What if he was courting or flirting? Sophie Mercer Evans was none of his affair. He doubted he’d marry Fidelia, and didn’t care what Mrs. Peters had said to put that dead expression on Sophie’s face or whether Margaret approved or not. He and Sophie were done. He had been rejected and then warned away by her brother.
He continued deeper into the parlor, pulling his gaze from the women. Best they cut all ties between them. Sophie, blast her, had been a topic of conversation among the gentlemen during their cigars and port. Vedaelin had been charmed by her and had made no secret of it, either. Banallt doubted he was the only man to leave the room wondering if Vedaelin thought he’d found his new duchess in Mercer’s sister. As for Mercer, he’d said little, and what little he did say had been, thankfully, to his sister’s credit.
The fuss over her wouldn’t last, he told himself. Sophie Evans was new blood in a circle of jaded men who spent most of their time with women equally jaded. His heart clenched. Damn, damn, damn. And damn again. He was done with her. Utterly done. If he had any sense at all, he’d wait for Mrs. Peters to finish with Sophie and Margaret and let “La Grande Peters,” as she was called in certain circles, succeed in her pursuit of him. Or perhaps he’d allow Lady Harpenden to make progress with him. Mrs. Peters was more to his taste, but at least he liked the countess. He needed a distraction, and he’d gone far too long without sexual indulgence. Why not a mindless encounter with Mrs. Peters?
He halted when he realized he was going to walk headlong into the wall if he didn’t get his mind off Sophie. The idea of taking Mrs. Peters to bed left him cold.
“Banallt,” someone said. “Good to see you out and about.”
“Tallboys,” he said. Tallboys had been Sophie’s partner at dinner. That had been a deft pairing of two fine minds. Until recently they’d not moved in the same circles. Tallboys had never been the sort to keep company with men like Tommy Evans. Or the Earl of Banallt, for that matter. What vices Tallboys had tended to keep him in better company than Banallt had once kept. “How are you?” he asked.
He didn’t give a damn how Tallboys was, but the man proceeded to tell him, and that meant Banallt didn’t have to stand alone, stupidly staring at a woman who did not want him. Tallboys was not married. At his age he ought to be. He ought to find himself a decent woman and retire to the country to live boringly ever after. Sophie, damn her eyes, didn’t seem to have moved. He had her profile now, not her face. The arch of her nose was a glaring imperfection.
“Have you an interest?” Tallboys said in the manner of someone who has repeated a question. Perhaps more than once.
“I beg your pardon?” He had no damned idea what Tallboys had asked him. Mrs. Peters had finished talking to Margaret. Sophie was now making her way across the parlor, away from him. Away from Margaret. Mrs. Peters, on the other hand, was moving toward him. Her hips swayed invitingly as she opened a fan and waved it slowly under her chin. She was heading in his direction. God help him. He wanted to run.
“You’ve been staring at her,” Tallboys said in a low voice. Well of course he was staring. Look at the way the woman was walking. He wasn’t the only man whose attention was on those swaying hips. He was probably the only man who didn’t want her any nearer. “I wondered if perhaps you felt you had a prior claim. You did meet her first, after all.”
“No,” he said. He tore his gaze from Mrs. Peters. “There is no prior claim.” She was beautiful, but he wasn’t interested. He ought to be. He wished he were. Before Sophie, he would have been. Hell, he’d have already been to bed with her and found a way to drop her if she was as tedious as he suspected. He glanced around the room, looking for Vedaelin or even Mercer, if that would save him from Mrs. Peters. What he saw was Sophie heading for the door with short, rapid steps. Head down, she had her skirts fisted in one hand.
Tallboys stepped back, hands lifted. “No need to snarl, my lord. If you reciprocate her interest, I won’t interfere.”
