Nan curtseyed. “Milord.”
Sophie opened a second door farther down the hall—inconveniently far, she hoped as she went in. She found a lamp and lit it while, again, Lord Banallt bent over the hearth to start the fire. “At least you make yourself useful,” she said.
“I’ve no desire to freeze to death.”
She pulled sheets off the furniture. Rider Hall so seldom had guests that Sophie kept most of the rooms closed up. Done with the fire, Banallt stood at the grate. He put a hand on the mantel to steady himself. She wondered how much he’d had to drink. To think this was the man she had once imagined as the hero of so many stories. “Sit down, my lord, before you fall and break your head.”
He threw himself onto a chair and let his legs sprawl out. “I’m foxed,” he said slowly. “More foxed than I thought.” He ran his hands through his hair. “My head’s spinning.”
“Overindulgence will do that.”
“You have a very tart tongue.”
“You’re drunk.”
“Well,” he said. “And so.”
“I disapprove of spirits.”
“Whereas I cannot live without them.” He let his head fall back against the chair. “I am not a happy drunk, Mrs. Evans. I hope that tomorrow you will have the kindness to recall nothing of my condition.”
She stopped with her arms full of sheets. “Leave Nan alone, and I’ll have no cause for complaint.”
“She is pretty.” He nodded to himself. “And she has a lively eye. I wonder that you hired her.”
“Tommy is never here.” She dropped the sheets onto a chair.
Once again he looked her up and down. His eyes were unpleasantly cold. “You’re not a’tall what I expected.”
“A crone?” she said.
He smiled, and it transformed his face, giving it all the warmth he’d previously lacked. He took her breath. “Bent over and crippled in both legs.”
“With a long, hooked nose.” She skimmed a finger along her nose, and Banallt’s gaze followed her motion. “Pie-eyed and shrewish, too.”
“But famously deep in the pockets.”
“Yes,” she said. “Tommy has described me to the last penny.”
He clasped his hands on his head and stared hard at her. “I am not too drunk to fathom the entendre in those words of yours. You’re a clever girl,” he said slowly. “Not a girl. A woman. A clever woman.” He shook his head. “No good ever comes of clever women.”
She wanted to laugh. To think here sat the man whom she’d given the role of knight in shining armor! Her imagination was far more pleasant than reality. As she’d done for Maeve, she took blankets from the chest at the foot of the bed. He stood again and walked to the fireplace where he leaned an elbow on the mantel and rested his chin on his palm, facing sideways so that he watched her. Sophie felt their rapport slip into intimacy, as if they were lovers who’d parted amicably and were now comfortable in friendship. Well. Was he not the very man she’d imagined meeting since she was ten and overheard her mother telling some visitor that, yes, the Earl of Banallt owned property just two miles distant? How strange that she should meet him now. So many years later and so far from home.
“I continue to struggle, Mrs. Evans, with the notion that you are Tommy’s wife. You were described to me as—well, nothing like you.”
“You said yourself you’ve had too much to drink. I expect tomorrow you’ll see me clearly and find your opinion in accord with my husband’s.”
“I’m not that foxed, ma’am.” He considered her again with a slow perusal she found more than faintly insulting. And—something else she couldn’t name. “Are you certain you’re not an imposter?”
“Quite.”
“You’ve the finest eyes I’ve ever seen on a woman. Bar none. And that, madam, is saying something. Your eyes are lovely.”
“Thank you.” She was in the process of spreading one of the blankets on the bed, and while she was doing that, she discovered he’d moved toward her without making a sound.
“Mrs. Evans.” He spoke in a different sort of voice. A voice that sent a shiver up her spine. It was the voice he’d used to whisper to Maeve. The kind of voice Tommy never used with her. She froze with one hand on the edge of the blanket. “Perhaps,” he said in that caressing, silken voice, “you would care to join me in this lovely bed?”
She turned around, the backs of her legs touching the mattress. “I am a married woman.”
