Swan's Grace (12 page)

"Don't look at me like that, Grayson Hawthorne," she warned.

"What look is that?" His mischievous smile grew heated.

"That…
manly
look."

"You mean this?" He set her back a bit, his dark-eyed gaze traveling down to where their bodies nearly touched.

"You're impossible." Frantically she tried shoring up her wall. She refused to feel anything, and she tried to step away.

Grayson chuckled. "I'm not ready to let you go, sweetheart. We haven't finished our dance—or our discussion. As I recall, you were just telling me how manly I am."

The words surprised her. She almost laughed at the thought that he was toying with her. Grayson Hawthorne playing the cad was an event to remember. But she didn't laugh. Instead she decided on a new tack sure to have this proper man escorting her back to the table so fast they'd leave scuff marks on the parquet floor.

Slowly she ran the tip of her tongue along her upper lip. "Is that what you would like me to do? Tell you how manly you are?"

She moved closer and his eyes darkened.

"Would you like me to show you right here?" she challenged, her voice soft and sultry. "On the dance floor?"

His eyes never wavered from hers, and she was certain he was considering her offer. But he surprised her with his words.

"Is this how it will always be between us? Each pushing the other, playing chicken to see who will back down first?"

"Sounds like my kind of game. Why don't we try it? I'd be interested to see who would actually win."

He touched her cheek, his finger tracing the line of her jaw as he forced her to look at him. "I'm not interested in battles, Sophie. What do you say we start over?"

She was quiet for a moment; then she pulled back, the dance floor becoming crowded around them. "That's the difference between you and me. As far as I'm concerned, it's the battles that make life interesting."

"There is more to life than battles."

"Like what?"

"A home and family."

She glanced at her father dancing with Patrice. "Perhaps."

"And children."

Her eyes shot back to Grayson. "So it's true! You are looking for a wife."

He hesitated. "What if I said I am?"

"I'd laugh."

She felt him stiffen and she smiled.

"I hardly think my marital pursuits are cause for amusement."

"True. And based on the considerable amount of gossip I've been hearing, there are an ample number of mamas anxious to bring their daughters to your attention. Tell me that you aren't seriously considering Monica Redmond."

"Who said anything about Miss Redmond?"

"No one. But I saw you talking to her earlier, and even I've heard that she's looking for a husband. Furthermore, I have been led to believe that you are considered something of a catch"—she glanced at him with a coy smile—"even if you are destitute and forced to live in my house."

He bared his teeth. "I hardly call paying large sums of money to reside at the Hotel Vendome reason to say that I am living
at your
house."

"You might not be sleeping under my roof, but you spend nearly the rest of your day at Swan's Grace."

"My office is there," he stated.

"True, but it seems a silly place to work. And the few papers I've seen on your desk hardly seem worthwhile."

His eyes narrowed and his features went hard. "You've gone through my belongings?"

"Of course I have," she stated, unable to keep her lips from quirking. "What did you think, that it was above me to search through your drawers, given the chance? Though I was hoping to find something of some interest. Like some hapless soul's divorcement papers, or better yet, a tantalizingly juicy lawsuit. Maybe even an arrest warrant of sorts. Surely even your clients get tossed in jail."

He stood like stone, his face a disbelieving mask.

Sophie chuckled, relieved to be the one causing discomfort.
Finally
. "You're upset."

"I hardly think
upset
covers what I feel."

She bit her lip to keep from laughing, then looked at him through lowered lashes. "If it will make you feel better, I'll let you come over and search through my drawers."

She drew the last word out, letting it roll off her tongue provocatively. She expected him to sputter, and if she were lucky he might even turn red.

But he offered little more than a flicker of dumbfounded surprise before his face washed clean of expression.

A clever man, she mused. He was smooth and able to play the game better than she had thought, she realized when his hand drifted low, slipping to that place on her gown under which those very crudely called "drawers" circled her waist.

In the next minute he danced her through the open doorway and out onto the flagstone terrace, cold, clear moonlight filling the blackened sky.

"I think you actually
are
trying to get into my drawers, Mr. Hawthorne," she said with mock primness. "But if you think it will be that easy, you've been dealing with the wrong kind of women these last many years."

"Or you've been dealing with the wrong kind of men."

She laughed appreciatively despite herself.

But then his chiseled face grew serious. No more heated smiles or sensual grazes over skin. It was the face she remembered, the face of the young boy she had known a lifetime, dark and stormy.

"Did you really not remember the talking machine?" he asked without warning.

The words surprised her, and her head tilted in confusion at the sudden change in subject. "The talking machine?" she replied, her heart beginning to pound.

"Yes, Megan Robertson's gramophone."

Her heart skipped and she felt vulnerable, just as she promised herself she would never be again.

"Do you really not remember what you said about me on that machine?"

She stared at him, then couldn't help asking, "Do you remember?"

"You said you loved me." He said the words with force, almost as a challenge.

