The Secret Lover (6 page)

That clearly took Honorine by surprise. For once she was speechless, her mouth open and wide blue eyes blinking. Lucie Cowplain shifted from one hip to the other, regarding her calmly, waiting for Honorine to decide.

After a moment, Honorine said softly, "
Oui, madame
."

Satisfied, Lucie Cowplain nodded her ancient head and wobbled like a crab from the dining room.

Honorine turned to Sophie, tears brimming in her eyes. "So cruel is this woman!" she whispered, and quit the dining room almost as dramatically as Lucie Cowplain.

For Sophie, Lucie Cowplain's arrival signaled a slowdown to the rhythm of her life. Worried that Ann would see her idleness as new opportunity to take her round to the drawing rooms, she was suddenly desperate for an occupation. In similar circumstance in other cities of the world, she had turned to charity work. In London, however, that seemed a rather daunting prospect, as there were more charitable organizations than one could count, and many women of the
ton
involved in all of them.

There
was
one charity that interested her above all others—the house to which Claudia had taken her when she escaped Stanwood. But Sophie could not quite bring herself to mention the house on Upper Moreland Street, much less find it. Those jarring memories were always on the fringes of her consciousness, and she wasn't very sure she wanted to resurrect them.

So she spent her time wandering Regent's Park each day, usually carrying a small picnic made up of the delectable treats she was learning to make from Lucie Cowplain. Having discovered a small pond she thought particularly pretty, she took her picnic there each day, along with a book. But more times than not, she spent her afternoon gazing across the small pond, to where a house was being constructed, fascinated by the building of it. Well, actually… she was far more interested in the men who built it than the structure itself.

Men had become something of an enigma to her; strange creatures that made her skin flush with just a look, or tingle with a careless touch. Her dreams of them,
oh Lord
… they were decadent, sensual, and so very close to satisfying as to drive her mad.
Close
, they were, but not quite.

Tormenting was more like it.

One man in particular had caught her eye—she gathered he was a foreman of sorts, as he always appeared on horseback, in a gentleman's suit of clothes. He would gracefully leap down, and arms akimbo, stalk about surveying the work done that morning. At that point, he would inevitably shed his coat and waistcoat, roll up the sleeves of his lawn shirt, and wade into the middle of the work, directing the others.

She would watch him for what seemed like hours. The man had wavy, sandy blond hair that brushed the top of his collar, impossibly wide shoulders, and narrow hips conveniently outlined for her viewing pleasure by the fabric of his tight trousers. He was truly a magnificent sight to behold from all angles, and Sophie did indeed behold him, locking his image away in the corner of her mind. He was delectable, a work of art.

Watching him move about, hammering things, carrying large timbers…

could she help it that she imagined him completely naked? It
had
been eight years since she had been so much as kissed by a man, unless one counted Arnaud, which she certainly did not. She was a woman, for heaven's sake, a living, breathing woman, and she could hardly help the churn of desire in her when this man would appear. Desire? Bloody hell, it was a slow burn. She had not felt a burn like that since…

All right, then, it was a fact that after she had escaped William, she had spent several years trying to rid her mind and body of the memory of him, and had convinced herself, completely and irrevocably, that she would never desire the touch of a man again.
Never
.

A prime example, apparently, of why one should never vow
never
, as she had been flat wrong.

It had returned, unexpected, two years ago.

She could still remember the moment. It had been in the markets of Stockholm; a gentleman with hair as white as her petticoats had walked up to the butcher and requested a flank of beef. He had stood beside Sophie, his arm lightly brushing hers, and she had felt herself begin to melt, starting somewhere deep inside and quickly spreading throughout her body. He was gone before she could breathe again, but she could not shake the surge of desire he had sparked in her.

It had happened again and again after that, and with increasing frequency, each incident seemingly more intense than the last, until she began to fear there was something quite seriously wrong with her. She longed to speak to someone about her condition of wantonness, but she could not bring herself to admit that, much to her horror, when she saw an attractive man, her gaze was immediately drawn to the square of his jaw, the breadth of his shoulders, the trim of his waist, and…
and to the
bulge between his legs
.

