A Study in Scoundrels

by Christy Carlyle

  Grey arched an eyebrow as the medical man closed the door behind him.

  “I’m not staying in bed,” Sophia called in a rusty voice. “I feel much better.”

  “Doctor’s orders, I’m afraid.” Grey approached her bedside and swallowed hard at the sight of the dark crescents under her eyes. Despite the determination in her blue-green gaze, he was equally determined for her to get the rest she needed.

  “He also advised you to retire to Longcross and keep a woman by your side. Do you plan to take that advice?”

  Maybe. He doubted he’d ever run the estate with the efficiency that seemed to come naturally to Alistair and Becca, but he didn’t dread the place anymore. In a few short days, the estate had become more than a mausoleum to painful memories of the past. With Sophia, he’d made new memories. Vivid and much more pleasant ones.

  “I plan to do whatever it takes to keep you in this bed for a few days.” He took her hand, because touching her had become a necessity. For the first time in two days, she was warm but not feverish. His chest swelled with relief.

  “And what is your strategy?”

  He’d failed this quiz before. She’d chided him for rushing in with brute force rather than employing his intellect. He scoured his tired brain for some distraction that would keep her satisfied to remain abed. “I could read to you. Judging by the story you’re writing, you favor mysteries.”

  Sophia rose onto her elbows and stared in horror at the thick rug in front of the fireplace. “You took up my pages? You read my story?”

  “I . . . ” Grey hesitated, running a hand through his hair. He wanted to get this answer right. She’d written a story, and writers generally wrote so that others might read their tales. Or so he’d assumed. “I assembled them, adding the ones I retrieved from the lake.” He pointed to where he’d collected the warped sheaves of foolscap. “Reading the story was necessary to put the whole back in order.”

  She grimaced and sank down further into the covers.

  “I quite like Lord Redmane, and Miss Breedlove is a fearsome sleuth.”

  “Do you think so?” Sophia edged up, scooting into a sitting position.

  “Absolutely.”

  “I haven’t decided how they should continue.”

  “Well, then you must decide and finish the tale.” Grey reached around to add another pillow to support her back, inadvertently brushing her breast. She let out a little a hiss of surprise and clutched his hand before he could pull back.

  “Thank you for staying with me.” The touch of her fingers was feather light, but warmth radiated through his body. “I sensed you were here through the worst of the fever.”

  Through every minute. He’d never considered leaving her side. “No place else I wished to be.” Sifting his fingers through the honey-blonde waves of hair spilling over her shoulder, he told himself he had to stop touching her. She needed rest, not him hovering over her, yearning to divest her of every stitch of clothing and climb into bed with her.

  A soft rap at the door preceded the arrival of a maid carrying a pile of linens. “Lady Fennston says I am to help miss with her bath.”

  Grey swallowed down the reply on the tip of his tongue. What he wouldn’t give to be the one tasked with helping Sophia to bathe. But he’d already broken every rule of etiquette by remaining in her room. He stood and promised, “I’ll return soon.”

  “Can I take you up on your offer?” Sophia called when he was two steps from the door.

  Grey lifted a brow. Had he actually made his offer to bathe her out loud?

  “Will you come back and read to me?” she clarified.

  Grey smiled for the first time in days. His face ached as if his muscles had forgotten how. “Let me guess. Detective stories?”

  Sophia grinned back. “Conan Doyle will do quite nicely. I have a copy of The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes in my bag.”

  Grey walked quickly as he began his search for Sophia’s leather traveling case. According to the upstairs maid, a footman had retrieved it from the lakeside but failed to take the bag up to her room. While Grey searched its contents in Longcross’s entry hall, Liddy appeared.

  “You must plead my case,” she demanded in strident tones. “Becca says I can’t go to the Westby ball because I’m not formally out until next year.”

  “Sounds sensible to me.” Not to mention a useful means of keeping her away from the Earl of Westby.

  She sighed dramatically. “When have you ever been sensible in your life? Please help me, Jasper.”

  “Helping you is why I’m here.”