“And I am a married man.” He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her with those awful eyes, gray with that odd rim of black. She felt quite certain she would never be free of the heat of his gaze. “What could be more natural than for us to be lovers while I am here?”
“You’ve had too much to drink,” she said.
He smiled. “Yes,” he said. His voice fell, and it wasn’t deliberate; it just was. “But I assure you, it won’t affect my performance.” Banallt touched her cheek, and she slid away from him, unpleasantly aware of the intensity of his eyes on her. He gripped the bedpost and leaned sideways, trapping her. “Darling, don’t go.”
“Let me pass.” She stared at him. Heavens, he’d trapped her in the darkness of his eyes, and there wasn’t any way out. His eyes enfolded her in layers of silver tarnish.
“Say yes,” he said. His voice fell to a whisper. “Let’s have a wicked, wicked affair while I am here.” He took a step closer.
With her heart galloping out of her chest, Sophie slapped him as hard as she could.
Chapter Four
Havenwood,
March 11, 1815
“Napoleon has escaped from Elba.”
Sophie gaped at her brother. From his expression she knew the matter was serious. She mentally repeated the words to herself before the meaning penetrated. “Oh my dear heavens. When? How?”
John clasped his hands behind his back and paced. “Does it matter? He’s believed to be making his way to Paris. He may be there even now.” He watched her sideways as he walked. He looked so like their mother, intent and lovely and so earnest about his feelings, Sophie felt her throat close off with tears. “What matters, Sophie, is I am needed in London. Even if I were not wanted in the House, Vedaelin wishes me to be in London.”
“Of course,” she said calmly. The Duke of Vedaelin was John’s patron, the man who had gotten him started in his political life. John was a member of Parliament now, thanks to the duke. “You must be in Town.”
He stopped in front of her chair and frowned at her. She kept her knees together, hands clasped on her lap. “I know this inconveniences you, Sophie.”
“I hardly think, John, that the escape of Bonaparte is an inconvenience only to me.”
Her brother looked away and then back. “A bachelor alone, trying to entertain?” He drew in a breath. She knew what he was getting at, but John needed to come around to things in his own time. “I shall bungle everything. But you, Sophie, you can manage a household. Havenwood’s never run better since you came back.”
She kept her face still. “I should be delighted to be of assistance to you, John.”
A look of relief crossed his face but was quickly replaced by calculation. As if he’d ever been in doubt that she’d go to London with him. “We’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Of course. I’ll see to everything.”
“Excellent, Sophie,” he said. She rose, expecting John to move. He didn’t. “Banallt will be in London.” His gaze pierced.
Did he think she would refuse to go? Or that she didn’t realize Lord Banallt would be in London at the same time they were? As if they would travel in the same circle as the Earl of Banallt. “London is a large city. I doubt we shall see him.”
“And if we do?”
She shrugged. Banallt knew her feelings. If they should happen to see each other, she believed he would respect them. “Then we shall say good day to each other. Perhaps remark on the weather. And that will be that.”
“Sophie,” John s
aid softly. “What happened between you two?”
“Nothing.” And if it had, what then? She was under no obligation to tell John anything about the years she’d lived cut off from her family.
“A man like him doesn’t come to a village like Duke’s Head because he fancies a change of scenery.”
“He came to see Darmead, of course.”
John touched her cheek. “No one lives a perfect life.”
She didn’t want to be reminded of all the ways her life had been imperfect. “I imagine not.”
“I remember when you were a brat in pigtails, and all too soon a foolish girl.”
Sophie pulled her head back, and John’s hand fell away from her cheek. Anger welled up, but she had no choice except to choke back every bitter word that leaped to her tongue. If she lived to be a hundred, Duke’s Head would still be gossiping about her. See that old woman? Yes, that one. She eloped, don’t you know, with a fortune hunter. By the time her father caught up, it was too late. A scandal. Oh yes.
