“Indeed?” Her brows rose. “My own family are known for their strong will and determination.”
“The irresistible force meeting the immovable object,” he drawled.
“A paradox of Chinese origin, in that there cannot be an irresistible force if an immovable object also exists.”
Magnus found himself smiling yet again. “You are an interesting woman, Sophia.” He could not imagine having a conversation such as this with any other woman.
Lucy, he knew, would merely have given him one of her cold looks if he had even attempted to talk to her about anything other than the latest fashion and the society events with which she had filled her life. Two subjects Magnus had absolutely no interest in. He had a feeling, despite her elegance of appearance, that Sophia would not appreciate discussing such frivolous subjects either.
The other women Magnus had briefly known were not interested in conversation at all, let alone one as entertaining as this one.
“Dine with Clarissa and me here tomorrow evening?” he pressed again.
“Oh, very well,” Sophia snapped. “But only so that Clarissa and I can get to know each other better before she is sent off to school in a strange town.”
Magnus did not care why Sophia agreed to have dinner with them tomorrow evening, only that she did.
In the meantime, he had every intention of learning everything of interest that he could about Miss Sophia Marchment before they met again tomorrow evening.
Chapter 3
“Weston kissed you?” Royston made no attempt to hide his surprise as he and Sophia sat together in the private parlor at Royston House later than afternoon.
Her cheeks warmed at this reaction. “I was not aware of being so unattractive that it would shock you so deeply to learn that a man had kissed me.”
“You are not unattractive at all,” the earl assured, one of his long legs draped across the arm of the chair he sat in. “Nor was I questioning Weston’s taste in women. What does surprise me is that he kissed you and you did not object.”
“I did not say that,” she drawled.
Green eyes danced with merriment. “What did you do to the poor bastard?”
Sophia held back a smile. “Let us just say that I believe the duke might find any function to do with a certain part of his body to be extremely painful for the next few days.”
Lord Robert Huntley, the Earl of Royston, let out a raucous laugh. “Holy hell, you kneed the illustrious Duke of Weston in the nuts!”
“Exactly as you taught me to do, yes,” she confirmed dryly.
Unless one was looking for the likeness, it was unlikely anyone would actually connect the two of them as belonging to the same family. Robert was dark-haired and green-eyed, whereas Sophia was blonde and blue-eyed, and yet the two of them were cousins, Sophia’s mother having been sister to Robert’s mother. It was not, however, a family connection either of them ever made public nowadays. At Sophia’s request. Her relationship with her own family was now such that the less she had to do with any of them, the better. Robert was the exception, the two of them having been best friends since childhood.
He had also been the only member of her family to stand by her during the scandal ten years ago.
“The duke believes you to be my lover, by the way,” Sophia informed him dismissively.
“Does he, indeed.” Robert mused, completely unperturbed at the misapprehension. “And minx that you are, I bet you did not contradict him of that belief?”
She shrugged. “It did not stop him from kissing me.”
Robert scowled. “Which in itself is a bloody insult.”
“You do have something of a reputation, darling.” The two of them had grown up teasing each other in this way, having been born and lived on neighboring estates in Gloucestershire. Robert’s age of twenty-nine put them only two years apart.
“Deliberately nurtured, I assure you.” He now nodded. “That rakish reputation keeps the old biddies of the marriage mart off my back, and none of the respectable matrons want their little darling married to a rake like me.”
Sophia chuckled. “And what happens when you meet and fall in love and her family disapproves of you?”
Her cousin shrugged broad shoulders. “In that case, I have no doubt the Royston fortune will be all the persuasion necessary.”
“You have grown to be a cynic, Robert.”
“A realist,” he corrected. “It’s all a load of nonsense, anyway. The rich marrying the even richer. The titled marrying for a more prestigious title. Or a mix of the two. I find the whole thing quite sickening, especially after what happened to you—”
“I would rather we did not discuss what happened to me,” Sophia cut in firmly.
“Zachary was supposed to be my friend, damn it—”
“I cannot and will not talk about the past, Robert,” she insisted. “It serves no purpose, nor do I hold you in the least responsible for the Marquis of Harrogate’s actions, friend of yours or otherwise.”
“Well, he certainly ain’t my friend now!”
“Robert, please.”
Her cousin seemed to fight an inner battle with himself before he quirked a teasing brow in her direction. “Shall we talk about the haughty Duke of Weston’s bruised nuts instead?”
“No,” she laughed.
“I bet they and his cock are big, though, hmm?” He was the one to laugh when Sophia winced at his indelicacy. “The man’s a positive behemoth. Stands to reason everything would be in proportion.”
Sophia had every reason, judging by the feel of the hard and throbbing cock pressed against her abdomen earlier today, to know that everything about Magnus Spencer was indeed in proportion to his incredible height and breadth.
She stood. “I shall not stay and listen to your personal and inappropriate remarks about the duke another moment longer,” she dismissed. “I will see you this evening at dinner, when it is to be hoped you will find more genteel subjects to talk about.”