“I don’t,” he said. He didn’t even care that he sounded curt. Sophie was moving at an angle to where he stood, but someone must have called out to her, because she hesitated, and he caught a glimpse of her face. Deathly white. And the tremble of her hand over her bosom. Then she fled. With a flash of the satin trim down the back of her gown, she was gone. “Damn,” he whispered. Well. Let her go then. Frankly, she had the right idea. He needn’t stay for this torture, either. He could leave while Sophie was in the retiring room fixing whatever disaster had happened to her rather shopworn gown. Couldn’t Mercer be bothered to properly outfit his sister for Town?
“I thought perhaps you’d met her before tonight,” Tallboys said. “You knew her late husband, after all.”
Banallt stopped staring at the empty doorway and looked at Tallboys. “Late husband?” To his knowledge, Mr. Peters was on the other side of the room. He wasn’t often caught flat-out stupid, and he’d just been, he realized. “Mrs. Evans, you mean?”
“Why, yes, my lord.” Tallboys scanned the room. “She’s absolutely charming. Not the way you prefer them, but she’s got something all the same.” He smiled. “I’m relieved you don’t mind. The way you were staring at her tonight I thought you might.”
“I was not staring at Mrs. Evans.” This entire evening was a fiasco, and he really couldn’t stand another moment of it. “Excuse me, Tallboys, won’t you?”
Tallboys nodded. “My lord.”
He dodged Mrs. Peters and left, heading for the stairs, mentally composing the excuse he would give a servant to deliver to Vedaelin. At the top of the stairs, where the corridor went one way to the ladies’ retiring room and another to God knows where in the house, a soft sound stopped him.
Sophie was standing in a darkened portion of the corridor with her forearm on one of the marble columns that ran the length of the tiled walkway. Her head was hidden in the crook of her elbow.
She gave no sign of having heard him. He could walk away. Continue down the stairs and out of the house. Away from here. He ought to. He took a step in her direction even though he didn’t intend to. Her shoulders heaved.
“Mrs. Evans?”
She stilled. Her forehead pressed into her arm just once before she lifted her head and looked in his direction. She opened her mouth to say something—probably, he decided, an order to leave her alone—but her breath stuttered, and her eyes ... Her eyes were bleak. Broken.
“What’s happened?” He was instantly cast back to Rider Hall, to the days when they’d been friends despite the relentless pull of his desire for her. He moved closer, near enough to touch her. He didn’t dare. “If it’s me who has upset you, please, dry your tears,” he said. “I have been called away. I’m on my way out now.”
She put her back to the column and stared at the ceiling. Her breath hitched again, but softer this time as she struggled with whatever it was that had shattered her. Banallt’s chest shrank around his heart. “That‘s—” She cleared her throat and started again. “That’s—It’s not you,” she whispered.
He stared at her as she struggled to master herself, and for the first time since he had met her, he thought she might lose the battle. “Sophie,” he said. He took a breath. “Please, let me speak, and then you may either dismiss me or tell me what is the matter, as you wish. Agreed?”
She nodded. Her hands were fisted and pressed against the column at her back.
“I owe you an apology. It’s not to my credit that it’s taken me until now to make the attempt. That day at Rider Hall, you know the day I mean, I betrayed us both.” He fought for control himself as the emotions of that day came back. “No matter the cause, no matter my state of mind, I should not have behaved as I did.”
“Banallt,” she said.
But he lifted a hand to stop her. “I’ve not lived an exemplary life.” He glanced down the hall, but no one was there. “No one knows that better than you, but that day—that night of all the nights of my life, that is the only one on which I sincerely regret my behavior. I’ve since
lain awake at night and ... I imagine I behaved differently.” He glanced down. “How different our lives might be if I had not treated you so abysmally. I dishonored us both. You most of all. For all that and more, for every insult and offense, and I am aware there are many, I apologize.”
She chewed on her lower lip. Her hands, he noticed, were no longer fisted but flat to the column behind her. “Thank you,” she said. And, God help him, something in her softened toward him.
He nodded. “If I could take it all back, I would.” He hadn’t righted the wrong he’d done her. Nothing would do that. “I ought to have apologized much sooner.”
