Behind the Courtesan

by Bronwyn Stuart

  In fact, since she had fled, she hadn’t visited outside of the city at all. Until now. And look how it turned out.

  Silence once again engulfed them. They were mere inches away from each other and yet worlds apart. She was a courtesan, and he was a countrified tavern owner.

  Never mind that as children they’d seen each other without clothes, that they had lain on the banks of a river and quenched their thirst. They had endured so much, had each known everything about the other, yet the years had borne a gap too wide to breach. Sophia missed the camaraderie they once shared more than she would ever admit aloud. Blake had been a brother to her just as much as Matthew had. But that was over now. They were no longer children, no longer friends. But there were things she wanted to know.

  “How long ago did your uncle die?” It was blunt but she didn’t think he would mind much. There had never had been love or affection between Blake and John.

  “Six years. Best thing that ever happened to me.”

  “Did Blakiston ever try to claim you as his son?” she asked, snapping a twig between her fingers and feeding it to the hungry flames of the fire.

  Blake shook his head. “Never. The cur tried to destroy me but it didn’t work. Eventually he gave up trying and let me be but by then it was obvious to all with eyes that he was my sire.”

  “What did he do? To try to ruin you?”

  “First there was the poison.”

  Sophia gasped.

  “Not intended for me,” he assured her. “Took down every last cow and chicken I had, nearly got the horses as well, but they were fed a different grain then.”

  “What did you do?”

  He shook his head. “Not me. We. The town rallied around me, ate vegetable pies for a month, gave me a cow for milk, a few chickens for eggs to make the basic biscuits, bread and cake. I was able to start again.”

  “Did you confront him?”

  “I went to the estate,” he said but offered no more.

  “He actually let you in?”

  They hadn’t had a choice when he’d kicked the front door down and strode in as if he did indeed own the mansion. If the old duke had been nicer to his mother instead of making her appear his mistress, if his mother had demanded respect from the man who married her and then denied it and had had the evidence destroyed, he would have owned the place.

  Unfortunately for the folk of Blakiston, there appeared no legitimate son to take the mantle, to carry on a name dragged through the mud and back for generations. It fell to Charles Falston, not even a real man, more a sniveling brat, who now had power and the hunger to wield it, to fill the shoes of the depraved duke.

  Charles could have it. Blake didn’t want any part of a title or the responsibility. He’d been raised a bastard. Nothing would change that. He and St. Ives had made sure of it.

  “You don’t have to talk about it anymore.”

  Her voice pierced his internal rage, gave him something to hold onto, to pull himself out of the pit of anger and despair that tried to drown him. “Or do you not want to hear it?”

  This is why he didn’t talk about it. He tried not to think of his mother, the woman who’d birthed him and then abandoned him. So many people in his life had betrayed him. Sophie would always sit at the top of the list. “You and my mother are the same, you know.”

  “We are not,” came her indignant reply.

  “You both just threw away my love like it never mattered a damn.”

  The awful silence, the one that held the demons of their pasts, settled around them again. How did she manage to draw his emotions from him like a bucket dipped into a well? It was none of her business and deep down, Blake knew she didn’t care. She had her grand life in London and in a matter of weeks, this trip would be but a distant memory, more fodder for the gossip that filled drawing rooms and salons. Salons she would sit in with St. Ives and live her shallow life.

  He couldn’t sit still anymore. He was a fool and a hypocrite. He wanted her to open up to him, yet he hadn’t done the same with her. Hadn’t told her of his friendship with her protector or that he and St. Ives were related.

  For the first time ever, he was actually jealous of his only two friends. Matthew had Violet and the baby. St. Ives had Sophie and her trust. He had nothing. Nothing at all.

  As he got up and stamped away into the cold night, wishing she would call him back, wishing he had the courage to stay, he realized he was the biggest fool of them all.

  Despite what she was, whoever she was now, he still loved her and that made him angrier than anything else had in the past fourteen years.

