delightful accent, but needed help marshaling her thoughts when confronted with a row of numbers.
Cordell was an unhappy house, Sophy realized, with Henrietta its one bright flame. Lord Fairchild indulged her, fond of his beautiful, high-spirited daughter. Lady Fairchild was proud of her and ambitious for her, already mapping out her marriage prospects and her brilliant social life. Even Jasper’s teasing was done with obvious affection. Henrietta was the pride of the all the servants, more so than Jasper, who could be churlish under his smooth veneer. Like everyone else, Sophy could not help loving her.
Henrietta’s company was some solace, but still, Sophy was often alone.
Vast and sprawling, the park at Cordell was moist with rotting leaves in the fall, rimmed with frost and blighted by wind in the winter. A hardy soul, Sophy ventured out in all weather, until the day that Jasper spied her sliding across the frozen lake. Hauled back to the house, she was lectured by Miss Frensham, by Dessie, the nursery maid, and most awfully, by her father, whom she still called Lord Fairchild. He sentenced her to a fortnight indoors, so Sophy took to exploring the house. Venturing undetected into rooms, eventually she mapped it all, from the fastness of Lord Fairchild’s library to the steaming laundry. She tiptoed through the airy prettiness of Lady Fairchild’s suite, wandered the staterooms and finally ingratiated her way into the cellars, the exclusive domain of Jenkins, the butler.
“She’s an endearing mite,” Dessie admitted at table in the kitchen, "Even with that naughty streak. Lord, it's impossible to keep her in the nursery.” Just that day, Dessie had found Sophy in the gunroom and the dumb waiter.
Liza sniffed, exchanging looks with Millie Dawson, Lady Fairchild’s maid. The two were united in their disapproval of Sophy’s presence in their Lady’s house, but otherwise the servants liked her.
When Easter came, Lady Fairchild punished her husband by inviting her family for the holiday. Sophy spent her days hiding from the guests. Once she was summoned to the library to speak to her guardian; it was a difficult interview with long silences, but she hoped she had convinced him that she was doing her best as a scholar and endeavoring not to make trouble. He was still a stranger.
At first, Jasper saw little of his half-sister, being away much of the year at school. Uninterested in young children, he had intended to ignore Sophy, but discarded this notion over the summer in favor of making a pet of her to annoy his mama. He spent most of his time at Cordell tramping through the fens with his dog and a fowling piece and one day he saw Sophy drifting away from the house as he made his own way through the gardens.
“You may as well carry my bag,” he said, tossing it to her. “If you’re going to spend the day outside. Come on.”
She was a game little thing, he learned, solid as a soldier, gladly following him under hot sun or chilling mizzle, begging for stories of his adventures at school. She was, as he suspected, a regular hoyden and knew how to climb trees and make a whistle from a blade of grass. He laughed, seeing how pleased she was when he showed her the best places to find tadpoles, though he was past that kind of thing himself. Seeing her sitting like a sack as one of the grooms led her around on Henrietta’s old pony, he decided he ought to take an interest in her training, if only for the sake of the horse. After a particularly hard fall, he discovered Sophy’s collection of curses. Smirking, he gifted her a few jewels of his own, recognizing in the flash of her eyes a like-minded soul.
It pleased Jasper to escape with Sophy and watch her thin face vivify in his company. Naturally, she was a trial at times, being eight years his junior, but he did not hesitate to dismiss her when he tired of her company. He found he seldom did. They passed much of their time together in
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