Laura Lee Guhrke (30 page)

Sophie wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him. She curled her leg around him, wrapping his hip in the heavy damask of her ball gown.

He opened her lips with his, his tongue caressed hers, and he groaned into her mouth, giving voice to the same pleasure she was feeling. Sophie could not stop herself from moving against his body just as she had in the carriage. She wanted those sensations she’d felt before.

The sound of a woman’s tinkling laugh was like a shower of ice water over both of them. Sophie felt herself sliding to the ground. Mick stepped back several feet, and Sophie tried to regain her equilibrium.

The woman’s laughter came again, and Sophie and Mick looked over to where a very drunken pair of couples stumbled around the corner of the house toward them, carrying glasses of champagne and spilling most of it as they walked.

Sophie looked down and noticed that the hem of her skirt was turned up six inches, revealing the lacy trim of her petticoat. She hastily bent down and turned the hem back down as the couples came closer. They passed by as Sophie and Mick stared at one another, breathing hard and trying not to.

“We should go back,” he said.

“Yes, of course,” she whispered, her heart thudding like the rhythm of a runaway train.

Neither of them moved.

She watched Mick’s mouth tighten. “If we don’t go in,” he said, “your mother will be the next one to walk by, and then I’ll be in serious trouble.”

He did not offer her his arm, and they walked back to the ballroom without touching. Sophie struggled to regain her composure as they entered the ballroom, but she felt as if every eye must be on them, including her mother’s, and she snapped open her fan to shield her face, which she felt must be scarlet with embarrassment.

She and Mick took a place along one wall, and she fanned her face, pretending to watch the dancers, but all she could think of was how her body seemed to be on fire everywhere Mick had touched her. She dared not look at him.

“Miss Haversham!” a loud, insistent voice called. “Just the person I’ve been looking for!”

Sophie turned and saw the stout, unmistakable figure of her hostess bearing down on her. She hoped she now looked more serene than she felt.

“How wonderful to see you!” Lady Dalrymple exclaimed, clasping Sophie’s hand. “I’m so glad you came to my little party.”

“I’m delighted you invited me,” Sophie said politely.

“This is such perfect timing, Sophie. I’ve just been telling the ladies all about your extraordinary talents.” She turned to the group of women with her. “Ladies, this is Sophie Haversham. You know, the psychic and spiritualist the newspapers have been talking about. She’s so accurate that it’s uncanny.”

Sophie groaned under her breath. This was adding insult to injury. “Good Lord,” she whispered to Mick behind her fan as Lady Dalrymple sang her praises, “I didn’t know I was that astounding.”

Lady Dalrymple turned back around, and Sophie pasted a smile on her face. “You say such kind things, Countess,” she said, “but please believe me when I say the newspapers have exaggerated my abilities.”

Lady Dalrymple ignored that. “I have an idea!” she exclaimed. “You can tell fortunes tonight.”

“What?” Sophie choked. “You’re joking.”

“Not at all. It’s such wonderful entertainment to have a skilled psychic read the cards. I have a tarot deck you may use.”

Sophie listened with growing dismay as the countess decided that the card room would be just the right place for Sophie to tell fortunes. “It will be grand,” she said and turned to her friends again. “So entertaining, don’t you think so? Why, it’s just the perfect thing all around. And Miss Haversham, is very talented. It’s amazing what tricks she can do.”

Mick leaned close to her. “And your sister thinks it’s only us poor blokes in the working class who have bad manners.”

“She’s talking about me as if I’m a trained seal,”
Sophie whispered back. She listened to Lady Dalrymple ramble on happily to the others, and more than ever she wanted to leave. What was she then, a circus performer?

Feeling smothered, Sophie turned to Mick. “Please, please get me out of here.”

Sixteen
 

Sophie looked at the sign over the door of a small, inconspicuous building on Bow Street. “A police station?” She glanced at Mick doubtfully.

“How much safer can we be than at a police station?” he countered and opened the door.

