Behind the Courtesan

by Bronwyn Stuart

  She did have so many questions. How did they find out they were siblings? How long had they known? Was the old duke aware of Daemon as his son? So many questions, but if she blurted them all out now and Daemon told her to mind her own business, how would she respond? She had to work it all out in her own mind and choose carefully what she wanted to know. Daemon was a private man and only released the details of his life that he wanted to be made public. The rest were cards he held very close to his chest.

  “Are you ready to eat?” she asked, shifting all her jumbled thoughts to the back of her mind for later. For now, all she wanted was to eat a meal with a man who didn’t insult her at every turn. Or make her head hurt with the effort to decipher him.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Later that day, Sophie stood by a makeshift corral as yet another fine thoroughbred went under the hammer and more of Daemon’s money spilled into the pocket of a ducal toad. She wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but Daemon had purchased a total of fifteen horses, much to the disgust of the other men who’d traveled for the auction. She wanted to ask him what he would do with them all, but she could only stand and smile prettily as her brain whirled with questions. The barns at his estate were tiny and he wasn’t a horse man at all. And then there were the dozen more questions about his relationship with Blake she longed to have answered. Why hadn’t he ever mentioned even traveling to Blakiston? She also wondered how often the half brothers saw each other. Too many scenarios skated in her mind.

  “Are you all right, m’dear?” Daemon asked, looking pointedly at where her hand was supposed to rest lightly on his arm. Instead her grip was tight, his coat bunched beneath her gloved fingers.

  Sophie relaxed her hand and smiled. When she peered at the others around her to make sure no one else had noticed her agitation, she met the gaze of Blake who scowled in her direction as if she was the one bidding on all of the flesh.

  “I’m perfectly fine, thank you.” If she could have a guinea for every time she had said those particular words in the past week...

  “You don’t look fine. Perhaps you need to sit for a moment?”

  “No, thank you.” She leaned closer so no one would hear her. “What are you doing?”

  “What do you mean? I’m trying to see to your obvious lack of comfort.”

  “Why are you buying all of them? That one over there looks as though she is about to fall over. Her ribs are poking out.”

  The stiffness under her hand was not imagined and when she looked to his face, Daemon was now the one wearing a scowl. “He has not fed them properly in a month. Wait till you see the foaling mares. He’s lucky this mob haven’t taken matters into their own hands and hung him from his own barn.”

  She didn’t want to see the foaling mares. Not if they appeared as pitiful as the last two. She didn’t want to be there at all, but the whole village had turned out and she didn’t want to be left behind at the tavern on her own. And she still had to find a way to confront Blake with what she knew. And soon.

  Four pathetic beasts later and finally, a spirited gray gelding was led into the corral. This one was skinny like the others, but intelligence and defiance shone in his stormy eyes. When he whinnied and reared onto his back legs, the shadow he cast over those standing closest made them shuffle back in fear.

  “Ten pounds,” Blake called as he stepped from the shadow of the barn.

  A laugh was the only answer from her left as Blakiston also stepped into the light. “You’ll need to do better than that, Vale.”

  “Only if there is another bidder,” Blake said, looking around at his fellow villagers and friends. There was just enough firmness in his tone to let everyone know this beast was marked as his.

  Sophie waited for Daemon to buy this one as well, but his mouth remained closed, his lips drawn in a tight line. Fascinating.

  “Thirty pounds,” came from a stranger in a dusty bowler hat and black coat.

  “Fifty,” came Blake’s reply.

  Her heart sped up a little in anticipation.

  “Sixty pounds,” Bowler Hat countered.

  “Eighty.”

  This went on for several tense minutes until the amount reached a staggering one hundred and sixty pounds. From the corner of her eye, Sophie noticed the man in the bowler hat look to Blakiston. If she wasn’t standing so close, she wouldn’t have noticed Blakiston’s small nod, which prompted Bowler Hat to place another bid. The duke was cheating to push the price higher. She wondered if Blakiston had more men in the crowd bidding on his own flesh.

  Once the sum hit two hundred pounds, Blake had to be almost at his limit, and yet Bowler Hat kept countering with ten more pounds to his every bid. He was about to pay far too much for the horse and everyone present knew it. Sophie let go of Daemon’s hand and began to drift through the crowd toward Blake, but before she moved more than three steps, Matthew appeared at her side.

  “Where are you going?” he asked as he blocked her path with his body.

  “Blake is being swindled. I have to warn him.”

  “Blake knows what he’s doing, Sophie. He’s a big boy.”

  “And Blakiston is cheating him out of more money than that horse is worth.”

  “He knows that.”

  What? “He does?” What hadn’t they told her?

  Matthew led her away from the auction and crowd. “Of course he does. Why do you think St. Ives has purchased every horse so far? They have a plan.”

  “Do you know what it is?” Sophie wondered if they’d told Matthew of Blake’s claim to the title or their real relationship.

  He shook his head, but the expression he wore said he knew more than he let on. She kept walking until they were both a safe distance from prying ears. “Do you know about Blake?” she demanded. If she didn’t talk to someone and soon, she would explode.

  Matthew became instantly wary. “What about Blake?”