“It’s all right.”
“And now, on to tonight.” A selfless act from the Earl of Banallt? Could it be true? He was actually willing to stay out of her life. Had he ever done anything so much against his nature? “Is it my presence that upset you? If it is, you needn’t worry.”
“That ... No. Not you.” She drew in a breath. “I don’t belong here.”
“Nonsense.”
“Now I’m the one who is not being honest.” She chewed on her lip again. “It’s Mrs. Peters,” she said on an exhale that rattled the words. She caught herself, as she did whenever strong emotion challenged her control.
Conversation from the parlor came faintly down the hall, but here they stood in private, or very nearly so. The servants weren’t likely to head this way, and the retiring rooms were in the other direction. He doubted anyone would see them here, alone and in such dim and intimate lighting. “Did she say something unkind?”
“Unkind.” She sniffled, a sign of how close she’d been to tears. “How could she have been unkind? Deliberately, I mean. She did not know who I was.”
“Should she have?”
Her mouth worked, going from pressed thin, to parted, and back to closed. He did his best not to stare at her mouth, her full and perfect lips, the lower one just that much fuller than the upper. “Not long after you left Rider Hall the last time...” Another stuttering breath came from her, but softer than before. She tucked her hands behind her back, leaning on them, refusing to meet his gaze. So be it. Did he expect to be forgiven so easily? “Tommy came home.”
He said nothing. She wore white muslin trimmed with dark blue satin. A row of tiny blue satin bows lined the neckline, some touching the pale skin of her bosom. Shadows gathered at the tucks that pulled her bodice to a tiny vee. In all the time he’d known her he’d never seen her in an evening gown. Never once with bare shoulders or with the upper curves of her breasts exposed. She was exquisite. And he would never hold her in his arms, with her body soft and pliant against him.
“He said he’d come home to stay.” At last, she stopped staring at the ceiling and looked at him. His body reacted with a jolt of sexual anticipation. Misguided, hopeless, but there it was, coursing through him as if he were once more on the prowl. “He was tired of his life, he said, and he wanted me. He wanted to make a life with me.” She smiled, but the corners of her mouth too quickly turned down. She looked at the floor and tugged on one of her gloves, bringing the kidskin closer to the tender crook of her elbow.
“I didn’t believe him,” she said. “Why should I have? You know what he was like. But he stayed at Rider Hall. He stayed home with me, and he was never once drunk. He didn’t ask me for money. Nor spend the night in town. I wanted so much to believe he meant it.” She bit her lower lip, and then slowly, sensuously, she smiled. He doubted she knew what she looked like with the dreamy uptilt at the corners of her mouth. “I was happy, Banallt. For the first time in ... forever, it seemed, I was happy. He was the man I married, the man I fell in love with, and I fell in love with him all over again.”
He let the silence stay between them. What the hell had Tommy Evans ever done to deserve such devotion?
Her head leaned against the column. “We went to visit his parents. They had several guests at the house. Down from London. We weren’t going to stay long. Tommy and I had talked about going to Havenwood to see Papa and John. He knew how dreadfully I missed them.”
Banallt kept his silence. If Tommy Evans had wanted to visit Sophie’s family, then it would only have been to borrow money after he showed off a young wife whom he pretended to adore and who obviously adored him.
“But one afternoon I came home early from some outing with his mother. I don’t even remember now what it was we were doing. And I walked in on him with Mrs. Peters. In our room. Our bed.” A tear slipped off her lower lashes and headed down her cheek.
Banallt’s heart dove to his feet. He saw and felt the image in his head. Sophie, believing she had her heart’s desire, that her husband loved her. Her hand on the door, seeing Tommy with another woman, their bodies locked together. He felt her heartbreak. Damn Tommy Evans to hell. Banallt wasn’t over her. No matter how often he told himself he was, he wasn’t. If he lived to be a hundred, he’d not be over her. “I am so sorry.”