The man across the pond certainly was not lacking in that regard.

So Sophie watched him, pretending to read, feeling the heat creep into her skin as her gaze feasted on him, imagining him in various activities.

Lewd activities. Activities that crept into her dreams at night. And she was watching him move about one day—well, watching
it
, actually—when she suddenly realized he was
looking
at her. Looking right at her looking at him. It unnerved her so badly, her book flew halfway across the park.

She didn't return for two days.

But she could not stay away, and she finally crept back to the pond like a sinner returned to God, taking care to arrange herself just so in a way that she wouldn't appear to be looking. She thought herself quite clever.

So it was the worst sort of panic that swept through her early one bright afternoon when the foreman on horseback actually appeared on
her
side of the pond. She was reading, having lost interest in the building since
he
was not there and absently looked up at the sound of an approaching horseman.

She almost toppled right off her wrought iron bench, and in the struggle to keep that from happening, knocked her picnic basket to the ground.

She quickly bent to retrieve it, cringing when she realized the horseman had stopped.

Slowly, she sat up, clutching the basket so tightly that the food all but oozed out the wicker sides.

"Good day," he said, tipping his hat.

Mother of God, he was gorgeous
! Dumbfounded, Sophie nodded.

He smiled, flashing brilliantly white teeth, matched only by the brilliance of his pale green eyes. "Lovely day for walkabout."

Walkabout? Sophie blinked.
What was this? What did he want? Was
her face as red as Honorine's Christmas cape
?

His smile faded a bit and he shifted uneasily in his saddle. "I beg your pardon if I have imposed. It's just that I have noticed you sitting here on several occasions, and I wondered if perhaps you might know the occupants of the house at the end of the lane just there," he said, motioning behind him.

Sophie didn't actually see the house he indicated, as she had, unfortunately, caught sight of his thigh—the heat quickly spread to her chest, constricted her breathing.

"Madam?"

She jerked her gaze up to his. "Ah… ah, the house?
That
house? Ah, no.

No," she stammered.

He smiled again, absently rubbed his hand on that sculpted thigh.

"There is a particularly sturdy gutter on the perimeter of that house. I thought to inquire as to where it was made." He looked at her again with his high, well-defined cheekbones, and his square, cleanshaven jaw. She meant to speak, she truly did, but she had apparently swallowed her fat tongue.

"Ah well, then. I beg your pardon for the intrusion."

Like an imbecile, she nodded.

He tipped his hat, started to turn away, but hesitated, looking down at her.
Why? Why was he looking at her like that
? Sophie's eyes grew wide.

"Excuse me," he said politely, "but I think you are about to snap the handle of your basket."

Sophie looked down—she was holding the basket so tightly it was a wonder the lid had not exploded from it. She immediately let go, dropping the thing as if it were a red-hot coal.

"Well then. Good day," he said, and he was gone, galloping around the pond to the site of construction.

Sophie stared at the place he had vacated. Lord, oh
Lord
, he was more handsome than she could possibly have imagined, exceedingly masculine

—

And she had made a
complete
cake of herself!

She abruptly stood up, and in something of a panic, grabbed up her basket and book, the basket once again clasped tightly to her chest. Before she realized it, she was walking toward Gloucester Gate. When she reached the crowded thoroughfare, she felt a pall of confusion come over her. Where did she go? What corner of the earth could she find where the humiliation would not swallow her whole? She had sat there like a fool, unable to speak, staring at him as if she had never seen a man before!

Augh
!

"To Marleybone! All bound for Marleybone!"

She jerked around; a hackney driver motioned to the cab of his coach. "

'Ere you are, miss. Up to Marleybone, if you're of a mind."