  He was her brother, so surely she could share with him a secret that wasn’t her own. It was Blake’s fault he hadn’t told her the truth when he’d had the chance. She’d answered his questions honestly when he’d asked, but all he’d given her were lies and subterfuge. She owed him nothing. “Did you know that Blake is indeed the true heir to the Blakiston title?”

  “He is a bastard. He cannot inherit.”

  “He is no more illegitimate than you or I.”

  “That’s impossible. Why didn’t he say anything to me? Why would he tell you?”

  “He didn’t tell me. I overheard him telling his brother to burn the documents proving his claim.”

  “He has no siblings. We are the closest he has to family. Are you sure you were listening in on the right conversation?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Daemon and Blake are half brothers. Daemon tried to talk Blake into ousting Charles and taking the title himself.”

  Matthew paced away, one hand rubbing his forehead as he processed the information. “What? How? I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t know the entire tale, but needless to say, Blake would do a much better job than Charles does now. Charles doesn’t care about the village or its people. He only cares about gambling and women. We have to do something.”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “We do nothing. Leave it be.”

  “We can’t just stand by and wait for Blakiston to destroy our home.”

  “This is not your home. Why are you so worried for us now?”

  His sudden hostility caught her off guard and she didn’t know how to respond. He was right. She didn’t belong here and what happened after she left would have no effect on her further than what it meant for Matthew, Violet and her niece or nephew.

  Sometime over the course of a week, Sophie had begun to think of Blakiston as home. She’d barely thought of London, the clinic, her friends. In the parts of her mind where hope still shone, she’d even thought of how it would be to live out her life in the tavern alongside a man like Blake. Down the road from the estat
e where her life had ended and Sophia’s had begun.

  But who was she kidding? She’d blamed her errant thoughts on nearly losing him. She’d blamed them on the fact that her world had been turned upside down when he’d kissed her. So many feelings she’d long buried had risen to the surface. As a child, she’d idolized her older brother’s best friend. As a young woman, she’d watched him grow, watched him fight and run and laugh but it had been a hopeless child’s crush. When she’d overheard her father’s plans to sell her to the old duke, all thoughts of a happy life, being courted and wooed, spending her summer days with Blake and Matthew, all had flown from her mind. Even up to the day her father marched her up the steps to the estate and handed her over, she hadn’t thought he would go through with it. Surely his only daughter was more important to him than a piece of land.

  Evidently not.

  It made her skin crawl and her stomach heave to recall the many times she’d wished the old duke would kill her rather than touch her again.

  He almost did kill her, several times over. If it hadn’t been for the drink, she would have died. Instead, he’d drunk to such an excess, he forgot to turn the lock on the door all the way. After spending what seemed an eternity before daring to try the door, Sophie hadn’t even known if it would be night or day when she finally emerged from the lowest levels of the house. When Blake had told her how they’d searched for her, the hours her father had spent looking for her...she had been there all along.

  Nothing had been more important that night than putting distance between herself and the man who traded her innocence for a farm. Sure, she could have woken her brother and let him see the bruises, but then they would have both had to run. She should never have written to let them know she was alive. She should have let her brother and her friend think her dead, but her sadness had weighed too heavily so she’d put pen to paper. She could have told them so much more, but the rest she kept to herself. Only the old duke knew the whole story and he was dead.

  Blake would never understand that a courtesan’s life was preferable to no life at all.

  She’d seen an opportunity to escape and she’d taken it. When she looked back on her flight that night, she was very lucky to have made it to London at all. She could have fallen into a ditch in the dark. She could have been attacked by animals or chanced upon a stranger on the road. It was no small miracle that she’d survived to reach the capital. She’d lived every day since as if it could be her last. She developed street sense with the help of her friends and she’d made decisions that were right at the time, not right for the future. The situation she now found herself in was no different. She had to make a decision about the information she now held and she needed to make it now, not for her future or Blake’s, not for their pasts or the possible outcomes, but for the future of her niece or nephew and the life he or she would lead.

  Charles may not be exactly the same as the old duke, but he already showed he was not the man to take care of these villagers. To take care of her family.

  Whether Sophie accepted the village as her home or not, she had to ensure her family would be happy, taken care of, protected. She would accept nothing less and, like it or not, Blake was the only one who could make sure that happened.

  * * *

  With each swing of the heavy axe, Blake split huge logs into smaller pieces for the kitchen fire and the tavern pit. His side hurt a little with the exertion but nothing compared to how his heart thundered in his chest. For the hundredth time since Sophie had arrived back in his life, he asked himself what the hell he was doing. The headache attested to the fact he was nowhere near the answer.

  He wasn’t the kind of man who slept with his friend’s paramour. He certainly wasn’t the type of man to sleep with his brother’s woman. But Sophie had been his first. Not in the flesh, but he had loved her long before St. Ives had “saved” her. Blake snorted and dropped the axe once more, the sharp crack only just distinguishable above the steady patter of rain.

  If the old duke had asked Blake to find the woman he’d wronged, Blake would have brought her home. He wouldn’t have offered her a position in his bed. Not as his mistress anyway.

