by Anne Stuart
“Oh, she’ll receive a great deal of joy, I promise you,” he murmured.
Adelia strode from the room as abruptly as she entered it, her massive bosom heaving in indignation, and Alexander turned to look at Sophie in the candlelight. “I do regret foisting that creature on you, but I find that ignoring her works fairly well. I plan to rid this house of her as soon as I discover what happened to my brother.”
For some reason Sophie felt a moment of pity. “She’s just lost her son—it’s no wonder she’s a little . . . difficult.”
Alexander’s sardonic smile only annoyed Sophie more. “Trust me, my dearest, Adelia was always, as you say, a little . . . difficult. I’ve always had the strong suspicion she tried to poison me when I was fourteen, and my father had grown disillusioned enough to consider it a possibility. Hence the arrival of Dickens. You’d best watch your step with her.”
She stared at him in shock. “Tried to poison you? You must be mistaken. And if your father believed it a possibility, how could he have allowed her to remain in the household?”
Alexander shrugged. “He was infatuated with her. I’m assuming she was very talented in bed.”
Sophie flushed, remembering just how untalented he’d claimed her to be. “Then why have you allowed her to live in your house once your father was gone?”
“Ah, you’re getting curious about your new family, my pet. My brother happened to adore her, and I respected that. But I have no illusions—she’s a dangerous woman, and you’d be wise to watch your step around her.”
Sophie stared at him. At least that was one thing she wouldn’t have to worry about. She had no intention of ever seeing the woman again. Once in London she would run—there were a dozen ways to escape. So she simply nodded, rising.
“I’m tired, my lord,” she said. “And if you truly mean me to go to London then I’ll need to pack. I’m afraid you’ll have to eat the rest of your meal in solitude.”
She half expected him to stop her, to take her arm and drag her back down into the chair. Instead he took the little silver bell and rang it, and Tim appeared immediately.
“Escort Miss Russell to her room, Tim, and see that she has everything she needs,” he said, and Tim replied with a dutiful nod, holding out his liveried arm.
“Miss Russell?”
She had no qualms about taking it, and she hoped Alexander would remember her reluctance to take his. “Good evening, my lord,” she said, sinking into the merest hint of a curtsey.
“À bientôt, my precious.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
SOPHIE WOKE EARLY THE next morning, just after dawn. Her tenure in the kitchens must have ruined her ability to sleep in, she thought, surveying her closet and the dresses she had once loved so much. There were a number in the lemony yellow she adored, but she hesitated. Surely that color was far too cheery. She pulled out a gray-blue ensemble that wasn’t a far cry from demi-mourning, but really, why was she bothering?
She’d already lost any semblance of proper behavior—her adherence to the etiquette of mourning was a waste of time. She’d been compromised, both in the eyes of the world and in her own heart; she’d lived under the roof of a bachelor, even if no one knew about it. She’d spent . . . time in his bed. She was a ruined woman and she might as well defy convention completely. After all, she’d never been one for simply following along, obeying the rules.
She could only hope one of her sisters had returned to London. If worse came to worst she could always take the train to Plymouth and a hackney to Devonport, assuming they even had hackneys in Plymouth.
She looked down at the blue dress in mild disgust. She’d always hated the dress, but Bryony had insisted she needed something subdued for funerals.
She hadn’t had it for the small, shabby ceremony they’d held for their father in Marylebone. But then, she’d worn black, the same hated dress she’d been wearing for the last few days.
She wanted to burn it. She was leaving her old life behind, the hidden, shamed, mournful part. And she was leaving the Dark Viscount in the dust—it didn’t matter what she’d felt two nights ago, that strange, restless longing that seemed to have taken up permanent residence in the pit of her stomach. She wasn’t going to take the life he thought he could force on her, for whatever odd notion of propriety he might have, and he struck her as someone who didn’t give a damn about propriety.
She could always get another job in a kitchen. She could certainly write her own brilliant references, and a cooking job could provide a safe haven for her until she could find her sisters.
Her first act when they got to London would be to secure a newspaper and see what positions were available. But first, she had to find a pair of shoes.
She shoved the gloomy dress back into the cupboard and took out a new dress of lemon yellow, with matching petticoats and froths of lace. Her French-made undergarments were all there as well—Alexander must have simply moved in with all their belongings still intact, and no one had bothered to get rid of them. Someone, however, had bothered to get rid of her Italian leather shoes, and her annoyance grew.
She opened the door quietly, half expecting someone to be standing guard, but the hallway was shadowed and empty, and she knew exactly where the service staircase was. She disappeared behind the baize door and made her way down into the cheerful chaos of the morning meal.
The moment she stepped down into the kitchen everyone stopped talking, and they all rose from their breakfast, standing at mute attention, and for a moment Sophie wanted to cry.
It was Prunella who came forward. “I do beg your pardon, Miss Russell. We hadn’t realized you’d be up quite so early, or Gracie would have brought you a tray.”
Yesterday afternoon she had still been one of them. This morning she wasn’t, and she felt her heart break. “I rather thought I might have breakfast down here. With all of you.” She ought to go away, she thought, feeling defeated.
