by Jo Goodman
Sophie had drawn her hair forward over one shoulder and was absently untangling the ends as she listened. Now her fingers paused, and she regarded Eastlyn with a pensive mien. "How is it that Harold's spending came to your attention? With so many things to occupy you, it seems to me that Harold's habits should have been of little note."
"You are wrong. They are important on two counts: he is Tremont's son and your cousin. The first makes him of political concern; the latter a personal one. I had a vague notion that he might know something more than he was revealing."
"In regard to what?"
"In regard to his father's political ambitions for one. Your whereabouts for another. You had not yet left Cara's, and I had no inkling that you intended to do so. Making certain that I knew Dunsmore's business was but one way of keeping you safe."
Sophie remembered how angry East had been when he left her at the inn. She had been certain that he would not want to see her again, and when he did not arrive at his sister's home to make any explanations, she thought she had been in the right of it. To learn now that he had been acting to protect her from as far away as London set her off balance. As East had said of himself, she found she liked the perspective from this new angle.
"Sophie?"
"Hmm?"
"You are wool-gathering."
She gave him a brief, distracted smile.
"You have some deep thoughts, I collect."
Sophie meant to hug those thoughts to her. Perhaps it had not only been his own sense of honor that prompted him to act as he had in London. Perhaps he had felt something for her even then. It was not possible that he had loved her from the first, as she had him, but it was possible that he had entertained a certain affection for her long before he declared himself, perhaps before he knew it in his own mind. "I'm sorry," she said. "You were telling me about Harold."
East wondered at the route her thoughts had taken but knew he was unlikely to learn of it. "I was done telling you about him."
"No. You have said nothing about his spending except that it was outside the common mode for him. I want to know more of the particulars."
"It cannot be important."
Sophie would not be dissuaded. "You mentioned losses at the gaming tables, but that is in every way a common occurrence. He has no luck with cards or dice. Tell me something I would not suspect."
"Do you remember the night I came to your bedroom at Bowden Street?"
"I am far less likely to forget it than you. I am not the one seized by megrims and odd lapses of memory."
Eastlyn could not fault her for pointing out the truth, but he gave her a quelling look for her saucy retort. She was as unaffected by it as he thought she might be. He went on, "Then you will also recall that Tremont and Dunsmore were gone from the house. I noticed that you were surprised by their absence when I informed you of it."
Sophie nodded. "Tremont had spoken to me earlier that day, and he never mentioned an engagement for that evening. He frequently told me when he was going out. I think he meant to remind me of my own confinement." She smiled crookedly. "As if such were needed. I must have presented myself with more composure than I felt for him to think I was unaffected by my situation."
"You were holding fast to your decision not to marry," East said. "Tremont likely thought another turn of the screw was in order."
"Where was he that night?" asked Sophie. "Was he with Harold?"
"Let us say that he was with his son for some part of the evening. I imagine they did not spend the whole of it together. They went to an establishment called the Flower House, not far from Covent Garden. It is frequented by gentlemen who have certain peculiar tastes in entertainment."
Sophie's fingers began to pleat the fabric of her chemise again. The small, vertical crease appeared between her eyebrows as she considered what East was not saying. "This establishment? It is for whores?"
East sighed. He should have known she would come at the thing directly. "Yes, Sophie. It is a brothel."
"And my cousins were there?"
"Yes."
She eyed Eastlyn sharply. "It begs the question how you came by such intelligence. Did you perhaps pass them in a hallway?"
Amused by her querulous tone, East grinned. "I watched them go inside. That is all." He held up his hands, palms out, as if toward her off. "I was coming from a gaming house not far away when I saw them. It occurred to me that if I knew where they were going and how long they might be occupied, I might take advantage of an opportunity to see you. When I followed them to the Flower House I knew they would not return to Bowden Street much before morning."
Sophie was not entirely satisfied with this explanation. "I think you know rather too much about this place."
"You have accused me of murder, gambling, and an indulgence in drink," East said. "Do you wish to add another vice?"
She said nothing for a moment, examining the crease in her chemise while she considered her apology. "I regret having said those things," she said quietly. "It was all in want of stopping your proposal, but that is a poor enough excuse. I did not know so very much about you then, and I should not have judged your character on the gossip of others, especially when I despised the same being done to me." She glanced at him and could not make out the tenor of his thoughts. "Will you forgive me? It was wrong of me to charge you with such behavior, no matter the provocation."
"Even if it's true?"
"Even then." She hesitated, and her fingers resumed their pleating once more. "Is it true?"
Eastlyn leaned forward and reached for her busy hand. He laid his over hers, quieting it. "There is truth in almost everything one hears," he said. "You must decide for yourself the degree of it." He released her hand and drew his legs up tailor fashion, resting his elbows on his knees. "I have been making wagers with my friends for more than a score of years. At Hambrick we had little money to spare so our wagers were confined to coppers and shillings. Our pockets are deeper now, but the wagers between us have not changed. Even in the betting book at White's it is rare for any one of us to offer up more than a few hundred pounds."