  He leaned over and hefted half a tree branch, resting it between two stumps. As he lifted and dropped the axe, rendering the useless limb down to kindling, he kept thinking what it would have been like to have Sophie by his side all these years. Even if he became a duke now, he couldn’t have her. Despite Daemon having offered her marriage, they both knew it took more than even love for a duke to marry his mistress and certainly not a courtesan. It had been done but Sophie would be whispered about and the title would be eternally plunged into scandal. Generations of his future family would be tainted.

  But what of her? What of Sophie? There was nothing he could do for her.

  It wasn’t him. A duke wasn’t who he was. He was the boy delivered to his uncle as a child and beaten into a man. He was the boy who had been told so many times how useless he was that he almost believed it.

  When next Blake picked up another log, water dripped from his fingertips, mixing with the sweat he would be covered in if it weren’t for the still falling rain. He wished the droplets would wash away his troubles. But nothing could eliminate the truth. No matter how hard he denied it, he preferred instead the safe life he’d built.

  That’s what she did.

  He supposed, but it was different. At least his safe illusion didn’t hurt anyone. Hers hurt her family, her friends, the woman she could have become.

  Blake shook his head and tipped it back, cold rain washing over his closed eyelids. Damn her and how she made him think.

  “I’ve been looking for you,” a voice called from his left.

  “I’ve been right here.” Blake shrugged, then swung the axe with more power than he truly felt.

  “Sophie told me some interesting tales this afternoon.”

  Blake swallowed, dropped the axe and turned to his oldest friend. “Oh?”

  Matthew returned his gaze—wary, hesitant, unsure of how to proceed. Blake’s stomach dropped. Well, here it was, the lecture he’d waited to receive, that he needed to have in order to bring him back to reality. Funny that it should be Matthew and not Daemon.

  “She told me you are Blakiston’s real heir, not Charles.”

  His head snapped up so quickly it was a wonder he didn’t fall over. “What did you say?” Matthew should have said, “How dare you sleep with my sister and then treat her like that!” or something along those lines. He should call him out, punch him in the nose or throw him in the dirt. Not this.

  Matthew stepped forward. “You were supposed to be the Duke of Blakiston. How could you not tell me?”

  Lie, his subconscious breathed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t give me that rot. I asked you to be the godfather to my child because you are an honest, trustworthy man, who would make an excellent role model. I didn’t know then that the deception went so deep. How could you never tell me any of this?”

  Blake flinched from the anger in Matthew’s voice. “I didn’t tell you because it isn’t true. Where did Sophie hear this?”

  “She heard you with your brother. Don’t cover your lies with more lies. Now would be the time to tell the truth, Blake, and hope to God that this village doesn’t turn its back on the one man who could have made life so much better all these years.”

  “It’s not as easy as that.” But that was also a lie.

  “Tell me you aren’t Blakiston’s legitimate son. Tell me you were truly born on the wrong side of the blanket and I’ll tell Sophie she was wrong.”

  He heaved great lungfuls of frigid air as his hands fisted at his sides. How dare she? From the moment she’d stepped foot in his yard, she’d tried to ruin his life. How could he even for one moment think she could be his other half?

  “If you’ll excuse me,” he said to Matthew before turning on his heel in the mud and storming toward the kitchens. He had to make su
re Sophie kept her mouth shut and her meddling to herself.

  * * *

  “How could you never have breathed a word about your relationship with Blake?” Sophie decided the direct approach was the only way she would have the answers she needed to complete the puzzle.

  “Blake and I are friends, but I have a feeling that’s not what motivates your question.”

  Sophie wandered around Daemon’s room and folded the towel he’d left draped over a chair. What a perfect picture of domesticity they made.

  “I overheard you and him talking this morning.” She didn’t have to look in his direction to know he’d frozen to the spot.

  “What exactly did you hear?”

  “Enough to know that Blake and you are brothers and that he is indeed the heir to the dukedom.”

  “You heard all that?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “What are you going to do with this new information?”

  “No, Daemon. What are you going to do with the information? Why are you really here and why did you purchase almost every one of Blakiston’s horses?”

  Daemon dropped into the chair before the cold hearth and beckoned for her to sit as well. She did so, even though her anxiety rocketed higher with each and every question that sprang to mind. There were so many.

  “Charles is in deep to some very nasty men. The auction was the quickest way he could acquire the funds to flee England.”

  “I don’t understand. Why does he not ask the Crown for help, or his friends? Surely a loan would put him back on the straight and narrow?”

  “He has no friends in funds and the King has already helped as much as he is prepared to. Charles owes money to so many men, even if the estate and title could be sold, it wouldn’t even be a drop in the ocean to his creditors.”

  “But what has this got to do with Blake? Why do you bring it all up now?”

  “We’ve known who we are to each other for about a decade. My mother considered herself in love with the old duke until he showed his true colors and almost ruined her life. St. Ives paid no heed to her in the early days of their marriage and didn’t particularly care when one of his oldest friends did. Discreetly of course. Discretion is the middle name of the ton. If it weren’t for the secretiveness of the upper echelon, duels would have wiped half the aristocracy from the country.”