Yes. To Marleybone. Yes, yes, yes. Sophie nodded eagerly, fished in her reticule for two crowns, and handed them up to the driver before hoisting herself into the coach and squeezing onto a bench next to a gentleman who was in desperate want of a bath. When the coach lurched forward, she gripped her things tightly in her lap and wondered where in heaven's name she thought she was going now. Anywhere but Regent's Park, where the eyes of a stranger had melted her into a warm mess of muck.

Two hours later, Sophie stood in front of a small town-house with green shutters. She couldn't be entirely sure, but she thought it was the townhouse she was looking for. She peered up at the windows, dredging her memory for any sign that it was the right one.

It looked to be the same one, but honestly, she had come to it under a cloak of darkness and snow. And deadly fear. She had left much the same way, in the company of Julian, too frightened of the journey ahead to look to the right or the left. And it wasn't as if she had ever ventured from the house in the two weeks she had stayed here—it was, after all, in a part of London that was unfamiliar to her.

And there had been the ugly, telltale bruise on her jaw.

Sophie sighed, glanced up the road to where Upper Moreland intersected Essex Road. What did it matter, really? It had been eight years ago and she was a long way from those days—they were nothing more than a forgotten, hazy memory, an occasional bad dream. And now, she was a long way from
Maison de Fortier
. She ought to go back before they began to worry about her. This was silly—even if it
were
the same house, there was no one left here now who had been there then. Except perhaps Mrs.

Conner—

"Miss? Is there something you'd be wanting?"

Startled, Sophie whirled around. A woman had appeared on the steps of the house with the green shutters and smiled warmly at Sophie as she swept the top step.

"Ah… no. No, thank you, I was really only… ah, I was merely—"

"You look as if you could use a spot of tea, luv."

Tea
. How delicious that sounded. She hadn't eaten a bite since early morning, having forgotten her little picnic the moment she had seen the startling green eyes of the foreman. She was famished, she realized; still, one could hardly impose on a stranger. "I… I beg your pardon, madam. I should not have been lurking about, but I thought perhaps… that perhaps it was the same house a good friend once occupied."

"Does it indeed?" Still smiling, the woman moved down and swept the next step. "Perhaps it is. What was your friend's name?"

A jolt of self-consciousness seized her; Sophie unthinkingly twisted the gold bracelet around her wrist. "Umm… her name? Her name was ah, Mrs. Conner. Doreen Conner. But I've probably the wrong house," she added quickly.

The woman paused in her sweeping, stacked both hands atop her broom. "You've the right house," she said gently. "But Mrs. Conner is no longer with us."

"Oh." Sophie twisted her bracelet again and glanced nervously toward Essex Road. She should simply have asked Claudia where Mrs. Conner had gone, but it was so hard to mention those days aloud, especially to her family. She still felt the shame she had brought them all.

"She died this winter just past."

Died
? That announcement shocked her—Doreen Conner had seemed so…
invincible
! "She died?" she echoed weakly.

The woman smiled sympathetically, as if she somehow could not believe it, either. "She lay ill for a very long time before the fever took her."

It was impossible to imagine Mrs. Conner—who had stood exactly where the woman was standing now that bitterly cold day—could be ill.

The woman had been an absolute beacon of strength, a rock in the maelstrom in which Sophie had found herself—

"How 'bout that tea, then, luv?"

Blinking through the fog of her memory, Sophie glanced up. The woman was still smiling so warmly that she could almost feel it shining through her. "My name is Sophie. Sophie Dane. I am…" She faltered.
Who was she

?

"Nancy. Nancy Harvey," the woman responded, and held out her hand to Sophie, just as Doreen Conner had done that night eight years ago.

When Sophie returned to
Maison de Fortier
that afternoon, she found Roland in the foyer, staring up at the immense chandelier that hung from the crown dome above. He continued to stare at it while he informed Sophie she was wanted in the orangery.

"Why?" she asked, peering up at the chandelier, too, curious as to what he was seeing.

"This, I do not know," he responded, and with a heavy sigh, he shook his head and wandered off in the opposite direction of the orangery, muttering to himself.