Most Improper Miss Sophie Valentine (13 page)

James smiled dashingly at Mrs. Dykes and suggested that as soon as the Sadlers arrived in Morecroft, they must all come to his grandmother's house for an evening of music and cards.

“She does enjoy new company and would be excessively glad to meet you all.”

Sophie winced. James always did love his pranks.

“You keep an 'ouse in London, sir?” Mrs. Dykes asked James.

He confirmed he did.

Gravy dripped down Lavinia's chin, but she was oblivious to it. “Henry won't take me to London. He says it's too much expense.”

“Not even to visit the Grimstock relatives in Mayfair?” James asked politely.

“He's never taken me to visit them.”

James leaned back in his chair to look at Henry. “Really, old chap? One should take one's lovely and charming wife to meet the noble Grimstocks.”

Sophie tried to get his attention with her foot, to end his teasing for her brother's sake, but turning his handsome smile back to Lavinia, he exclaimed, “You would be the talk of the town, Mrs. Valentine. I daresay Henry fears you might be stolen away by an admirer if he took you out into Society.”

Lavinia giggled and covered her plump lips with one hand.

“I don't have time to go to London,” Henry snapped. “I have an estate to run.”

Sophie drank her entire glass of wine in one swallow.

Mrs. Dykes shook her head sorrowfully and sucked on her teeth before giving this pronouncement: “Your sister's becoming a drinker, 'Enry. I knew it would come to this! Sir Arthur Sadler says an idle mind is too easily prone to over-hindulgence. A firm hand is what you lack here, 'Enry. With your parents gone, certain behavior has been tolerated, unchecked, for far too long, particular in light of…recent
hevents
.”

Henry's face blossomed like a scarlet peony.

“The Sadlers have, in the past, helped several troublesome young ladies like Sophia find good positions away from 'ome and in the bosom of good, proper Christian families. They'll surely find somewhere to put Sophia. Out of the way.”

Sophie sighed so heavily she almost extinguished the nearest candle flame.

“What with that gypsy fellow down the lane, 'overing like a vulture…”

Sophie felt James watching her intently, his eyes cool and questioning.

The syllabub was served, but she couldn't enjoy a solitary spoonful, not while that nodding dragon sat across the table, trying to force her into another corner. Why did everyone assume they might organize her life? Soon they might drive her to a desperate act of mad violence with a meat cleaver. That cork leg would not stay attached long to Mrs. Dykes once Sophie began swinging something sharp in her direction.

As soon as she could politely leave the table, she walked outside for some fresh air. The wind and rain had stopped, coming and going with that peculiar eccentricity of an English summer, but it was still a chilly evening, and Sophie regretted leaving her shawl behind. It was too late to go back for it. They would all be discussing her now, as if she were a disobedient puppy leaving puddles on the rug. She hugged her arms and marched up and down the courtyard to stay warm, acrid smoke from the fireplace still clinging to her hair and gown.

“So this…gypsy…is the man who leased Souls Dryft?” James had followed her out into the yard and brought her shawl.

“Yes. He came here because of the advertisement. Just like you.” Taking the shawl from his outstretched arm, she swung it around her shoulders.

“Not like me,” he corrected her. “I have a prior claim. Besides, Henry says this gypsy changed his mind when he found you scarred.”

That was a new one, she mused. Before, it was because her dowry was too small. Sophie turned away and walked toward the gatehouse.

James followed. “Where are you going?”

She stopped by the ancient stone and inhaled the calming scent of distant pine trees. The damp air was thick with it this evening.

Where
was
she going?

“What is all this about a governess post?”

“That's Mrs. Dykes…doing her best to be rid of me for her daughter's sake. I'm under Lavinia's feet here, and she resents my daily ‘
hinterference
.'”

James reached for her hand. “I can't decide who is worse, Lavinia or her mother. If I had any liking for Henry, I'd feel sorry for the man, but he makes his own problems.” He looked down at her fingers. “And I can't forgive him for persuading you to break off our engagement, Sophia.”

He never believed it was her idea to end their engagement. He preferred to blame Henry's influence. Ironically, most people in the village assumed James broke it off. No one could imagine Sophie Valentine, quite a commonplace woman even on a good day, would turn down the likes of a James Hartley.

“We should be married, Sophia. As it was meant to be.”

He was so handsome and gallant in the moonlight. But it wasn't enough. People would think her daft, but she couldn't help it. She wanted more. The way he'd once touched that dark-haired maid in a crowded ballroom when he thought no one saw, had more tenderness, more heated desire in it, than the way he ever touched or looked at
her
. James seemed to think they belonged together, almost as if it were preordained, an item on a list to be crossed off. It wasn't because he had to have her, lusted after her, felt he would die without her.

