But the girls had to have their lessons, and so the next morning they arrived in the nursery, trailing the countess by one step each. Sophie had been working at her lessons for an hour already, and she looked up from her arithmetic with great interest. She didn’t smile at the girls this time. Somehow it seemed best not to.
“Miss Timmons,” the countess said.
Miss Timmons bobbed a curtsy, murmuring, “My lady.”
“The earl tells me you will teach my daughters.”
“I will do my best, my lady.”
The countess motioned to the older girl, the one with golden hair and cornflower eyes. She looked, Sophie thought, as pretty as the porcelain doll the earl had sent up from London for her seventh birthday.
“This,” the countess said, “is Rosamund. She is eleven. And this”—she then motioned to the other girl, who had not taken her eyes off of her shoes—”is Posy. She is ten.”
Sophie looked at Posy with great interest. Unlike her mother and sister, her hair and eyes were quite dark, and her cheeks were a bit pudgy.
“Sophie is also ten,” Miss Timmons replied.
The countess’s lips thinned. “I would like you to show the girls around the house and garden.”
Miss Timmons nodded. “Very well. Sophie, put your slate down. We can return to arithmetic—”
“Just my girls,” the countess interrupted, her voice somehow hot and cold at the same time. “I will speak with Sophie alone.”
Sophie gulped and tried to bring her eyes to the countess’s, but she only made it as far as her chin. As Miss Timmons ushered Rosamund and Posy out of the room she stood up, awaiting further direction from her father’s new wife.
“I know who you are,” the countess said the moment the door clicked shut.
“M-my lady?”
“You’re his bastard, and don’t try to deny it.”
Sophie said nothing. It was the truth, of course, but no one had ever said it aloud. At least not to her face.
The countess grabbed her chin and squeezed and pulled until Sophie was forced to look her in the eye. “You listen to me,” she said in a menacing voice. “You might live here at Penwood Park, and you might share lessons with my daughters, but you are nothing but a bastard, and that is all you will ever be. Don’t you ever, ever make the mistake of thinking you are as good as the rest of us.”
Sophie let out a little moan. The countess’s fingernails were biting into the underside of her chin.
“My husband,” the countess continued, “feels some sort of misguided duty to you. It’s admirable of him to see to his mistakes, but it is an insult to me to have you in my home—fed, clothed, and educated as if you were his real daughter.”
But she was his real daughter. And it had been her home much longer than the countess’s.
Abruptly, the countess let go of her chin. “I don’t want to see you,” she hissed. “You are never to speak to me, and you shall endeavor never to be in my company. Furthermore, you are not to speak to Rosamund and Posy except during lessons. They are the daughters of the house now, and should not have to associate with the likes of you. Do you have any questions?”
Sophie shook her head.
“Good.”
And with that, she swept out of the room, leaving Sophie with wobbly legs and a quivering lip.
And an awful lot of tears.
* * *
In time, Sophie learned a bit more about her precarious position in the house. The servants always knew everything, and it all reached Sophie’s ears eventually.
The countess, whose given name was Araminta, had insisted that very first day that Sophie be removed from the house. The earl had refused. Araminta didn’t have to love Sophie, he’d said coolly. She didn’t even have to like her. But she had to put up with her. He had owned up to his responsibility to the girl for seven years, and he wasn’t going to stop now.
Rosamund and Posy took their cues from Araminta and treated Sophie with hostility and disdain, although Posy’s heart clearly wasn’t into torture and cruelty in the way Rosamund’s was. Rosamund liked nothing better than to pinch and twist the skin on the back of Sophie’s hand when Miss Timmons wasn’t looking. Sophie never said anything; she rather doubted that Miss Timmons would have the courage to reprimand Rosamund (who would surely run to Araminta with a false tale), and if anyone noticed that Sophie’s hands were perpetually black-and-blue, no one ever said so.
Posy showed her the occasional kindness, although more often than not she just sighed, and said, “My mummy says I’m not to be nice to you.”
As for the earl, he never intervened.
Sophie’s life continued in this vein for four years, until the earl surprised everyone by clutching his hand to his chest while taking tea in the rose garden, letting out one ragged gasp, and falling facefirst to the stone cobbles.
He never regained consciousness.
Everyone was quite shocked. The earl was only forty years old. Who could have known that his heart would give out at such a young age? No one was more stunned than Araminta, who had been trying quite desperately since her wedding night to conceive the all-important heir.
“I might be with child!” she hastened to tell the earl’s solicitors. “You can’t give the title over to some distant cousin. I could very well be with child.”
But she wasn’t with child, and when the earl’s will was read one month later (the solicitors had wanted to be sure to give the countess enough time to know for sure if she was pregnant) Araminta was forced to sit next to the new earl, a rather dissolute young man who was more often drunk than not.