Behind the Courtesan

by Bronwyn Stuart

  “You’re here,” she whispered.

  “Where else would I be?”

  The thunder of hoof beats brought them back to the fact they stood in the middle of the road. Daemon averted his gaze, his horse shifting after sensing her rider’s discomfort.

  Matthew pulled the reins hard and finally came to a stop, looked Sophie from head to toes and back again. “Where the hell have you been?”

  “You were supposed to be downstream, Matthew,” Blake pointed out.

  “I did go that way, but then I found the remains of the bridge and the tree branches are completely blocking the bend down by the Patrick place. I figured if she had been in the water, the tree would have stopped her swim.”

  “How nice of you to put it that way,” Sophie commented with a shiver. “As you can see, I didn’t require a swim at all.”

  “Is that blood on your dress?” he asked, ignoring her attempt at sarcasm.

  “It’s not mine.”

  Matthew stared at her for a moment, his gaze shifting from her face to the road she had walked down. “Violet?”

  * * *

  Sophie didn’t get the chance to answer before he’d kicked his heels to his horse’s sides and took off down the lane.

  “Do I need to go after him?” Daemon asked.

  “She is fine, as are the babies.”

  “Babies?” both men echoed.

  “A boy and a girl.”

  Blake blew out a breath before speaking. “Are they all right? Jesus, Sophie, what happened last night?”

  “After I left the inn, I headed to say my goodbyes to Violet and found her in labor.”

  “Do I want to know the rest of this story?” Daemon groaned.

  Sophie laughed. “Perhaps not.”

  “Then I’ll go and make sure your brother doesn’t kill himself on his way home.”

  “Blake, I—”

  “Sophie—”

  Sophie thought Blake would do the gentlemanly thing and let her speak first but when she opened her mouth, he clapped a hand over it and shushed her. He shushed her?

  “I have to tell you something before you ruin the moment and distract me from my purpose. Will you cease your noise?”

  She nodded and he took his hand away a heartbeat before she would have tried to bite him for manhandling her. “What—”

  “Sophie!” His warning was received. She nodded again and snapped her mouth shut.

  “You are the most stubborn woman I have ever met. Even as a girl, you had to have everything your way. If you could have controlled the sun rising you would have told it to give you an extra hour in the day to get your hands dirty.”

  He was right.

  “You also never listen. You hear, but you don’t listen.”

  “Are you going to stand there and list my flaws? I’m tired, Blake, I want to get back and wash and rest.”

  “Will you shut up? I’m trying to tell you that I want you to stay. I want you to stay in Blakiston.”

  “Why?” She wasn’t going to tell him she’d already decided to stay. She wanted to hear what he had to say.

  “Because I don’t think I could live through losing you again. Because this past week has shown me that life with you is a hell of a lot more interesting than without you.”

  “But we fight. All the time. Interesting isn’t a word I would associate with our friendship.”

  Blake stepped toward her and cupped her dirt-smudged cheek. “What if ours isn’t only a friendship?”

  She blinked. Held her breath.

  “I love you, Sophie, and I want you to stay here with me. I want you to work alongside me, sleep alongside me, live with me.”

  She gulped. Gulped again. Sophie racked her brain trying to think of a reason he would have to say all of the things he was saying. Was it because she’d been gone and he’d worried for her? Did he mistake fear of loss with love? The look on his face when he’d seen her was one of pure relief. Perhaps he thought he owed it to her to keep her safe? His idea of safe anyway.

  “You don’t have to do this.” She stepped back. Instantly her cheek was cold from the loss of contact. His contact. “You don’t have to try to save me.”

  “I’m not trying to save you. I’m trying to save me. No woman has ever lived up to your image in my mind. I stopped looking and hadn’t even realized I had until you came back into my life and turned it inside out. I didn’t know how miserable I was without you.”

  Sophie was torn. Did she believe him? Trust him? Or did she trust as she always had, only in herself and no one else. Then she wouldn’t be let down, she couldn’t be hurt or left out in the cold.

  Blake must have taken her silence as refusal as he forged ahead. “I’ll be anyone you want. I’ll be a duke or a tavern owner or even a farmer, just as long as you stand beside me.”

  “As your what? As your maid or your mistress? Perhaps your close friend?” She had to hear the words. She wouldn’t believe it until she heard it from his mouth, checked the sincerity in his eyes against the reaction in her body. What if his relief at her safety and gratitude over her help this week coerced this declaration? She wouldn’t know if he offered her a life out of guilt and he wouldn’t know if she accepted out of desperation.

  “I want you as my wife and the mother of my children. Imagine retelling this tale to the little ones.” His smile was the brightest she’d seen since they were children.

  She could see in her mind the picture he painted. But there was just one problem with the vision. “There’s something I have to tell you before you say anything else.”

  “If it’s no, then I probably don’t want to hear it. Do you need time to think on it? Do you need me to get down on my knees and apologize and tell you what an idiot I’ve been? How ashamed I am for the names I called you?”

  “It’s not that.” She shook her head, her eyes burned with tears and the words stuck in her throat. “Before I came here...”