She looked away, her mind drifting back as it had so many times this night. "I believe my exact words were that I loved you. Forever. I loved you with all my heart. And one day I would be your wife."

She turned back to him and saw something she couldn't name in his eyes. Regret, need?

She felt them both, and hated them each in turn. Because forever was a long time, and sometimes things happened that got in the way.

"This has gone on long enough. Sophie has to be told."

Patrice's smooth brow furrowed with agitation as she paced across her husband's study, her dark coil of hair shining in the muted light. It was late, the party was over, and the guests had gone home. But Patrice still looked dazzling and vibrant in her shimmering gown.

"Now, darling," Conrad said, looking every one of his nearly fifty-two years, "I've talked to Grayson several times. But I can't push him. We have to let him do this in his own time. And he will do it. I'm certain. Besides, there is time enough to tell her. She has barely been here a week. Even I see now that I expected things to move too fast."

"They can't move fast enough, as far as I'm concerned. In the time she has been here, she has managed to gain the attention of every eligible male in Boston. I can't tell you the line of men who begged me for an introduction tonight. Of course I didn't comply," she said with a sniff. "I only brought Niles Prescott to her attention."

Conrad tensed at the mention of the man, and thought of his first wife. He hadn't wanted to invite him at all. Why dredge up old wounds? But Patrice had been adamant.

"And do you know what that daughter of yours had the audacity to do?"

He sighed.

"She turned down an invitation to play at the Music Hall! Good Lord, she travels all over the world performing, but she won't play in her own hometown." Her cool eyes turned heated. "These are the people who supported her and nurtured her along the way. Not that pack of impoverished, overbred peasant stock who call themselves European royalty."

"Actually, it was her mother who nurtured Sophie's talent, not Boston, and not Europe, for that matter—at least not until recently. If I'm not mistaken, her first concert in Europe wasn't a success. I'm not sure what made the difference."

Patrice gave her husband an impatient look, then resumed her pacing. "Regardless, she is successful now, and Niles said if Sophie performed, the show would be the premier event of the year. There would be parties leading up to the concert. Parties and dinners. It would be a social coup."

"For whom?" he asked with surprising acumen.

"For me!"

She stopped abruptly, her gaze meeting her husband's; then she ran a jeweled hand down the bodice of her expensive gown and drew a deep breath. "Regardless of what you think about who did or did not support her, Sophie owes Boston, dear."

Turning his gaze away, Conrad thought of his only child by his first wife.

He had loved Genevieve as a husband should. But before she died, her days had been absorbed in Sophie and her music, with little time for a husband or having a larger family.

Not long after Genevieve's death he had married again. There was a significant age difference between
Conrad
and his new bride, but she was a stunning woman who captivated him, making him feel younger than his years. They had three lovely daughters who were sweet and… simple in the best kind of way.
Thank God for that
.

Sophie was anything but simple.

As a child she had lived for music. As an adult she still lived for music. But as he had told Grayson, it was time she settled down. As her father, it was his responsibility to see that she did—no matter what he had to do to achieve that goal.

"I think it's best she turned Niles down," he said. "I don't think she should play the cello any longer, at least not in public. She is a grown woman now. It's time she turned her attention to a husband and children."

Patrice whirled around. "Fine!" she exclaimed, her blue eyes like fire. "But if that's the case, then we need to stop beating around the bush and tell her about the betrothal. It's time, Conrad, long past time."

A knock sounded on the door. When Conrad turned the knob, he found his best friend's son.

"Grayson, I thought you would have been long gone by now," Conrad said in surprise.

Grayson raised a questioning brow and glanced at Patrice as he entered, then looked back at Conrad. "I was asked to meet you here."

Confusion swept through Conrad before a sharp dread began to fill him, and he turned his gaze on his wife. "What is this about, Patrice?" he asked, his tone exacting.

"I told you, husband, this has gone on long enough."

Grayson's eyes narrowed dangerously, and he brought his arms up and crossed them on his broad chest.

Grayson Hawthorne had grown to be a man of great wealth and power. He had a reputation for scrupulous fairness, but also for unmatched ruthlessness when someone crossed him. A person could see the power of him in the way he moved, the way he spoke, even in the fine, chiseled lines of his dark countenance.

Conrad tugged at his rumpled dinner jacket, feeling a flicker of concern caused by the younger man's hard stare.

"What has gone on long enough?" Grayson inquired, his voice deceptively soft.

As soon as he asked the question, Grayson saw Conrad's unease. He also saw the flare of pleasure in Patrice's eyes. Grayson knew right away that she was up to no good.

Annoyance flickered through him as he came farther into the room and shut the door.

Conrad glanced nervously at his wife before turning back to Grayson. "Patrice and I were just discussing your betrothal."

A fire burned on the hearth, reflecting on fine oil paintings and bronze sculpture. After doing some digging into Conrad's financial status, Grayson had learned that Conrad's finances were not as healthy as they once were.

