Lady Scandal

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Lady Scandal Page 11

by Wendy Lacapra


  He pressed his nostrils to Sophia’s hair and inhaled. Her scent was roses on a hot summer day, a presence setting right something he had not even known was wrong. If he could capture everything enveloped in her scent, he would.

  But she would disintegrate under an autocratic hold—or, less metaphorically, run again.

  He knew how to manipulate. He knew how to fight. He had no idea how one nurtured a shrewd but vulnerable woman. He was going to have to learn before they returned to Kasai’s arena.

  Harrison had bought him time by taking charge of the search for Helena and Eustace. He thought of the sharp-eyed glint in Harrison’s eyes as he questioned the young man. In some ways, Harrison was the more qualified man for this mission.

  Randolph’s muscles unwound. Harrison would be fine and he had promised to send word of any development. For now, Randolph could think of no better way to ensure Sophia’s safety than to remain by her side.

  Here, in the peaceful environs of Elizabeth’s farm, only the two of them existed. Baneham’s ghost still cast a pall—but Sophia had opened, just enough to give him confidence he would prevail. But, when they returned to the trappings of Baneham’s wealth, the constant reminders of Baneham’s misdeeds—would he lose the small advance he had gained?

  He released Sophia. The slightly dazed look in her eyes sank into his groin.

  He replaced her frumpy little bonnet—she must have been truly frightened to hide with people who prized simplicity as much as she valued lush grandeur. But what better place to woo the infamous Lady Scandal than a place where she was, essentially, stripped of all her defenses?

  “Maximilian Harrison,” he told Sophia, “has taken over my post.” For now.

  “He has?” She frowned. “Poor Lavinia.”

  He gave her a dubious expression. “Poor Lavinia was the one who sent him to meddle. I will stay here until some progress in the mission forces us back to London.”

  Her gaze traveled over his face—part wonder, part concern. “You would remain with me—here?”

  “For a time.” They would all call him Hugh. Another blasted internal shudder. As much as he found he liked the name on Sophia’s lips—being called by his first name by the mess of farm workers was going to sting. “You are unharmed and unlikely to be found. Harrison, and Harrison alone, knows I am here.”

  “I am not ready to live as your wife.” She blushed. “Yet.”

  Yet. His whole world turned on a three-letter word. “I expect nothing you are not ready to give.”

  “Elizabeth does not abide idleness.”

  Wonderful. He forced a smile. “Do you think the prospect of a little labor will make me flee?”

  An infinitesimal grin flashed on her lips. “I think you have no idea what you are getting yourself into.”

  “My lady wounds me again,” he said. “Does she not yet realize I would perform any feat to ensure her good regard?”

  She sighed. “Now I think I do not know what I am getting myself into.”

  He laced her fingers with his. “Whatever ‘it’ is, we will be mired together.”

  He would win her over this time.

  He must.

  Chapter Eight

  Earl Baneham’s Rules for Winning

  “Watch the enemy with hawk eyes.”

  Watch the enemy with hawk eyes. Sophia mulled Baneham’s rule and decided this one of his rules, at least, had merit. At the moment—a-hem—she did not object to very close vigilance.

  Muscles under Randolph’s shirt bunched and then rippled as he swung the ax up high and then brought it down. The wood made a squeaking crack as the cleft pieces toppled to each side.

  Sophia inhaled. Who was she kidding? She was not watching Randolph because of Baneham’s blasted rules; she was watching him because he moved with a hunting cat’s grace. And his grace made her want to brush up against his side and nestle her head under his chin.

  He raised the ax again, and brought it down with another satisfying crack.

  Squeal. Clatter. The wood split and fell away.

  Having brought the ax down too hard, he struggled to retrieve the metal head from the block.

  Far be it from her to criticize, however. His forearm counted among one of the most fascinating things Sophia had ever observed. Ah, what things she had missed while gracing the sitting rooms of London! The pleasures of the country had not been adequately explained.

  He released the handle, lifted his arm, and wiped the sweat from his brow.

