The Heart That Wins (Regency Spies Book 3)

by April Munday

  “Thank you, John. I appreciate your offer, truly, but I’ll manage better on my own.”

  “Take him,” said Sophia ignoring the fact that it would be John’s third trip to Sint Stefaan in twenty-four hours and her own desire to keep him with her. “Please, Edmund.”

  She thought that even Edmund’s unnatural detachment when he was working might desert him at the sight of a friend’s body, despite their recent differences.

  “I’ll go and tell Mary what I’m doing, then we’ll go.”

  He left them alone.

  “Please take care of him. He's very upset,” said Sophia.

  “And what of you?”

  John came to join her on the sofa.

  “I shall be here when you return,” she said.

  “But you know I cannot...”

  “I know. Thank you for my life.”

  Knowing he would reject her, she put her arms around him and laid her cheek against his chest.

  “Sophia...”

  “Just for a moment, please.”

  “Look at me.”

  Reluctantly, she raised her head. His arms went round her and he lowered his head to kiss her. He was still kissing her when Edmund returned.

  Chapter Eleven

  15th June 1815

  John was struggling into his jacket as he got to the door. By the time he and Edmund had returned with Franz’s body and Sophia’s belongings, and made sure that Madame Gilbert and Jeanne were safe, all without being seen, it had been light. Edmund had offered him a bed, but he had preferred to return to his lodgings. He had had very little sleep and his landlady’s announcement that a young woman wanted to see him had done nothing to put him into a better mood than he was in from having had to be woken to hear it.

  Determined to give the young woman, whoever she was, a piece of his mind, he flung open the door.

  “Sophia!”

  It took him a moment to remember that she could not be here, then he was looking for her carriage. The sooner she got back into it and left the better.

  “Good morning. I’ve come to talk to you.”

  “I can see that, but you shouldn’t be here.”

  “You’re here and I need to talk to you.”

  He spared her a look now. Her face was pale and drawn. She had not slept much, either. She had waited up for him and Edmund and had only gone to bed when they had returned safely.

  “Please, get back into your carriage and go home.”

  “No. There’s not much time.”

  “No, there isn’t. I’m expecting orders at any moment.”

  This was not entirely true. It was only now that he realised that the news they had delivered last night should have had half the town on alert by now, but everything was quiet.

  “They’re not coming. Wellington doesn’t believe our information.”

  “What? Why not?”

  “It conflicts with the information from his own sources.”

  It was a surprise to John that Wellington had his own sources that he preferred to Edmund’s, but it was the man’s own choice, he supposed.

  “You’d think he could rely on something that cost a man his life.”

  Sophia flinched and he chastised himself for not considering her feelings.

  “You almost lost your life,” she said. “If you’d come a few minutes earlier those men would still have been outside.”

  John could not speak while he was trying to control himself at the thought of what might have happened to Sophia yesterday. He looked down at her. Sophia reached up to him and he took a step back to avoid the kiss.

  “Are you mad? You can’t even be seen with me, let alone kiss me in public.”

  “I don’t care anymore. I never cared. What’s the point of having a good reputation if I’m not going to need it?”

  “You’d ruin yourself in order to force me to marry you?”

  Sophia stepped back as if he had hit her.

  “No,” she said. “I’m showing you that I don’t care about my reputation so that you’ll marry me.”

  John looked about. Mercifully there was no one in sight. He saw Edmund’s carriage. An unhappy-looking groom was standing by the closed door. It was only then that John saw that it was raining.

  “Get into the carriage and go home.”

  In response Sophia simply put her arms around him and held him, her head resting on his chest.

  “Sophia, please.”

  “Get into the carriage with me and I’ll go.”

  John complied; anything to get her off the street where they might be seen. Once in the carriage Sophia kissed him, as he had expected. He did not resist, but returned the kiss. Eventually she broke away and rested her head on his shoulder.

  “That wasn’t my main purpose in coming to you,” she said.

  John was surprised she could speak. He could barely breathe and was certain that the beating of his heart would drown out any words he could say.

  Sophia continued talking.

  “We both know that there will be fighting soon and…”

  “I want you to go away,” he interrupted her, his voice shaking with the effort to speak. “I want you to get as far away as possible and to go back to your father as soon as possible.”

  She lifted her head and smiled up at him, then caressed his cheek. When had she taken her glove off?

  “I’m not leaving you. I know you want me to be safe, but I’m not even going to lie to you and say that I’ll go. Even that isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”

  She put her head back on his chest. It must be something terrible if she could not look him in the eye as she spoke.

  “I don’t want you to die,” she said.

  John did not even think of protesting that it was not something over which he had much control; that was not what she meant. He pulled her onto his lap and put his arms around her. She sighed and he almost did the same.

  “How long have you known?” he asked.

  “Since the day I heard you had joined the army.”

  He had hoped that she might not have understood his intention in joining the army, but his parents had and she knew him at least as well as they did.