"What are you waiting for, son? The longer we wait the harder it will be to tell her. You're not having second thoughts about this, are you?" Conrad asked, his voice growing guarded.

Grayson no longer doubted his intent to marry the man's daughter. Regardless of the fact that she was headstrong and had made it clear she had little interest in being a proper lady, he couldn't give her up.

He stood in Conrad's study, surrounded by bookcases filled with volumes of gold-embossed, finely tooled leather. When he was young he had read every single book in his father's library. He had finished the last one the week before he was sent out on his own.

It had been those stories, frequently, that had helped him through the long nights in Cambridge, with men shouting and cursing each other in the dank hallways, fighting in the streets. Grayson had gone over the tales of Odysseus and Julius Caesar in his head, their journeys and successes, to forget the sounds.

Within a few short months, however, he hadn't needed the stories. He had learned to fend for himself. Like Odysseus. Like Caesar. He had learned to use his fists, fighting off bigger men, some wild, unrecognizable emotion surging inside him that gave him more strength than his sixteen-year-old body normally would have had.

By the time he turned seventeen, everyone close by knew to steer clear of him. It had taken years after he had finished Harvard Law to smooth over those jagged edges. Long years of ruthless control to lose the wildness. Because of that, everyone had left him alone. Everyone except Sophie.

Her baskets eventually gave way to letters and small trinkets. A shirt or sweater. Always arriving when he needed it most. Those gifts had been a mainstay in his life, along with scraping to get by and obsessive studying.

But one day, the year she turned eighteen, the gifts and letters had ceased. He had learned shortly afterward that she had left Boston. Foolishly, he had been disappointed that she had left without a word to him. Disappointed and oddly alone. For so long Sophie had been such a part of his life. Then suddenly she was gone.

Whenever he felt that he desired her at the deepest level, he turned away from the thought. He wanted her, yes, but he didn't need her. He merely wanted to make Sophie Wentworth his own. Or so he told himself.

"I'm not having second thoughts," he said to Conrad. "But we've got to give her the chance to get to know me again. We've been over this."

"Damn it man, she's known you her whole life."

"True, but until last Sunday she had seen me only once in five years, and that was at the birthday gala Patrice had for you."

Women had wanted Grayson for as long as he could remember. He had never given it much thought until recently—until Sophie.

He was no fool. He wanted a willing bride in his bed. And because of that, he realized, he would have to take the time to court her. Amazingly, he found himself looking forward to the idea.

Besides which, Grayson reasoned, with the arrogance of a man used to getting what he wanted, he was certain he could win Sophie over. He just needed time.

"She's not as much trouble as she seems," Conrad said.

Grayson stared at the man with disbelief.

"Okay," Conrad conceded. "So she's a little troublesome."

"A little?"

"Damn it, Sophie needs someone to keep her out of trouble," Conrad blurted out.

Grayson's mind absorbed the man's tone more than the words. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

Conrad grew uncomfortable and studied a small daguerreotype on his desk of Sophie holding her cello. She was young in the picture, her mixture of pride and defiance clear even in the murky brown-and-white tint.

"No," he finally said. "But you remember Sophie and her escapades." The older man ran a hand through his thinning hair, seeming tired and resigned. "She makes everything into a drama. Always has."

Grayson was quickly being reminded of how true this was. Nothing was easy with Sophie.

"So you can see why I want her married to someone with a level head on his shoulders, someone I can trust to keep my daughter out of harm's way." Conrad shrugged. "The sooner the better."

"I think we should tell her tonight," Patrice interjected, her look challenging.

Grayson barely afforded the woman a glance before he returned his attention to her husband. "No, Conrad. Not yet."

The statement shimmered through the room, hanging in the air as the quiet command it was, each man eyeing the other. "As I've already said, let her get to know me again. There is time enough before she needs to learn about the betrothal. Then I will be the one to tell her." Grayson's gaze pinned the other man to the spot. "Are we clear on this?"

The words were barely out of his mouth when another knock sounded on the door. Both men turned not to the entrance, but to Patrice, who raised her chin defiantly.

"Come in," she called out.

Conrad leaped for the door, his gaze skewering his wife. "Don't you dare say a—"

But the door opened before he could get there.

"Father," Sophie said, entering into the room with a fond smile. "Thank you so much for the party."

She meant every word. While the event hadn't turned out exactly as she had hoped, she was grateful that he had tried. And in the end there had been more ups than downs, leaving her with a shimmer of excitement running through her veins.

Conrad flushed red. "I'm glad you enjoyed yourself, dear. But in truth, I can't take credit. It was your stepmother's doing."

Sophie felt a childish flicker of bitterness sweep over her at the thought of the woman, but she covered it quickly and turned. "Thank you, Patrice."

The resentment fled entirely then, and was replaced by nothing more complicated than end-of-the-night excitement. "It's been years since I have seen so many people I knew from my youth." She laughed gaily, sweeping through the room as though she were still dancing.