Swan's Grace (9 page)

Grayson had picked himself up, but when he headed for his mother, his father had cut him off. "Only a baby needs coddling from his mother."

In the end he had washed his cuts in the upstairs lavatory alone, tears streaking his grimy face, his meal sent up by his father as if he had done something wrong. His cuts and scrapes had healed. And he had never cried again.

Grayson didn't understand the strange pounding of his heart, or why he suddenly remembered the incident—why memories were wrapping around him. A father's duty was to teach his son to be a man, to be strong and powerful. Grayson had become both.

Suddenly he wondered why he was still there. He didn't need this; he didn't want this. Outrageous behavior, traveling the world with an entourage of hangers-on, up to her elbows in dirt and muck from an unknown dog that was sure to die. Once and for all he saw so clearly that this was not what he wanted in a wife.

He wanted an ordered world, important work, a warm, calm home to return to at night. He wanted the life he had spent over fifteen years building.

But the pounding didn't stop and he turned away sharply, tossing wood into the fire with more force than was necessary.

When there was nothing more they could do, Margaret and Sophie leaned back against the wall. Margaret left, and when Sophie told him she didn't need anything else, he stared at her for a long time as he told himself to leave. Forced himself to leave.

With measured steps he returned to the hotel, forcing his mind to a careful blank. He concentrated on the small bed, the cramped space. He had to use the small basin of water in his room when the shared bath down the hall was full.

He grimaced before his lips flattened to a straight line. Memories swelled of the earlier days in the garret, when he had faced the shock of dingy hallways and shared baths with rusty streams of trickling water, and unscrupulous men who would have as easily stolen his razor as used it to slit his throat. He'd been thankful that at sixteen, he hadn't needed a razor all that often.

He searched for a laugh, but found nothing close to humor.

When he went to the small hotel wardrobe to change, Grayson realized that he was down to his last pair of trousers and an older shirt.

Frustration snaked through him, though for so much more than lack of clothes. Too many memories. His life suddenly felt out of control.

The situation needed to be remedied, and soon. But what did he want? What did he really want to do about Sophie and the betrothal? He had no answers.

He had always been a man of quick decision. Once made, he moved forward. But since Sophie had arrived, one minute he couldn't wait to marry her, the next he wanted her out of his life.

When he once again left the Vendome, he was intent on going to his men's club. He refused to think—of Sophie, of the dog, of the past.

But when he should have hailed a hansom cab to take him downtown, he turned instead toward Swan's Grace. Like a moth drawn to a flame.

He found Sophie still tending the dog, and instead of continuing on to his club, Grayson went to his office in Swan's Grace to work. But his concentration was fractured. Every few minutes he found himself standing in the basement doorway.

Sophie sat in a shaft of sunlight that streamed in from a small, high window. He watched, unable to look away, as she touched the dog, barely, softly. Her fingers drifted across a patch of fur on its brow that was unmarked by violence. She gave no thought to hurting herself, no thought to hurting the fingers she depended on to play the cello with such beauty.

So quietly that Grayson couldn't hear, she whispered to the animal. But he understood. Somehow he knew. She truly believed she could heal this dog. This stray. This battered soul that was beyond repair.

He came farther into the room. Sophie glanced back at him, her eyes filled with silent question. He met her gaze with determination as he pulled out a ladder-back chair and sat down beside her. For one brief, fleeting moment, she smiled, the gesture tired but appreciative. Then she turned back to the dog.

Grayson didn't leave her again.

It was late in the day when Sophie's stepmother came down the stairs.

"Sophie, are you here?"

Sophie turned and Grayson rose.

Patrice Wentworth was undeniably a beautiful woman, much younger than her husband, not much older than Sophie herself. She stood in the doorway, dressed in a deep blue taffeta gown that matched her eyes, and a rich blue-and-brown-paisley shawl. Her hair was the color of midnight, her skin as white and pure as a bowl of cream. Grayson had only been around her once before she married Conrad Wentworth. But since that marriage she had become a jewel of Boston society, attending all of the city's finest events.

