“But you met her.”
So, Mercer did suspect they’d been lovers. He wished they had been, because then he’d not be here, making a fool of himself.
“Naturally, we met. I thought her—” What was he to say? Heartbreaking. And then intriguing, and at last, utterly beguiling. “—charming.” He had not for a moment expected Tommy Evans’s wife to be anything but a foolish, empty-headed female of the sort that kept a man in London month after month. He had arrived at Rider Hall a rake unfettered by scruples of any kind, blissful in his ignorance that his life was to be set on end.
“There’s scandal attached to her,” Mercer said. The bitter way he spoke made Banallt look sharply at him. Mercer had a knowledge of Sophie’s past that Banallt did not. He knew a different Sophie, a woman Banallt had but glimpsed through a door left ajar, then swiftly and decisively closed. He envied Mercer the knowledge. Deep waters here, treacherous to navigate. “Were you aware they eloped?”
“Evans mentioned something about that.” Crowed about it. He’d eloped with an heiress. Some dull and starry-eyed seventeen-year-old who was his before they crossed the Scottish border into Gretna Green where the laws were so amenable to eloping couples. Even if they’d been caught, he’d have been forced to marry her. Respectable heiresses did not run off in the night with men to whom they were not married.
“It was a scandal here.”
“Elopements generally are,” Banallt said. Poor Sophie. She’d squandered her love and her money over the anvil. Tommy put her away in Kent and dedicated himself to spending seventy thousand pounds sterling as fast as he could.
“And then there was Evans’s death,” Mercer said, opening that distant door again and offering another glimpse of Sophie. Banallt was fiercely opposed to learning anything to Sophie’s detriment. “If he was an acquaintance of yours, I’m sure you heard.”
“No, actually. I’ve only recently returned from Paris. He died while I was away.” His curt reply seemed to satisfy Mercer. Thank God.
When they got around the corner of the house and were heading for the stables, Mercer pulled up. Banallt did the same. He knew what was to come, and, like Mercer, he did not care to have the servants overhear. This was a discussion best had quickly and in privacy. One of the grooms came out of the barn but retreated when he saw them in conversation. Mercer leaned forward. “I know your reputation, my lord.”
Banallt waited to hear if he was to be sent away. His mount, well-trained beast that it was, remained utterly still. There was no defense possible for his past. He’d been warned off more than once in his life, and by men with more reason than Mercer to be angry and fearful. But Mercer surprised him by meeting his eyes directly, and for that Banallt liked him.
“You’ve come to Duke’s Head for the first time in your life.” There was steel in Mercer’s voice. Another groom turned a corner from the rear of the stables, glanced their direction, and disappeared inside the outbuilding. “People talk about a thing like that.”
Banallt cocked his head in acknowledgment. Mercer had no choice but to connect Banallt’s presence here with his sister. He was right to do so.
“I hope,” Mercer said softly, “that scandal does not come down on us again.”
Oh, well done. Mercer’s oblique warning ranked among the best he’d ever had from a concerned relative. More than oblique enough to be taken for concern about Sophie’s behavior rather than his. Banallt said, “My wife has been dead for some time now. I have no heir and no desire to see the title go elsewhere. A man in my circumstance must put his mind to marriage.” That, he thought, was rather well done of him.
Mercer’s green eyes were unforgiving. “From among the young ladies of Duke’s Head?”
From where they’d stopped, Banallt could see servants moving inside the conservatory. He was amused that Mercer could not bring himself to ask the obvious. Well. He’d had enough of warnings and insinuations. He met Mercer’s eyes. “I did not come to Duke’s Head on a lark.”
“I thought not.”
Banallt took a breath. One never liked to show one’s hand too soon. But there it was. “I intend to marry your sister.”
Mercer’s eyes widened, but he had something of Sophie’s fortitude. “My lord.” He inclined his head. “Just so we are perfectly clear, are you asking for my consent or my blessing?”