“You grew up,” John said. You were eight years married and are now a widow. You still look seventeen to me, but I accept you are a grown woman with a right to her own mind and her own mistakes.”
“I never, ever betrayed my husband.”
“And yet Banallt loves you.”
She rolled her eyes when what she wanted to do was jump to her feet and shout at him. “He doesn’t,” she replied calmly. “Lord Banallt is incapable of that emotion, I assure you. He only ever took an interest in me because he was bored. And the only reason he didn’t lose interest just as quickly was that I told him no. That, famously, is something rare for him to hear.”
“After all this time, Sophie?”
“All this time, John, and I am still as you remember. Plain and quite uninteresting to a man who has been to bed with every beauty ever to set foot in England.” Anger choked her, at John and at Banallt and at her father for returning her letters unopened. Never read. Her departure never mourned. “Banallt cannot fathom how someone like me would refuse him. It’s a game with him, and all he can think is that he must win.”
“You’re mistaken.”
“I know him, John.” She clenched her hands into fists. “No one knows him better. He doesn’t love me. He just wants to have won.”
John said nothing for too long, but Sophie knew better than to speak. She’d only make her unintended revelation even more significant to him. “Then I hope your paths do not cross.”
“It makes no difference to me.” It was a lie, but as long as John believed her, all would be well.
Organizing the removal kept Sophie up until long past midnight. John’s valet and Sophie’s maid, Flora, left at dawn with the wagon loaded with their trunks. She and John departed shortly after ten. The remainder of the trunks and a groom with John’s horses were to follow later in the day. The Duke of Vedaelin had secured them a house in Mayfair. She found when they arrived that afternoon that it was a narrow two-story building on Henrietta Street.
They located their rooms, washed away the dirt of travel, confirmed the cook knew they would dine in, and then John went out to call on the duke. Sophie stayed behind to oversee setting the house to rights. The house came furnished, but Vedaelin’s taste, if that’s what the decor represented, was firmly in the previous century.
Downstairs was a front and back parlor, an office for her brother, and a dining room; below, the kitchen and pantry; and above, rooms for her and John, with two guest rooms. Across the street was a mews. They could keep their carriage in Town, and horses, too. At some point, she went through the cards and invitations already left for them. There was nothing from Banallt. How odd that she’d even think of him leaving a card when her acquaintance with the earl was so thoroughly over. She doubted he even knew she was in Town.
She separated the cards and invitations by occasion, noted them in her personal calendar, arranged the cards chronologically then alphabetically, and met with the cook to discuss supper. She had tea alone, as John sent word he was having tea with the duke. In her room, she fell asleep reading the Court Journal.
She was fast asleep when John came home. It was on his instruction that no one woke her. She was still asleep when there came a knock on the front door.
Chapter Five
Number 26 Henrietta Street, London,
March 12, 1815
Is Mrs. Evans at home? Banallt asked the butler who answered the door at Henrietta Street. Ah yes, the redoubtable Charles, with his luxurious head of white hair. Down from Havenwood with his employers.
“Who, may I ask, is calling?”
From the man’s expression he knew too well who Banallt was. He suspected as well that Sophie was home. Whether she would see him was another matter. He handed the butler a card. “Gwilym, Earl of Banallt.”
The butler opened the door. “Will you wait while I see if she’s in?”
“Yes, thank you.” He walked in. Truth to tell, he was anxious. His feelings for Sophie were utterly and incomprehensibly unchanged. From the moment he’d heard she and her brother were in London, he had been unable to think of anything but her. Her dismissal of him at Havenwood had failed to cure his affliction. He followed the butler to the front parlor, a dreary room of faded blue and yellow. The only spot of color in the room came from an extravagant bouquet of white roses in a red vase. Roses he had not sent. A card leaned against the vase. Vedaelin had sent the roses. What business had he sending roses to a woman half his age?
Welcome to London, Mrs. Evans. What was the duke after?
