by Mary Balogh
“I have been reading Milton’s Paradise Lost,” Sophia said. “It is heavy. But you are quite right, Lavinia. It is well worth reading.”
“Poor Milton did not realize what a marvelous hero he was creating in Satan,” Lavinia said.
“The quintessential rebel,” Sophia said. “I am not surprised that you sympathize with him.”
They settled into a comfortable chat. Sophia’s mind did touch upon the dreadful problem she would be facing if Boris Pinter decided to call today, but she did not believe he would. He would wait a while before presenting her with the next letter. He would wish to savor last night’s victory for a few days or even weeks.
Did Nathaniel’s spirits lift at the mere sight of her? she wondered. As hers did at the sight of him?
FIFTEEN
COMING TO LONDON FOR the Season seemed to be accomplishing one of its purposes at least, Nathaniel thought a week later. For his own part he would have been quite content to return to Bowood, since he was not enjoying himself despite the pleasure of seeing and spending some time with his friends again. But Georgina was happy.
She appeared to love everything about London—the famous sights, the museums and galleries, the shops, the parks, the social events. And she had gathered about her a group of admirers, two or three of whom might have been pursuing her with serious intent. His sister, Nathaniel discovered, was blossoming rather late into an extremely pretty and surprisingly vivacious young lady.
Young Lewis Armitage, Houghton’s son, was a definite favorite. He was an amiable young man, eligible in every way. Nathaniel did nothing to discourage the growing attachment, even though he could have wished there was not the connection with Sophie. He had not seen her since she had called at Upper Brook Street. She had not made an appearance at either of the two balls her family—and his—had attended. But sooner or later, if Georgie and Armitage remained together, he was bound to see her again.
He did not want to see her.
She had indeed put an end to all connection with Rex, Ken, and Eden as well as with him. When Catherine and Moira had called on her, she had refused to receive them.
He wished he had never seen her again. She had put a blight on the Season he had looked forward to with such eager anticipation. He had danced with Lady Gullis twice at each of the balls in the past week, and he had walked in Kew Gardens with her and driven her in Hyde Park. He had accepted an invitation to dinner and the theater with her and four of her friends during the coming week. But he had not yet been to bed with her, though the invitation to do so had been stated in all but words. Indeed, the lady appeared to be becoming impatient with his scrupulous concern for her reputation.
Eden and the others, of course, assumed that the deed had already been done and a full-blown affaire de coeur was now in happy progress. Assailing him with ribald wit obviously afforded them enormous pleasure—they never tired of affecting great surprise when he joined them for their early-morning rides, and they always proceeded with a spirited discussion of whether he was up early or late. He had not bothered to disabuse them. It was easier to hide behind their assumption.
Sophie had left him feeling strangely hurt and bruised.
Lavinia was the only one with whose friendship she had not broken. Lavinia, as he might have guessed, had made no secret of the fact that she had gone alone to call upon Sophie the very morning of Sophie’s visit to him. It was only later he had discovered—from Eden—that in fact she had had an escort most of the way to Sloan Terrace. He guessed that she had omitted that detail in order to shield his friend from his wrath.
But Nathaniel had not ripped up at her, except to scold her for not taking at least a maid along with her. Lavinia, he was beginning to realize at last, was not a child and was not going to conform to any comfortable pattern of his or society’s devising. Even after just a couple of weeks in town, she probably could have had a veritable court of besotted followers. By the end of the Season she could probably be married ten times over if she so chose.
She did not so choose. She treated with careless grace those gentlemen who might have been serious about her; she treated with hauteur those few of high rank who would have condescended to her; she treated with humorous scorn those who would have become possessive; and she quarreled at every turn with Eden, who quarreled right back.
Sometimes it struck Nathaniel, though he kept the thought strictly to himself, that they would make an interesting couple.
But he had resigned himself to being stuck with her until she was thirty.
It happened at last, as was inevitable—the meeting with Sophie. They had been invited to an evening of music and cards at the Houghtons—an intimate gathering of friends, as Lady Houghton had described it. Nathaniel gathered that he qualified as a friend because of Lewis Armitage’s interest in Georgina, just as Rex qualified because of Viscount Perry’s interest in Sarah Armitage—Rex and Catherine were invited too.
And of course Sophie was there, looking very much as she always looked and behaving just as if they were not there.
It was hard to ignore her. Nathaniel played a few hands of cards, an activity he never particularly enjoyed, and stood for a while behind the pianoforte bench, watching a series of young ladies play and sing. Sophie sat the whole while in one of the remoter corners of the drawing room in conversation with several older ladies. The fact that she stayed there, identifying with them, annoyed him intensely. The fact that where she sat and what she did was absolutely none of his business only annoyed him further.
Lavinia joined her eventually and he was triply annoyed. Did Sophie continue with that friendship deliberately to wound him since he had humiliated her by refusing to allow her to present Pinter to Lavinia? He hoped she would not try defying him to the extent of introducing the two of them after all. Though on mature consideration he did not worry about the result of such an acquaintance as much as he had at first. Lavinia was a sensible young lady in many ways. She would not easily be swayed by the veneer of charm Pinter was capable of wrapping about himself.