“Either will do.” His heart thudded again. If only the matter could be resolved so easily. What he wanted, though, was for Sophie’s too-intelligent brother to stay the hell out of his way.
Mercer leaned forward then resettled himself on his saddle. The leather creaked as he did. “They say you’re likely to be raised in the peerage.”
“I am quite content with my present title,” he said. If he went from earl to marquess or even higher, then he was content with that, too.
Mercer frowned, and for an instant, Banallt saw him as the young man Sophie had spoken of. But only for an instant. Mercer returned to what he was: an impediment to something Banallt desired. “Suppose you marry Sophie.”
“Yes,” he murmured. “Suppose I do.”
“Setting aside my conviction that such a marriage would make no one happy, least of all my sister, my nephew might be a marquess or perhaps even a duke.”
“Or merely a lowly earl.”
“With fifty or a hundred thousand a year in his pocket.”
“Closer to a hundred thousand,” Banallt said. Triumph flashed through him. He urged his horse toward the stable. “Console yourself, Mercer, by writing her a settlement to ease your conscience.”
“I’m sure you’ve bought women for far less,” Mercer said.
Well, yes, actually. But having Sophie as his wife was worth any price.
Two
BANALLT WATCHED SOPHIE FROM THE DOORWAY OF THE conservatory. She stood with her weight on one leg, speaking to a white-haired servant, the butler, he surmised from the man’s clothes and bearing. Mercer wasn’t a dolt as so many brothers were about their sisters. Once they’d come to the house, Mercer had conveniently remembered business that would delay him in joining Sophie and Banallt for tea.
Someone at Havenwood was fond of roses. Beyond the beds of flowers, white, red, and pink, an orange tree grew toward the ceiling. She turned her head toward him. Her eyes widened when she realized he’d come without Mercer. Just that one look from her and all his pent-up and repressed feelings for her returned in force: his anticipation of her company; his delight in her intellect, her wit, her eyes; the way his body clenched when he was near her.
No, nothing at all had changed.
Banallt walked in. The butler said something to a footman, who nodded and picked up an empty tray. He had the feeling he’d just been thoroughly dissected by a pair of blue green eyes. And found wanting. The footman left on the butler’s heels, leaving the field to him. His roguish instincts reared up. Such an enchanting setting for seduction.
The scent of roses hung in the air. If not for the gloomy sky, he might have imagined himself in a summer garden. Damask roses filled a Chinese vase on the table. An excellent touch, he thought. The damask rose itself was farther away, blossoms open in the afternoon light. Watercress sandwiches were layered on a plate, while on another were cakes iced in green, pink, and blue and decorated with frosted yellow ribbons. Quite the grand step up from her previous situation.
“You should not be here,” she said when he stopped just short of her. She walked away from the table and stood behind a bench that faced the lawns. He joined her, breathing in the scent of her hair. Outside, only slightly distorted by the glass, the garden gave way to lawns that sloped away from the house. Emerald green became lost in the mist twisting through the bare-branched trees far distant. She gripped the topmost rail of the bench.
“Is it possible you’re still angry with me?” he asked. “After all this time?”
“Why have you come here?” She did not look at him.
He hated the fact that he could not interpret the emotion th
at flashed over her face before her expression stilled. “Castle Darmead has been in my family for more than five hundred years. It’s time I visited.” He took one of her hands in his and rubbed the inside of her wrist through her glove. She still didn’t look at him, but she didn’t object to the contact, either, and that was something.
“Why didn’t you wait another five hundred years?” she said in a low voice. “Why now, Banallt, when I have only just begun to put my life back together?”
“I am a changed man, Sophie.” He tugged on her hand and drew her with him to sit on the bench.
“I expected never to see you again.” Her tongue flicked out to touch her lower lip. “I wanted never to see you again.”
After they sat, he kept her hand in his and continued to draw a circle on her wrist. “I was out of the country when I heard Tommy had died.”