Sophie's mien remained thoughtful. "It is not the usual practice of a gamer."
"No," he said. "It is not. But it is my practice." East made a steeple of his fingers and lightly tapped the tips together. "As for drinking, it is certainly true that I have been foxed on occasion, but I can tell you that except for a sore head I have never suffered overmuch. Neither have I forgotten anything. It is not drink that prompts a loss of memory, but the severity of a megrim."
"So you are a temperate drinker."
"With infrequent lapses into excess."
"You are practically a paragon."
East looked pointedly at Sophie's belly. "Hardly that."
She ignored him. "And a murderer? There is something more to the story than the gossip."
"Someone told you about Hagan, I take it." East shook his head, his mouth set grimly for a moment. "It was a very long time ago, Sophie. I was just beginning my diplomatic work, and I was to have a meeting with the Russian consul. Hagan was the one who gave me the assignment. I was supposed to offer some guidelines for an agreement by which we might form an alliance with the Russians against Napoleon. We already knew that Prussia meant to give the French license to cross their land, and it appeared Boney was only in want of an opportunity to do so. He was still in Spain at that time, and a Russian invasion would have to wait, but with his steady annexation of most of the Continent, it seemed clear he would eventually turn to Moscow."
East threaded his fingers together so that his hands made a single fist. "There was another aspect to my assignment, however, of which Hagan was unaware. It was known to the foreign secretary that someone in the corps had compromised an earlier attempt to do much the same thing. I was to discover that man's identity."
Sophie's eyes widened a fraction, and her voice held equal parts astonishment and awe. "Why, you are a spy."
East shook his head. "No. I am the
tinker. The one who makes repairs." It was a fine distinction, perhaps, but in the Compass Club, it was West who was the spy. "You might have already concluded that Hagan turned out to be the one I was looking for. I discovered him in a tryst with the wife of a member of the Russian delegation. He would not believe me that she was using him to procure information for her husband. I was frank in my description of the lady's behavior and the lady herself, and Hagan took exception to it. He called me out."
"I was told you had thrown down the glove."
Eastlyn shrugged. "People forget the particulars even if they once knew them. In truth, there was little known factually about what happened. Most of it was supposition."
"Then is it true that you killed him?"
"It is true that I meant to when I set out that morning. Hagan's pistol ball struck me first." Eastlyn showed her a faint, slightly puckered scar on his left arm just below his shoulder. "I had a choice then to delope, and I decided he did not deserve so easy a dismissal, but it was also enough for me that he knew I could kill him. I adopted the middle course and aimed my shot low. He took it in the thigh, close enough to his ballocks that he would forever think twice before he compromised himself with a woman." He regarded Sophie directly. "The reason that you heard he was murdered is because he immediately left the country and has never returned. It is quite possible that he did come to a bad end, but it was not by my hand. I suspect the Russians no longer found him useful."
Sophie thought it was likely East knew more about Hagan's bad end than he could properly tell her. She did not press him. "So you are not a murderer either," she said. "It would seem that you have been poorly judged by many people."
"Perhaps, but they are judgments not often repeated behind my back, and only once to my face."
The realization that he was speaking of her incautious words put color into her cheeks. "I deserved to be called out for it."
"I decided to marry you instead."
She looked at him narrowly, wondering if she could believe him. "You are diabolical."
"Thank you."
"It is not strictly a compliment, you know." She stretched crossways on the bed, raising herself up on one elbow. "You told me rather a lot about your assignment on behalf of the East India Company. It doesn't seem to me that it is much different than what Hagan did. Weren't you concerned that I would say something to Tremont?"
"You gave me your word that you would not."
"You could not have trusted me so completely."
East said nothing.
Sophie saw the whole of it then. "You did not trust me. You took me into your confidence in anticipation that I would say something."
"No," he said. "Only that it would not matter if you did. It surprised me how very much you knew about the Company's plans, but then I had not realized that you listened to your cousin practicing his speeches from the other side of the door."
"You made everything you told me seem as if it should be an intrigue."
He shrugged. "I thought you were looking for one. I only meant to oblige you."
Sophie's fingers curled around one corner of a nearby pillow, and she hurled it at him. East caught it easily. Her attack was a little more difficult to deflect, but he managed to capture her wrists and pin her back to the bed. The blankets and sheet tangled around them, assisting his efforts to keep her confined. She was breathing hard when he finally subdued her.
"Admit it, Sophie," he said pleasantly. "You are more embarrassed by your gullibility than you are angry with me. And I did not lie to you about anything except that you should keep it all a secret. It was inevitable that the arguments for and against the settlement proposal were going to be made public."
She glared at him. "I thought you trusted me."