“He made me love him again, and what a fool I was.”
He closed the distance between them and brushed the tear from her cheek. What was he supposed to say to her when he’d been more than a little responsible for the man’s many transgressions? “Sophie.”
“Later, we argued terribly,” she said, unaware that more tears were spilling down her cheeks. “I said a great many unkind things.”
“You were angry.” He was afraid she was going to break. She was trying mightily to control herself, but he knew she was at the edge. “And hurt.”
“I refused to stay another night in that room. Where he’d been with that woman.” She looked up. “Her eyes were closed, you know. She mayn’t ever have seen me or known I came in. Perhaps Tommy never told her. I saw them, and right before I closed the door, Tommy ... he looked right at me. And I could see in his eyes that he’d lied to me all along.”
Banallt brushed a finger along her lower lip.
“All I wanted was for my husband to love me. Just a little.”
“Sophie ...”
“That night, he was killed. His mother knew we’d argued, though not why—I wouldn’t tell her that for the world—and she blamed me. If we hadn’t argued, he’d never have gone out.” She looked away. “Married couples argue all the time,” she said.
“She was a mother, Sophie, who’d lost her son. She must have been mad with grief.”
Her eyes met his, silently acknowledging his point. She reached for his hand, holding just his fingers in hers. “Yes, that’s so.” She sighed. “She blamed me that Tommy got drunk that night and stayed drunk all night and killed himself riding home.” She let out a breath. “If I hadn’t told him to get out, he probably would have stayed. So, in a way, she was right.” He watched tears pool in her eyes, and the sight tore at him. “Seeing Mrs. Peters brought it back. Even if he’d lived, he was never going to love me. I knew that, too, but I never cared. I never could believe it was so.”
He pulled her into his arms, and the moment he felt her body against his he knew that he’d made a mistake touching her.
“You knew,” she said into his shirt. “You knew all along he never loved me.”
“Shh,” he crooned. He held her while she cried, her hands against his chest. He loved her still, and there didn’t seem to be anything he could do about it. He would probably love her until the day he died, a pathetic, dried-up old man married to some worthy woman who would give him his heir and a spare and would never, ever be to him what Sophie was right now and forever.
“I know Tommy’s to blame for what he did, I know that,” she said. “But I can’t forgive her, either. She was married. She knew he was married. She knew it was wrong of her.” He put his handkerchief in her hand. “I wish I’d never come here.” She lifted her tear-streaked face to his. “How many other women here tonight were Tommy’s lovers, too? Five? Ten? A dozen?” She crumpled his handkerchief. “I should hate him. Why do I miss him so terribly when I ought to despise him?”
He grabbed her by the shoulders. His hands were bare, an
d his fingers splayed onto the skin exposed by her gown. “That’s quite enough out of you.”
She reared back and stared wide-eyed at him.
“Sophie Mercer Evans, you are better than her. Better than this. Go back in there. She can’t compare to you. She never will.”
“I can’t.” She dissolved into tears again.
He gave her to a mental count of five, and yes, the tears stopped, exactly as he knew they would. “I’ll fetch your brother,” he said. “He’ll take you home if that’s what you want.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
In the parlor, he dispatched a footman to have Mercer’s carriage brought around then found Mercer and took him aside. “I beg your pardon,” he said to Fidelia. “I need a word with Mr. Mercer.”
“What is it, my lord?” he asked.
“Your sister is ... ill.” His hesitation was yet another mistake. One of many tonight. Mercer heard it and understood quite well that some other word must have been foremost in his mind. “I’ve called for your carriage.”
Anger flickered in his eyes. “Bold of you, my lord.”
He grabbed Mercer’s arm, hauling him farther from curious ears. “Whatever the cause, forget about Fidelia for five minutes and take your sister home. She’s in no fit condition to be seen.”
Mercer took a step toward him. “What have you done?” He only just kept his voice low. “If you’ve harmed her, Banallt—”
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