  She scrunched her nose and tipped her head. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Liddy, you disappeared.” Grey scooped up a collection of papers and a thin blue clothbound book from a side compartment of Sophia’s bag. “You gallivanted to Brighton with Clive Holden, then took yourself off to Cambridge. Sophia and I followed you for days. Why do you think we’re at Longcross?”

  “I thought she’d come as a friend of Becca’s, and that you followed her here because you’re besotted with her.”

  Well, she had half the story right. Grey glanced around to ensure no servants were about. He’d never worried about his own reputation, nor those of the women he’d carried on affairs with. But he cared about Sophia’s, despite being the lucky scoundrel who’d taken her to his bed a few nights ago.

  “Her brother is my friend.” And he had Kit’s murderous rage to contend with when the man learned how close Grey and Sophia had become in a week’s time. “She agreed to assist me in my search for you.”

  “Oh.” Pressing her lips together, his sister clasped her hands behind her back and almost looked contrite. Almost. “I’m sorry if I caused anyone worry.”

  “If?” Worry was the least of what she’d caused. Some halfwit actor had taken his part on Fleet Theater’s stage. Sophia had jumped into the lake and been abed with fever for two days as a result. Grey hadn’t slept in his own bed in far longer. Though, in truth, his unprincipled friends were likely using his Belgrave Square home to come and go, and sleep and revel, just as they did while he was in residence. He usually hated quiet and being alone, but the prospect of returning to the bacchanalian wreck of his townhouse no longer held any appeal.

  “I don’t know how you can lecture me when everyone knows you engage in the worst sorts of excesses.” Despite her defensive tone, she stared at the tile floor, unable to meet his gaze.

  “No one should follow my example.” He hooked a finger under her chin and nudged her head up. “Especially a clever, lovely young lady who could win the heart of an honorable young man.”

  “I’ve found the man I wish to spend the rest of days with, but I am capable of pursuits beyond flirtation and matrimony.” She lifted her chin from his finger and stepped away. “Perhaps you should read Miss Ruthven’s and her sister-in-law’s books.”

  Grey frowned as his sister stomped away. “Why?”

  “You might learn a thing or two about women and what they truly crave in life and love.”

  After a thorough search of her still-damp bag, Grey found no other book than the volume of Sherlock Holmes tales. He separated the Memoirs from a pile of papers it had been stored with and kneeled down to put them back in Sophia’s bag. Then a name caught his eye.

  Ogilvy.

  The ink on the man’s letter had run, but Grey could decipher most of the words. Apparently Sophia had written to Ogilvy, and he mentioned enclosing a photograph in reply. Sifting the papers, his fingers struck a harder bond of paper, a photo card of a stern-looking middle-aged man with pale skin and dark everything else. Beside the photograph, a small clipped rectangle of newsprint bore a matrimonial ad such as one might find in the London papers.

  Grey considered such ads sad, often comical. At the theater, some of his fellow acting troupe took to amusing each other by reading them aloud backstage. Companionship was plentiful in the city, whether acquired through charm or coin. Why petition for a mate in the newspapers?


  But he knew the answer. He sought affection when he liked and with women who cared about their reputations as little as he did. Sophia had spent her life upholding all those constraining principles and ethics her father had been known for. She was the kind of woman who would give herself to spinsterhood rather than engage in an affair with a man who offered her passion and nothing more. Like Westby. Like Grey.

  His hands shook as he shoved the sundry papers back in her bag. One stuck up at an odd angle, and he pulled the sheet free. A list written in a flawless italic script, the same hand as Ogilvy had used in his letters. Qualities Required in a Wife. The list was ridiculously long, the product of a pompous man who seemed to think women were akin to a carriage or suit that one could order designed to one’s specifications.

  What made his gut clench were the marks on the page. He could only imagine they’d been made by Sophia. She’d ticked off several of the qualities on Ogilvy’s list, as if she’d sought to meet his demands and be the perfect matrimonial prospect he sought. But she’d fallen short. Two items—“meekness” and “no pursuits outside the home”—had no tick mark, and “purity of body and mind” contained a series of question marks in the margin.