"I do... after a fashion." East was forced to shift one of his legs across both of hers when she tried to squirm away. The unmistakable press of his erection against her hip made her go still. He acknowledged this evidence of his desire with the ironic lift of one eyebrow. "I did not know about the Aragon, Sophie. If I had suspected Tremont was actually involved in the trade, I would not have told you why I was meeting with him. It did not occur to me that you might use some part of our discussion to blackmail him."
He felt her relax, though the cast of her eyes was not so forgiving. "You threatened to tell him what you knew and put yourself at great risk. You are fortunate that he only made you absolve your sin with prayer. He could easily have done more than set you on a bed of stones. That is why I will not let you confront him a second time. That is for me to do, Sophie. It is all part and parcel of my work, and your interference will only complicate matters." East searched her features. He thought the line of her mouth had softened a little, but he was not so certain that he would risk kissing her.
"I will agree to one of your demands," he told her. "We will be wed here in Clovelly by special license, but the marriage will remain a secret from everyone but my family. I will arrange a house for you in London, and you will let it about that it is part of a settlement from the estate of a distant relative. A settlement that is not subject to entailment, of course."
"Of course," she murmured.
"We will find a suitable companion for you until such time as we make our marriage widely known. With your companion, you will be able to go out in public."
"There is Lady Gilbert," she said softly. "My great-aunt in Berwyn."
"Very well. I shall find her, but companion or no, you will not—under any circumstances—visit Bowden Street, and you will not entertain your family alone in your home."
"Very well." Her voice was not raised much above a whisper.
"I am very glad to hear it. This secrecy cannot last, Sophie, but I concur with your assessment that it will provide time. I can use it to gather evidence of Tremont's involvement in the opium trade. It is a task that would be made more difficult if he knew we were married."
She nodded, though he had not asked for her agreement.
"Then it is settled."
"Yes."
East regarded her closely, gauging her sincerity. She did not look as if she meant to bite him any longer, or rather that if she did, it would be of a kind he would not mind. Her eyes were vaguely slumberous, darkening at the center with her lashes lowered. Her mouth was still parted on her last spoken word, and it no longer seemed that her response was entirely meant as an answer to his question.
Dipping his head, Eastlyn brushed her lips with his. She followed the movement, trying to reach him as he drew back. He came again and touched her just as lightly this time, the contact as fleeting as the first. The breath she caught sounded like a whimper. He saw her eyes dart over his face as she tried to anticipate him. Her wrists were still pinned, her body held taut under his, and when she moved it was only to lift her chin and offer the slender curve of her throat. He put his lips there, at a point above her collarbone, and tasted her. The suck of his mouth left a small bruise. He had not meant to mark her skin, but the sight of it made him feel oddly powerful, as if he had laid claim to her in the most elemental way.
He lowered his head again, taking her mouth hard. His tongue speared her. She kissed him back, equal to his strength, and if there was surrender it was not because he held her body flush to the bed, but because she wanted him in just this manner. When she could stir, her movements had a restless edge and only one purpose: to be closer to him.
She was made breathless by his kisses, and light-headed. When she opened her mouth to draw air, he stole it from her. He whispered her name against her lips and what he meant to do to her against her ear, and then she could not breathe or even think beyond that moment. At the periphery of her vision there was darkness, but at the center was the image he had placed in her mind. She had a view of herself lying under him and his lean frame cleaved to hers, and it was as if she were apart from both of them, watching him move a moment before she felt his lips on her skin. There was his mouth on her breast, at the underside of her arm, then at her th
roat again. And there was her shift being pushed to her thighs and the blankets unwinding around her legs.
She did whatever he asked. "Raise your knees, Sophie." And when he was settled between her thighs, a second husky command: "Lift your hips." She felt him push inside her and her back arched and then he demanded her mouth. She gave him this, too. Her wrists were released, and his hands slipped around her back. He sat up, carrying her with him. She remained joined to him, her face close to his, and she felt boneless and weightless, unable to move until he told her to put her arms around his neck.
Her breasts rubbed his chest. Their aching fullness was not relieved by the press of his skin against hers. She wanted his hands there, and he teased her by placing his palms on either side of her and running his hands from her waist, along her ribs, and then down again, always stopping short of cupping her breasts. He made her tell him what she wanted, and she hardly recognized her own voice when she found it. The breathy, husky timbre sounded as if it were spoken by another woman, one drugged by desire and shameless in her need.
His thumbs made a pass across her nipples, and she closed her eyes against the intensity of the sensation. Her hips rocked forward, drawing him more deeply inside her. He took her mouth, her breath, her voice. Her body rose and fell in a slow, undulating motion, like a wave washing over him.
The sound of her own heartbeat was a roar in her ears, and for a moment she was deaf to everything but that. The bed creaked, embers popped in the fireplace, there was the rustle of the sheets and the moist suck of their mouths, and she heard none of it.