“I do not believe we have yet finished discussing all about the Duke of Weston or his nuts,” he called after her as she left.
“I have,” she came back with finality.
Truth be told, Sophia was loath to talk to Robert of the Duke of Weston in any greater detail than she already had. Not because there was nothing to tell, but because the unprecedented feelings the duke had evoked in her earlier today had unnerved her. They were certainly not to be shared with Robert, even good friend to her that he was and always had been. There were some things a cousin did not need to know.
Sophia had spent the past ten years behind a barrier that allowed her to avoid any form of intimacy with all gentlemen. Something which had been all too easy to accomplish when she had moved to Miss Marchment’s School for Young Ladies in Portsmouth, first as a teacher and then as headmistress these past three years.
She knew the mechanics of what took place between men and women, and made sure her girls were conversant with all of them, including how to defend themselves from unwanted attentions, if necessary. She also ensured those young ladies might take their own pleasure in the marital bed. But she only taught the girls those things so that none of them ever suffered from the same ignorance as she once had.
Magnus Spencer gave not a care earlier for whether or not Sophia kept a barrier over her emotions when he took her in his arms and demolished her resistance with a single kiss. Leaving Sophia not only shocked but vulnerable in a way she found decidedly uncomfortable.
Then why had she agreed to have dinner with him and his daughter tomorrow evening when it would, Sophia knew, have been far safer for her to have kept her distance from that overpowering gentleman?
Curiosity.
Because Sophia had lived as celibate as a monk—or nun—for the past ten years. Now, for the first time, she had not only enjoyed being kissed and held in a man’s arms, but she had also experienced being aroused by that gentleman.
An arousal she still felt.
Even now, as
she studied her appearance in the cheval mirror after undressing and taking down her hair in preparation for her bath before dinner, she could see her breasts looked plumper than usual, the nipples red and engorged as they peeped out from between the golden strands of her long hair. Between her thighs felt not only hot but also slick, the lips there swollen and sensitive.
It was that same curiosity which caused her to now place the palm of her hand on her mound before stroking two fingers through the wetness coating her nether lips.
She gave a low groan at the pleasure she felt as those fingers stroked over and around the erect nubbin above. The clitoris, as she informed the girls at her school, was one of the centers of a woman’s pleasure. There were others, of course, the nipples and the spongy cluster of nerves inside a woman’s channel.
But the clitoris, Sophia had told them, was like a small penis, and could be manipulated and stroked to give pleasure in the same manner as a man’s cock. She also warned her pupils that most society husbands had no interest in even finding that organ of a woman’s pleasure or in whether or not their wife attained release from their coupling, but there was no reason why they should not provide that climax for themselves.
As Sophia now did.
She watched herself in the mirror between lowered lids as she caressed her clitoris, sweeping her hair back over her shoulders so she could pull and pluck on her nipples in turn, now fully aware of the deepening slickness between her thighs and the way its sweet and floral perfume clung to her fingers as she stroked them through that cream.
The pleasure she felt was…extraordinary.
A pleasure that was increased when Sophia closed her eyes and imagined it was Magnus Spencer’s long and elegant fingers tweaking her nipples and stroking between her thighs.
So much so that Sophia felt how her already slick clitoris now swelled and grew harder still, utterly sensitive to each touch and stroke. She grasped one nipple between fingers and thumb, breathing hard as she now pulled on that nipple in the same fast rhythm as she manipulated her clitoris.
“Yes,” she groaned achingly. “God, yes, Magnus! Harder! Faster! Magnus!” Pleasure exploded at her core and radiated outward as Sophia rode out those waves of ecstasy until she stood on trembling legs, her head bowed as she attempted to regain her breath.
She finally opened her eyes and placed her hand on the wall beside her for support before once again looking in the mirror.
She looked utterly debauched.
Her eyes were dark beneath heavy lids.
Her breasts flushed and the nipples swollen.
The curls on her mound were damp with the cream that was also visible between and on her parted thighs.
She was also fully aware that, as she climaxed hard and uncontrollably, she had called out Magnus’s name.
“What do you mean there is no such person as Sophia Marchment?” Magnus glared at the man, probably aged in his fifties, seated on the opposite side of the desk in Magnus’s study. Much as Sophia Marchment had done the previous day. “I assure you I spoke with the lady right here in this room only yesterday.”
Henderson looked uncomfortable. “I am not disputing the fact you spoke with a lady yesterday calling herself Sophia Marchment, I am simply saying there is no such person registered as such having been born in either England, Scotland, or Wales, of the age you told me. A child of five, now deceased, and an elderly lady who will soon join her, I have no doubt, but no young lady aged seven and twenty.”
Magnus had done what he had told himself he would, and that was to hire someone to look into exactly who and what Sophia Marchment was. Because, despite not being a betting man, he would lay odds there was far more to learn about Sophia than the little she chose to reveal about herself.
