by Mary Balogh
Blackmail.
But what the devil could she have done?
“You want to try to find them?” Lavinia asked.
“It might be a wild-goose chase,” he said. “And we will have to look somewhat impoverished, Lavinia, if we are to shop for a wedding ring at a pawnbroker’s. Or perhaps at one of the lesser jeweler‘s, people who buy jewelry to resell. Pawnshops first, though—I do not believe she would sell her wedding ring. I could go alone, of course.”
But Lavinia had brightened considerably. She looked flushed and happy. Her eyes were shining as she leaned across the desk toward him.
“Oh, darling Nat,” she startled him by saying, “I adore you so very much, my love, that I would take you even without a ring or a wedding gift of pearls. And of course I will forgive you for gambling away all your fortune. I know you will never do it again. The power of my love will transform you into a nobler being.”
He chuckled. “Minx!” he said. “But you might have to act out the part for a number of days, and even then we may find nothing.”
“For you, darling,” she said, batting her eyelashes at him, “anything.” And then she looked like her old brisk, no-nonsense self again. “And for Sophie too.”
But devil take it, Nathaniel thought, he did not know what the recovery of Sophie’s property would do to help. All it would do was prove that she had needed money quite desperately.
She had told him not to interfere.
Apart from a few walks in the park with Lass at times of the day when she was unlikely to meet any acquaintances, and one visit to and one from Gertrude, and a couple of calls from Lavinia, Sophia had stayed home alone for almost two weeks—apart from that one evening at her brother-in-law‘s, of course.
It had been no grand ton entertainment, and she had allowed herself to go for that reason and because Beatrice had asked her especially to come. Foolishly, because she had been told it was to be an intimate gathering of family and friends, she had not expected to see any of the Four Horsemen there. She had forgotten the young people and their attachments.
Foolishly too she had expected the misery of the evening to be her only punishment. And it had been miserable—utterly so. Rex had carefully avoided her—to save her from embarrassment, she guessed. Catherine had glanced at her a few times and had looked hurt. And he—Nathaniel... She could still shudder, five days later, at the realization that, outside the drawing room, she had come very close indeed to taking that one step forward that would have buried her face against his neckcloth, against the warm, familiar, safe smell of him.
It had been pure agony to see him again and to know—she had seen them in the park, though they had not seen her—that he had been with Lady Gullis for longer than a week.
But that evening had not been punishment enough. He must be spying on her, she thought with another shudder—Boris Pinter, that was. He must have discovered that she had been to a ton party, albeit a modest one, and that Rex and Nathaniel had been there too. At least she assumed he must have found out. Or perhaps it was only coincidence that had brought a note two days later. He had, of course, “found” another of those love letters and knew that dear Sophie—he persisted in playing that ridiculous game of concerned friend with her—would not wish it to fall into the wrong hands. The sum he asked for was so exorbitantly large that perhaps fortunately her mind had frozen and had still not quite thawed three days later.
She was in her sitting room in the middle of an afternoon, doing nothing except sit smoothing her hand over the back of a contented Lass, who was stretched out across her lap. The warmth of the collie’s body and the sound of her contented sighs somehow brought with them the illusion of comfort.
She had a few options—her mind was coming sluggishly back to life. She might simply let the deadline date, eleven days hence, go by and see what he would do. She would not, of course, take that option. She might try to sell the house. She did not know if she could. It had been a gift from the government, but she was not sure if it was a free gift or if there were some conditions attached. She supposed that she might find out, but if that was the option she chose, she must do so without much further delay. Or she could go to Edwin or Thomas—Edwin first, probably—and tell them all and allow them to decide on the best course of action. It would come to that eventually, of course, but she hated to burden them with her knowledge and the realization that it could at any moment become public knowledge.
And yet there would be such enormous relief to be no longer alone, to have someone else to bear the burden.
She closed her eyes and ignored Lass’s cold wet nose nudging against her hand—she had stopped smoothing and scratching. If she sold her house, she would perhaps lose her pension too. She would be a dependent. She would have to live with Edwin and Beatrice or with Thomas and Anne.
But she must try to sell the house. She turned cold at the thought finally taking shape in her mind.
There was a tap on the door.
“Come in,” she called.
Her butler had a card on his tray and brought it over to her.
She picked it up, looked at the name on it, and held it against her chest. Well, if there was a spy, now he would have something else to report.
“Tell Sir Nathaniel Gascoigne to go away, Samuel,” she said. “Tell him I am not at home. Tell him that I never again will be at home. And if he comes again, save yourself the trouble of climbing the stairs.”
“Yes, ma‘am,” he said with his conspiratorial smirk. She often wondered if he and the other servants knew that Nathaniel had spent two nights in her bedchamber with her. They probably did. Not much could be kept from the servants of a house.
“Samuel,” she shrieked after he had left the room and closed the door behind him. Lass, startled, jumped down from her lap and sought a more peaceful refuge in front of the hearth.
“Yes, ma‘am?” Samuel had opened the door again.
“Show him up,” Sophia said.
