by Eloisa James
“Lady Sophie,” Margaret almost hissed at her, “how many children do you intend to bear to the head of our family?”
Sophie drew back, slightly alarmed.
“Ah, I’m not sure,” she said. Then she added, thinking fast, “We must leave it to God’s will.”
Margaret’s eyes kindled with approval. “Children are God’s greatest gift, Lady Sophie. And as the head of the family, the Earl of Slaslow must have at least five and possibly six children. One cannot be too certain.” She stood back a little. “Of course, I have seen you dancing and such, but I never considered you in this light before.” Her eyes scanned Sophie’s middle section. Sophie turned her head, looking up at her betrothed questioningly. Braddon avoided her eyes.
“Your hips look ample,” Margaret pronounced briskly. “Of course, you’ll need to begin producing children as soon as possible. Do you have any idea whether your own mother had some impediment? She seems to have produced only one child, unless you have deceased siblings?” Margaret paused expectantly.
“Not that I am aware of.”
Margaret pursed her lips. “We must hope for the best.” A fleeting frown crossed her face. “Your father’s title will become extinct when he dies, Lady Sophie. So I am sure you are aware of the importance of this question.”
“In fact, the title will pass to my cousin,” Sophie felt bound to answer.
Margaret curled her lip. “A cousin is not the same as a son, Lady Sophie. I am sure that your father considers his title dead.”
To Sophie’s mind, her father thought very little about his title. If he’d really wanted a son he would have visited her mother’s bed after the first two months of their marriage, at least according to her mother’s version of events.
“The important thing,” Margaret continued, “is that you start as soon as possible. You are no longer a young girl, and childbearing is not easy for older women.”
Sophie started to feel a slow burn in her spine. “I am not yet twenty years old,” she said a bit stiffly. “I feel sure that I can provide his lordship with eight or nine bundles of joy.” She gave Braddon a cloying if slightly wild smile.
“That is an excellent attitude.” Margaret unbent a trifle, seeing that her brother’s future wife had a bit more substance to her than she had previously thought. “I myself granted my husband his first child a mere nine months after we married, and I pride myself on the fact that seven infants have followed, in almost as many years.”
“Goodness,” Sophie said faintly.
A voice broke in, a darkly amused voice. “Lady Sophie could hardly do better than to model herself on you, Mrs. Windcastle. I feel sure that Lady Sophie will be a most, ah, fertile partner for old Braddon here.”
Braddon cast his old friend an accusing look.
“Forgive me, forgive me,” Patrick murmured, a wicked gleam in his eyes. “Perhaps ‘fertile’ harks too much of the stable.”
“Not at all.” Margaret Windcastle was unwilling to drop the subject dearest to her heart. “I see no reason why the subject of children does not belong in every lady’s drawing room. Far too many gentlewomen quail at the thought of children—and what happens? Their husbands’ lines die. Their titles expire.” Her voice dropped dramatically: “Imagine if there were no more Earls of Slaslow!”
Patrick replied in a honeyed voice, “Why, Lady Sophie might be quite opposed to the idea of having children! That would be a disaster for the future Earls of Slaslow.”
Braddon tugged down his waistcoat again, glancing down at Sophie. She seemed to be trying not to giggle. “We’d better go meet m’godmother.”
Margaret smiled brightly. “Actually, Lady Sophie has just announced her intention to have eight or nine children.”
“Eight or nine?” The teasing note in Patrick’s voice compelled Sophie to meet his eyes. “My goodness, and here I was in danger of thinking that Lady Sophie was nothing but a frippery society miss.”
Despite herself, the corner of Sophie’s mouth quirked up. “Not at all,” she said, repeating Margaret’s phrase. “While I have always had the ambition to have ten children—such a nice, well-rounded number—I realize that at my advanced age I may have to settle for a smaller sum.”
“Excellent,” Patrick exclaimed. “I do love a woman who has no fear of getting old, don’t you, Braddon?”
Braddon was staring in fascinated horror at his future bride. Had she really said ten children? Had he inadvertently promised to marry a broodmare like his sister?