“Yes. You were in Paris,” she whispered. “With the Bourbon king.” She bent her head and stared at the ground and the tops of her slippers, and Banallt found himself confronted with the naked back of her neck.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Didn’t you hear?” She straightened but didn’t look at him.
“Yes. But I should like to know the truth.”
“It was very sudden,” she said.
He wanted to ask if her heart was irreparably broken. Did she still grieve for her bastard of a husband? Instead, he said, “I am very sorry for your loss. I know you loved Tommy. And I’m sorry, Sophie, that I was not there to comfort you.”
“I knew you’d been sent to Paris.”
“When I returned to London,” he said, still rubbing her wrist, but more slowly now, “I went to Rider Hall to pay my respects.”
She looked at him, and, as ever, he felt a shock at the beauty of her eyes. Thick, thick lashes framed her almond eyes. And the color, my God, a lucid blue green, an astonishing shade sparked to life by her formidable wits. A man could lose his soul in her eyes. A man had. “Did you really?” she asked.
“The house was full of strangers, and you were gone.”
“I was here,” she said. “Home at last.”
“So I learned.” The silence stretched out, and Banallt was content to let this one settle between them for a while yet.
“I’m sure the new owners were surprised to see you at their doorstep,” she said.
“They were alarmed,” he replied. “They have three daughters.”
She laughed, and that made him smile. When he first knew her, she rarely laughed. And when she had begun to, his heart had already long, long traveled far from anyplace safe. She turned toward him, still smiling. “Horrors,” she said.
“You may well imagine.”
She straightened his cravat and then pulled back. Too late. The gesture was done and fairly shouted between them. He kept his smile. Whatever she said, whatever lies she told him now, he knew the truth. She was not indifferent. He said, “Once, you consoled me when I was in need of sympathy. I promised myself that if ever you were in similar need, I would come to you instantly. To my eternal regret, when it happened, I could not.”
Sophie touched his cheek with the tips of her fingers. “Oh, Banallt,” she whispered. Her hand fell away from him before he could capture it. “How you break my heart.”
“Sophie...” Her words echoed back to him. She had spoken them just so on that day. Exactly so. He was not over that heartbreak, and he found himself obliged to master himself for the second time in a single afternoon.
“You should not have come here.”
“Your brother invited me.”
She gave him a look. “How could he not when Duke’s Head’s most famous resident is at last at Castle Darmead?”
He leaned forward. The scent of orange water filled his senses. She was no longer married. Sophie was free, and he had been widowed for over two years, waiting, he knew in his soul, for Sophie.
They heard voices in the distance, and the moment for intimacy, if ever it had existed except in his imagination, passed. He moved away and leaned a shoulder against one of the wooden support beams. Cold air through the glass chilled his shoulder.
“Everyone says you came here to find a wife.” She hurried on before he could say anything. “You should, you know. Marry again.”
“The line must be secured before much longer. I have relatives whose chief occupation is calculating the odds of their inheritance.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” She gave a shrug. “One’s family should be a refuge from the world. As John was for me when Tommy died.”
He let that pass, though he felt the unvoiced accusation despite knowing she didn’t blame him. She hardly could. He’d not even been in Britain when Tommy died. “You should have written to me, Sophie.” Yes, that was anger in his voice. He tamped down the reaction, but really, she had promised she would tell him if ever she was in need, and she hadn’t done so. “You should have told me. I would have left Paris if you had written to me.”
She swallowed. “His creditors descended,” she said softly. “And I soon had nowhere to go. Nowhere but back here.” The corner of her mouth tightened. She kept her gaze on him. “But you, you could go anywhere to find another wife.”
“I do not intend to marry the wrong woman.” He pressed his lips together. “Not again.”
She let out a long breath. “The young ladies of Duke’s Head will be as dazzled by you as I was by Tommy.”