“When I asked to leave the ball, this wasn’t what I had in mind.”

Sophie followed Mick through the front room of the station, greeting the men on duty as he passed and seeming to ignore their stares of curiosity.

Mick led her into a room at the back of the station, and when she walked in, she saw a group of three constables gathered around a table in one corner of the room, playing cards. They looked up as she and Mick entered the room.

“Hell’s bells,” one of the men said, looking Mick up and down, “Where’s the funeral?”

Sophie laughed, and the man turned his head toward her, skimming her with a speculative glance. “Well now, a woman with a fine sense of humor.” He took her hand in his. “Who might you be? And what on earth is a beautiful woman like you doing with our Mick? I’m sure he’ll be dead of the shock by morning. He’s not used to beautiful women.”

“Lads, this is Miss Sophie Haversham. Sophie, this is Billy Mackay,” Mick said, pulling her hand away from the other man’s grasp. “He was, until a moment ago, a friend of mine.”

She was introduced to the other two men at the table, Rob Willis and Anthony Frye. The one named Rob she remembered from the night Jack Hawthorne was killed, and he gave her a nod of recognition when they were introduced. She sensed a bit of surprise from all three men at her presence with Mick, but given the incredible stories in the papers, she could understand why. She was Sophie the Psychic, after all.

Billy glanced at the two men on the other side of the poker table. “Cleans up rather good, our Mick, doesn’t he?”

“He does,” Rob agreed. “For a moment, I didn’t recognize him in that monkey suit.”

Mick adjusted his tie. “Unlike the lot of you, I get enough invitations to actually own an evening suit.”

“Ouch, that hurt.” Billy looked both of them up and down. “So, what are you two all dressed up for?”

“We were at a ball,” Sophie explained, “but I didn’t want to stay. It’s hard to like balls when you can’t dance.”

“You can’t dance? I thought all society girls knew how to dance.”

She shook her head, and several of her hairpins came tumbling down. Billy bent and picked them up. He handed them to her, grinning.

“Thank you,” she said and started pinning up her hair again. “Why are you smiling at me like that, Mr. Mackay?”

The grin was gone in an instant. “No reason,” he said. “You are just not. . .” He didn’t finish the sentence, but in that moment, she read his mind just like a book.

Not the sort of woman Mick usually lilies
.

She wanted to ask what sort of woman he preferred, but it didn’t matter. Mick wasn’t a marrying, settling down sort of man. She knew that much.

“Micky boy,” Anthony put it, “you brought her here from a ball? Here?” He shook his head, looking at Mick sadly. “This is your way of showing a woman a bit of fun?”

“Of course,” Mick answered, “but I didn’t know you were going to be here or I’d have known better.”

Sophie listened to the men trade good-natured insults almost as if she were listening to a foreign language. She’d never been around a group composed entirely of men before, and she liked their easygoing manner.

She glanced at the table and noticed the cards and the pile of brightly colored disks in the center, and she turned to Mick, laughing, remembering their conversation earlier. “This is your Saturday night poker game. That’s why you brought me here! You’re going to teach me how to play poker.”

“If the lads don’t mind, I thought I would,” He turned to the other men. “Sophie has always wanted to play poker, but among the high-society circle she moves in, ladies are only allowed to play proper games like whist. She finds it dull.”

“Whist?” Billy grinned. “Who wouldn’t?”

“I don’t know,” Rob said, shaking his head as he looked at Sophie. “Aren’t you the one all the papers claim is a psychic? Are you going to know when I’m bluffing?”

She saw the amusement in his eyes, and she knew he didn’t really believe she was psychic. But that was all right. “It depends,” she answered. “Is there money involved?”

“Of course. What would be the point otherwise?”

“Then you’re safe. I don’t get psychic impressions from cards if there’s money involved. Mick tried to get me to help him win at Ascot, but I just couldn’t do it.”

“Ascot?” Anthony looked at Mick. “You went to Ascot? Isn’t it a bit highbrow for you, Micky boy?”