Patrice grimaced as she sidestepped a pile of used towels, her beaded reticule swinging on her wrist. "Good heavens, what are you doing down here?"

No greetings, no hugs.

"Hello, Patrice," Sophie responded, a dark, painful look flaring in her eyes. But then it was gone and only a smile remained.

"Did you bring the girls with you?" she asked.

Patrice's footsteps rang daintily on the stone floor as she approached, clutching her shawl as if it were a shield against the dimness of the basement. "No, I didn't bring the girls— Oh, Mr. Hawthorne, I didn't realize you were here."

"Hello, Mrs. Wentworth," he offered with a formal nod of his head.

The woman smoothed her hair, and her decorously painted lips parted on a beautiful smile. "I haven't seen you in ages."

"Not since you called at Hawthorne House for my mother," he replied, his tone cold and clipped. Patrice Wentworth wasn't his favorite person.

"Ah, yes. Your mother." She seemed to lose interest. "How is she?"

"She is well. Though recently she was a bit under the weather."

"You can't mean it." Her brow rose in surprise. "I could have sworn I saw Emmaline just Monday." She smiled and sighed. "She looked beautiful in a gown of peach silk with a simple inlay of Flanders lace, and a wonderful cape of winter-white wool with fur trim."

His brow furrowed with confusion. "You saw my mother on Monday?"

Patrice placed her gloved hand against her midriff, pulling herself up. "Oh, yes. She looked stunning. She couldn't possibly have been ill."

"You must be mistaken. She was at home."

He could feel Sophie's questioning gaze on him. But he couldn't keep the hard pounding in his mind contained.

"Well," Patrice considered, "I thought it was her." She shook her head and laughed. "Though perhaps not."

She turned her attention to Sophie. "The girls couldn't come, as they are much too busy with all the things young ladies do." She stopped abruptly. "Though I always forget that you were too busy with your music to become involved in the… simpler aspects of a young lady's life."

Sophie tensed, he saw it.

"You were always playing, playing, playing." She eyed Sophie. "Of course, my girls don't have a bit of talent when it comes to musical instruments. And you have so much. I sometimes wonder who is luckier. You with your talent or my girls with their brimming engagement calendars." She
tsked
. "I suspect that you consider the trade-off well worth it. Especially now that we've all seen the article that ran in the magazine."

"You saw it?"

"Why, yes."

"Did Father see it, too?"

"Well, of course he has seen it." Then nothing else.

Grayson watched as red flared in Sophie's cheeks.

"What did he think?" she asked, as if she couldn't help wanting to know.

Patrice smiled in a way that was clear she knew of her stepdaughter's frustration. "You'll have to ask him that yourself, dear. I would never be so presumptuous as to speak on his behalf."

"Of course not," she responded, the words tight.

"Enough about the article. I've come to make sure you will be at the party. I understand that you had words with your father last night." She shook her head daintily. "Not that I'm surprised. You always were strong willed. But the party is set and there is no turning back. And what would people think if our guests of honor weren't there?"

"
Guests
of honor?" Sophie asked, confused.

Grayson caught Patrice in a hard glare.

"Guest, guests. The more the merrier, I always say."

Patrice glanced over at Grayson and raised a brow defiantly. "You are going to be there, too, Mr. Hawthorne?"

"Yes," he answered tightly.

But Patrice hardly seemed to notice as she gasped, her delicate features blanching at the sight on the table. "Good God! What is wrong with that dog?"

Sophie looked at the animal. "She is hurt."

Patrice's smiles were gone. "Why am I not surprised that you would be down in the basement tending a bloody animal?" Her eyes flashed annoyance.

They stared at each other, neither speaking, until Patrice turned away and hastened from the room, a finely wrought handkerchief held to her mouth.

As soon as the door slammed at the top of the stairs, Sophie seemed to deflate.

"Nice to see you, too, Patrice," she said to the empty stairway.

Grayson stared at the closed door before turning back to Sophie. Her nose was red, her chignon long having fallen about her neck, but all he knew in that moment was that he wanted her. To hold her, to taste her. To brush his fingers along her body to make her want him as much as he wanted her.