  Sophia sighed. He looked up in surprise. His smile deepened the creases fanning out from his eyes. Her stomach flipped. She craved his smiles. When he smiled, every sense she possessed danced.

  “Jane,” Elizabeth’s voice broke Sophia’s reverie, “art thou weary?”

  She flashed Elizabeth a sheepish grin, but kept her eyes on her husband. “No, I just…”

  Sophia fell silent as Randolph touched his hat and then lifted his ax again.

  “Such hard work,” Elizabeth observed, “draws thirst.”

  “Yes…” Sophia said distractedly.

  “If thou wishes to fill Hugh’s cup, I will take over washing.”

  Sophia’s lips formed an Oh as she realized what Elizabeth suggested.

  Such an odd thing. Such a little thing…to bring Randolph—Hugh—a drink. Had she ever done so? Of course, she had prepared tea for them both. She had performed any number of the mindless pleasantries society demands, which had become so second nature they’d lost their power.

  But as Elizabeth suggested, he likely had a need. A need she could aid.

  “Go,” Elizabeth said with uncharacteristic exasperation. “I will take thy burden. Assist thy husband.”

  Sophia released the washing stick but remained motionless. Her anticipation slightly appalled. Since when were gestures of a domestic nature appealing?

  “Is going to him so difficult?” Elizabeth asked.

  Yes. No. He-is-a-wolf-can’t-you-see?

  “I will do as you ask,” Sophia replied.

  “I would rather thee do as thy heart commands,” Elizabeth said in a tone so low only Sophia could hear.

  What did her heart command? Apprehensive and shy, she hauled a bucket to the water line, lowered it down into the well, and then retrieved the filled bucket by turning the crank. She filled a simple wooden cup and headed toward Randolph.

  A vision of those opulent parties given in her garden materialized in her mind’s eye. The be-laced gentlemen who smelled of wig powder, spirits, and expensive German cologne. The games, the raucous laughter. Why did the simple act of taking Randolph water take more effort than scandalizing London?

  She reached his side. Work and wind had flushed his cheeks and his dark blond hair lay in damp disarray to his angled cheeks. She handed him the cup, her fingers brushed his.

  “Elizabeth suggested thou may need refreshment—.”

  “Thou?” His lip turned up, bemused.

  “You.” She shook her head. “Elizabeth suggested you may need refreshment.”

  “I appreciate refreshment.” He raised a brow. “My needs are of a somewhat different nature.”

  She laughed. She hadn’t laughed in a long time.

  He took the cup and drank deep, Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed.

  She inhaled. Truly, these good people must think her depraved if she did not take her eyes off her husband.

  “Would you like a drink as well?” he asked.

  She took his offer and sipped the cool, renewing water. As she drank, his intent stare coaxed a second blush to her cheeks. What had happened to her? Lady Scandal did not blush in response to a simple glance. She was scarred and tainted and a serious shock was required to make her blush. But here in her little white bonnet and scratchy grey dress she felt like a different person. Demure. Almost innocent. The world yawned anew in the shining whiteness of possibility.

  “Hugh,” she whispered.

  “Sophia,” he said her name like a plea.

 
If he had asked her then—come to me tonight—she would have been tempted. Her gaze followed a bead of sweat down his neck and past the V at the base of his throat until the droplet disappeared behind the laces of his partially open shirt.

  So tempted. So desperately, terribly tempted.

  His muscles would ache tonight. She could ease the ache with her fingers. She could follow the trail the bead had taken with a soothing caress.

  Ask me! She gave him a silent and furious command.

  He asked nothing. He just held her with his eyes. Then, he smiled, slow and wide.

  “Thank thee,” he said softly, “for the drink.”

  She felt the warmth in his gaze. He knew she had been won. But outside of these walls, back in their world…how would she feel then?

  “Good day…Hugh,” she said.

  …

  Earl Baneham’s Randolph’s Rules for Winning Wooing

  “If given an opportunity, take full advantage. …admit your mistakes.”