And then Dickens spoke up. “Gracie, set a place for Miss Russell, will you? Up here by Prunella and myself. I’m sure we can all squeeze in to make some room. We’re having porridge and kippers, miss. What would you like Prunella to prepare?”
Gracie quickly brought a place setting as the rest of the servants moved down. “I’d like what everyone else is having,” she said, switching the plate so that she was on the far side of Prunella on the bench, rather than taking one of the chairs. “And a cup of coffee strong enough to strip paint, and I want to hear what the latest gossip is. And does anyone know where my blasted shoes are?” She put the blasted in purposefully, just to relax things a bit, and after a moment everyone sat down again, and conversation resumed.
It wasn’t as comfortable as before, but it was worlds better than dinner with the viscount and his stepmother popping in. Before she left, Gracie presented her with a pair of shoes. She’d outgrown them, and they were a bit small on Sophie, but they would do in a pinch. Then Prunella looked at her uncertainly, but Sophie simply grabbed her and hugged her. She did the same with Dickens, much to his horror.
“Don’t let him terrorize you, Miss Russell,” he said in a choked voice. “And we’ll be looking forward to your return.”
But she wasn’t going to return, not to these kind, hardworking people, not to the house she grew up in. She was running so far and so fast that no one would ever find her.
Two hours later she curled up on the seat of the elegant brougham, closing her eyes and pretending to sleep. Not that she would normally have been so indelicate as to draw her legs under her skirts, but Alexander had failed to return her shoes, and when she’d protested he’d simply picked her up and carried her out the door and across the drive to the waiting carriage, dumping her inside with a total lack of ceremony. The borrowed shoes were tucked away inside a shawl so he wouldn’t take those as well, and she didn’t want Alexander looking at her feet—it felt far too intimate. It didn’t matter that he’d touched almost everything else; he hadn’t actually seen her body. The room had been
dark, thank God.
He was reading a newspaper, and she wondered how she would get it away from him to look for suitable positions until she could catch up with her sisters. He seemed to be taking his own sweet time about it, and she wished she’d brought something, anything, to keep her mind off her predicament.
Failing that, she could do nothing but brood and come up with far-fetched plans. First she would need to discover where Bryony had worked. The Earl of Kilmartyn had a house somewhere in Mayfair, but of course Sophie had never paid any attention.
And Maddy was somewhere near the coast, in Devonport, an area of Plymouth. She had been gone for more than a month—it was anyone’s guess whether she was still there. If she wasn’t, wouldn’t she have tried to return to Nanny Gruen’s house? And what would she have found there?
No, Sophie needed a bolt-hole, someplace safe from Alexander’s ridiculous plans for her. For some reason it seemed paramount that she avoid marrying him, though if she sat down to consider it rationally she couldn’t come up with a good reason. In fact, he was exactly what she’d planned to find, only better. He was titled, he was wealthy, and on top of that he was beautiful, or at least she found him so. He’d given her a taste of pleasure so exquisite in his bed that she felt a little damp and dizzy when she thought of it. What was the problem?
“Are you plotting nefarious things, my sweet?” came his dulcet voice, and she raised her eyelashes to survey him, looking for something to criticize, such as his eyes were too close set, his nose was too big, his teeth were bad.
His eyes were beautiful, that lovely dark gray astonishing her once again. His nose was straight, his teeth were fine, his mouth . . . his mouth . . .
“Doing my best,” she said briskly.
“Plot all you wish. It won’t do you any good.”
She looked at him. “Why are you insisting on this marriage?”
He set the newspaper down and leaned back. He was properly dressed, with stiff collar and cravat, watching her with amusement. “Why do you think?”
She considered it. “I really cannot imagine why. Oh, I’m beautiful. It would be a waste of time to deny it, but I expect you could find someone equally as pretty without too much difficulty.”
“I didn’t think you considered anyone to be equally pretty,” he drawled.
“I’m not vain; I’m realistic,” she said.
He raised an eyebrow.
“All right, I’m vain and realistic,” she amended. “But the fact remains that if you want a beautiful wife, there are others just as qualified.”
“Perhaps I like your particular arrangement of features?” he suggested.
She made a face. “Marriage is hardly a temporary proposition. Within a year or two you won’t even look at my face.”
“Try a week or two.”
She glared at him. “You clearly don’t like me; you found me dull in bed, though how in the world you could expect me to be anything else is beyond me. Where was I supposed to learn the fancy tricks I expect are necessary to keep your . . . interest aroused? They aren’t in books, or I would have read them.”
“Maybe you haven’t been reading the right sort of books.”
She ignored that, though her curiosity was piqued. Were there really books like that? She forged ahead. “Maybe I haven’t. I have no reputation to begin with, thanks to my father and whoever tried to—” Belatedly she remembered that he was, technically, one of the suspects, and she halted.
“Go on. I’m finding all this fascinating. You have no reputation, thanks to your father and . . . who? Do you suspect things weren’t as they seemed?”