Of course, if she thought practically, taking stock of her situation, marriage to James offered her much. At her age, it would be ungrateful, not to mention foolish, to turn him away without the slightest consideration.

“Kiss me, James,” she whispered, wondering if it would feel different now they were older. She reached for his shoulders, but he gripped her arms and braced them so her hands rested on the lapels of his coat instead.

He was so painfully proper with her, when she knew he was not like that with other women. Oh yes, she knew about his reputation, but their one and only encounter on that billiard table ten years ago was initiated by her. He'd always treated her as if she might break, and the disappointment had led her to leap from a balcony.

“James. Just kiss me!”

With Lazarus Kane, she had not needed to ask. He hadn't given her the chance.

Finally James kissed her, almost missing her lips but for one southerly corner.

“Marry me, Sophia,” he said again.

She sighed heavily, tears threatening at the brink. It would be a “good” match. No more money worries. Henry might even stop being angry with her, and she would no longer be the great disappointment, an embarrassment to be shoved off into the corner. She would escape this fortress and Lavinia. People would stop looking at her with pity in their eyes.

But she would have to leave behind this pretty village she loved. Then there was her schoolhouse—any good she'd tried to do there would be undone. And venturing back out into James's world…she didn't know if she wanted that again. Part of her would die forever. It must if she was to survive in that society. She remembered that evening by the balustrade, how she'd felt stifled and trapped. Of course, she was nineteen at the time, and many things seemed more dramatically wretched to her then. It might be different now.

“I need time to think, James.”

“My darling Sophia. I shall be patient.”

He was probably afraid she might do something drastic again if he forced a decision.

The gift came on the following Monday.

“Miss Sophie, Miss Sophie!” Wilson clutched a box in her hands and dashed through the waving flags of wet linen. “I just went down to the gatehouse to let Old Bob in with the fish cart, and this was sitting there for you.”

She took the box cautiously in her hands. “Whatever…?”

“It has your name on it, miss, look.”

Sure enough, her name was scrawled across the lid—badly misspelled. There was no note with it, no explanation. Sophie gingerly opened the lid. Inside, nestled in straw, there was a birdcage, complete with the model of a linnet seated on the perch. She recognized it at once from the market stall. There was a tiny key in the base of the cage, and when turned, the little bird let out a pert chirp, flapped its wings, opened its beak, and dipped forward, ready to take flight. But the door of the little cage didn't open, and the bird remained on its perch, ever ready to go nowhere.

She knew who sent it to her; there was no doubt. They'd not spoken since the dance, but somehow she knew he was responsible for this.

“Isn't it lovely, miss?”

“Yes,” she whispered reluctantly.

“But what can it mean?”

Frowning, she handed the cage to the maid. “I suppose I'd better find out.”

***

The air that morning was fresh and warm as a loaf straight from the oven. The shrill larks, chattering blackbirds, and sultry wood pigeons, feeling the gentle, glowing sun on their feathers, greeted its rise with a full orchestral performance. The slightest of breezes carried a few stringy fleece clouds, just high enough to keep them from snagging on the treetops, and wildlife rustled, unseen and industrious among the hedgerows. Her feet, walking quickly through the long grass of the verge, disturbed a young rabbit and several butterflies, whose sudden nervous emergence caused her as much fright as she caused them.

She raised one hand to her forehead to shade her eyes and peered ahead to where a man was climbing a stile into the field beyond.

“Mr. Kane!” The name still sounded strange on her lips.

He stopped and looked back. She waved and quickened her pace, afraid he might disappear or she'd lose her courage, but he rested his arms on the stile and waited. Panting, she finally arrived beside him. “Mr. Kane, where do you go?”

His dark, thoughtful eyes studied her warm face. “I go to pick mushrooms.”

“Oh.”

“Will you pick them with me, Miss Valentine? If you have the time to spare, of course. I know you have far more important things to do than share a few minutes with a shallow young rake.”

The invitation was spur of the moment, and she accepted just as speedily, not even waiting for his hand to help her over the stile. When he stood back, giving her room to pass through into the field, she saw him look away, pretending not to notice the little flash of ankle as she leapt from the stile. On his best behavior today, it seemed. He walked on into the field, leaving her to follow.

“You have no basket, Mr. Kane,” she said as she quickened her pace to walk alongside. “You came out to gather mushrooms but have nothing in which to keep them.”

“We can use your apron.”

“Did you know you would meet me, then, and I'd wear my apron?”