Nathaniel left the drawing room for a couple of minutes, having discovered that he had left his handkerchief in the pocket of his cloak. It was not the sort of party at which the guests wandered beyond the main center of entertainment. The hallway was deserted and lit by only two branches of candles. But someone else was coming out of the drawing room just as he was returning to it—someone who was probably on her way to the ladies’ withdrawing room. He halted only just in time to avert a collision. She stopped too and looked up at him, startled.
“Sophie,” he said softly.
Her face looked thinner, he thought, her eyes more luminous. Her hair was surrounded by its usual dark halo of escaped curls.
She did not answer him but stared at him as if speech and movement had become impossible to her for the moment. And he could think of nothing else to say. He caught a whiff of her soap smell and realized something suddenly—an explanation for his inability to put her from his mind and put Lady Gullis there instead.
He still felt a strong sexual yearning for Sophie Armitage.
He might have kissed her, he thought with some embarrassment later, if two things had not happened to save him. She spoke, and he caught a flutter of movement from the doorway beyond her.
“Excuse me, please, sir,” Sophie said in her calm, placid voice.
Lavinia was with her.
“I do beg your pardon,” he said, stepping smartly to one side to allow them both to pass. A few seconds had passed between the near collision and her speaking. A few seconds of eternity that he hoped had passed with their usual speed and lack of significance to the two ladies.
It was time, he thought as he went back into the drawing room and responded to Lady Houghton’s beckoning hand from the direction of the card tables, that he bedded Lady Gullis. If she could not drown out all other sexual cravings, then his was a hopeless case indeed.
Lavinia was up a little earlier than usual the next morning. Nathaniel
looked up in some surprise from reading his steward’s report, newly arrived from Bowood, as she came through the door of his study after knocking but not waiting for an answer. He got to his feet.
“Good,” she said, waving him back to his chair and seating herself uninvited on a chair across the desk from him, “you have returned from your ride but have not gone back out. It is difficult to find you at home in the mornings, Nathaniel.”
“If I had thought my absence distressed you, Lavinia,” he said, sitting down again, “I would have made more of an effort to be available to you.”
Her lips twitched. “Heaven forbid!” she said, to which remark Nathaniel only just stopped himself from adding a fervent amen.
“What may I do for you?” he asked, leaning back in his chair.
“I am worried about Sophie,” she said. It was characteristic of Lavinia never to waste time discussing the weather or her own or her listener’s health when there were more important matters at hand.
But there were some topics he did not wish to discuss and Sophie was one of them.
“Indeed?” he said. “I am afraid I no longer have an acquaintance with Mrs. Armitage and am therefore quite unable to discuss the matter with you.”
“Nat,” she said scornfully, “do try not to be ridiculous.”
He merely raised his eyebrows.
“Mrs. Armitage!” she said, rolling her eyes. “At least have the grace to call her Sophie.”
He remembered his impression that Sophie’s face was thinner, her eyes brighter. “Why are you worried?” he asked.
“She behaved last evening as if you did not exist,” Lavinia said, “or Catherine or Lord Rawleigh either. When she did run almost head-on into you outside the drawing room, she called you ‘sir,’ just as you now called her ‘Mrs. Armitage,’ and she would not talk about it afterward even when I tried to make a joke of it. She merely turned the conversation. Have I missed something, Nat? You were a little rude to her on that evening when you whisked me away—well, perhaps more than just a little. She has a friend whom you dislike. But why was that incident of such huge significance that she has broken all connection with you—and with Lord and Lady Rawleigh, Lord and Lady Haverford, and Lord Pelham too? She was so fond of you all.”
Nathaniel sighed. “Sometimes seemingly small incidents are merely the tip of an iceberg, Lavinia,” he said. “I suggest you not worry about it. I have not tried to cut off your friendship with her, have I?”
“Nat.” She leaned forward in her chair and set both hands flat on the desk. “Don’t treat me like a child.”
“If I were doing that,” he said, “I would have packed you back to Bowood by now. Perhaps she prefers Pinter to us, Lavinia.”
“But she does not even like him,” she said. “She told me as much when I said she might present me to him at any time if she wished. She told me he was not her friend.”
He rested his elbows on the arms of his chair and steep-led his fingers beneath his chin. He had known that. But Sophie had taken away from him—from all of them—the right to pursue the reasons for her behavior.
“Then perhaps,” he said, “she merely wished to teach us a lesson, Lavinia. We were trying to protect her from him that evening—all four of us were, even though she had expressly told me, at least, that I had no business trying to tell her whom she might befriend or receive. We chose to interfere anyway and she was furious. You of all people should be able to identify with that.” He smiled ruefully at her.
But she was frowning down at the hands she had spread on the desk. “I could understand and even applaud her ripping up at you, Nat,” she said. “Indeed I urged her to do it before she told me she had already done so. But to completely break off all those friendships—and even with Catherine and Moira? And she is so miserable, Nat.”
“Miserable?” He drew a slow breath.