“Of course I do,” she snapped, thoroughly cross. “And you needn’t act surprised—anyone connected with the Russells knows we’re protesting the findings of the police and the court.”
“Ah, yes, that reminds me. Could it be mere happenstance that you managed to infiltrate my household under an assumed name? Simply because Renwick was close at hand? Or did you have another, more devious reason to sneak in here? Do you suspect me of murdering your father and stealing all his money? And then setting it up to look as if he was the embezzler?” He seemed no more than idly curious.
She hesitated, then decided to answer truthfully. “You did get the house, after all.”
“Why should I care about the house? Granted, it’s been in the family for generations until my great-uncle lost it so precipitously to your father in what was most likely a rigged card game, but there are other houses, and I’m hardly a sentimental man.”
“What about the large sum of money you seem to have come into?”
“My, my,” he said. “You are very well informed about my business, aren’t you? In truth, I happen to have one talent in this world, and that seems to be making money.”
“Then why didn’t you display this talent before you took possession of Renwick?”
“Because I didn’t have the money to play with. The only people who can afford to make money are those who can afford to lose it.”
“There shouldn’t have been any money attached to the house.”
He looked at her with a bland expression, but it seemed to her as if his eyes darkened. A moment later that look was gone, and he was entirely affable. “I’m afraid someone else will have to answer your questions. I have no idea where the money came from. So you think I killed your father for his money?”
“Of course not,” she said irritably. “You were always our least likely suspect, despite the fact that you—” Again she halted. What was wrong with her today? The man made her tongue run away with her.
“Despite the fact that I murdered my wife,” he supplied easily. “Well, I’m glad that was good for something. Do you still doubt me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
She fumbled for the words, when she had been considered the wittiest beauty to grace the London scene. “Because you’re not that sort of man,” she said.
“I’m gratified. So who are your other suspects?”
“I don’t wish to talk about this.”
“I do. We have a long ride ahead of us and I’ve finished with the paper.”
“May I read it?” She couldn’t hide her eagerness.
“Of course. When I get bored with your conversation.”
“You,” she said, “are a rat bastard.”
He exploded with laughter. “And you, my dear, have spent too much time around the stables. I assume that’s where you heard such insalubrious terms?”
“I learned them from my sisters.”
He chuckled. “And here I thought the Russell sisters were so straitlaced. There are three of you, are there not? Though no one ever saw the eldest one. Where are they now?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t like lies, my sweet,” he said.
“I’m not lying. Do you think I’d still be here if I knew where they were?”
“I think you wouldn’t have any choice in the matter. So we have discussed my reasons for marrying you . . . .”
“Not entirely. You could marry someone with money,” she suggested.
“I don’t need it. I told you, I have a gift for making it on my own.”
“You could marry someone with a pure reputation.”
“I don’t care about reputations. You should know that.”
“Then why are you insisting on marrying me?” she demanded.
“Let’s turn this around, shall we?” he said in his elegant voice. “Why don’t you tell me why you keep refusing my very handsome offer?”
He really was being a rat bastard, Alexander thought. He shouldn’t be enjoying this so much, but Sophie had that effect on him. In fact, he enjoyed her so much he’d probably be better off letting her escape, but he couldn’t bring himself to allow it. He set the paper down beside him, stretched his legs out, and watched her as she struggled through her justifiable outrage. “Because I hate you!” she finally said.
“What a pathetic answer. And entirely
untrue—you’ll have to do better than that. Why should you hate me? I’m rich and titled, just as you required.”
“I wanted an elderly peer who’d die off and leave me alone,” she shot back.
“I’m afraid I can’t help you with that,” he murmured. “I am a bit older than you are, but I intend to live a long, long time. Right at your side, my precious.”
He watched her fume, and wondered whether he’d still be able to drive her into a passion when they were elderly. He hoped so.
“I don’t—”
“Don’t come up with another lie, please,” he said. “It’s tedious. Why don’t you want to share my bed and board?”
“Because I didn’t happen to like your bed, and I prefer my own board,” she snapped.
“Well, then, I suppose I’ll simply have to change your mind.” She was light enough, and it was a simple matter to reach across and lift her into his arms. She wasn’t expecting it, so she didn’t fight, and he held her in his lap, a mass of billowing skirts and infuriated womanhood.
“You are a beast,” she said in a low, furious voice.
“And as you’ve pointed out to me numerous times, you are a beauty. See how well matched we are.” He put his finger under her stubborn chin, lifting her face to his. “So let’s see how easy you are to train.”
She tried to elbow him in the ribs for that one, and he swallowed his laughter. There were times when he was his own worst enemy, but she was just so delicious. He lowered his mouth to hers, half expecting her to bash him in the head, or at least bite him, but the moment his lips touched hers she stilled, like a startled woodland creature confronted by danger, and all his humor fled.
He slid his hand up to cup the side of her face, pulling her even closer with his other arm, and she melted against him, flowing, her mouth soft and welcoming, opening for him when he deepened the kiss. She tasted of cinnamon and coffee, delicious, and he lost himself in the kiss, in her response, as he lured her tongue into his mouth with sweet seduction.