He stared ahead. “So I didn't come out just to pick mushrooms. How astute you are.” Then he smiled crookedly. “Too clever for me. But then I'm an ignorant fool who can't even read.”

She ignored that comment. “You came out, Mr. Kane, to leave something at my gate.”

“Did I?” He looked at her with eyes wide, feigning innocence. Very badly.

“Why did you buy me the caged linnet?”

He stopped, and so did she. “It reminded me of the little bird I saved from your schoolhouse. When you shouted at me for no reason and slammed a door in my face. Don't worry, I won't expect any thanks for this bird, any more than I got for my other favors.”

She couldn't be angry with him, even if she wanted to. “You shouldn't give a gift to me, Mr. Kane. It's not proper. We are not engaged.” She hesitated. “And Henry won't be pleased.”

“Is Henry ever pleased?”

Sighing, she lifted a shoulder. “Not these days.”

“Then I'm sorry for him. His life is passing by, and he can't enjoy a moment of it.”

How strange it was that Lazarus Kane should express sympathy for Henry, a man he barely knew, yet James Hartley, who'd known Henry for years, couldn't spare him the smallest of pities.

“My brother thinks only of what he doesn't have. Of course”—she hesitated—“if I wished to be completely honest, I'm often guilty of that too.”

He scratched the back of his neck and laughed low. “'Tis a human failing.”

His black hair was almost in his eyes as he looked down at her. She felt the urge to reach up and stroke it back from his forehead. Needing something to keep her hands busy, she untied her apron and knotted the corners to make a sack for the mushrooms. Then they passed through a new gate into the covert. He held the latch for her, and she swept by, swinging her apron. Now he was behind her as they walked between the elm and chestnut trees, sunlight dappling the grass. She knew he was close. His breath came faster as their footsteps rustled along. Then she felt his touch. His fingertips moved her hair, where a loose curl rested on her shoulder.

She stopped abruptly and spun around. He showed her a caterpillar in his palm, laying the blame on that tiny creature, which must have fallen from the trees to her hair. But she saw the gleam in his eyes, and Sophie knew how it felt to be taken by surprise, kidnapped and held ransom by a sudden sensation, a desire that came unwanted, unbidden.

The only sound in that covert was of their feet through the grass, the warbling wood pigeons, and the occasional drowsy burr of a wasp.

He reached out his hand again and ran those wayward fingertips along another loose lock of hair that fell to her shoulder. There was no excuse to be had this time, no caterpillar or likewise impertinent insect.

Then he took his hand away quickly, as if abruptly remembering his manners and how she'd shouted at him before, and motioned her on ahead. She turned without a word and continued onward, glad of the shady trees to help cool her blood, although the peacefulness made her heart beat only that much louder in her ears. Why had she run after him? What did she expect to happen?

Something. Anything.

There was no avoiding it any longer. Her desire for him would not be quenched, and James's recent kiss only highlighted that great empty ache in her heart. Her skin prickled when Lazarus was near, the expectation of his touch almost too much for her sanity. It made her ashamed, this pointless hankering for someone so unsuitable. But she couldn't stop it. She'd given up trying. Surely, like a bad itch from an insect bite, it would work itself out of her soon, and she would recover from this foolish fancy.

At last they spied some mushrooms peeping out from the damp grass, and together they picked them, each newly discovered bundle bringing a small cry of delight from her lips as she swooped down to claim it before he did.

“When my strawberry beds bear fruit, Miss Valentine, you must come and pick them with me. Your aunt tells me it was once one of your favorite things to do.”

She looked up in surprise and wondered when he'd spoken to her aunt.

“As long as you promise not to eat them all,” he added.

She wiped an arm across her brow. “She told you of my lack of willpower?”

“Oh yes.”

“Well, I was very young, and when I ate one, I just couldn't seem to stop.” As a child, she'd eaten three times as many strawberries as she picked one day, and subsequently suffered a terrible stomachache. “I learned my lesson. Now I know when I've had enough.”

He leaned against a tree and watched her, emerald shade and gilt spatters spinning across his face. “I hope so, because my berries will be the sweetest you've ever tasted, and you might be tempted beyond endurance.”

“Pride is a sin, Mr. Kane.”

He pushed away from the tree trunk, stepped over gnarled roots, and came toward her. “One of many.” She could smell the warm earth on his roughened fingertips as they brushed, unbearably gently, across her lips. She was overwhelmed by it all—this onslaught against her senses.

Above them the leaves shivered. Branches creaked and danced, suddenly caught up in a jig.