  * * *

  “Damn you Blake! Damn you and your fool notions. I am nothing like your mother!” A temper difficult to leash pushed her to her feet and drove Sophia to follow the stubborn man into the dark. She stumbled, nearly fell, righted herself only to stumble again.

  Out of nowhere, his body loomed until he stood face to face with her, his eyes and mouth twisted into a fury so great Sophia trembled but stood her ground. There wasn’t anything he could do to her that hadn’t already been done.

  “You are the fool,” he roared. “You could have had it all, a family, a husband, a good life, but you were a coward. You should have stayed and fought your father but you ran away and hid from it.”

  If it was a fight he wanted, it was a fight he would get. “I’m the coward? You hide behind your so-called farming accomplishments so you won’t have to step out on a limb and make something of yourself. You could have had it all too, Blake. You could have been so much more, but you were too frightened to make your father see you. Too busy hiding from responsibility and respectability.”

  “Is what you think? That I should have been a duke? Would you have had me then, Sophia? If I came to you in London and told you I loved you, would you have given it all up to come back here with me? To rot in the countryside with thousands of pounds and an estate? Because that’s what you want isn’t it? That’s why you never wrote me, never thought of me. I’m just a peasant and you want a title.”

  “What are you talking about? I don’t want a title.”

  “That’s what you say, but it’s all a lie. You sleep with St. Ives in the hopes that he will one day offer you the life you ran away for. How did you first get the notion? Did you read it in a book? Did you meet him when he came to visit the estate? Did your London friends help you think up the lie of your father selling you to Blakiston to win Daemon’s heart?”

  “They aren’t lies. It’s the truth.”

  “No, Sophia. I think the truth is that you wished for a better life long before you had the notion to flee. I think that is why you never said goodbye. You wouldn’t have been able to hide your enthusiasm, your eagerness to start your new life.”

  Sophia’s heart stopped its rapid thump-thump against her ribs. Stopped beating altogether. “Is that truly what you think? How you see me?”

  “How many men did you sleep with before worming your way into the bed of a duke?”

  Sophia shook her head until her hair came loose from the chignon she’d tied it in. He was wrong. Oh, how wrong he was and there wasn’t a thing she could say or do to sway him.

  Suddenly, warm hands gripped her arms hard just above the elbows. “How many men, Sophia?” With each syllable, he shook her, shook her until her teeth rattled and her neck hurt.

  Wrenching free of his brutal grip, Sophia pulled her hand back and swung hard. The resounding crack echoed in the night air, fog from their heavy and harsh breaths drifted into the sky above them. Sophia’s palm stung but she wanted to hit him again. She wanted to lash out and hurt him just as much. How could he be so wrong? He saw her with only disgust and pity and it gnawed her soul that his opinion had fallen so low.

  Well, if he wanted the truth, she would give it to him, but in return she would know the same of him. “I will tell you how many men, but you must tell me how many women.” How she wished she had the eyes of a night owl. She would have given it all to see what
he felt in that moment. His anger and condemnation she could feel but there was something else there. Some other kind of anguish that tore him up. That probably had nothing to with her and her occupation so much as his own hurt pride.

  “I don’t have to tell you that and you shouldn’t ask.”

  “Very well, then.” Whipping around so fast her dirty, ripped skirts snapped about her legs, Sophia headed back to the warmth of the fire. He would follow or he would not. For all she cared, he could perish in the dark on his own.

  Shaking the blanket free of anything that might have taken a mind to crawl in, Sophia wrapped it around her shoulders and dropped back down in the space between the dead horse and the hot coals. A chill pervaded her body, but she doubted the night had anything to do with it.

  The minutes stretched, the only sound came from the crackle of the fire and the occasional call of night birds. Just when she was about to give up and close her eyes, Blake’s heavy tread approached.

  “How many?” he asked.

  She sighed. “Why does it matter? What concern is it of yours?”