He had no idea if Sophie would agree to see him. She was here. In London. As was he. Their town house overlooked a small park, well tended and colorful with early spring flowers on a rare day of blue skies. Voices from upstairs had him turning away from the window. Masculine voices. Footsteps followed, coming closer until, at last, they approached the parlor where he waited like some lovesick boy.
“My lord,” said John Mercer. He came in and closed the door behind him. “Good day.” He walked to the center of the room. He did not sit down. “What a surprise to see you. I’ve not been in Town twenty-four hours.”
“Mercer.” He kept his back to the window. Was Mercer going to pretend Sophie hadn’t come with him? Ridiculous. “Is your sister not at home, then?”
Mercer indicated a chair. “Please, my lord, sit.”
He raised one eyebrow. Damn. “Ought I?”
“Suit yourself.” He had his sister’s eyes, but for the color. Mercer’s eyes were dark green, but the shape and thick lashes were the same as Sophie’s. Mercer focused his gaze on the floor, gathering himself, Banallt fancied. Mercer took a breath, let it out, and lifted his head. “My lord. May I speak frankly to you?”
“If you must.”
“Sophie is my sister. My only relation. It is my duty to look after her. When you came to Havenwood and professed to have fallen in love with her, I confess I imagined you meant the girl who ran away with Thomas Evans and broke all our hearts.”
“Then you were incorrect.”
“She’s a girl no longer, I’ll allow you that. And yet I think no two could be more unsuited than you and my sister.” The edge of his mouth quirked. “It’s not her you claimed to love, but some other woman. A woman I don’t know and never did. And still don’t.” He threw himself on a chair, legs sprawled, one hand clutching his hair. “I don’t know how best to protect her. You did not see her after you left Havenwood.”
“A dilemma for you, to be sure.”
“It was worse, my lord, almost worse, than when she first came to Havenwood. After her husband’s death.” Mercer’s gaze was unfocused. Obviously he was privately recalling those days. “She was…so altered then I hardly knew her.”
“She was very much in love with her husband.”
“I know.”
“She mourns him still,” Banallt said. “I do understand.”
“Actually, I don’t think you do.” Mercer sat forward, forearms on his spread-a
part knees, immune, it seemed, to his glare. “You haven’t any idea what she was like as a girl, do you?”
Banallt said nothing. Sophie had told him almost nothing of her childhood.
“Always laughing. She was a happy child. Did she happen to mention to you how much time she spent at Castle Darmead?” Mercer waited a heartbeat. “I thought not. She’d badger the caretakers for information and come home full of facts about the castle and its history. The history of your family.” He smiled fondly. “And then she’d work all those facts into stories. No reason she’d tell you about that, but she did. The earls of Banallt always loomed large in her tales. I used to try to trip her up in her facts, but I never succeeded. Eventually I gave up trying. Ripping good stories, too.” He sat up straight. “I’m telling you this so that you’ll understand why she would be more susceptible to you than anyone else. To your title in particular. Don’t misunderstand me, I mean the fact that you are the Earl of Banallt. If you were Prinny himself she wouldn’t care half so much.”
“Your sister is quite the democrat.” He was certain where their conversation was headed. But he did not intend to be so easily discouraged.
“My point, sir, is that however it was you met, you couldn’t possibly live up to her girlhood ideal of the absent master of Castle Darmead.”
“You underestimate your sister if you think her unable to separate childhood imagination from a flesh-and-blood man.”
His eyes narrowed. “Whatever you were to her, I think we both know you didn’t come close to being her knight in shining armor.”
Banallt barked a laugh. “Me, a knight in armor? She never thought that of me.”
“Perhaps not. Yet I know seeing you again has hurt her.” He stood up. “My sister has had more than her share of unhappiness, my lord. More than enough. What happened between you two I don’t care to know. What I do know is that Sophie assured me she would be unaffected should we have the misfortune of meeting you in London.” He lifted a hand. “Hear me out. She insists that’s so, but I don’t believe her.”
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