“I’ve been before,” Mick said with a shrug. “So, lads, is she in?”

“I don’t know.” Billy studied her for a moment. “You’re sure, being psychic and that, you can’t cheat?”

“I’m sure.” Sophie sighed. “My auntie thinks it’s because the spirits don’t want me to profit from my psychic ability.”

“The spirits, eh?” Billy grinned again and glanced at Mick. Somehow, Sophie knew Billy wasn’t laughing at her, but she couldn’t quite pinpoint the source of his amusement. Something to do with Mick. “Are you a medium?”

“Oh, no, I can’t communicate with spirits, although Auntie’s spiritualism society wishes I could. They have to use a planchette instead.”

“A planchette?” Rob made a choking sound. “I see.”

“What is this spiritualism society, Sophie?”

“Oh, it’s just my aunt and a few of her friends.” Sophie waved her hand in an airy gesture, and her garnet bracelet came undone, falling to the floor. “They talk about ghosts and spirits and reincarnation.”

Mick bent and picked up her bracelet. He handed it to her, and she refastened it around her wrist as she went on, “Auntie thinks she’s the reincarnation of Cleopatra. Of course, I don’t try to argue with her about it.”

All three men at the table glanced at Mick, but he didn’t seem to notice. “Give us some chips,” he said and handed Billy a pound note. “We’ll see how she does, eh, lads?”

The men at the table made room, chairs were pulled up for them, and Mick explained the fundamentals of the game to her. He did not play. Instead, he sat behind Sophie’s chair to guide her play if she needed it.

She tried to keep her mind on the play, but when Mick would bring his arm around her to point at her cards and whisper suggestions in her ear, she couldn’t concentrate on anything. An hour and a half later, she was out of money.

“See?” she told Rob with a sigh, plunking one elbow down on the table and resting her chin in her hand. “I never see anything when there’s money involved. I never win the sweeps, or wager on the winning horses, or anything like that.”

“Tell me something, Sophie,” Billy said as he shuffled the cards, “The
Daily Bugle
insisted that you foresaw Jack’s death. Is that true?”

Given how sensitive the case was, and how silent Scotland Yard had been about Sophie’s involvement, she didn’t know whether or not to answer that question. She straightened and glanced at Mick, then she said, “It is true. For once, the
Daily Bugle
actually printed something accurate.”

No one spoke. Mick’s three friends stared at her without attempting to hide their skepticism. Sophie was not surprised. “I know you don’t believe me, gentlemen,” she said quietly. “Many people don’t. But I can’t help that.”

It was Mick who broke the silence. “I believe you.”

All of them, including Sophie, stared at him in astonishment.

“I didn’t at first,” he continued, meeting her gaze straight on. “But some things just have to be taken on faith.”

She could feel the incredulity of Mick’s friends, and she knew what it had cost him to admit this in front of men whose opinion mattered to him. For this, he would be ridiculed, yet he had gone out of his way to show her that his opinion of her had changed. He was doing what even most of her family had been unable to do. He was accepting her for exactly what she was.

It was at that moment that Sophie fell in love with him.

“We’d better go,” he said and stood up. “Lads, I’ll see you for next week’s game.”

Sophie stood up, waving good night to the men around the table as she followed Mick out of the police station.

She paused beside him on the sidewalk, still reeling from what had just happened. He believed in her. It was a wondrous feeling.

He hailed a cab. “Eighteen Mill Street,” he told the driver, and those words snapped her out of her reverie. “Oh, no!” she cried. “It’s not even midnight yet! Must we go home already?”

“Where do you want to go?” he asked.

“I’d love a cup of tea and something to eat. I’m starving. We left before the supper.”

“The tea shops are closed by now.” He tilted his head to one side, watching her. “What is your mother going to think of you being out alone with me?”

“She won’t know. The ball won’t be over for hours yet, three or four o’clock, at least. Besides, only Auntie will come back to Mill Street, and she won’t mind as long as I’m with you. She has a very high opinion, of you, you know.”