She wanted the girl out of this house and out of their lives as soon as possible, but due to Jeremiah’s ridiculous interference she was on the horns of a dilemma. She had always intended to put the girl into service in the kitchens of a big house, somewhere miles from Southwick, but that was no longer possible with the education she had received. And she was too young to take the post of a governess somewhere. But something would have to be done.
Matthew took his cousin’s hand, drawing her past his mother as though she didn’t exist as he said, ‘Come into the drawing room and sit by the fire and get warm. I’ll ring for Molly to bring us some tea and cake – it’s a while until dinner.’
Mary stood where she was until the drawing-room door had shut behind the two, her body rigid but the sick panic she felt every time Sophy came home to the fore. John seemed to be out of the equation now, although he would marry that miner’s girl over her dead body. She couldn’t believe John had stooped so low as to entertain such a thing, but it wouldn’t happen. She would make sure of that. But Matthew was still fancy free and young and silly enough to act rashly if he imagined himself in love. Look at the way he had championed the girl this evening and the way they had been laughing when they’d come into the house . . .
Mary found she was wringing her hands and immediately stopped, composing herself before she went upstairs and entered Jeremiah’s study without the courtesy of knocking. He was sitting hunched over his desk working on his sermon for Sunday morning and looked up in surprise at her entrance.