  Grey crushed the paper in his fist, shoved the volume of Sherlock Holmes stories under his arm, and sprinted up the stairs to Sophia’s room. He pushed the door open so hard it bounced off the wall.

  She gasped, nearly sloshing tea from the cup in her hands. “My goodness, what’s wrong? Are you all right?” Her pretty blonde brows tented on her forehead.

  As he strode toward the bed, he straightened Ogilvy’s stupid bloody list and held the page out for her to see. “This is utter hogwash.”

  She narrowed her eyes to read the faded writing, and her brows winged high. “Where did you get that?”

  When Sophia reached out, Grey crushed the paper in his hand and flung it toward the fireplace.

  Then he leaned down and kissed her. He didn’t try for finesse or skill. He wasn’t gentle, as he should have been. Fingers twisted in her hair, hand skimming over her cheek, her neck, her breast, he poured all his worry, need, and desire into the kiss.

  She clung to him, her hands as eager as his. Her moans and gasps were a symphony to his ears. When he pulled back, breathless, she stared at him with a stunned look in her verdigris eyes.

  He told her, “You’re perfect, just as you are.”

  “I’m far from perfect.”

  “If you argue this point with me, I’ll simply kiss you senseless until you agree.”

  She laughed, a warm delicious sound that made his whole body ache to have her underneath him. Or on top of him. Any way he could have her would do.

  “Is that how you win all of your arguments with ladies?”

  “No,” he said brusquely, sitting back on the bed, one hand still twined with hers. “Only you.” He could hardly admit that he rarely argued with any woman. None of his previous entanglements had lasted long enough for a disagreement. And if one arose, it was always a signal for him to bolt.

  Funny, then, that he was quite content to spend the rest of his days settling rows with Sophia Ruthven. Especially if each ended with kissing her. But would she be content to spend her days with him? With her beauty, she’d likely been propositioned by more than a few scoundrels, beyond him and Westby, yet she’d responded to the matrimonial ad of a pompous sod like Ogilvy.

  In his haste to kiss her, Grey had dropped her book of detective stories on the bed.

  Sophia took up the volume and lifted it toward him. “You did say you’d read to me.”

  “Is there a particular one I should I start with, or have you already read them all?” He couldn’t tell if the book was well thumbed. Its page edges were rippled from being doused with rain.

  “Surprise me. I enjoy the stories no matter how many times I’ve read them.”

  Grey began thumbing the pages and arched a brow. “Even though you know the answer to who committed the crime?”

  “I suppose I enjoy Holmes’s methods for solving a conundrum as much as the mystery itself.”

  He recalled her calm demeanor and insightful questions throughout their search for Liddy. Her intrepid Effie Breedlove character seemed more an ideal of Sophia’s than simply a character on the page. But if she saw herself as Effie, why had she written a character who became smitten with the roguish aristocrat who’d helped her solve the mystery?

  Grey stood and lifted the wingback chair over to her bedside. He opened the volume of tales to The Yellow Face and began reading.

  Sophia settled back against the pillows with a little grin curving her mouth. “That’s a good one,” she said quietly. “The very story where I got the name for my detective.”

  “Shh, I’m reading,” Grey teased, and then read on, drawing on his acting skills to give each character a unique voice.

  Sure enough, the Conan Doyle mystery centered around a character named Effie Munro and her husband’s suspicions about his wife’s past. The story proved quite short, but within ten minutes Grey was thoroughly engrossed, sitting forward in his chair, the book balanced on his knees.

  Sophia watched him, as enrapt as a theater audience, one hand clasped over her mouth.

  He read more quickly, but tried to steady himself. For Sophia’s sake, he tried to perform the story with emotion and skill. He looked up at her in amazement as the mystery was revealed, then bowed his head to continue.

  “ ‘I am not a very good man, Effie,’ ” Grey’s voice roughened as he read the husband’s reaction to his wife’s deceit, “ ‘but I think I am a better one than you have given me credit for being.’ ” Just four paragraphs remained in the story, and Grey stumbled through them before snapping the book shut.