Magnus had investigated the school in Portsmouth himself, of course, after Clarissa expressed an interest in attending the establishment for the coming year. But that had only informed Magnus of the names of the headmistress and other female teachers, along with a brief outline of the curriculum taught there, There had also been a list of past pupils, many of whom Magnus recognized as coming from families of the highest echelons of Society.
After meeting Sophia yesterday, he had suspected there was more to learn about her than was stated in that brief résumé of her accomplishments and qualifications.
Which was the reason Magnus had hired the same private investigator he had used in the past, when he had suspected Lucy of indulging in affairs. A suspicion that had been entirely confirmed by the evidence Henderson gathered. Not that Magnus could exactly blame his wife. In fact, he had felt relieved, when he had absolutely no interest in bedding her himself.
The last thing he had expected was for that same investigator to now tell him Sophia Marchment did not even exist.
He scowled darkly. “Perhaps she was born in France or some other part of the Continent?”
“That will take a little longer to check into, and I will do so as soon as I leave here today.” The other man nodded. “But the name Marchment is almost certainly English in origin,” he reasoned.
Magnus knew that. He was just— Just what? Making excuses for the woman? Clutching at straws?
Because this was not what he had expected to learn about Sophia at all.
Her innate elegance of bearing, along with her educated voice, implied she had been something else before she became a schoolteacher. That was what Magnus had hoped to find out, not that her very existence was a lie.
“Do that,” he instructed the other man dismissively as he rang for Simms. His butler escorted the investigator out of the house seconds later.
Because more than anything, Magnus now needed to be alone with his thoughts. To recall the way he had stroked and pumped his cock to completion in bed the previous night with the image, feel, and taste of Sophia inside his head. He could not remember the last time he had come so hard and for so long. If he ever had.
Only to now learn the Sophia he thought he knew did not exist.
Then who the hell was she?
What was she?
One thing was for certain, Magnus could not allow Clarissa to associate with, let alone attend the school of a woman who lied, and had apparently done so for many years, about something as basic as her name.
Which begged the question, what else was Sophia lying about?
“I thought Clarissa was to join us this evening?” Sophia frowned her puzzlement.
She had arrived promptly at Weston House in time for dinner, only to find Magnus Spencer was alone in the private dining room the butler showed her into.
“Clarissa is spending the evening with her aunt,” he dismissed with more than his usual coolness.
Sophia trembled in awareness of how magnificent the duke looked—the very large and totally imposing duke—in his black evening clothes and snowy white linen. An awareness that only deepened at the knowledge he expected the two of them to dine alone this evening.
Yesterday evening, she had caressed her body to completion with thoughts of this tall and dominant man touching her. Even now, she could feel the way her nipples had plumped inside the bodice of her dark blue gown, and between her thighs was once again slick with her arousal.
Dining alone with him this evening was not a good idea. “We could have made new arrangements had you sent word to me earlier.”
“At Royston House?”
Sophia frowned at the censure she heard in Weston’s voice. “Yes.”
He gave a humorless smile. “I could have, of course, but I was unsure as to whether or not your lover would approve of you receiving notes from another gentleman.”
Sophia felt the heat of the blush in her cheeks. “Royston is not my lover.”
One dark and mocking brow rose over those pale gray eyes. “No?”
Sophia returned that challenging gaze without flinching. “No.”
The corner of Weston’s mouth curled back humorlessly. “Then what is he?”
“A friend.”
“Is he a close enough friend to be privileged with knowing your real name?”
Sophia’s breath caught in her throat, all thought suspended, as she stared at Magnus Spencer.
Much as, she decided when her brain began to unfreeze enough so that she was able to have the most rudimentary of thoughts, a mouse must look at a huge and dangerous cat about to pounce upon its prey.
In this case, that prey was her.
Chapter 4
“Well?” Magnus prompted as Sophia’s silence stretched on to an unacceptable degree.
Her breasts rose as she drew in a long and steadying breath before replying evenly. “What makes you think that is not my real name?”
“I had you investigated.”
Her spine stiffened. “I believe this conversation is over, Your Grace. Indeed, I do not believe the two of us have a single word more to say to each other. On any subject.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Magnus had not intended to bring up the subject of her false name, or having her investigated, until the two of them were seated and had started eating dinner;. He had believed there would be less chance of her getting up and leaving if that was the case.
Instead, he had taken one look at Sophia, so beautiful and desirable in a dark blue gown that added the same depth of color to her eyes and gave an ivory appearance to her unblemished skin, and been unable to refrain from speaking out about the subject that had been on his mind since Henderson left earlier this afternoon.
“You actually had me investigated?” she now demanded.
“Yes.”
Stormy blue eyes flashed with anger. “And what did your paid lackey learn about me?”
“Nothing, because Sophia Marchment does not exist.”
“And yet here I stand,” she taunted.
“Sophia—”
“How can you even be sure that part of my name is correct if I do not exist?”
“I cannot,” he conceded heavily. “Except to know the name Sophia suits your elegance and refinement.”
Craving (Regency Lovers 3) Page 3