  “I found I could not. Other men depended on me and I couldn’t let them down. I couldn’t waste their lives and I discovered that my life was worth something. I imagined that I was the only thing that stood between the French armies and you.”

  “You are,” she said.

  He kissed the top of her head.

  “I won’t deny that I still think about it sometimes. If something happened to you, I would just give up.”

  “Please, don’t.”

  “If I had arrived too late last night…” He had thought about this while he and Edmund were retrieving Franz’s body. “I think those dark thoughts are part of me now. Before every battle I read your letter asking me to come back and I make the decision that I will defend you and that I will live to defend you again, but there would be no point if… Please go somewhere safe, my love.”

  Sophia lifted her face to his and kissed him again. He felt the wetness of tears as she did so, but could not tell if they were hers or his or both.

  Eventually Sophia pulled away and eased herself off his lap so that she was sitting on the other side of the carriage. She started to pull on her gloves.

  “Edmund says it’s too dangerous for you to live here anymore. He wants you to move into the house.”

  John had been expecting this. Sophia had explained that they were all known to Joude. He did not think Edmund had the resources to protect him as well. Moving into the house would suit him if Sophia was not to go back to England.

  “Yes,” he said. “I’ll do that.”

  She smiled at him, then, and made to move back beside him, but he shook his head. He would sit here all day and kiss her if he did not go back into the rain.

  “Paul will take me back to the house and come back for you… unless you need some help with the child.”
/>   “Agathe? No, she is well enough to undertake a short journey.”

  As he stepped down from the carriage he turned back to her.

  “Tell Edmund that if he thinks to force my hand, he is too late.”

  It had not taken John long to pack up and leave his lodgings. Barely an hour had passed before the carriage drew up outside the house and John stepped down from it. Servants rushed out into the rain to collect his bags and John turned back into the carriage to lift out the young girl, Agathe.

  She was small; Sophia guessed she might be eight or nine years old. When John joined her by the door she could see that the child’s face was covered in slowly healing bruises and cuts. Sophia tried not to let her horror show in her face but suspected she failed. She did not know how someone could deliberately hurt a child so badly.

  “Come in,” she said. “Mary has found just the right person to help.”

  He followed her into the house.

  “Mister John!”

  “Lizzie?”

  The small maid dashed across the entrance hall, placed a hand on one of his and kissed it. Then she pulled away, meeting the eyes of the girl in John’s arm. There were tears on her face and Sophia saw that John’s own eyes were wet at the sight of the first girl he had saved.

  “I would not have recognised you,” he said.

  “I’ve grown.”

  Sophia had not paid much attention to the little maid before today. The happy smiling girl must once have looked even worse than the child in John’s arms, who shrank back against him as if he were her anchor in a stormy sea.

  “So you have,” he replied. “You must be doing very well if Mrs Finch brought you with her.”

  “I look after the babies,” boasted Lizzie.

  “And Claire,” added Sophia.

  “And now Agatha,” said Lizzie.

  “Agathe,” corrected John. “Her name is all she has.”

  “Agatta,” tried Lizzie with a frown.

  “You can practise. Can you show me to her bed?”

  “Mrs Finch said she should be with me and Claire, because we’ll know to be quiet.”

  “That’s exactly what she needs,” agreed John.

  They set off up the stairs with Sophia following slowly behind. John stopped and looked back at her.

  “Carry on,” she said. “When you’re ready, come back down the last flight of stairs and I’ll show you to your room.”

  “There must be…”

  “There are plenty of servants,” she interrupted him, “but I’m going to do it.”

  He nodded and set off up the stairs again.

  As he and Lizzie walked along the landing to the next flight of stairs the maid was telling him that she had learned to sew and read and write.

  John had done a wonderful thing for her and for all the other girls, but Sophia had already made plans for him to help more, if he could only be persuaded.

  She did not have to wait long before he returned. He missed the last step and she steadied him. He put his arms around her and kissed her forehead.

  “You had no idea what you’d really done had you?” she said.

  “No.”

  “Claire and Agathe will be like that one day.”

  “Perhaps. Sophia, the chances are that Claire will never talk again and never learn to trust. Harriet, the last girl before I left England still lives in my parents’ house. She is too frightened to leave it and scared of everyone in it. Her life is more comfortable than it was before, but she is still afraid.”

  “Then it is even more important that you saw Lizzie today.”

  “I have done some good in my sorry life.”

  “You’ve done a lot of good.”

  Sophia reached up to kiss him.

  “Yes, perhaps I have.”

  “Let me show you to your room.”

  “I would rather sit and look at you.”

  “I would rather that too, but you will be on a battlefield soon and you must rest.”

  She heard the tremble in her voice and bit her lip. John brushed his lips across her cheek.

  “Lead on,” he said, releasing her.

  He took her hand in his as they walked, matching his stride to her limp.

