Sophia absently touched the back of her head where she had received what should have been a killing blow. If Reign had not caught her, Sophia might have disgraced herself in front of the entire staff by fainting dead away at their feet. Shouting orders, Reign had carried her to the nearest chair. He had blamed himself for not feeding her properly in his haste to leave London. Sophia did not bother correcting her husband’s erroneous assumption. It was kinder than telling him that his ancestral estate was riddled with ghosts.
Sophia abandoned the gravel path and its herbaceous border that outlined the garden, and headed toward the heart of the garden. At its center, the trimmed hedge walls soared above her head, and provided a small haven from prying eyes. Hidden within the green alcove, a painted wooden garden seat was raised on a rectangular stone step to keep the dampness at bay.
She halted when she heard a soft shuffling noise.
“Is anyone there?”
There was no reply to her inquiry. Sophia chuckled at her own foolishness. It was probably a few birds searching for twigs and leaves for a nest.
Grateful to be alone, Sophia climbed the three shallow steps to the garden seat and sat down. Feeling very much like a queen sitting on her throne, she inhaled deeply and allowed the mingled scents and beauty of the garden to calm her.
It came as a surprise, but Sophia longed to return to London. The discord between her and her brothers felt like an iron chain around her heart. She also missed Fanny. Oh, if only she had her dear friend’s kind ear this afternoon. Reign would think her daft if Sophia confessed that there was something about the house that unsettled her. Nor could she quite shake the odd sensation that she was being watched, even though she knew in those moments that she was alone.
Several pebbles scattered as Reign crossed the gravel path in search of Sophia. When he had inquired after his wife’s whereabouts, Winkler had directed him to the back gardens. Sophia seemed to prefer the outdoors when he was obliged to leave her alone. Not that he blamed her. It had taken him years before he could enter the drawing room without dwelling on the murders. Reign had intended to give Sophia more time to accept that Addison Park was now her home, but Ravenshaw’s midnight visit to the town house had forced Reign to change his plans.
Until her brothers accepted her marriage to Reign, Sophia was safer in the country. He just had to convince his wife of that fact.
Reign found her in the center alcove of the garden. He stepped over several low hedges to reach his countess. “Good afternoon, lady wife.”
“Reign!”
Her welcoming smile warmed his heart.
Sophia abandoned the garden seat and met him at the bottom of the three steps. Reign opened his arms in silent invitation. His wife did not hesitate. She walked up to him and slipped her arms around his neck.
“So you missed me?” he teased.
“Dreadfully.” She pulled away, and clasped his hand. Together, they returned to the garden seat. “What about you? Did you think of me?”
For a man who thought he would never marry again, it was frightening how many minutes of the day his thoughts were dedicated to her. “Once or twice”—Reign tugged Sophia onto his lap and caressed her cheek—“Or thrice,” he murmured against her lips before he deepened the kiss.
Sophia kissed him back with an innocent abandonment that he had come to treasure. What she lacked in experience, she more than made up in enthusiasm. She was breathless and her cheeks were rosy when Reign pulled away.
“Are you enjoying the gardens, wife?”
Sophia glanced pointedly at his right hand that had slipped beneath the bodice of her gown and corset. “Very much so, husband.”
Reign deliberately brushed her nipple before he withdrew his hand. As much as he was tempted to seduce Sophia in the garden alcove, it was not the reason why he had sought her out.
“I pray this means you are not vexed with me for abandoning you,” he said, pressing a kiss to the side of her neck.
Sophia glanced back over her shoulder to see if he was teasing. He wasn’t. She shrugged and said, “It will be an unhappy marriage for both of us if I am vexed at you for attending to your business affairs.”
Reign rubbed the sudden ache in his brow. “Are you unhappy, Sophia? Be truthful. There was little honesty between Beatrice and me, and we both suffered for it. Winkler tells me that there have been several incidents during my absences that have upset you.”
Sophia frowned. “Have you ordered the servants to spy on me?”