  “Let’s forget the past. Put it all behind us and never look back ever again.”

  “Can you do that?”

  “Can you?”

  “No.” It was the simplest answer. Whether he stayed an innkeeper, became a farmer or took the title, her past was always going to come between them and they would be hopelessly naive to think otherwise.

  “No?”

  “Before I came here, I was pregnant.”

  “What?” This time it was Blake who stepped away from her. Exactly the reaction she’d expected from him.

  “I lost the baby. And not the first one. Blake, I can never carry a child.”

  “How many times have you been with child?”

  The disgust she’d thought would follow his initial reaction was strangely absent in his question.

  “Becoming pregnant is not always avoidable in my profession.”

  “How many times?”

  “Five. This one was to be the fifth child I would have liked to hold in my arms, heard her tiny cry...” Had someone to love and be loved by.

  “I don’t understand. I’m sorry for your loss, but what does this have to do with anything between us?”

  “If you take the title, I won’t be able to give you an heir. You’ll never be a father and I will never be a mother. We won’t ever have a family to call our own.”

  Blake raked a hand through his already mussed hair and took a deep breath. His chest hurt with the effort not to explode and rail and rant. Not at her, but for her. And mostly at himself. He should have known there was something off about Sophie when she’d looked at him from her perch in the carriage in the yard that first day. When she’d alternated between fear and fury and then resignation, he’d thought her acting skills had matured while in London. But she really had been angry and upset...hurt. Why hadn’t he just let her be?

  “Children don’t make a family, Sophie, love and commitment do. I’ll still take the title if that’s what you want. After the fathers we had to walk in the shadows of, I’m not even sure I want to be one. Matthew a
nd Violet have plenty enough babes to go around now.”

  “You say that now, but what about the future?”

  “I’m already thirty-three years old. This is the future.”

  “You are the only one who can decide to take the title or not. It will be your burden to bear, but I know you can do good. Would do good.”

  “Haven’t we made enough decisions in our lives without asking for help or considering others?”

  “I thought you said you understood why I made those choices.”

  He took her hands in his. “I’m not judging you. I’m saying we should consider each other now. If you’re to be my wife, then we need to make the choices here on in.”

  “I haven’t agreed to become your wife.”

  “You will.” Blake chuckled. He felt lighter now than he had in fourteen years. This time it didn’t matter what she did or where she went. He would follow her and never let her go.

  “You think to force me? Wear me down?”

  Blake took her hand in his and began walking toward where the horse stood grazing quietly. He didn’t want to let her go. Not even for a second. “I would never force you to do anything.” He stared at her sideways. “Well, I may force you to take a bath. You look as though you rolled through a paddock.”

  “I may as well have,” she muttered as her hand relaxed in his and her stride lengthened to keep pace.

  “So a boy and a girl? Are they really all right?”

  “They’re excellent. It was the most difficult night of my life. And the best.”

  “Do you think maybe you could make a life out of delivering babies?”

  Sophie’s nose wrinkled and she shook her head. “Never. I would never want to do it again for as long as I live.”

  They both laughed at that. He didn’t want any of the details, but he could imagine.

  As he walked alongside the animal, wondering how they were both going to fit on the narrow saddle, relishing the idea of holding her on his lap as they made their way back to the inn, the sounds of hooves reached him again.

  At first he thought they might belong to Daemon, but the noise came from the other direction and the rising level signaled more than one horse.

  Blake held the reins in his hand and without a word, helped Sophie into the saddle.

  “I don’t ride well, Blake, and this is not a side saddle.”

  The feeling of unease multiplied in him when a carriage and pair barreled around the bend, headed straight for the fork in the road behind where they stood. He recognized at once the conveyance and the driver behind the horses, a look of anger and desperation on his face.

  He was not in the mood for a confrontation with a debt-ridden former duke.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “Charles is fleeing,” Sophie stated, her voice low despite the distance between them and him.

  “That was the original idea.”

  “Where do you think he will go?”

  “The Continent? The Americas? He’s lucky he isn’t being shipped off with the criminals. But as long as it isn’t here, I don’t care.”

  They stood and watched as he drew closer. Blake held his breath and hoped the man kept going, that he wouldn’t find the need to stop.

  But Blake’s luck had been used up in finding Sophie and as the carriage came to a stop, Charles threw the brake on and jumped to the ground, eyes positively glinting with malice.

  Blake swore under his breath.

  “This is all your fault,” Charles screeched, his fists at his sides as he advanced.

  Blake sighed. “I hardly see how any of the blame can be laid at my door.”

  “If you had kept your mouth shut, the King would never have discovered the details of your birth. I would still be a duke and you would still be a nobody.”

  Blake didn’t like the wild look in Charles’s eyes but this confrontation had to come. Be it now or when the rat crawled back from the hole he would find to hide in. “I didn’t tell the King anything. Do you really think he would have listened to me, anyway? I’m a nobody. Nobodies do not get heard by the King of England.”

  “Then how did he find out? I’ll kill the man who took this all away from me.”

  “Does it matter? Your gambling put you here. Not the man, not the King and certainly not me. I don’t even want to be a duke.”