  “It does matter. It matters to me for the stupidest reasons of all, but it matters.”

  Finally she nodded and gave him the number. “Seven.”

  “I’m not an idiot. Tell me the real number.”

  Must he continue to heap insult upon injury? “That is the number. You asked and I told you. Now it is your turn.”

  “I won’t tell you until you stop with the lies.”

  Sophia jumped back to her feet. “What do you want me to tell you? Do you want to know everything? Do you want to know that I was saved from a fate worse than death when I arrived in London? That I was polished, preened and beautified until I shone and then sold to save my life? The reason I landed in a duke’s bed is because lies and gossip travel faster than the truth. By the time St. Ives found me, I had a notorious reputation for dazzling men in their bedrooms—all lies but lies that helped me stay alive.”

  All was quiet for a time, Sophia’s chest rose with each breath she heaved in and then whooshed out. Why did he do this to her? Slumping to the ground, she rubbed a hand over her face and stared into the fire. “Believe what you will. I have nothing to lose by telling the truth.” Well, some of the truth. There was more to it but she would never reveal it. Ever. What would he do to her if he knew that when she arrived in London, she carried his father’s baby, his own half brother? He would never speak to her again. Even in anger.

  “Do you ever feel regret?”

  She did. All the time. Regret that she hadn’t run sooner. Regret that she hadn’t been able to truly trust Blake and Matthew to save her. Regret ate away her defenses each time she peered into the face of a baby knowing she would never have one of her own. Nothing in her life had so far gone to plan, but she had been happy, or at least some version of it. “Regret is a luxury I cannot afford,” came her eventual reply.

  “Some would call that denial.”

  “I define it as the intelligent option. And denial has its uses.”

  “One day you will have to face it all, Sophie. What will you do then?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “I’ll face it when it comes. But that won’t be this day or any other day soon.”

  “How do you know? You can’t keep it at bay forever.”

  Staring into the mesmerizing flames, she muttered. “Oh, yes I can.”

  Chapter Eight

  The distant sounds of horses’ hooves drifted through Blake’s mind, threatening to bring him more fully awake, to take him from a place where he was content. Beneath floating apple flowers, his hands molded her curves as his mouth brushed her jaw, her ear lobe, her cheek, consigning her taste to the deepest parts of his memories. In this place, in his dreams, Sophie was his wife and life was perfect.

  He didn’t want to wake up, but the drumming of hooves meant a customer. His delirious dreams could wait.

  He flexed his fingers and stretched but the woman of his nighttime invention didn’t move. She didn’t disappear when he opened his eyes, her apple scent continued to tickle his nose. Her warmth still filled his arms as he held her tightly to his side, heat radiating from both their bodies.

  His sleepy gaze shifted as he remembered where they were. Who she was. Right about the same time she did.

  A sudden stiffness infused Sophie’s body. Her head rose and her back straightened.

  Shit.

  Pulling his hands away from her, Blake cried out when pain exploded in so many parts of his body at once he thought he might die. The dream must have been God’s idea of a nasty joke.

  The skin on his arm pulled, pain from ribs that were surely broken took his breath away, and a thousand other little hurts made themselves known. He couldn’t feel his sleeping lower limbs at all.

  Before Sophie could berate him for his actions, before he could explain that he’d dreamed of happiness while holding her tight, she was on her feet and in the middle of the road.

  “Sophie,” he called out to her.

  “Don’t you dare say a word!” The finger she held out to him, the accusation in her eyes as she pointed in his direction, flustered and embarrassed him and made him click his mouth shut with a snap.

  In the cold light of the morning, he was right. He wasn’t a duke and she wasn’t interested.

  As crude as the truth was, Sophie sold her body to the lord with the deepest coffers. The very idea of sleeping with her head on his shoulder had to be causing no end of inner turmoil for her.

  The silence between them intensified, the thumping in his ears testified to his weakened state, his aroused state. He’d lost enough blood yesterday to fell the mightiest of men and anything remaining had flooded south at the mostly innocent sharing of body heat.