“I look forward to old age,” Sophie rejoined sweetly. “Male attention can be so … tiresome, don’t you think, Margaret? I may call you Margaret, mayn’t I, since we are to be sisters?”
Margaret smiled. “Of course, dearest Sophie.”
“Yes, men can be quite dreary,” Sophie continued. “The way they plead and implore.”
Patrick’s raffish eyes glinted at her. “Plead and implore, hmm?”
“Exactly,” Sophie assured him. “Plead and implore.”
Braddon gulped. “Time to meet m’godmother,” he blurted, drawing Sophie’s hand into the crook of his arm. “Excuse us, please, Margaret. Your servant, Foakes.”
Sophie couldn’t resist. She smiled at the fruitful Mrs. Windcastle, and then she flicked a glance at Patrick … a teasing, flirtatious look from under her lashes.
Devil-bright eyes looked back at her with a glance that was more of a command than a request, and which certainly had naught a drop of imploring, pleading emotion in it. It shivered her bones, the promise in his eyes; his glance skated from her face to her breasts and down her body. Warmth trailed down her legs, warming and weakening the back of her knees.
As she and Braddon walked away, Sophie reflexively looked down at her bodice. She had the sudden impression that her dress had fallen off, leaving her breasts tinglingly exposed to the air. But all was well. Madame Carême’s cleverly constructed bodices were proof against the most rakish of rakish glances.
Chapter 6
Sophie ate her dinner, laughing and talking to Braddon on her left, and Braddon’s friend David Marlowe on her right, while resolutely ignoring Patrick Foakes. He was seated diagonally across from her, quite a way down the long table, and she could see him under her lashes if she peeked, but she did so only a few times. David was delightful, a boyish curate who had come up from the country to meet Braddon’s intended wife.
“You’re very brave to take on Braddon,” he said.
“Why so?” Sophie took another sip of her champagne. She could feel the wine going to her head and she was letting it, letting the bubbles cloud her judgment and lend her a breathlessly intoxicated joy.
“Braddon was such a task at school.” David chortled. “There was a group of us—myself, Alex and Patrick, Quill—we took it on ourselves to get Braddon through. But it wasn’t easy. Someone had to hammer facts into his head the night before an exam. Not that it was such a chore,” David added hastily, remembering that he shouldn’t insult the brain of Sophie’s soon-to-be husband. “The real problem was Braddon’s schemes. He was almost thrown out several times.”
“Schemes?” Sophie was only half listening. Down the table that French minx Daphne Boch was flirting madly with Patrick. Under the table the toe of Sophie’s slipper started tapping as she saw Daphne lean toward Patrick, wantonly brushing his arm with her shoulder.
David was still talking and Sophie wrenched her attention back to him.
“Take, for example, the time that Braddon decided he could fool Master Woolton into thinking that he was his own uncle. You see, Braddon’s uncle is a famous explorer. And Woolton had mentioned to Braddon how much he’d like to meet this uncle. So Braddon got the idea that if he rented an appropriate costume he could pretend to be his own uncle and tell Woolton how remarkably intelligent he thought Braddon was, and then Woolton would be nicer to Braddon.”
Sophie was fascinated despite herself. “That’s absurd. How old was he?”
“Around thirteen, perha
ps fourteen.” David chortled again. “Believe me, we did our best to talk him out of the idea, but Braddon was convinced it would work. Braddon has a great weakness for acting, you know, that’s why—” He broke off suddenly. One did not tell a lady that her future husband’s mistresses had mostly been actresses.
“That’s why …?” Sophie prompted.
“That’s why so many of his schemes have a theatrical element,” David replied lamely. “Braddon is happiest when he puts on a great cloak and a fake mustache.”
“What happened with Mr. Woolton?”
David shuddered. “Braddon went down to High Street and bought an absurd cloak. I can’t think whom it was originally designed for. It was black with a red satin stripe around the bottom—quite the most gaudy piece of clothing you can imagine. But Braddon said this was what an explorer would wear. And he stuck a quantity of fake hair all over his face.”
