Sophie pursed her lips and kissed his finger. “You might consider playing a hand now and then. It’s a gaming club, and you’ll be thought odd if you never play at all.”
He arched one brow, amused. “Will I be?”
“I don’t mean you should wager heavily,” she added, “only that it will attract notice if you never wager at all.”
“Thank you for the counsel. I shall consider it.” He kissed her again, first lightly, then deeper and harder until she sighed in pleasure.
She had to get up to walk him out and bar the door for the night. Wearing only her dressing gown, she followed him down the narrow stairs into the tiny hall. There he took her into his arms and simply held her. She pressed her cheek to his chest, once more covered in perfectly tailored linen and wool, and felt her heart swell.
“Good night, darling,” Jack whispered, his lips against her forehead. “Until tomorrow night.”
“Good night, Jack.” She let him out, watching for a moment as he strode away, tall and far too elegant for her modest street. She closed the door and shot the bolt again.
It was only an affair. It would last only a short while. But by God, she would try to savor every blissful moment of it.
Chapter 19
Jack met the waiting hackney in Tottenham Court Road, around the corner from Sophie’s house. Her little home was on a quiet street, and he didn’t want to attract any notice. It had been years since he’d been out in London so late. He leaned back against the thin, shabby seat, and a smile spread over his face at the memory of Sophie in her flower-printed dressing gown, with nothing underneath. He much preferred her in his banyan. Perhaps he ought to send it to her . . .
He stopped that thought. Of course he couldn’t do that. This liaison between them was to be a secret. Only an idiot could have missed the way her mood dimmed abruptly when he said he would accept any condition she set upon their affair. She didn’t want anyone to know about them because it would spoil her reputation; she still hoped to marry someone else. His mood dropped another notch at the thought of her in another man’s arms, a man she loved. And he would have to sit by and watch it happen.
But he had promised to keep their relationship secret. It was becoming clear to him that Sophie kept many secrets.
He muttered a heartfelt curse in the silence of the hackney. Gaining admission to Vega’s might prove to be the death of him. Philip had been furious to see him arrive, but two short sentences put his brother in his place. As much as Philip might chafe at his presence, Jack made it clear he wasn’t budging. Philip could avoid him by avoiding Vega’s.
His brother’s eyes had narrowed, and he’d leaned closer. “You’re here because of her.”
“Do you mean Mrs. Campbell?” Jack had coolly replied. “Yes. I’ve heard rumors you are making a spectacle of yourself chasing after her, and that must stop—as must your losses. If you can’t keep yourself away, I shall do it for you.”
His brother had glared and muttered, but in the end he hadn’t gone near Sophie. Jack had kept Philip in view all night, so he was certain of that much. And eventually, as hoped, he’d spied Sophie herself. The charge that went through him at the sight of her lasted only a moment, though, because there was a man with her. A man who stood familiarly close, who spoke to her and made her smile. A man who offered her his arm and escorted her away, out of Jack’s view, causing a tidal wave of black and bitter jealousy to rush over him.
It took only a few subtle hints to elicit the man’s name: Giles Carter, a gentleman of respectable family and fortune. No one had an unkind thing to say about him; in fact, he was well-regarded by the patrons of the Vega Club as honorable, sensible, and even somewhat witty. He had seen with his own eyes that the fellow wasn’t ugly or misshapen, and he made Sophie smile. Jack positively ached to punch him in the face. And even though she claimed Carter was merely a friend, that would change in the blink of an eye if she encouraged the man. Carter’s interest was patently obvious, even from across the room.
Jack might ignore the marriage mart on his own behalf, but he knew perfectly well how it worked. A man like Carter was an eligible match, especially for a woman who seemed to have no family or connections and a reputation that balanced precariously on the edge of respectability. He knew Sophie had secrets; he told himself he had no right to demand them. For a brief affair at Alwyn House he could ignore that, but now . . . he wanted more, of everything about her. Her company, her time, her attention, her trust.