  The moment Sophia’s gaze had fallen to his chest, Randolph perceived her imminent surrender. Damnably welcome relief, because each time he heard Hugh on her lips, her voice ran like a warm cloth down his chest and across the sensitive flesh of his stomach. He could not endure much more. The slight curve of her lips—so gentle, so feminine—left him feeling as if she had brought liquid gold instead of water. She turned and sauntered back across the courtyard, hips swaying. He studied her retreat. By God, he had to have her in his arms, and soon. Where could he plan a tryst? He slept in the upper floors with the men, she, with the women. He wasn’t above a tumble in the hay—

  He closed his eyes and shook his head. Was he—the Earl of bloody Randolph—actually considering seducing his lady wife while surrounded by animal stench?

  Absurd.

  Sophia needed—and deserved—so much more than a simple satiation of desire. But what did he need? And what did he want, even?

  Her little, secret smile.

  In bed.

  Every day.

  He shook off the notion, took aim at another log, and attacked. A gratifying sting burned his shoulder.

  Who was he to be thinking of Sophia’s smile? He was at war with Kasai, and this sojourn’s purpose was to secure Sophia to his side. Mooning about smiles was for poets and fools. Poets and fools in love.

  He shuddered.

  Love was a softening agent. And love, he suspected, was not for people like Sophia and him—people who had seen more than they wished to admit and darkness they could never forget. The equation here was simpler than love: he and Sophia were stronger together than they were apart. He needed her in this fight. He wanted her in his bed. That he rather liked her was irrelevant.

  …As was the thought that when they won this war, he looked forward to bringing his countess home.

  “Woolgathering, Hugh?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I apologize,” he said.

  “There is no need…”

  Elizabeth turned toward the house and held her hand to her forehead to shield her eyes. At the threshold of the kitchen door, Sophia paused, turned back to them and flashed one of her infamous smiles. Randolph groaned aloud. A groan which he attempted to cover by clearing his throat.

  “Walk with me?” Elizabeth asked.

  “If you wish.” He fell in step with the Quaker in silence…and not because he observed her strictures, but because, as much as possible, he avoided speaking to his unsettling hostess.

  “I have appreciated thy work,” she said.

  “My thanks.”

  “Thou taketh much care with thy wife,” she continued.

  Now he was truly uneasy. There was no one anywhere with whom he would feel less comfortable discussing his marriage.

  “I come to thee with a concern,” she continued. “Anna is much on my mind.”

  “Anna?” He asked, startled.

  Elizabeth nodded. “When Anna arrived, she suffered night terrors. She hath been my bedfellow, but she is recovered enough to sleep among the other women, which is her wish.”

  Randolph frowned. “Do you need assistance assembling a bed?”

  “Oh no,” she smiled brightly.

  He cocked his head, “Are you requesting Sophia and I leave?”

  She gave him an admonishing look. “Thou wilt have shelter here as long as thou hast need.” Elizabeth stopped by a small building, just beyond the barn. She looked up into the tiny, resident-less cottage with a wistful fondness in her gaze. “This is the original farm cottage—bed chamber above and kitchen below—all that was here when my husband and I purchased the property.” She smiled in fond remembrance. “We built the main house and dormitories as funds allowed.”

  He stepped into the shadow of the house and looked up at the thatched-roof.

  “Thou wilt be comfortable here…thou and thy wife.”

  “Pardon?” He looked at her in surprise.

  “Anna requires Jane’s bed.” Elizabeth pinked and quickly turned toward the house. “I will send Jane.”

  Randolph rested his hand on the wall, stunned. A simple cottage of timber and whitewashed mud may be a far cry from his estate, but it was certainly a cozy step up from a barn-loft tryst. At the moment, the modest dwelling was worth far more to him than the intricately carved buttresses and impressive columns where he had begun his life.

  Elizabeth had answered his prayers—if he could call his deepest desires, prayers.

