Married to a Stranger Read Online Free Page B

planned for her future when Dan returned. Surely there is a relative who would make a congenial companion for her.’
    ‘Well, yes, Cousin Lettice would be delighted to move here, it was always the intention.’
    He nodded. ‘Excellent.’
    ‘How can you not mind that I was betrothed to your brother?’ She stretched out her hands as if she could somehow reach him through the glass wall of practicality he was erecting between them. ‘Would I not remind you of Daniel?’
    Callum stared at her hands without taking them. ‘I have told you how I feel. I have come through the grief and I do hope I would not be so foolish as to be jealous of your feelings for him,’ he said eventually. ‘If you tell me that you cannot marry me because of those feelings …’ He left the sentence hanging. Her escape route.
    But it would be a lie and the escape would be into deeper debt, misery for herself and Mama, difficulty for Mark. Sophia shook her head. ‘No, it is not that. I know he is … I have accepted that he is gone. It is just that this is so sudden, so unexpected. I need time.’
    ‘Time is not on your side. It is not as though you are a widow who has children already,’ Callum said with such flat practicality that it did not hit her until several seconds later that he was warning her that she was letting her only chance of motherhood slip by. ‘It will help you decide if you saw where you will be living. There is the town house, of course, but there are also two estates to choose from for when we are out of London. We could drive over and see them together and decide which to live in and which house to rent out.’
    ‘Choose?’ Everything was going too fast. ‘But Long Welling was always yours, was it not?’
    ‘It was managed by my father and then by Will. I have been in India, remember, and in London for six months. I have no great attachment to it and both houses are vacant at the moment.’
    The house where she would live with this man. An insidious little voice was murmuring that Callum’s arms would be strong around her body and that he would always stand by her. She could experience physical passion at last. He would give her children. Security. But was it right?
    ‘You need time to think it over,’ he said and she realised he had hat, gloves and whip in his hands. She had been so deep in her thoughts that she had not noticed him move. ‘I will return tomorrow morning. Goodbye, Sophia.’
    ‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘Callum—’
    ‘Of course, how remiss of me.’ He bent his head and kissed her, firmly but fleetingly, on the mouth. ‘Is that what you wanted?’
    ‘I don’t know.’ Sophia stared at Callum, somehow managing not to run her tongue over her lips to taste him. ‘I have no idea what I want. What I ought to want. You have turned my world upside down.’
    ‘Excellent.’ He strode away across the lawn without looking back.
    Sophia gave way to the urge to lick her lips. There was a faint trace of something alien and disturbing overlain with coffee. Excellent? ‘Oh, you stubborn, impossible man! Were you listening to me at all?’

Chapter Three
    S ophia sat in the front parlour the next morning and tried to work through a muddle of thoughts. There was resentment at the way that Callum simply made assumptions about what was best for her—and the fact that he was doubtless right did not help. There was respect for his sense of duty and loyalty to Daniel and the nagging consciousness that her own duty to her family lay in making a good marriage. This marriage.
    If only they had a little money and she had room to think. Her mind kept running over and over the lack of money like a dog in a turn-spit wheel. Tradesmen had been understanding about the settlement of bills since her father’s death, because of her betrothal to a son of the Hall. But for the past six months they had known that was not going to happen. Nor, unless she married well, would her brother have the influence of a great family