He wanted her with an intensity that left him aching like a schoolboy. An intensity that filled him now as he looked at her.

"Sophie," Grayson said, reining in his body with ironclad control, "you need to get some rest. You've been at this for hours."

"No," she whispered, touching that one unbattered spot on the dog's brow.

Grayson grasped her shoulders, gently turning her to face him. With the palm of one large hand he smoothed back her hair from her face. "Let the dog go, Sophie."

She met his gaze, her eyes growing obstinate. "No! She needs me. I am going to save her."

Then she pulled away.

Her words circled in his mind.
I am going to save her
. Grayson didn't believe the dog would last until morning.

But sometime later, with Sophie nearly asleep in her chair, the dog opened its eyes.

Grayson grew still. Sophie didn't notice. For one long, solitary moment, he sat in the room, unable to move, just staring at the dog, his heart beating hard. Then, more gently than he had done anything in his life, he reached out. With visible effort, the dog tentatively sniffed his fingers and licked his hand.

A tremor raced down Grayson's spine, and the memory of Sophie's baskets of food shot through his mind, her childlike attempts to save him much like her attempts to save this dog.

His hand was unsteady when he placed his fingers to that spot on the dog's brow that Sophie had touched so often. "Do you think she can save me, too?" he whispered into the quiet room.

A low noise sounded deep in Grayson's throat as he leaned back, dragging his hand over his face. He would never let anyone know of the fear and emptiness he had felt when his father sent him away. It hadn't been ambition that made him succeed, rather the desperate desire never to be hungry and cold again. Or afraid. He would never let anyone know that to this day there were nights when he awoke in a cold sweat, the remembered feel of rats brushing against his feet making his skin burn. And the loneliness. It had been a desperate ache that competed with his hunger.

He had moved beyond that. Today he had food at his fingertips, money in the bank. He had cut off emotion. He had succeeded.

But now, for reasons he didn't understand, the past had been dredged up and he had done nothing but remember, turning back the clock to that time when he thought he wouldn't survive.

After a moment, he drew in a deep, steadying breath, then touched Sophie's cheek, uneasy with all that he felt. When she jerked fully awake and looked at him in confusion, he didn't speak, only motioned to the dog.

Sophie gasped as she pushed the hair out of her face. The dog whimpered and tried to wag its tail—barely a movement, but enough.

With that, Sophie's tears spilled over. She threw her arms around Grayson and kissed him full on the mouth. "Oh, Grayson! We saved her," she whispered before carefully burrowing her face in the dog's neck.

Abruptly he pushed up from his seat. Sophie called out to him, but he didn't stop. Taking the stairs, he didn't think about where he was. He only wanted away.

He went straight up to the bedroom that he had made his own. But the unexpected sight of Sophie's belongings mixed with his stopped him cold. As if they already lived together. His best Hessian boots were still where he had left them before she arrived. Her sheer night wrapper was flung with careless disregard over the back of the chair, papers scattered in a jumble across his desk.

The bed was unmade, drawers half closed, her undergarments tossed in with his. The mess sent a flash of heat through him. Anger, he told himself, denying that the intimacy of it all affected him in any other way.

He knew he should return to the hotel or his club. Maybe even Lucas's gentleman's establishment for a stiff shot of brandy. But he knew he wouldn't. Shutting the door, he yanked off his shirt and strode to the deep closet that held his clothes. This time he wasn't surprised when he found her gowns lined up next to his suits, soft velvets and satiny silks next to crisp, pressed wool.

He'd had many women over the years. But he never stayed overnight. When he got up in the morning, he preferred to be alone. He had never woken to the intimacy of a woman next to him. The casualness of her clothes tangled with his. He was from a house full of men—their mother off-limits in most meaningful ways.

Forcefully Grayson emptied his mind, choosing a new shirt, then tossing it on the bed before he went into the private bath and turned the sink knob. Within minutes steaming hot water gushed into the basin. With a minimum of ceremony, he mixed up a lather, pulled out his finest razor, ran it across the strop attached to the wall, then started to shave. The motion cleared his mind, brought an ease to him. An order. The way things should be.