“Dazzled?” He pushed off the beam and took a step toward her. His recollection hadn’t exaggerated her intensity, nor her fathomless eyes, nor the way she held herself so straight; all that was just as he’d dreamed every night since they parted so badly. And he hadn’t misremembered how deeply he wanted her, either. God knows that had not changed. “You’re not going to suggest I marry some girl fresh from the schoolroom, are you?”
“Why not?”
“I’m thirty-three years old. I’ve no interest in girls who can be dazzled.”
Sophie tilted her head like a curious sparrow, a motion he knew for the deception it was. Well. She’d always been stubborn and stultifyingly good at hiding her emotions. “Are you asking me to make you a recommendation, my lord?”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “Why not?”
“Indeed,” she said. “Why not? Shall I tell you why not?”
“Please do.”
“Because there will be gossip, Banallt. Simply because of who and what you are.”
He lifted his hands palms up. “Gossip is inevitable whenever a man like me makes it known he’s looking to marry. Are you holding me to account for the gossip others spread? That’s unfair of you.”
“You are being willful, Banallt.” She had to tilt her head back to look at him. He felt a rush of desire for her. Damn, but nothing at all had changed. “If you stay here, there will be gossip. Your reputation invites scandal. Your temperament assures it.”
Rain spattered on the window glass. The gloomy day had at last descended into outright wet. The conservatory door opened, and Banallt grabbed Sophie’s wrist to prevent her from walking away. “The hell it does,” he said in a low voice.
“You forget,” she said, “how well I know you.”
“Sophie,” he said in a low, dark voice. “I came here to marry you, not some silly girl I’ve never laid eyes on. You.”
“Don’t, Banallt,” she said.
“I am not Tommy.”
“No, you are not Tommy.” She was angry now, and Sophie in anger was always magnificent. “You’re worse than Tommy ever was.”
“You’re wrong.” He continued to grip her hand. “And even if I was, that’s done now. I’m not the man you knew.”
“I am no longer young and no longer naive.” She shook her head. “I won’t marry a man who would never be faithful to me. I can’t. I won’t live like that again.”
“Sophie.”
“No.” She lifted her chin to look into his face, and Banallt obliged her by lowering his. “I would rather die tha
n marry the man my husband wished he could be.”
And then Mercer came in and Banallt had no choice but to release her wrist, and Sophie spun on a heel and walked away. “I’m sorry, John,” she said to her brother in a voice of awful deadness. “I’ve a terrible headache. Do forgive me.”
All Banallt could do was watch her leave him. Again.
Three
Three years earlier. Rider Hall, Kent,
AUGUST 17, 1811
SOPHIE’S HEART SLAMMED AGAINST HER RIBS WHEN THE front door opened with a crash that rattled the windows. Her first thought was that someone had broken in. It was half past two in the morning, and the servants had gone home hours ago. Nan, the maid of all work and the only one who lived in, was fast asleep. Even if she was up and about, the girl was incapable of making that much noise.
Downstairs, something crashed to the floor. A painting falling from the wall?
“Damn me, I’m killed!” a man yelled. She heard more thrashing about and then the screech of something heavy being dragged or pushed across the marble floor.
She bowed her head to her desk and concentrated on steadying her breathing. Not a house cracker, but Tommy. Her husband, whom she had not seen in nearly a year. Her hands trembled as she put away her writing, hiding it deep in a bottom drawer. Tommy. After all these months apart. And instead of joy at his arrival, all she could think was, why?
“Where’s a bloody lamp?” Tommy shouted from downstairs. But then his feet clomped and shuffled on the stairs. He was singing “Whisky, You’re the Devil,” but the words didn’t make any sense until he got to the chorus.
Her knuckles hit the ink bottle when she reached for the cap, and she lived a moment of pure terror while she juggled the cap and the bottle both. But no harm was done, except to her racing heart. She capped her ink and put away her pen without cleaning the nib. Those, too, went inside a drawer. Tommy’s singing became louder and then stopped. He was home and in no fit condition. A welcome thread of anger pulsed in her.
Scandal Page 2