How was he to persuade her to give him more?
The carriage stopped near Ware House, and he stepped down and paid the driver. The wheels clattered loudly on the cobbles as the hack drove away through the quiet night, and he walked the rest of the way home.
Even at this hour, a servant was waiting for him, ready to sweep open the door as he climbed the steps. Jack shed his coat and hat and sent the footman off to bed. For a moment he lingered in the silent hall. The house was as quiet as a tomb at this time of night. Restlessly he picked up the lamp and walked the corridors, finally turning into his study. He poured a glass of brandy but abandoned it after one sip. What was Sophie hiding?
He’d already guessed she was gambling to build a fortune. It wasn’t above reproach, but neither was it criminal.
He suspected she was on the hunt for a husband. As were so many other women in London.
Nicholas Dashwood warned him off speaking to her. Yet she found him and invited him home with her, breaking her own decree that they mustn’t see each other.
But there must be something lacking in his understanding. If she wanted a fortune, she had only to ask and he’d lavish her with luxury. She must know that; he’d offered to give her a house. Instead, she asked for his promise not to speak of their affair at Alwyn House nor even to see her again . . . only to take him back into her bed tonight. He was already mad for her, but this might drive him to Bedlam.
Was this all a great scam? Had he fallen into the hands of a truly skilled schemer and swindler? A woman in need of money, casting out lures to men she gambled with, rejecting the men who didn’t have independent fortunes, making love to him and then declaring their affair over, but conveniently circumventing any obstacles between them when it suited her? Her every action had only made him want her more; had that been her intent? Was he being drawn into a pursuit where he was unwittingly the hunted instead of the hunter? Was he about to be used and humiliated again by a woman?
With a flinch he swore and ran both hands over his head. He was doing it again, seeing shades of Portia where there probably were none. What an idiot he would be if he let her haunt him forever. In truth, he hadn’t thought much about her in recent years. But here he was, suddenly ascribing the same motives and intentions to Sophie, on very slim evidence.
The key was in his desk. It took him a minute to find it, but then he turned to the large chiffonier between the windows. He set the lamp nearby, turning up the flame, and unlocked the top cabinet. It took a few minutes to find the miniature. It was smaller than he remembered, the delicate silver frame a bit tarnished after all these years. Jack held it by the flickering lamp and stared at the face of his first love.
She looked so young. In his memory she was a woman, as beautiful and deceptive as Eve, but in this tiny portrait she looked barely more than a girl. It surprised him. He tilted the frame and studied her round cheek, her tiny rosebud mouth, her golden curls. He’d been taken with her almost at first sight, and thought the same had happened for her. She welcomed his attention, smiled at everything he said, even let him kiss her. Being with her was not like being with other young ladies, who were all too obviously sizing him up as a potential husband. Portia didn’t seem to care two farthings for that.
She’d seemed perfect: beautiful, vivacious, unconventional. She liked horse races and art. She learned Russian instead of French, like most young ladies, because she read about the czar’s court and found it more interesting. She was every bit of his class and the world he knew, a
nd she still managed to be a breath of fresh air. Jack’s father approved of her, and Portia’s parents actively encouraged him. Somewhat to his surprise, Jack found himself agreeing with all of them that he probably ought to marry her. He even fancied himself in love.
That was when she eloped with another man. One night she danced three times with him at a ball, causing a flurry of whispers and expectations, and the next day she slipped out the back of a milliner’s shop while buying bonnets with her maid and into a waiting carriage to flee northward. Only later did he learn that she’d had a secret, unsanctioned engagement to a rising naval officer all the time she’d been flirting with him. Her father, the Earl of Farnsworth, disapproved, and maneuvered to have the young man sent away to sea. He told his daughter to find someone more appropriate. Portia found Jack and used him for her purpose: fooling her parents while she made plans to run away with her lover to Scotland, where she could marry him without banns or her father’s permission.