“Yes, ma‘am.” The smirk had graduated to an expression that looked very like a self-satisfied smile.
Oh yes, they knew all right.
And what had she done now?
What had she done?
SIXTEEN
IT WAS A CHILLY MORNING, cloudy and blustery and trying its very hardest to rain. Sophie had a fire lit in the sitting room. She was standing before it, facing it, her hands stretched to the blaze. Nathaniel stood looking at her while her man closed the door behind him. Her collie nudged at his hand and he patted the top of its head.
“Sophie,” he said.
She was wearing a faded muslin dress that looked light and pretty despite its obvious age. She had surely lost weight, he thought. She did not turn around.
“I believe I told you,” she said, “that I wanted no more dealings with you, sir.”
And yet she had admitted him.
“Sophie,” he said again.
He tried to see her as he had always used to—as Walter Armitage’s brave and practical and amiable wife, as a not extraordinarily lovely woman whose beauty lay mainly in her character. As simply a friend—dear Sophie. It could not be done. He could no longer see her with any objectivity. She had become someone he cared about—with his heart.
“If you have something to say,” she said, “please say it and leave. If you have nothing to say but my name, then why did you come?”
“Why is this happening, Sophie?” he asked her, taking a few steps farther into the room.
“This?” She turned to look at him at last—though not at his face. Her eyes were fixed somewhere below the level of his chin. “I do not know, sir. You tell me.”
“Why have you spurned your friends who care about you?” he asked her. “Why have you spurned me? We have been lovers.”
Her pale, almost gaunt cheeks flooded with color. “Hardly that,” she said. “I was your bed partner for two nights. Do you call all such women your lovers?”
“No,” he said, trying to draw her eyes to hi
s but failing. “No, only you, Sophie. Why have you turned away from us?”
“Because you interfered in my life,” she said, frowning. “Because you made me unhappy.”
Unhappy. Did she mean all four of them? Or only him in the capacity of lover? But that was not the point now.
“Must caring for a friend, wishing to help and protect her be dubbed interference and punished so harshly?” he asked. “We are unhappy too, Sophie. I am unhappy.”
For one moment her eyes came to his. But she turned away again to gaze into the fire.
“I am sorry,” she said. “But I cannot think that I am of lasting importance to any of you. I wish you would leave.”
“Did he tell you to break off all connection with us?” he asked her.
She whirled on him, her eyes wide with shock. “What?” she said.
“Or did you just fear that we would antagonize him and he would make you suffer more for it?” He watched her closely. She was bringing herself under control. Her brow smoothed over; her eyes turned blank.
“Who is this mysterious he?” she asked. “Mr. Pinter? You are still determined to make a villain out of him, Nathaniel ? Perhaps I can persuade him to go about in black domino and mask, slinking from dark comer to dark comer. Then you would be thoroughly satisfied. No. I will have to persuade him too to carry me off, kicking and screaming, to some damp, murky lair so that the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse can ride to my rescue and slay him.”
Her eyes slipped below the level of his chin again when he did not immediately answer but just gazed at her.
“What power does he have over you, Sophie?” he asked her.
She clucked her tongue and made an impatient gesture with one hand.
“Blackmail?” he suggested.
“No!” Her eyes blazed into his again. “Get out of here, Nathaniel. Get out!”
“What have you done?” he asked her. “What could you possibly have done, Sophie, so bad that you would allow him to have this power over you?”
She closed her eyes and drew breath.
“Fool!” she said quietly. “Oh, fool! Go away from here. Leave this.”
“Tell me,” he said. “Let me help you. I do not care what it is, Sophie. Was it an adulterous affair? Some—petty theft, perhaps? I do not care. Let me share the burden with you and help you.”
When she opened her eyes he could see that they were bright with tears. “You are a kind man, Nathaniel,” she said, “but you have a vivid imagination.”
“Then why did you break off our friendship and our other arrangement?” he asked her.
“That was a mistake,” she said, blinking her eyes. “Look at yourself, Nathaniel. Look at yourself in a glass. And look at me.” She half smiled. “And at Lady Gullis.”
“You believe I have lain with her?” he asked her.
She turned her head away. “I do not care,” she said. “It is not my concern, Nathaniel. You are not my concern.”
“I have not,” he said.
“Ah,” she said softly, and said nothing else for a few moments. She hunched her shoulders. “It was still a mistake. I was not made for casual affairs or for pleasure without commitment. I am sorry. It was my suggestion, I know. I made a mistake. I would like you to leave now, please.”
So they had got into personal matters after all. He had not intended it.
“I have looked at you,” he told her, “and I have looked at Lady Gullis. I prefer you, Sophie.”
She smiled then and looked genuinely amused for a fleeting moment. “What shockingly poor taste you have, sir,” she said, her voice bitter.
“Sophie,” he said, “let me help you. Tell me what hold he has on you and I will put a stop to it. It is no idle boast. The Pinters of this world are invariably cowards as well as bullies.”
