by Jo Goodman
"Annette," he said by way of greeting. "You are looking well."
One dark eyebrow rose. "Only well? I meant to look delicious. Tell me, have I failed?" She closed the door behind her and crossed the room, offering her hand to him. She knew he would not refuse the overture. His reliable manners were the chink in his armor. She watched his lips touch her knuckles, and the sight of it, more than the act itself, caused the most delicate sensation to ripple down the length of her spine.
"You are exquisite," he said, meaning it. "As always." But delicious? he wondered. No, it was not an adjective he would ever associate with her. It implied a certain warmth that was not in her nature, not that he had been bothered overmuch by the lack. But delicious he knew, and it was a buttered scone. Annette was a petit four.
She made a small curtsey, pleased by his compliment but careful not to preen. "Won't you sit?" she asked, gesturing to the sofa. "Shall I pour you a drink? I still have the whiskey you like."
Eastlyn passed the sofa in favor of the wing chair. "Nothing, thank you. I do not intend to remain long. You are, after all, under another man's protection."
Annette sat and smoothed the splash of scarlet silk across her lap. "Yes," she said. "I am. I wondered if you knew. It is not at all the done thing for you to visit me. It is Lord Brownlee who has set me up, and he is reckoned as a superior marksman."
"I have spoken to Brownlee," East said. "I found him taking an early supper at White's." He took what was perhaps an immoderate amount of satisfaction in seeing he had surprised Annette. "He will not countenance a lengthy interview, but when I explained my purpose he was most amenable."
"I see."
"I wonder if you do, Annette. I cannot help but notice that you have not wished me happy. With so many other people it is the first thing to cross their lips after the usual courtesies are concluded. Is it that you do not wish me happy or that you know very well that there is no engagement?"
"It is rather awkward, isn't it, for me to express felicitations on the news of your engagement? We were intimates, after all. Perhaps I have fonder memories of our liaison than you do. I can admit to harboring the green-eyed monster."
Eastlyn gave her full marks for schooling her features, and her eyes, far from being shaded with the green cast of jealousy, were an unusually clear shade of gray. "You chose to look elsewhere for your bread and butter, Annette. I made no demands to that effect."
She shrugged. "If you say so, Gabriel. Perhaps I misread the handwriting on the wall."
East leaned back in his chair and tapped the tips of his steepled fingers together. "I want you to do nothing else to perpetuate the rumor you began," he said flatly. "You will not involve yourself in gossip about Lady Sophia Colley, either by giving it your passive support because you have listened to it, or by your active participation. I care not at all what you choose to say about me. Tell what truths you know or what lies you can imagine; it is of no importance. But hear me well, Annette, I will not subscribe to you using an innocent to get some of your own back."
Annette fanned herself with her hand. "My! I had no idea you were given to such heated discourse, Gabriel. Would that you had shown the same passion in my bed."
Eastlyn caught himself before he made an ill-considered reply. There was nothing to be gained by permitting their exchange to become a critique of his sexual prowess—or the lack of it, if she was to be believed. Neither would he turn the tables. Finding fault with her performance after so long an absence from her bed was boorish. Perhaps the most unkind thing he could say about her accomplishments between the sheets was that she was exquisite, not delicious. He doubted that she would have the good sense to be offended.
When East made no reply, Annette lowered her hand to her lap. "Really, Gabriel, are you accusing me of creating a fictitious engagement for you? And with Lady Sophia Colley? She is not your taste at all. Who would believe me?"
"Most of the ton."
"I think not, but what can it matter? You have never cared what they think. Indeed, did you not just invite me to say anything about you that I wished? I really do not understand you."
"I care what they think of Lady Sophia. She will be made to look foolish when it is revealed there is no engagement."
Annette made a dismissive gesture. "Then marry her. That will still wagging tongues, and I suspect it will be agreeable to Lady Winslow."
If Eastlyn had been discomfited by discussing his former mistress with his mother, that unhappy state was increased tenfold by the prospect of discussing his mother with his former mistress. He wisely chose to avoid it. "May I have your word, Annette, that you will cease to use Lady Sophia in such a poor way?"
"Hardly, Gabriel. Giving my word would be tantamount to admitting I bear some responsibility in this matter. I assure you, I do not. You can accept that or not, but it is all I am willing to offer."
"I had hoped you would be reasonable."
"I believe I am."
Eastlyn could not imagine that more could be accomplished here. Annette's position was firmly held, and he did not think she would give ground. This standing fast made him think of Sophie and her equally flat refusal to be swayed by his presentation of the facts. For reasons he did not care to examine too closely, that thought made him smile.
"You are amused," Annette said wryly. "Pray, is it something you can share?"
"No, not at all. I do not believe you would understand." It was not an entirely fair assessment since he did not understand it himself.
"That smile is the very worst thing about you, Gabriel. The amusement you evince that no one else is privy to. It is annoying in the extreme."
"It is perhaps just as well, then, that you realized so long ago that we do not suit."
"Yes."
He thought she might have caught the tip of her tongue on the word, so sharply did she bite it off. "You never cared for my friends," he said, goading her to draw blood this time.