She begged his pardon in the note she left behind, but it took little time for Jack to hear the whole truth. She had never cared for him at all. In her eyes, he was an idle young man who would become an idle old man waiting to inherit his title. There was a war going on, and her naval officer was already famous for a daring raid on a Spanish port. Portia saw herself sailing the world with him, a decorated hero and fearless adventurer. She’d scoffed with her friends about how no one would ever know Jack’s name; he’d be nothing but a numeral in the line of Dukes of Ware. She wanted a man of action, not someone who would inherit everything that made him desirable.
Carefully Jack restored the miniature to the cabinet. He’d long since gotten over the shock that she wanted another man. She was heartless and calculating to use him as she did, and he’d thought himself brokenhearted, but that faded in time. The scar Portia left on him was not a broken heart, as the ignorant gossips thought; it was the realization that no one would ever want him for himself. Less than a month after Portia’s elopement, the eighth Duke of Ware, Jack’s father, died. At the age of twenty-four, wholly unprepared and unready, Jack inherited the sprawling estates, massive wealth and heavy responsibility of the dukedom.
His more fortunate friends, the ones who either had not yet inherited their titles or who had no titles in the family to inherit, teased him about it. Now there were no tedious limits on his behavior or spending. Now he could have any woman he wanted, they said, with knowing winks and ribald laughter, and carouse as much as he pleased. That was small consolation, when the one woman he’d thought he wanted ran off with another man, and his carefree life as an heir had been crushed beneath the mountain of duty and obligation of a duke. Any woman he approached now saw not him, but a duchess’s coronet.
Sophie Campbell was the first woman since Portia to make him think she didn’t care for his title. For a moment the thought that had tantalized him at Alwyn House—why couldn’t he call on any woman he chose?—beat at his brain. He didn’t need to marry for money or consequence, so why couldn’t he break several generations of tradition and marry a woman just because he wanted her? Assuming he wanted to marry her.
Did he? Could one even decide such a thing in the space of a few weeks?
You don’t really know her, hissed his conscience. He’d thought the same about Portia, but she’d been deceiving him. He clearly didn’t know much about women. No matter how deeply Jack felt that Sophie was not like Portia, the fact remained that she had secrets. Secrets she seemed determined to keep.
What was Sophie hiding?
Chapter 20
For the next fortnight Jack steadfastly ignored those secrets and what they might mean about Sophie.
He kept to his plan of shadowing Philip. When his brother went to Vega’s, so did he—until a quarter past one o’clock. At that time he left, occasionally with a mocking salute from Philip, who had grown to accept his presence but not with particularly good grace. Jack no longer cared either way. Mr. Forbes, who was remarkably observant of patrons’ habits, soon had a hackney waiting for him when he walked into the reception hall. Every night Jack took the hack to Tottenham Court Road and walked to Sophie’s neat little house in Alfred Street so as not to disturb—or alert—her neighbors.
Those stolen hours in the dark of night fed something deep in Jack’s soul. Every time she opened the door to let him in, his heart leaped at the sight of her face. When they hurried up the stairs, hand in hand, he felt more alive than ever before in his life. And when her bedroom door closed behind them, and he could kiss her and strip her bare and make love to her until they lay twined around each other in bed, hearts pounding and skin damp from exertion, he allowed himself to think again about his position.
He was the ninth Duke of Ware, with relations and connections to every noble house in England and half the royalty of Europe. He hardly needed to instill more respectability or status into the family.
He was one of the richest men in Britain. He did not need to marry an heiress.
He sat in the House of Lords, as his ancestors had all done, but politics was not his passion. He had no urge to make a politically powerful marriage.
In short, there was no reason he couldn’t marry an ordinary woman.
