Page 72 of The Fortune Hunter’s Gamble

“He and Papa were acquaintances, or his father and Papa had been acquaintances. Something to do with Papa.” She fell into step as Rowden began striding through the streams of pedestrians, and as he was still holding her hand she was obliged either to follow or be dragged.

“But to fix his affections on you specifically. Your personal charms aside⁠—”

“I had none at the time, and you know that.”

He nodded. “Which is why I always wondered. Hinton could have chosen a bride from any genteel family, and with his wealth, he might have had his pick of certain aristocratic ones as well. But he came to Hungerford and chose you, and, as you have recently informed me, he frightened off the Felthams to make himself indebted to you. But why you?”

“I have often wondered that.” Her throat hurt. At the time, in need of assistance, she had not looked a gift horse in the mouth. It had simply seemed the way of things that a man in search of a wife would come to Hungerford, find Sophronia of age and acceptable in terms of bloodline and dowry, and make an offer.

Henry had wanted to build his estate on the Downs—he had settled on the area as the place to build his home—and he had seemed to think that a bride embedded in the neighborhood would be a help to smooth his introduction and acceptance into town.

“Do you know something I don’t?” She leaned into Rowden as a sedan chair passed, the bearers panting under the weight of a portly lady dressed in yards of silk who swore at them with the vociferousness of a fishwife at every bump and jostle.

In answer Rowden held up his walking stick. The knob—she had never noted this before—was the shape of a crouching lion, much like her figurine.

She lifted her gaze to meet his in silent question.

“Yes,” he said, and his voice deepened. “I bought them to match. Girls don’t carry walking sticks, and they don’t carve lion’s heads onto the handles of parasols. It was the closest thing I could find, other than getting you a walking stick of your own, which I know you would have found delightful, but Aunt Edmons would have had a constant struggle to get you not to take it everywhere.”

A painful smile tugged at one corner of her mouth. That was true; young Sophronia would have carried a walking stick with her at all times, if Rowden had one. “I wondered how you could have afforded such things, in your circumstances.” There it was, her practical side asserting itself, dwelling on cost because she couldn’t bear the tenderness that the gift expressed.

His smile looked equally burdened. “Won a wager at school. I’ve a talent for that, you know.”

They stared at one another. The noise on the street melted away.

“Your bringing it up at breakfast made me curious, so I asked around. Hinton courted my mother,” Rowden finally said, looking above her head to the ornamented tower of St. Clement’s. “The elder Hinton, that is. Quite the devoted suitor, by all accounts.

“She ignored him, of course, as she had eyes for no one but my father, second son though he was. But I think your Henry remembered that. I think he came specifically to Hungerford to see what had become of me, the offspring of the Maid of Marlborough, the woman who might have been his mother. The woman his own father had continued to carry a torch for, some say.”

He turned his gaze toward her, his face drawn, as if he recalled the beautiful mother he had loved but remembered so little of. “And what do you suppose he saw,” he asked, “when he came looking?”

Sophronia cleared her throat, unable to look away from the deep brown glints in his eyes. “He saw us, I imagine.”

Rowden nodded. “He saw how I felt about you. And he saw an opportunity to avenge his father by taking back something my father had taken away from their family. Your Henry was a covetous creature, I think you know. And he liked to win.”

Yes. Sophronia did know that about him. She’d learned well.

“You believe this?” Sophronia asked, skirting the declaration of his feelings, coward that she was.

It seemed everyone had thought she and Rowden were a match and assumed they had a future, save for her own stupid, young, heedless self, who had never been thinking of suitors or marriage or any of it at the time. She’d been focused on getting her father healthy so she might go away to a girls’ school. She wanted a proper education. She wanted to know what other girls knew.

She’d hoped to expand her circle of friends—Rowden was all well and good, but he had school of his own and was away for weeks at a time. But her father was never well enough for Sophronia to feel she could leave him without her for stretches of time, and she’d feared how he might decline if she were not with him. He’d been so diminished since her mother died.

“Henry married me to spite you?” Sophronia asked.

Rowden winced. “When you put it that way—I would say I hope not. I would say I hope he fell head over ears and treated you like a priceless treasure.” He hesitated. “But from what you have told me, I sense⁠—”

“No,” said Sophronia. “No, he did not.” Still clutching Rowden’s arm, she turned abruptly to enter the flow of traffic heading eastward, towards the City. “How did you learn all this?”

“Aunt Dobbs found out,” he said. “She’s a worse gossip than you are.”

Sophronia swatted his arm with her free hand. She still held the lion, and her hand was clutched within his, and all of a sudden, so many things about her youth—and her marriage—made sense in a way they’d never made sense to her before.

“But Henry never made a single spiteful comment about you, that I can recall. At least, not after our marriage,” she said, probing her memory of those early days, which was admittedly dim. She’d been overwhelmed with the loss of her carefree life, struggling to adjust to being a wife with a demanding husband, and missing Rowden with an ache that squeezed tears from her eyes at night.

“Because I disappeared,” Rowden said. “He might have revealed himself if I’d come around, tried to contact you. But…I didn’t.”

“Because you were so angry with me for betraying you,” Sophronia said.