  Baneham’s rules and Randolph’s experience told him to seize the advantage. On the other hand, Sophia’s shy smile had been a gift he would never have received had he been following those rules. One did not coax a spark to flame by tossing the largest log on new embers.

  For years, he had referenced Baneham’s damned book more from habit than for guidance. He had not been blind to his mentor’s faults, of course. Just certain that the preservation of the state and the state’s interests won out over morality’s lesser strictures. And grateful something had finally given him the means to subdue an internal spirit whose excesses he had too often indulged.

  But, useful as those rules had been, they did not apply to wooing. And his wife required plenty of wooing.

  Wooing. Randolph snorted. Baneham would be mortified.

  “Randolph?” Sophia had approached with nary a sound. “Elizabeth has sent me to you,” she said, part-amused and part-exasperated. “If she were not so pious, I would think she was playing matchmaker.”

  “The pious cannot match-make?”

  Sophia reflected and then shook her head no. “For Elizabeth to intercede, she would have to believe the couple had been, as she might put it, drawn together by the light and were suffering due to their willful refusal to unite.”

  Drawn together by the light. Her words echoed in his mind, bouncing from thought to thought, searching for a place to settle.

  “Well,” he grinned, “neither you nor I could be called willful.”

  She laughed. “Of course not.”

  “Shall we explore the cottage?” he asked.

  Her smile faded. “I have to attend to my work.”

  “As do I, but Elizabeth specifically requested we go inside.”

  “She must be matchmaking.”

  “Matchmaking?” he asked, “When we are already wed?”

  The ground floor tour was brief: a small hearth and table made up the contents. Randolph took his time climbing the steep and narrow stair behind Sophia, enjoying his favorable view.

  The single upstairs chamber contained a chair, a dressing table and basin, a privacy screen and a bed. Sophia glanced at the bed, and then spun around, nearly knocking him back down the stairs.

  “We are finished.”

  “Surely you wish to step inside?”

  She frowned. “Why?”

  “My lady, I present your temporary sleeping quarters.”

  She blinked. And then blinked again. “Tell me I did not hear you correctly.”

  “Anna wishes to move into the women’s dormitory, bu
t there are no extra beds,” he explained.

  “Elizabeth wants me to relinquish my bed to Anna?”

  He nodded. She folded her arms. The panic in her eyes simmered down to a low-roiling anger.

  “You,” she accused, “had something to do with this.”

  “On my word, I did not.” Steadily, he held her gaze. “In full truth, however, I find the change in living arrangements providential.”

  “Providence,” she narrowed her lids, “has nothing to do with the look in your eye.”

  “Doesn’t it?” He stepped past her, caught her by the waist, and swung her into the room. “Without the look in my eye, humans would cease to propagate.”

  She snorted. “I am angry. You cannot make me smile.”

  “I just did.” He drew his finger down her dimple. “You’ve a lovely smile, you know.”

  “My smile tends to transform men into the most accommodating creatures.”

  “Smile again, then.” He lowered his voice. “Allow me to demonstrate how accommodating I can become.”

  Her eyes widened. “Oh dear. I am not ready for this,” she waved her hand behind her in the bed’s general direction, “or that.”

  The honest little crack in her voice unraveled him.

  He cupped her cheek. “Do you still believe I mean you harm?”

  She swallowed. “No.”

  “You do not fear me, but you are not ready to trust me.”

  “An impasse,” she whispered.

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not.” He reached down and grasped her hand. Cradling her fingers in his open palm, he ran his thumb across her knuckles. He placed a lingering kiss on the spot he had warmed. “There is something between us, is there not?”

  “There is,” she sighed long and full of suppressed longing, “something. There has always been something.”

  “Something,” he ruminated. “Sweetness, no garment in England could be less alluring than what you are wearing.”

  “Just what a lady wishes to hear,” she derided.

  “But even clothed in this version of a sack, you drive me mad. I always know when you are near. You can cover up all your feminine attributes,” he ran his hand up her back until his palm cradled her neck, “and I would continue to find you the most desirable woman in the world.”

 

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