“You shouldn't have bought me a gift,” she muttered. “It's not…”

He leaned his head down to her, and his dark gaze caressed her lips, following the path of his fingers. And then, as if he saw it there all along, he satisfied the secret, clamoring need within her. Hands on her elbows, he drew her gently against his body.

She should protest. She had plenty of time.

But she said nothing. Sophie moved her lips toward him, just a little. Just enough.

He tasted her slowly, carefully. His hands cupped her face, holding her still, his fingertips in her hair. She knew she should object, but she was in a wayward mood today…here in the trees where no one could see.

Their mouths drifted apart, and her lashes flickered open.

She wondered if he did this often. It seemed likely he stole kisses from other women too.

Now his face was unreadable, and when she continued to study it, he suddenly stooped to pick another mushroom.

Think
of
something
else
, she chided herself.
Think
practically.
He was ignoring it had happened. Perhaps she should do the same. Then she understood exactly what she was doing there, why she'd run after him that morning.

As he bent over and she searched her mind for sensible matters, she saw a stain on his shirt. He always wore the same clothes. Even to work on the farm, he wore the same breeches, and on any day of the week, he might be seen in that fancy, embroidered waistcoat. The shirt he wore today, with the sleeves rolled up, was made of rich silk. She remembered what her brother said about the tailor in Morecroft fashioning one suit of clothes for Lazarus, paid for by bank notes hidden in his boots.

“Mr. Kane, have you no other clothes but these?”

He glanced up over his shoulder.

She added, “I don't mean to offend.”

Straightening up, he tossed a handful of mushrooms into her apron. “You don't offend. And yes, I have only one set of clothes. Why else do you think I take off my shirt to work in the farmyard?”

“Pure vanity, Mr. Kane?” When he laughed at that, she smiled. “Another of your sins.”

His eyes were on her lips again, and blood hot with anticipation rushed through her. It was as if a dam had broken.

“Miss Valentine, I'm not a rich man,” he confessed. “I know it might seem that way to you and to others, but my fortune is far from infinite. The money I have will soon be spent.”

She was startled by the sudden change of subject. Lavinia, she mused to herself, would call it improper to talk about money with a man who was practically a stranger. What, she wondered wickedly, would Lavinia think of her question to Lazarus about his clothes? He hadn't seemed to care. Perhaps there was no “improper” in this man's mind.

“The admiral agreed I can live at Souls Dryft until the end of harvest,” he added. “I'll pay my rent by managing the farm and maintaining the old house. He'll take one-third of the harvest profit this year. The remaining two-thirds are mine.”

His lease was only until the autumn. She felt her heart skipping too many beats. He wouldn't stay long, then.

It was strangely gratifying to be taken into his confidence.

“I saved a little of my army pay,” he added ruefully, “but one shilling a day doesn't go far.”

“You were a soldier?”

He nodded as they walked on. “An enlisted man.”

She was silent, politely waiting for more.

“I was born fatherless and destitute, Miss Valentine, on the streets of London. I found work wherever it could be got, turning my hand to anything required”—his lip turned up in a wry smile—“not always on the right side of the law. When I joined the army, I hoped to turn my life around.”

“You had no family?”

He blinked, and she saw a subtle hardening of his jaw, a tense movement. “A sister. A few years older than me. She died…in childbirth.”

“I'm so sorry.” She shook her head. “How awful.”

“She was only seventeen. The sweetest girl…” He stopped, catching his breath. When he didn't continue, she asked his sister's name, and he told her, “Becky. She'd be twenty-seven now. Not a day goes by when I don't think of her.”

“Yes, I'm sure,” she muttered sadly, feeling for his loss and the loneliness he must have suffered. “What…what happened to her baby?”

He stopped and looked off into the distance. “I wanted to keep him with me, but I was only fourteen, just dismissed from my post a few months earlier, and I couldn't get work without a reference. That's when I joined the army. I left the boy with a woman I knew, but a few years later, I found out she was in the workhouse, and so was he. After I…got out of the army, I fetched him out of there and found him a place in a shop. They give him room and board for helping out, running deliveries—that sort of thing. He's doing well enough. Growing up. I send money when I can. Soon he'll start an apprenticeship.” He looked down at his hands. “One day, perhaps, I'll tell him about his mother.”

She knew she probably shouldn't ask, but she did. “And his father?”

His smile became further twisted; his shoulders flexed. “Perhaps I'll meet him one day, too. I've a few things to get off my chest.”

“Yes.” She didn't know what else to say about that.

“I thought, one day when I settled, I'd bring young Rafe to live with me.” He looked up at the trees as another breeze shook the thick branches. “I'd like that.” He paused, one hand to his chest. “Ah, but for now, he's better off where he is.”