  Charles roared. “It shouldn’t even be a choice for you! From the sounds of it, your mother was nothing more than an ambitious slut. What did she do to get the old duke to marry her?”

  The words stung. They stung more for the fact that he’d said the exact same words to Sophie only yesterday. They stung because this is how men viewed women who reached above their station. Never mind if love was involved or not. Never mind if they were beaten, raped, treated as animals. He happened to know very well his mother loved his father until he tried to kill her in a drunken rage.

  “My mother and her relationship with Blakiston is none of your business. Be on your way now, Charles. There are no options left here for you.”

  The wild gleam grew wilder as he looked between Blake and Sophie—who sat frozen atop the horse.

  “Sophie, I want you to leave now.” Blake dropped the reins he held in his hands and willed her to pick them up and leave.

  “I want her to stay,” Charles said as he pulled an ivory-handled pistol from the pocket of his greatcoat and pointed it at Sophie.

  “Sophie, go!”

  But the horse must have finally picked up on the tension between the three and reared up, hooves flying through the air. Since Sophie didn’t have hold of the reins, just the horse’s mane, she teetered and fell.

  Blake half caught her, half fell with her. The breath was knocked out of him as she landed with an elbow to his gut, her short shriek punctuating the air only to fall away.

  Before they’d gotten to their feet, Charles put his boot squarely on Blake’s chest to push him back to the ground. With his other hand, the deranged man pulled Sophie to her feet by her hair. She screamed again and Blake tried to right himself, but the position he’d landed in made it difficult. One of his legs was under the other and her skirts still lay across them. If he moved, he would become more tangled.

  “Get your hands off her,” he growled.

  “Or what?” Charles snickered. “I have the gun and you have nothing. Just the way it should have been.”

  “You’re mad,” Sophie puffed, still trying to catch her breath. “You can’t possibly go anywhere new from here. Blake is going to be duke.”

  “It’s never that simple,” Charles said, tightening his grip in her hair until her scalp smarted and tears filled her eyes.

  She met Blake’s gaze, his eyes flicked to the right. He wanted her to run. Well, there was no way. He’d said it himself. They were in this together and together they would get out of it. She just had to distract Charles so Blake could get to his feet.

  “I’m telling you, I can’t see how this will work. If you kill Blake, you will go to prison. Perhaps if he had been a nobody, you would get away with it, but not like this. Not with the line of succession in question.”

  “Oh, there’s no question. While this son of a bitch holds the title, I’ll go back to being the heir until he spawns a brat.”

  “And then you’ll be the nobody,” Blake grunted.

  Charles pressed his boot deeper into Blake’s chest and leaned forward slightly.

  “Never!” he spat. “I will not let it get that far.”

  “But you can’t kill him,” Sophie pointed out again. If she could shove him hard enough with her shoulder, he would fall and then Blake could wrestle the pistol from him. It was risky but it was their only chance. “I’ll tell everyone that you killed him and you will be transported.”

  “No one is going to believe you, whore.” Charles laughed, sending shivers down her spine.

  “Daemon will believe me.”

  “Not if you’re dead too.”

  This time it was Blake who laughed. “How are
you going to get away with two murders? This is why you were never a successful gambler. You don’t think things through.”

  “But you have already set the scene for this little drama,” Charles said. “You two have done nothing but tear into each other since she arrived. There isn’t a soul in town who won’t believe she killed you in a rage. She has quite the temper, you see.”

  “Matthew won’t believe that, and neither will Daemon.”

  Charles laughed again. This time the sound rose as hysteria took over. “I’m going to tell him that Blake forced himself on you and you killed him.”

  Sophie smiled down at Blake. “Now that, neither Daemon nor Matthew will believe. They already know the truth of our relationship.”

  Charles tensed, wild eyes once again flicking back and forth between Sophie and Blake. “You bedded him?”

  Blake’s smug grin gave him the answer.

  “Where did I get the gun?” Sophie asked, not sure they’d done the smartest thing just then. Charles would only get angrier, since he wasn’t able to charm her himself. She had to keep him talking until she found her moment.

  “I don’t care where you got the gun,” Charles yelled. The sound echoed and for a second Sophie hoped Daemon or Matthew would hear the commotion and come back and rescue them.

  “Is it yours?” Blake asked. “Because if you took it from the house, the authorities will know of its origins.”

  “She could have taken it from the house at the auction.”

  “I never went to the house.” She would never set foot in that house again. Ever.

  “Yes, you came there to meet me. You wanted to thank me properly for rescuing you on the road that day.”

  “I don’t think so,” Sophie said adamantly. But perhaps that angle would work for him. She was a courtesan. All he had to say was that she was soliciting a new protector and it would put her in the house. Even with all of the witnesses at the inn, his word would mean more than all of theirs put together. But then again, his credibility was cracked. As was his mind evidently.

  “What have I got to lose?” Charles said with a shrug and a smile.

  Sophie took that moment, when his grip relaxed in her hair and his boot still pressed into Blake’s chest, to brace her legs and push with all her might.