“Do not be a goose,” Reign said, nipping her earlobe lightly with his teeth. “Winkler was merely concerned, especially when you fell the other day. Why did you not tell me?”
His wife’s expression grew mutinous. “Tell you what, precisely? That I am as graceful as a doe running across a frozen pond? I believe you are aware of my faults. I distinctly recall that you accused me of being clumsy the first evening we met,” she said, her blue-green eyes hot with temper.
“I thought we both agreed that I was an arse that evening.” His fingers trailed down Sophia’s arm in what he hoped was a soothing gesture. Reign did not have much experience when it came to calming a lady’s ruffled feathers. He had never cared enough to bother. Nevertheless, it had not been his intention to upset Sophia. “And what of the locked door this morning?” Reign pressed. “The housekeeper said that you were convinced that someone locked you in the informal parlor.”
Sophia’s lower lip trembled. “I was mistaken, though I swear I heard—” A soft sound of distress vibrated in her throat as she shook her head. “It is truly nothing, my lord. I would have mentioned the incidents myself. However, later, it all seemed ridiculous. The house is old. One expects doors to stick and floorboards to creak.”
She gave him a lopsided smile.
“You have not entered the drawing room.”
Sophia’s smile faded. She attempted to slip from his embrace, but he wrapped his arm around her waist. Reign had a sudden irrational fear that if he let Sophia go, he would lose her. Perhaps it had been a mistake to bring Sophia to Addison Park. His ancestral home had witnessed the demise of more than one Lady Rainecourt. His mother had known such despair that she had taken her own life, and many years later, Beatrice had died in her frantic attempt to escape him.
“I am aware that I am asking much of you, Sophia,” Reign said, his lips against her ear. “All I am asking is for you to trust me. We cannot scrub away the tragic past of Addison Park, but we can soften the sadness by adding happier days.”
Sophia turned so that their lips almost touched. “Something about this house frightens me.”
Reign rubbed his nose against hers. “It is just a house, Sophia. Nothing will hurt you here. You are safe with me. I promise.”
With her blue-green eyes glistening as the sunlight touched her face, she said, “I know.”
Reign cuddled her and savored how well his countess filled his arms. He did not want to spoil the tender moment with his admission that he would have to leave her again this evening. Word had reached him that Ravenshaw had been seen at the village tavern. If Sophia’s brother had some crazy notion of kidnapping his sister, then Reign intended to impress upon the gent the folly of his course.
Reign was prepared to pound the lesson into Ravenshaw’s thick skull with his bare fists if the occasion warranted it.
After her husband’s tender vows of protecting her, Reign had abandoned her.
Again.
With only the enigmatic assurance that his departure was a matter of life and death, he kissed her fully on the mouth in front of the butler and hurried out of the house.
Oh, there was no doubt that Sophia was positively vexed.
As the hours passed, Sophia filled the silence by writing letters to Fanny and Juliana. She also dallied over a letter to her brothers, but she set the unfinished letter aside. Sophia was not about to apologize for her marriage to Reign. Stephan and Henry would eventually come around once they realized that her husband was not
the devil his reputation purported him to be.
The sound of a door closing downstairs brought Sophia to her feet. Reign had returned. She reached out for her walking stick and moved to the chimneypiece in her bedchamber to glance at the clock. The servants had retired several hours earlier so there was no one awake to attend to her husband.
Regretting her chilly farewell, Sophia crossed the room to the door with the intention of giving Reign a warmer greeting now that he had returned to her.
It was not his fault that the house unsettled her.
“Reign?” she called out softly as she descended the stairs.
Her greeting was met with silence.
Fortunately the butler had left several oil lamps burning for his lordship’s return. Sophia frowned as she reached the second landing. She peered over the railing, but the front hall was empty.
Where was Reign?
As she realized where she was standing, Sophia gave the shut door to her left a wary side-glance. Beyond the door was the drawing room. Reign was right. She had yet to enter the room. This was not, however, the hour to test her courage. With the notion of returning to her bedchamber, Sophia turned away from the drawing-room door.