“Yes?”
“It was a disaster, of course. Woolton undoubtedly saw through him from the first moment, although Braddon maintains that Woolton politely offered him some coffee and the scheme fell apart only when he asked where Braddon had bought that cloak, and Braddon said it was the gift of the Tringelloo tribe in the upper reaches of the Alps.”
Sophie turned her head and gave Braddon a long, speculative look. He was chewing busily, waving his fork as he talked to Miss Barbara Lewnstown, who sat on his right.
“It’s hard to believe,” she said finally, turning back to David. “Frankly, I shouldn’t have thought that Braddon had the imagination.”
“Oh, he didn’t think up the details,” David admitted. “Those were all Patrick’s, of course. He was the one with imagination. Patrick made up loads of tales about incredible events that had supposedly happened in the depths of Africa and in the Alps, and Braddon was supposed to tell them to Woolton … but it all came to naught, because it turned out that the master’s sister had a shop in the High Street and she had actually sold Braddon the cloak! And Woolton had seen it there, probably hankered after it himself, the lobcock, and so he caught Braddon out. He didn’t take it nicely, either. He put Braddon on notice for three weeks afterwards.”
“My goodness,” Sophie said. “Your schooling sounds much more exciting than mine.”
“Not Eton.” David thought about it for a moment. “School was tedious, but Braddon always had a scheme, and Patrick—Patrick is a regular devil, you know—he egged Braddon into the worst of ‘em, and so between them they livened things up.”
Sophie risked another peek down the table. To her horror, Patrick was looking at her, and his eyes met hers with such an air of warm amusement that she colored and turned her head sharply back to David.
“I can certainly see Patrick Foakes indulging himself in falsehoods,” she said tartly. Why, oh why couldn’t she remember that Patrick was the worst of all rakes and exactly what she had sworn to avoid?
“Not falsehoods,” David explained. “He’s actually quite a stickler when it comes to honesty, Patrick is. I remember he would endlessly wrangle with his brother over the ethics of social fibs. Patrick hates lies. He would get enraged if Alex told the smallest sort of fib, even to get out of a music lesson.”
Just then Charlotte stood up, giving the signal for the ladies to leave the room, and Sophie gratefully filed out after her mother.
After the ladies were assembled in Charlotte’s private drawing room, Charlotte clapped her hands for attention. “We ought to have some dancing, don’t you think?”
The younger girls chattered and clamored for dancing. Even Sophie’s mother allowed as how it would be proper to get up some couples for a country dance or two.
So when the men rose from the dinner table they were directed to the garden room. They trooped in, carrying with them a faint, rich smell of cognac and a lingering woodsy smell of cigars, only to find that the ladies were busily directing footmen hither and thither, and that those footmen were carrying chairs out of the room and pushing sofas back against the walls.
Charlotte judged the party too small to move into the Sheffield House ballroom, where they might feel quite dwarfed and thin with only ten couples. But the numbers were perfect for the garden drawing room. Moreover, since it was an unseasonably warm night, she had had all the French windows opened onto the terrace, and footmen were arranging large potted torches around the veranda. One by one, the torches flared into light, casting golden rays into the dusky warmth of the London sky.
The Earl of Sheffield and Downes himself, who had strolled into the room at the tail of the group of male guests, narrowed his eyes. Where the devil had those monstrous torches come from? And why didn’t he know anything about the twelve-person group of musicians even now warming up at one end of the long room? And what was this bothersome wife of his saying?
“I’m sure you agree with me, Alexander dear,” Charlotte said sweetly, curtsying before him. Alex made an elegant leg in reply, but as he straightened he picked up his wife, tucked her adroitly into his arms and carried her out of the room.
There was a faint shriek of surprise from those ladies who caught sight of Alex’s maneuver, but Charlotte just giggled. Sophie’s mother shuddered and turned back to a conversation with her future son-in-law.