“She smiled and talked last evening just as if she were in the most comfortable of moods,” Lavinia said, “but she so very obviously would not look at or speak of either you or Lord Rawleigh or Catherine that it was clear she was very uncomfortable and unhappy. What hold does Mr. Pinter have over her?”
There, it had been put into words—the very obvious idea that he and his friends had skirted about in conversation together and that his mind had shied away from. Pinter had some hold over Sophie. Nathaniel’s eyes met Lavinia’s and held them, and for the first time he looked at her as an equal, as someone who cared enough for a mutual friend to wish to help her.
“I do not know, Lavinia,” he said.
“How can we find out?” she asked him.
“I have no right,” he told her. “She does not want me to know.”
“Perhaps she does,” she said. “Perhaps she has been told that she is not to solicit your help.”
He closed his eyes and pressed his chin down onto his fingertips. He had thought of that too—and had avoided the thought.
“You are her friend, Nat,” Lavinia said, “as much as I am. Perhaps more so. You have known her longer, and I know you are fond of her. Fonder than the others are.”
He opened his eyes and looked into hers. He pursed his lips. She saw too damned much. But for once he did not feel annoyed with her.
“You think he has threatened her, then?” he asked. “Is that too Gothic an interpretation, Lavinia? Too melodramatic?”
“When I called on her three days ago,” she said, “—I did take a maid, Nat—we heard someone knocking on the door below. She turned terribly pale and jumped to her feet and rushed to the window and said she must send me up to her dressing room as it was too late for me to leave without being seen. But before she could push me out through the door—she really was pushing—her butler came up to announce her friend Gertrude. We all sat down for tea and neither Sophie nor I referred to the strange incident again. Nat, who did she think it was?”
It seemed hardly a question that needed answering.
“Was it just that she wished to oblige you by not presenting me to him?” Lavinia asked.
“Or was trying to bundle you upstairs too excessive for that?” he said more to himself than to her.
“Nat,” she said, “we have to help her.”
“We?” He looked more closely at her, but he held up a hand, palm out, before she could reply. “Yes, we, Lavinia. Pardon me for being about to exclude you. Thank you for coming to me. You have forced me to face what I have been avoiding for longer than a week. Sophie is my friend even if I am not hers.”
“Oh, you are,” she said, sitting back in her chair. “Tell me about Mr. Pinter, Nat. Not just that he was an unpleasant officer in the Peninsula. Tell me all you know of him.”
He certainly would not have said anything more than that to his sisters, he thought, looking consideringly at her. But Lavinia was different—a massive understatement. And he owed her his confidence.
“He enjoyed power,” he said. “He used it cruelly. He seemed to spend much of his time trapping his men into committing small, insignificant misdemeanors and then ordering punishment for them.”
“Punishment?” she said.
“Whippings mostly,” he said. “Formal affairs conducted while the rest of the regiment stood on parade, watching. The offender would be stripped and tied to a punishment triangle to have his back flailed. We all used to hate it.”
“Except Mr. Pinter?” she asked.
He nodded. Kenneth had used to say that Pinter derived a sexual thrill from watching a whipping. Nathaniel was not about to say that to Lavinia. But he did not need to.
“I daresay,” she said, “it was his substitute for whores.”
He jumped to his feet. “Lavinia!” he said, his eyes blazing.
“Oh, Nat,” she said, looking decidedly cross, “do try not to be ridiculous. Did he like whores too?”
He sat down again, set one elbow on the desk, and propped his face against his hand. “I cannot,” he said, “continue this conversation any further.”
“I am so
rry,” she said. “I have embarrassed you. But I would wager he did not. I believe we should find out as much more as we can about him, though, Nat. I shall ask Lord Pelham. He will sputter and poker up just as much as you, of course, and mutter darkly again that I am no true lady, but perhaps he will remember more. What you have said is very revealing, though.”
“Lavinia,” he said, “you must leave this to me—please. Poor Ede already thinks someone should have given you a good walloping when you were younger.”
“He would,” she said, sounding bored. “I suppose a heavy hand on the rear end scrambles the brains and causes a girl to grow into a suitably featherbrained lady. How convenient for men.”
“You can do something for me, though,” he said, drumming his fingertips on the desktop. He did not know quite where the idea had sprung from, but he supposed it must have been forming for some time in that deep part of his mind of which he was unaware. “You can come shopping with me—for a pearl necklace and a wedding ring.”
One of the first things he had noticed about Sophie the evening before had been the continued absence of her pearls and her wedding ring. He did not know quite why he had noticed or why their absence had taken on such significance to him.
“Why, Nat,” Lavinia said, “I did not know you cared.” But despite the levity of her words, she was looking keenly at him.
“Sophie’s are missing,” he said. “Until a week ago I had never seen her without her ring. And I had never seen her at a social function without her pearls. On the night of that soiree they were both suddenly missing.” The ring had been missing the night before too, but he was not going to explain that meeting.
“Lost?” she said. “Stolen?”
“Or pawned,” he said. His mind had still not verbalized the final ugly word, but it did so now with crashing though silent clarity.