Out from the shadows, the blow to the side of her head was swift and brutally efficient. Sophia was knocked to the floor before she had the chance to draw air into her lungs for a scream. There was nothing she could do but let the darkness claim her.
Sophia awoke with pain buzzing in her skull like angry bees. It took her several minutes to comprehend that she was in the drawing room. How had she gotten there? Where was Reign? She tossed back her head to remove the strands of hair from her face. Her hair had come undone at some point. Had she tripped? While she had been unconscious, someone had placed her upright in a chair. This had not been done out of kindness. It had just made the task of binding Sophia’s arms behind her back easier, she thought, her struggles weak and useless. She tried to move her feet, but each leg had been tied to the chair with rope.
“You are not supposed to be here.”
The woman had been so quiet, Sophia had thought that she was alone in the drawing room. Oddly dressed in a billowy chemise and men’s breeches, the woman stood in front of the large mirror that was across the room, and calmly coiled her long, dark hair that was streaked with silver. She secured her tresses with the pins she had stolen from Sophia’s hair.
“Who are you?” Sophia demanded, silently cursing as the shadows swirled and muted the clarity of her vision.
“I have no time for games, my dear. Reign will return soon, and I have much to accomplish,” the woman said, giving her hair a final pat before she glanced at her prisoner. “You know who I am.”
Perplexed, Sophia shook her head. She immediately regretted the action as sharp pain sliced through flesh and bone. “My apologies, madam, but I do not recall meeting you. Who are you?”
“Silly goose,” the woman chided softly. It was not until she approached that Sophia noticed the pistol in her captor’s hand. “Did I hit you too hard? You are addressing the Countess of Rainecourt.”
A look of horror washed over Sophia’s face. Suddenly the pain in her chest was fiercer than the one in her head. “B-Beatrice?” she stuttered, suddenly afraid that Reign’s dark secrets were far worse than she had ever guessed.
The woman frowned in annoyance. Her expression and the way she tilted her head to the side seemed vaguely familiar to Sophia. Her own muddled brain was working out the solution when the woman said, “Beatrice is dead. She died a long time ago. No, I am Lady Colette, Reign’s mother.”
Sophia licked her dry lips and grimaced at the sting. She also tasted blood. “No, that cannot be. Reign’s mother died when I was a child. I was told that she took her own life.”
The woman who claimed to be her mother-in-law smiled, her eyes humorless and empty. It was like staring into the void of madness. “Oh, I tried, but my husband found me bleeding and barely conscious. Rainecourt tended my wounds, and then locked me away in one of the abandoned tenant cottages. He hired a few servants to care for me, and paid them well for their silence. I learned only later that my husband had told everyone, including my beautiful son, that I had died.”
Reign had once told her that the servants believed the ghost of his mother haunted the Rainecourt lands. Little did he know that it was more or less the truth. Whether it was right or wrong, Reign’s father had locked away his troubled wife, and then pretended that she had taken her own life. Had the guilt eaten away at the edges of Reign’s father’s sanity? So much so that years later, he would murder her parents before he ended his life with a single bullet?
She flinched as Lady Colette’s fingers brushed back strands of blond hair from Sophia’s face. Her hair was matted behind her left ear. Sophia assumed it was blood.
“It was wrong of your husband to do that to you. Reign mourned you, my lady.”
The dowager countess pulled back and brought her fist to her head. “I know . . . I know . . .!” she said, digging her fingers into her bound hair. A section of dark hair was pulled from its confines. “It took me a long time to find my way back home.” Her gaze was moist with torment and a poignant plea. “You must believe me. I had to be clever. Oh, so clever.”
How many years had Reign’s mother been locked away? Sixteen? Seventeen? The isolation must have plunged the already fragile mind of the forgotten woman into madness. Sophia winced as she tilted her head, studying the woman before her. The fact that she was talking to a dead woman proved Lady Colette to be a very clever ghost. “I wager that your husband never realized there were times when you escaped your keepers?”