  Sophia beamed at him and clapped her hands. “Beautifully done. Now I know why ladies line up at the stage doors for you.”

  “Why do you want to marry Ogilvy?” Grey regretted the question instantly. Not because he wasn’t desperate to know the answer, but because his words swept away all the admiration in her eyes and wiped the dazzling smile from her face.

  “You shouldn’t have rummaged through my belongings.”

  “I was retrieving your book so that I could read to you.” Like a detective claiming his evidence, he lifted the volume to prove his point. “Judging by his photograph and letters, Ogilvy’s as dull as dry toast. Why would you want to marry such a man?”

  “And you judge everyone by appearance, don’t you? The handsome actor with a bevy of beautiful woman on his arm every night.” She threw back the covers and swung her legs around as if she intended to get out of bed.

  “Don’t get out. Dr. Keene said you must stay in bed.”

  “Dr. Keene isn’t my doctor, this isn’t my house, and you have no right to instruct me in what I must do.” In spite of her determined shout, Sophia remained in bed. She lifted a hand to her head as if she was in pain, and Grey rushed to her side.

  “No.” Her hand shot out. “I can’t think clearly when you touch me.”

  “Likewise.” He couldn’t resist smirking.

  She caught the flash and scowled up at him. “You shouldn’t be in the room when I’m half-dressed anyway. It’s not proper.”

  “We’re way past propriety, sweetheart.” Grey caught her scent, bergamot and warm woman, and his mouth watered. “I’m not leaving until you answer my question.”

  “My decisions are my own, and Mr. Ogilvy is none of your business.” She got back into bed and tucked the blanket firmly around her, as if attempting to create a barrier to keep him away.

  “You write of an adventurous woman.” Grey pointed to the stack of pages from her manuscript. “A clever woman who bests all the men around her at solving crimes and every other endeavor.” Walking toward the fireplace, he kicked the crinkled ball of Ogilvy’s list with the toe of his boot. “And yet you wish to give yourself to some sorry sod who wants a custom-order wife? Who thinks women can be reduced to a neatly written list. I didn’t see pass
ion on the fool’s list. I saw no mention of stubbornness, tenacity, courage, or intelligence. You possess those qualities in spades, Sophia.”

  “I suppose I’ll never suit any man, then.” Clasping her arms across her lush breasts, she insisted, “I’m fully prepared to be a spinster.”

  Grey chuckled, and she cast him a glare full of emerald fire. “Sophia.” Her name always felt so good on his tongue, right and somehow familiar, as if he’d been waiting his whole life for her. “Solve the mystery for me, won’t you? Tell me why a woman like you, lush and lovely and full of passion, would even consider marrying a man like T. Ogilvy, Esquire.”

  She was silent so long he thought she’d refuse to answer. Staring at the fire, she finally murmured, “Because he wants a wife.” Slowly, she lifted her head and cast her gaze his way. “Do you?”

  Grey’s mouth went dry, his chest hollow and tight. He backed out of the room, his view of Sophia retreating. The opposite of his nightmares, when he ran toward Richard and never got closer. At the threshold, he turned away from her, kept going, and never looked back.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “Along with a finely tuned ear, sharp eyes, and sundry detecting tools, I find a sturdy parasol and study in the defensive arts serve a lady detective well.”

  —CASEBOOK OF EUPHEMIA BREEDLOVE, LADY DETECTIVE

  “I have no business attending an aristocrat’s ball.” Sophia instantly realized the futility of her refusal, especially considering that a seamstress kneeled at her feet, finishing off hemming stitches to ensure Lady Fennston’s borrowed gown fit her properly. “I’m not an aristocrat.” And she had a terrible feeling about the ball.

  The first and last ball she’d ever attended was still the stuff of her nightmares.

  “There are at least four reasons you should attend,” Liddy insisted from the slipper chair in Sophia’s dressing room. “After days of begging Becca and Alistair, I will be there, and I want you there too. Alistair arranged a special invitation for you since Becca likes you so much. You’ll look positively ravishing in that gown, and Grey will have the opportunity to dance with you.”