  She led him along the landing.

  “This is your room. It is next to mine.”

  It had not been too difficult to convince Mary to arrange the rooms in this way.

  “I shall be in my sitting-room when you wake. It’s on the other side of my room.”

  “And you will sleep?”

  “For a while.”

  He kissed her forehead.

  “I love you, Sophia.”

  It was like a benediction, but Sophia knew she could not let it be a farewell.

  When John came into the sitting-room he was carrying something. Sophia had been napping on the sofa, but she had heard him leave his room and was sitting up when he entered.

  He sat beside her, took her hand and brushed his lips across her fingers.

  “You look rested,” she said.

  “I slept a little. I have a present for you.”

  He turned her hand palm upward and placed the object he was carrying on it. It was a book wrapped in a square of silk. Sophia recognised it immediately as she unwound it. It was the book of Shakespeare sonnets that John’s father had given to him on his seventh birthday. She looked up at him in dismay.

  “You can’t give me this.”

  John carried it with him everywhere. They had both learned to love the sonnets as he had read them aloud to her and they had explored their meaning. At first the poems had meant little, but they had become part of her and various lines came to her whenever she thought of John.

  He blinked, then he frowned.

  “It’s not a parting gift. I do intend to come back from the battle.”

  Sophia started to breathe again, realising only then that she had stopped. She touched his cheek briefly before smoothing her hand across the cover of the book.

  “This is the most precious thing that I have, but not just because my father gave it to me. Look inside. It’s for you. It’s always been for you.”

  Sophia opened the book. John had never even allowed her to hold it before. The first thing she saw was the inscription John’s father had made in his very precise writing. “To my beloved son, John, on his seventh birthday, in the hope that these words will show him his heart before he is a man.”

  Just below it, in very similar handwriting was John’s own inscription. “To my beloved Sophia. My father’s hope was not in vain and I have known that you are my heart for many years. I am and always will be your servant, John.”

  Her hand started to tremble and she made to close the book, but John caught her hand.

  “You still don’t understand.”

  He brought her hand to his lips again then opened the book to a sonnet and she saw that the margins were filled with tiny writing. Some of it was clearly John’s as a boy, some of it more recent and other notes seemed to fill the time between. As she read them Sophia saw that they were about her. Some of the notes related something in the poem to her, others compared the feelings expressed in the poems to the way John felt about her. When she realised that her tears would smudge the writing she closed the book and John took it from her and placed it on the small table beside him.

  “I have always loved you and I thought you might be ready now to understand that.”

  He bent to kiss the tears from her cheeks. Then his mouth found her lips. Sophia’s mind was soaring. He was not going to leave her. He was going to come back to her. Everything would be well. John’s mouth moved up her jaw and then down her neck, leaving a trail of kisses as he went. When he returned to her mouth, she gave up any pretence of thinking and allowed her body to respond as it wanted.

  She barely registered him pulling down her bodice, but when his hand brushed against a nipple she gasped into his mouth. She almost protested when his mouth left hers, but it very quickly closed aro
und the nipple of her other breast. It was only John’s arm around her that kept her upright as she became aware of and was overwhelmed by the sensations that his touch produced.

  Then his hand and mouth were gone.

  “John?”

  “I’m sorry, Sophia. I’ve gone too far.”

  She touched his face and smiled.

  “Perhaps, but it was wonderful.”

  His expression did not change and she wondered if he found all this as pleasurable as she did.

  “I lose control of myself and it is disrespectful.”

  Despite his words he drew a finger down her breast to the nipple, which he touched lightly before withdrawing his hand.

  Sophia was distracted by the chimes of a clock and sighed as she counted them.

  “It’s time to dress,” she said. “We’re going to a ball.”

  Chapter Twelve

  15th June 1815

  All of Brussels had been in turmoil for some time over who had and had not been invited to the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. The Richmonds were the centre around which social life in Brussels revolved and an invitation from them raised a person’s social standing. The lack of an invitation could destroy it. There would only be one social event greater than this this summer and that was the Duke of Wellington’s ball to celebrate the anniversary of his victory at Vittoria. Most of the Richmonds’ guests were army officers and their wives and members of the aristocracy. John, a distant relative of the Duke of Richmond, was invited. Edmund had told Wellington to ensure that he, Mary and Sophia were invited everywhere, so they, too, had invitations.

  John tried to concentrate on the coming invasion and the battle that would follow, but could not drag his thoughts away from Sophia. His love for her now was such that he doubted it could be contained. When he had proposed to her all those months ago his love had been a small thing. He really had been a boy if he had thought that she would accept the proposal that he had made then. Then he had merely thought he could not live without her; now he knew he could not. Then he had been blinded by jealousy; now he knew that she loved him. Then he had been certain that she would accept and now… Now he was equally certain. It wanted only the appropriate moment and he would propose. The appropriate moment, however, was not this one.