Out in the hallway, Alex let Charlotte slide slowly down his front until her toes touched the floor, keeping his arms around her.
“And what do you think you’re doing, Madam Wife?”
Charlotte could feel Alex’s large hands on her back … they were inching downward as his breath grazed her ear.
“Alex!” she hissed. Footmen were still coming in and out of the garden room door.
“Are you by any chance planning to influence the lovely Sophie’s choice of husband?” Alex’s hands ran a bit lower. Despite herself, Charlotte swayed.
“No!”
Alex bit her ear softly.
“All right, yes! I thought I would give your brother a chance to …”
“I love it when your voice goes all husky like that,” her husband informed her. “Why don’t we go upstairs and check on the children?”
“No!”
“Yes?” Warm lips traced a path down her neck.
“No.” Charlotte pulled herself from Alex’s grasp, smiling up at him. “You are a wicked reprobate,” she informed him. “Just think what Sophie’s mama is thinking about us. You know how strict the marchioness is.”
“She’s thinking the same thing she always thought,” Alex said, looking pensive. “That you’re a wild rackety thing who led me astray, and then did the same to Sophie … and if she knew that you had plans to derail this fine marriage she’s managed to talk your Sophie into, she’d flay you alive, m’dear!”
“Well, we aren’t going to tell her.” Charlotte looked pleadingly up at Alex. “I need you to help me, Alex. Don’t you want your twin to be happy?”
“I’m not absolutely sure that Sophie will make Patrick happy,” Alex said. “He hasn’t shown strong inclination to get married.”
“That’s not the point. They are on the verge of falling in love. And if Sophie marries Braddon, and then falls in love with Patrick—”
“I see your point.” Alex rubbed his chin.
“Or what if Patrick marries the wrong person, out of pique because Sophie rejected him?”
Alex knew all about the perils of marrying the wrong person. He tucked his countess’s arm under his and turned back toward the door.
“What do you want me to do?” He cast her a conspiratorial grin.
“Get Braddon out of the way,” Charlotte shot back quickly.
The earl and countess walked back into the drawing room as if nothing had happened, as if earls always carried their countesses from the room without a by-your-leave.
Patrick was leaning on the piano. Daphne Boch was looking up at him with melting eyes as she played a languorous air.
Charlotte pinched her husband. “You see?”
Alex looked at her, eyes warmly black under his la
shes. “Your every wish is my command, Countess.” Then he added wickedly, “As always.”
A pink flush crept up Charlotte’s cheeks as her husband strolled toward the group at the piano.
As Braddon bowed before Sophie, she noticed out of the corner of her eye that Patrick seemed—naturally!—to have engaged Miss went through their paces primly, a more-than-appropriate space between their bodies. Sophie caught her mother’s eye and easily read the gleam of approval there.
They were making their way, rather tediously if the truth be told, toward the bottom of the room, when Braddon executed a quick step, pulling Sophie sharply back and to the right.
“Sorry, Lady Sophie.” He was puffing a bit from the unwonted exercise. “Foakes is a foul dancer, always was.”
Sophie looked curiously over her shoulder. Patrick did seem to have a reckless disregard for the welfare of other dancers. He and Daphne were coming down the dance floor. He was holding Daphne’s hands high in the air. Maybe that was making Daphne’s cheeks rosy, or perhaps it was Patrick’s dancing. Even as she watched he added an improvised series of swinging circles. Around and around they went, Daphne half protesting, until they came to a halt at the bottom of the room, Patrick laughing down at his partner.
“My lord, my head is reeling!” Daphne’s voice sounded prissy to Sophie, and she wrinkled her nose as she and Braddon decorously slowed to a standstill.
Braddon stopped with a grateful sigh. “There you are,” he said, wiping his forehead with a large silk handkerchief. “Trifle hot in here, isn’t it? Would you like to wander outside? I am sure no one could object, given our status.”
Sophie stared at him, not at all sure what he meant.
“Our status as an engaged couple,” Braddon repeated patiently. He was quite used to not being understood and never took affront.