They talked in bed, sometimes silly conversations that left them both shaking with laughter, sometimes more thoughtful conversations that left him quietly impressed. She had seen something of the world—more than he had—and she had an appreciation for small things that surprised and humbled him. Her curtsy, for instance; that grand elaborate motion that looked like a ballet in one movement had been taught to her when she was eight by a Russian ballerina. She drolly recounted how she had practiced and practiced in front of a mirror, anticipating her presentation to the czar—which of course never came. But the curtsy remained because it reminded her of that ballerina, who had refused to wear anything not made of red silk, who kept a pet mongoose, and who had been kind to a little girl.
Jack wondered why she’d been in St. Petersburg in the first place, but she never said. He found he cared less and less what Sophie’s secrets were, but more and more what her feelings for him were.
She wouldn’t be a conventional duchess, but that hardly mattered. The Duke of Exeter had wed a country vicar’s widow and the world had not ended, not even the toplofty little world of the ton. And really, wasn’t his opinion the one that mattered? Wasn’t his preference paramount as to who stood by his side at balls and had her portrait in the gallery at Kirkwood and bore his children? As Sophie lay curled against him one night, relating another silly story from her childhood about some pastries in Vienna and the stray cat she’d tried to hide from her parents, Jack listened with a faint grin and thought to himself, I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks. She’s worth it.
His growing feeling that he should follow where his heart and mind were urging him to go lasted until his mother joined him for breakfast one morning, three weeks to the day after Sophie had come to Ware House.
“Good morning,” she said as the footman pulled out her chair.
“Good morning.” Jack watched with mild surprise as she seated herself. The duchess usually took breakfast in her room, and not at this early hour. Her appearance this morning was decidedly unusual.
By the time the servant had fetched everything she wanted and arranged it at her place, Jack was nearly finished with his meal. His regular habit, before Sophie, had been to go to his study for an hour before taking a morning ride in the park, depending on the demands of the day. Now, since Sophie, he had put Percy to handling more of the routine matters. Now he rode every day, rain or shine, and today he planned to stop by the boxing saloon for the first time in years. He wasn’t ready to climb in the ring again, but it felt good to get out of his study and do something. He pushed back from the table. “If you’ll excuse me, Mother.”
“Are you well, dear?”
The question, asked in such a gentle tone, caught him off guard. “Perfectly,” he told her, thinking that he’d ne
ver been better. “What makes you ask?”
Concern creased her brow. “You’ve not been yourself these last few weeks. Neglecting your work, going out every night and staying out until dawn . . . It’s not like you, this wildness. Of course I wonder.”
It wasn’t as wild as the way he had behaved before his father died, and it didn’t hold a candle to Philip’s regular habits. “Percy is handling things well. Father ought to have trusted him more. There’s no need for me to personally approve every purchase at Kirkwood House or review the plan for repairing the ice house at Alwyn.” He cocked his head when her reproachful expression didn’t abate. “What worries you, Mother? What friend has come to you, faint with horror over the hours I keep?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “I’m your mother. My concern springs from my own observations. And I cannot help noting that you have changed your habits very dramatically since the incident at that club.”
The Duchess of Ware never said the name Vega’s, not even when she was imploring him to save his brother from it. And Jack bit back a grin at the way she referred to his wager with Sophie. She had no idea how much he’d changed since then. “Perhaps it shook me out of my calcified ways,” he said mildly.
“Not for the better!” she exclaimed. Her butter knife clattered on the plate. “How can you go to that wicked place every night?”
“Wicked? I go with Philip. Are you equally worried for his habits?”
Her eyes flashed. Jack had long known Philip was her favorite son, and it did not surprise him when she refused to address that. “We were discussing you, not your brother. Are you neglecting your duty because of him?”
Jack wanted to laugh. Philip had provided him an excellent excuse to see Sophie, and he was very grateful for that. “I’m not neglecting my duty at all. In fact, one might say I am observing my duty—the duty you pressed upon me—by keeping an eye on my brother and preventing him from ruining himself at the tables.”
My Once and Future Duke Page 20