"I do not suppose you thought to level your accusations at their heads. Any one of them is a more likely candidate to start such a rumor than I am. I imagine Mr. Marchman would find it entertaining to see you squirm under the pressure of an impending marriage."
"West did indeed have a laugh at my expense. Northam also. Southerton, I believe, choked on it."
"He recovered?"
"Yes."
"Pity."
One of East's brows kicked up. "The gloves are off, I collect. No matter. I like you better this way, Annette. It is infinitely more entertaining when you say what you think. The tolerance you affected for my benefit must have been wearing."
She regarded him coolly. "You cannot imagine."
He smiled slightly and got to his feet. "Oh, but perhaps I can." As a parting shot it had the sure aim of one of his pistol balls. Eastlyn was already streetside when he heard the unmistakable tinkling sounds of shattering glass. He imagined the delicate porcelain figurines that populated the mantel in Annette's drawing room had become the latest victims of her temper.
* * *
Sophie closed her journal and placed it on the bedside table. She had written very little this evening and only marginally more the night before. She could not ignore the fact that with the passing of each day in confinement her concentration suffered.
Gutting the candle stub in its dish, Sophie slipped lower into the bed and turned on her side. She slid one arm under her pillow so her head was raised at just the right angle to appreciate the starshine. The drapes had been deliberately left parted so she could enjoy this view, and tonight there was but a slim crescent of a moon to detract from the stars.
It was an old habit of hers to count the number visible at her window, a nighttime ritual she had once enjoyed with her father. If she closed her eyes, Sophie could imagine the depression in the mattress as he sat on the edge of the bed and held her hand. His warmth was almost tangible. And the scent of him... tobacco and peppermint... If she breathed hardly at all, it would come to her, and she would be comforted.
The ache at the back of her throat, that lump of unshed tears, was not so easy to ignore. She swallowed hard and blinked rapidly and assuaged herself with the brilliance of the light that for a moment seemed to collect into a single beam of remarkable beauty.
A month had passed since she had been permitted to leave her room. Thirty days. She knew because she had marked each one in her journal, sometimes convinced that it was only this simple ritual that kept her from going mad. It occurred to her that she could not decide which description of the passing of time seemed shorter, thirty days or a month, and it suddenly was important that she make that distinction. The waste of even a single day was appalling to her; this confinement of a month had been nearly unendurable.
Sophie knuckled her eyes, and her vision cleared. She stared at the window again and the stars framed in it.
"How many do you see, Sophie?" her father would ask.
"Fourteen."
"As many as that, eh? I did not know you could count so high."
In time she had learned to count much higher, and if she exaggerated the number she could see from her bedchamber, her father never called her to task for it.
"Which one are you, Sophie?" he would say.
"Just there, Papa. At the corner of the sky."
Her father would bend his head and search for the same view of her star as she had. "And so you are. What do you see from there?"
"All of heaven."
"And what do you see from here?"
"The same, Papa."
"Then heaven is everywhere," her father said.
"I think it must be," Sophie whispered. "It was very good of God to make it so."
She remembered how her father had smiled then, the bittersweet nature of that particular placement of his lips, like a man who had known perfect joy once and had not the hope of knowing it again.
Sophie did not think she had yet achieved the same depth of melancholia that she had observed in her father. It was his companion every day of his life that she could recall and was always more noticeable to her when he was being most determinedly happy. No, she had not reached that same sad place, but she thought it was in sight.
Self-pity did not sit well on her shoulders, but neither was it effortless to shrug off. Sophie considered that Tremont might be correct when he had announced again today that she was unconscionably selfish. The earl had convinced himself that she could change the family's fortunes through a well-made marriage to a generous husband. Sophie could no longer deny that what he was proposing was not as disagreeable as it had been. Not that the generous husband should be the Marquess of Eastlyn; she could not countenance that. Still, if she were to permit Tremont to make her a suitable match, someone who was not the marquess, would it really be a surrender of her very self?
She was losing her resolve, she realized. It was slipping away, taking the same course as her concentration. She would never be as brave as she wanted to be. It was not hard to fool herself into believing she had the courage of her convictions when her convictions weren't challenged. She had been so full of herself for turning away Eastlyn, not for the refusal precisely, but for what it would prove about her principles to Tremont and Harold. Now, a mere month of being confined to her room had shown her how unremarkable her stand against the marquess had been. Tremont had announced two days ago that she would be returning to the country with him. No doubt there was a genial squire nearby, comfortably plump in the pockets, someone the earl had determined would do for the nonce.
Sophie settled more deeply against her pillow. There were twenty-four stars framed in her window. Somehow she had managed to count them while contemplating her inevitable capitulation. It was distressingly clear to her that the attempt to divert her thoughts had not been successful. She missed walking in the park with the children and taking them to the bookseller. She missed going downstairs for breakfast and quieting Robert and Esme as they swung their legs hard enough to make the table shake. She had even come to miss Abigail's nervous chatter while reading the Gazette and Harold's long-suffering sighs while he hid behind it.
Her visitors had been Tremont and Harold. They never lingered long, and they rarely argued. It was as if they recognized she gathered her resolve by fighting theirs. The less they pressed, the more she felt like giving in.