  He stared at Sophie, standing in the middle of the road, hands on hips, one foot tapping the gravel beneath her toe. What was she doing? Would she stand there until someone came along? He’d need help getting to his feet and was about to ask her when he realized the thumping in his head was actually the sound of horses, the sound that had woken him.

  From where he sat, his back still against Monster’s, he couldn’t see down the road, but he could hear the driver’s order to the horses pulling the carriage to slow and then stop.

  Doing his best to ignore the pain that racked his body, Blake rolled to his side, the side on which his ribs were unharmed, and willed blood back into his legs. The carriage could hold any manner of filth.

  “Good morning to you, sir,” Sophie said, her voice clear and loud and sweetly feminine. “As you can see, we have met with some trouble and require assistance.”

  “Who is it, Gaspar?” a voice asked from the inside of the carriage. Whoever it was sounded frustrated.

  “A...lady, Your Grace.” The hesitation in the driver’s words made Blake want to punch the man in the face. He wasn’t at all sure if Sophie was a lady due to the richness of her clothes or just another woman standing in the middle of the road, but his hesitation implied he would as soon as run her down than render assistance.

  “Please, sir, it has been a harrowing night already, I would be most appreciative.”

  Why hadn’t she ever used that tone of voice with him? She sure knew how to stroke a man’s conscience.

  He groaned, the pain in his legs taking his mind off the thought of Sophie stroking anything.

  He heard the door of the conveyance open, boots hit the earth and the traces jangle as the horses shifted.

  “And who might you be?” Frustration seemed to be replaced by curiosity.

  Blake rose to his feet, worried about the black spots swimming before his eyes. Taking the few steps toward Sophie, Blake saw who stopped to offer them aid and swore.

  * * *

  Sophia itched to march over to the bone-head and kick him. What kind of man welcomed their rescuer with a string of vile, offensive curses? Did he think she wanted to stay on the side of the road with him?

  Not likely!

  Drop
ping a deep curtsey, Sophia tried her best to appear every inch the lady. If this man knew her status by birth, he would probably beat her out of the way with the ivory-handled walking stick he held. “My name is Sophia Martin, Your Grace.” She hadn’t missed the title the driver had so carelessly thrown about.

  “And what kind of trouble have you come across?” The question was asked as the duke assessed first Blake, then their broken cart and then her. His gaze started at her toes and traveled slowly, insolently up, pausing at her chest, and then finally meeting her eyes.

  Sophia remembered when Blake made much the same perusal. She narrowed her gaze in his direction before turning back to the duke. “I’m afraid one of the horses went lame and the other ran off. After spending the night on the road, I find myself eager for a warm bath and a glass of wine.” Sophia knew what she was doing perfectly well. The inflection she put on the word bath, implied she wished for company. She played with the devil not knowing whom she addressed, but faced with two evils, she would choose a stranger over Blake’s nearness any day.

  “Oh, dear lady, of course I will offer you the sanctuary of my carriage. I expect the ambience will be improved with your presence.”

  Sophia tittered. “Your Grace, you are too kind.”

  “Ah, but you must call me Blakiston if we are to be traveling companions.”

  Her heart skipped a beat. It couldn’t be. Resisting the urge to let her jaw fall open in shock, or to look to Blake to seek confirmation, she merely inclined her head. The presence at her back told her Blake had finally pulled himself from the ground.

  “You needn’t risk the mud to your leather, Blakiston. Sophie will be quite fine here with me until the search party arrives.”

  Ooh. Her foot itched again, only this time she would do more than kick his shins.

  Blakiston didn’t give her the chance. “I’m sure the lady would rather join me than stay here in the cold with you.” His tone challenged, condescended.

  “And I’m sure our searchers will be along any moment now, so you needn’t bother yourself. Why don’t you get back in your carriage and be on your way.”