Lady Colette straightened, and the distress in her expression faded away. She smiled indulgently at Sophia. “Oh, Rainecourt figured it out . . . eventually.”
“I know your secret. I know he hurt you.”
Sophia did not bother hiding her confusion. “Who? Stephan? He was not thinking clearly when he locked me in my bedchamber.” Her fingers curled into impotent fists to ease the growing numbness. The rope around her wrists was unyielding. She was at the complete mercy of this creature.
“I speak of Rainecourt,” she said sadly. “He told me all of his secrets when he thought he was safe.”
Was it possible that Lady Colette had been there the night Rainecourt and her parents had died? Had the countess seen Rainecourt strike down the six-year-old Sophia, who had awakened to the sounds of angry voices?
“You say Rainecourt hurt me,” Sophia said, striving to keep calm. “Did you see him hit me?”
“Hit?” Lady Colette pondered the word. “Most ladies enjoyed Rainecourt’s attentions. Or so he often bragged. Oh, there were times when he was rough. Too rough. Did you fight him when he pushed you onto the bed and tried to lift your skirts, too?”
Good heavens! Her eyes widened as she realized in sickening dread that Lady Colette was speaking of Sophia’s mother. “No, you are wrong. Confused. Rainecourt was my father’s good friend. He would never have touched my mother,” Sophia said, too appalled by the notion to consider that Reign’s father might have attacked her mother.
I do not believe it.
What if she was wrong? No, Sophia immediately discarded the thought. She refused to believe the ravings of a madwoman. For a betrayal this vile, her father would have murdered Rainecourt . . .
Murder.
Sophia straightened her spine. Everyone had assumed that Rainecourt had murdered her parents. What if her father had shot his wife and friend before turning the pistol on himself?
“You know the truth.”
Sophia was feeling too addled by the blow to know anything for certain. “Lady Colette, do you know who I am? I am Sophia, Lady Ravenshaw’s daughter,” she said, hoping to break through the confusion that muddled the older woman’s mind.
“Sophia.” The countess returned to the chair and knelt at Sophia’s bound feet. Her face lightened with affection. “I remember you. You were such a pretty child.”
It was difficult, but Sophia did not flinch away when the countess caressed her cheek. “My wrists hurt. Could you untie my hands? I would very much like to talk to you about my mother. The staff has retired for the evening; however, I could make us some tea while we wait for your son’s return.”
“Tea?” Lady Colette slowly straightened her legs. “No—no, I do not think that would be wise. You might use trickery to make me sleep.”
“No, I have not the skill for trickery,” Sophia said hastily.
Where were Lady Colette’s attendants? To ensure her obedience, they must have been drugging her food and drink for years.
Slyness crept into the countess’s panicked expression. “Now you are being deceitful. Is that how you tricked my Reign into marriage?”
“No! Reign offered marriage to spare me—” Sophia could have bitten off her tongue for almost giving the woman another reason to keep her tied to the blasted chair. She took a deep breath. “Reign loves me. He will be quite upset if you hurt me.”
“His grief will ease. I just cannot bear for him to suffer another faithless wife.” Lady Colette whirled away, her head moving from side to side as if she was searching for something. The pistol in her hand connected with a tall rectangular vase, and the motion sent it crashing to the floor.
Both Sophia and Lady Colette shrieked at the noise.
“My lady, I love your son.”
“Lies!” Slamming the pistol on the table, the countess picked up something from the floor. Sophia did not recognize the object until the pale razor-sharp shard of porcelain was pressed against her throat. “And what of the babe you carry?”
“W-what babe?” Sophia wailed as she craned her head away from the lethal edge of the shard in Lady Colette’s hand. Was the countess confusing her with Reign’s first wife? “Madam, I am not Beatrice. Remember? I am Sophia. There is no babe . . . no babe!”
Till Dawn with the Devil Page 16