She sighed. “I am afraid, Nathaniel,” she said, “you are going to have to accept the fact that I have befriended someone you do not like and someone that Walter did not like. And that when you insulted him you insulted me. If you cannot accept the idea that anyone could possibly choose him before you, then maybe you have a problem with conceit. But it is not my problem. Will you please leave now? I would hate to have to ring for Samuel and have him throw you out.”
“I would hate it too,” he said. “Poor man. He would not have a chance. I will leave. I want to give you this first, though.” He drew out the package he had placed in an inner pocket and held it out to her.
She looked at it warily. “No,” she said. “No gifts. Thank you but no.”
“Take it,” he said, keeping his hand extended. “It is yours.”
She came close enough to take it when it became obvious to her that he would not move until she did. She looked down at the small square package almost as if she believed it would explode in her hand. And then she opened it, removing the paper wrapping and then lifting the lid from the box.
Nathaniel watched her face as she stared down at her wedding ring surrounded by her pearls. She turned so pale that even her lips were white.
“Where did you get these?” She was whispering, her eyes on the contents of the box.
“From the jeweler to whom you sold them,” he said. It had taken him and Lavinia three long and tedious days to find the right one after they had exhausted every pawnshop except those situated too deep inside some of the more dangerous rookeries.
Sophie’s lips moved several times as if she would speak before she actually did. “This was foolish of you,” she said. “I sold them because I no longer wanted them.”
“No, Sophie, it will not do.” He stepped forward, removed the ring from the box, took her cold, nerveless left hand in his, and slid the ring onto the correct finger. “I cannot force you to confide in me or allow me to help you. But you may not lie to me. It would be pointless, my dear.” He raised her hand to his lips.
She was crying then with awkward, noisy sobs. Box and pearls went clattering to the floor as she reached for him, her arms coming up about his neck, her face burying itself against his neckcloth. He closed his arms about her and held her.
He thought back to the wars, to all the men he had killed in battle, many without faces, many with. They were faces that still sometimes swam about in his nightmares and probably always would. He thought back to a morning two years before, to another killing, in England this time, the result of a duel. Rex had done the killing, though the rest of them had been there and had approved—indeed, Nathaniel had had a pistol trained on the man after he had cheated and shot early, wounding Rex in the right arm. The dead man had been a rapist of more than one woman, but of Catherine in particular. Nathaniel remembered thinking at the time that there was an end of it, an end of all killing as far as he was concerned. He had found since that he could not even hunt on his land. War had made him value life, even that of wild animals and birds.
But he was going to kill Boris Pinter. Somehow it was going to happen. He closed his mind to the question that inevitably asked itself—was killing the only answer to life’s worst problems? Perhaps the answer was yes. In this case it was yes. He was going to kill Pinter for Sophie.
Her face was warm and wet when he found her mouth with his own. He had intended to comfort her, but she responded with fierce passion, opening her mouth against his own, tightening her arms about his neck, pressing herself to him. It was the wrong time, he thought in some regret after a while—and after he had wondered if her servants ever entered a room unbidden. It was too mindless a moment. It was something they would both regret if they did not stop now.
He drew back his head from hers.
“Let me come to you tonight,” he said. “I am no longer cut out for casual affairs either, Sophie.” He was not sure quite what he meant by that—or perhaps he did not want to know. But he did know that he wanted her. Not just in bed, but—he wanted her back. He had been lonely without her.
She pulled away from him, found a handkerchief in a pocket, turned away, and wiped her eyes and blew her nose.
“I will not mention the other to you again, then, Sophie,” he said, “unless you mention it first. But know that I am always here, that I will always listen, always help. If you are desperate for money—well, you would not come to me, would you? But know that you could, that matters are never so desperate that there is not that way out. There, I will say no more. Shall I come at midnight?”
“Yes,” she said. “I will watch for you.”
“Thank you,” he said. And he turned without another word and let himself out of the room.
But he had a strong feeling that he had let himself into something from which he would never free himself. And perhaps he would never want to. It was a bewildering and a thoroughly alarming thought.
Lady Honeymere’s ball on Hanover Square was set for that evening. Even before setting out, Nathaniel had stated his intention of leaving early, but Georgina and Lavinia would be able to stay until the end, since both Margaret and John were to be there to chaperon them and accompany them home.
Lavinia would have been quite content to leave early with her cousin in the normal course of events. Although she enjoyed the social activities of the Season, she did believe they were conducted to excess. As she had told Sophia on a visit the previous day, one became mortally tired of seeing the same silly gentlemen wherever one went and hearing the same silly compliments and fielding the same silly advances. Did gentlemen not harbor an unsilly thought in their heads?
She and Sophia had enjoyed a good laugh on the topic. But Sophie, Lavinia had not failed to notice, though she had made no mention of it, no longer attended ton functions, even though her brother and sister-in-law did.
On this particular evening Lavinia was quite happy to remain at the ball—once she had discovered that Nathaniel’s early departure did not take away his friends too. She had thought that just might happen. They were very close, those four, and were very obviously enjoying a few months of one another’s company. But he was the only one who left. Lady Gullis had not appeared at all at the ball, Lavinia had not failed to notice. Doubtless there was some connection.