The stars beckoned her, and she searched out the one that would be her view from afar, the one that would open up the heavens to her when that aspect from her room was not so clear.
One. Two. Ping. Three. Ping. Ping. Four. Five. Six. Ping.
Sophie sat up and cocked her head to one side to catch the origin of the sound. Ping. Ping. Ping. She scooted to the edge of the bed as a shower of gravel from the garden path bounced off the window. Hurrying from the bed, Sophie threw open the sash and ducked to avoid the next scattering of shot from below.
"I beg your pardon."
There was no mistaking that voice, and in any event there was also that smile. Eastlyn's teeth gleamed whitely. Sophie stared down at him, transfixed. Several moments passed before she collected she should say something. "What are you doing here?"
"Enjoying your garden."
"It is gone midnight."
"Much later. Did I wake you?"
She shook her head. "You must go." Her whisper was husky with urgency. "You will wake everyone."
"You are the only one with a room at the rear. And Tremont and Dunsmore are gone from the house. No one will hear unless you raise the alarm. Are you going to raise the alarm?"
"No." There was no point in lying. She thought he was the sort of man who would know a lie for what it was. Sophie wondered about the earl and Harold. She had not known they were not at home. It seemed odd that Eastlyn should be privy to that fact when she was not. "I should like it if you would leave, just the same."
"I want to speak with you."
"You are."
"Privately."
"Here? In my room?"
"In the house. I promise that I require only a few minutes of your time. The drawing room will be suitable. It doesn't have to be in your bedchamber."
It did, though, because she couldn't move herself anywhere else. "I cannot let you in."
"I will let myself in."
Sophie hesitated. His presence here below her window was so out of the common mode that she had no way to make sense of it. Thus far he had refrained from calling her his fair Juliet. She counted that as a good thing. "Very well," she said. "But you will have—" She stopped because he had already disappeared.
Sophie closed the window and secured it. A piece of gravel lodged itself under her bare foot, and she swore softly at the inconvenience of it. She lighted the lamp on her writing desk and carried it with her to the adjoining dressing room, carefully avoiding the stones that still littered her carpet.
She slipped into her robe, belted the sash, and was on the point of lacing her slippers when she heard the door handle to her room being turned. It did not seem possible to her that he had come so far in such a short time. Electing to forego the slippers, Sophie went quickly to the door. He must have sensed her presence because there was a pause in the turn of the handle.
The first full twist did not give Eastlyn entry but proved to him the door was locked. It required less than a full minute with the proper picks to make it turn effortlessly in his hand. When he pushed open the door, Sophie was there waiting for him. He stepped inside when she beckoned him and closed the door quietly. The lamp bobbled in her hand so that shadow chased light across the wall and ceiling.
Eastlyn pocketed his picks and leaned one shoulder casually against the door. He studied her face in the flickering light. "I think, Lady Sophia, that you had better explain to me why you are a prisoner in your own home."
Chapter 4
"A prisoner?" Sophie asked. She surprised herself by having the wherewithal to remain calm. "That is a rather dramatic description, don't you think?"
East decided then that he would not be moved off course by a quest
ion of semantics. He took the lamp from Sophie's hand and crossed the room to set it on her writing desk. He noticed the open journal and the neat copperplate hand but did not permit his eyes to linger on the exposed pages. Instead, he turned away, and lest he be accused of prying, chose the fireplace to make his stand. "Your door was locked to me."
Sophie offered a slim, ironic smile. "Never say I am the first woman to deny you entry to her bedchamber. In the event you discover your luck has turned in this regard, you must endeavor to take it on the chin, m'lord."
He thought he might actually like to shake her. She was not precisely defiant in her manner and posture, but her degree of self-possession in these unusual circumstances was something to be reckoned with. It begged the obvious question. "Do you have many visitors to your room at this hour?"
It was his sincere curiosity that kept Sophia from taking offense, though she did not deign to answer it. "Why are you here? You promised you needed but a few minutes of my time."
Eastlyn ignored her. "It is only that you remain all of a piece," he said. "Composure of the sort you are showing me now is not so easy to affect. Either you are an actress of considerable skill, the very equal of Miss India Parr, say, or these conditions are not unfamiliar to you and your preternatural calm is the result of experience."
Sophie's features remained perfectly serene. "There is a third possibility, m'lord."
"Oh? I should like to hear it."
"You must consider that I am calm because I am calm. I have not an excitable nature."
Eastlyn pretended to consider this, pausing a beat before announcing his own view. "No. That is definitely not the way of it here."
She blinked. "I beg your pardon?"
Leaning his shoulder against the mantel, East crossed his arms in front of his chest and regarded Sophie thoughtfully. Her face was bathed in the golden glow of the lamp. The light brightened the halo of her wild honey hair and softened the definition of her cheekbones and the line of her nose. "I entertained just such an opinion of you upon our first introduction," he said. "You were so lacking in animation on that occasion that one could be forgiven for overlooking you among the hothouse flowers. An orchid is a pleasant enough thing to cast one's eyes upon, yet one does weary of so much still perfection."