“He fell,” Sophia said when the earl didn’t move.
“Cut his ear,” Grey added.
“I’m afraid he fainted,” Liddy whispered past a tearful hiccup.
“Was he being reckless again? Showing off?” Lady Westby twitched her nose and sniffed the air. “Where’s the revolver?”
“My lady?” Grey queried innocently.
“He plays with the weapon like a child with a toy. I’ve told him he’ll shoot himself one day.” She cast an imperious gaze around the room. “I can smell the gunpowder.”
At the same moment Grey drew the revolver from his pocket, Westby sat up and pressed a hand to his wounded ear.
His eyes bulged wildly as he glared at Liddy. “You bloody bit—”
“Dominic!” Lady Westby slammed her walking cane on the floor. “I bear your debauchery and spendthrift ways, but I will not tolerate profanity in my home.”
Grey gathered Liddy to his side with one arm and laid his hand on Sophia’s shoulder. “We should depart.” He’d deposited the revolver on Westby’s desk and tipped his chin toward the gun as they passed the countess.
“Say nothing to the others as you go,” Lady Westby demanded. “If anyone understands the need for discretion and hiding a family’s shame, you do, Lord Winship.”
“Of course, my lady,” Grey bit out.
In the vestibule beyond the library, guests milled and whispered. When one couple noticed the library door slide open, several others rushed forward to question Grey. Out of the crush, Becca and Lord Fennston emerged. Liddy went straight into Lady Fennston’s arms.
“Take her and return to Longcross,” Grey directed.
Fennston offered a grim nod in reply and led his wife and cousin around the gathered guests toward the house’s front door.
“Aren’t we going with them?” Sophia longed to be away from the Westby estate. And to never attend another blasted ball for as long as she lived.
Grey bent to whisper near her ear. “I want you with me.” He plowed ahead, and the crowd parted with only a few grumbled protests.
At the carriage circle, Sophia barely resisted the urge to press herself to Grey, to hold him, breathe in his rich scent, bask in his warmth. He seemed less eager and stood stiff and rigid at her side, his arms braced across his chest.
When he finally helped her into the carriage, the weight of his hand on her back made her wince. Pain radiated out from the spot, and she drew in a sharp breath.
After joining her on the carriage bench, Grey leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “What did he do to you?”
“He pushed me.” Sophia shook her head, eager to forget the whole incident. “He said vile things. Nothing more.”
“I should have pummeled him when I had the chance.” Grey raked his fingers roughly through his hair. His elbow bumped her shoulder, and he flinched away. “I’m sorry.”
“You needn’t be afraid of touching me. I shan’t break.” She enfolded Grey’s hand and pressed his palm to her lap to prove her point.
He dug his fingers into her gown, his hand closing around her thigh as he gathered fabric, pulling until the dress’s hem rested on her knee. Sophia bit her lip when he caressed her stockinged leg, sliding his fingers up and down in delicious ribbons of heat. When he reached higher, pushing the fabric up to the edge of her drawers, she shivered and emitted a breathy moan.
Grey retreated instantly, his hand stilling on her thigh before he pulled down her dress and swung his body onto the opposite carriage bench.
“That was a moan of pleasure.” Sophia clenched her fist against the upholstery. Shouldn’t a scoundrel know as much? “I didn’t want you to stop.”
“You deserve better than being tupped in a carriage after you’ve been . . . ” He scrubbed a hand over his mouth.
“Nothing happened with Lord Westby.” She had to make him understand. All she needed was for Grey to hold her again, to love her.
“He touched you, and I wasn’t there to stop him.” He slouched back against the upholstery and laughed. A horrible hollow sound that made her own chest ache. “I am never where I’m needed. Even when I am, I fail.” He glanced out the carriage glass at a moonlit field. “Remember that, goddess, when you tell yourself I’m not like Westby.”
“You were there when I would have cut myself on broken glass in your father’s room. And when I nearly lost half my manuscript in the lake.”
“I’m not a bloody hero.” He leaned forward. Even in the dim interior, Sophia sensed the tension rippling off his body. “That room I carried you out of? My father will die in that room. He’s been there, wasting away, for years, while I’ve been in London. Hiding. Indulging.” He dipped his head, his chest inflating on a ragged breath before he continued. “And that lake I dragged you out of? My brother—”
“Grey, I know.” His hand was warm and broad, his fingers clasping hers eagerly when she reached for him. “You needn’t explain.”
“I couldn’t reach him,” he said quietly. “I didn’t save him.”
Sophia scooted to the edge of her bench, slid her fingers along Grey’s jaw to tip his head up, and lowered her mouth to his. She kissed him tenderly, stroking the stubble on his cheek.
Grey groaned and cupped the back of her neck, pulling her closer. He wrapped an arm around her hips to ease her onto his lap.
The heat and hardness of his body drew a moan from her lips. Grey swallowed the sound with a deep kiss, his tongue tangling with hers as he clutched at her waist to get her closer. She needed to be close to him too. Needed to be back in his bed, with nothing between them—not a stitch of clothing and no pretense, no doubts.
This was the man she wanted. Needed with an intensity that didn’t frighten her anymore.
He dipped his head to kiss her neck, then lower, laving the slit of her cleavage.
“I love you” emerged from her lips on a gasp.
He nestled his face against her neck, kissing and suckling the tender flesh before he whispered “I love you, Sophia” against her skin.
The words she’d craved. Words she’d been waiting her whole life to hear. Heat blossomed in her chest, but there was a squeeze of pain too. An echo of the misery she heard in his voice.
“I can’t lose you.” He ceased kissing her but continued to hold her in his arms, stroking his hand down her back.
Heart in her throat, she said, “Are you asking me to marry you?” She had to know.
“I don’t deserve you.” He swallowed hard and opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. Then, finally, choking on his words, he said, “I want you. That much I know.”
All the heat, all the tentative fragile joy, flowed out of her as if she was a pin-stuck balloon, deflating without any air to buoy her up.
As the carriage clattered to a stop at Longcross, she disentangled herself from Grey’s arms.
“Sophia, please.” He held fast to her hand. “I can’t lose you.”
She had no answer for him. Only questions flooded her mind. Had he felt the same way about Maeve once? She didn’t doubt he’d bedded both of them. Why was she different? Why did he shout at Maeve to get out and beg her to stay? He didn’t want marriage. Refused to commit himself that much.
If Liddy was right, the more he cared for her, the greater likelihood he’d bolt.
“I can’t stay,” she heard herself say. She was prepared to commit her whole heart, her body, her soul, but she needed a man who would do the same.
She commanded her legs to move. Even when he called her name in that reverent way of his, she willed herself to keep walking.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
One month later
Grey woke with a start and stared in confusion at the pristine shelves across from him. Each book stood up straight and perfectly aligned. Not a single shelf contained discarded lingerie or empty wine glasses. He gazed around, confirming that he was, in fact, in his Belgrave Square townhouse. That’s when he remembered.
He’d turned a new leaf.
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After Sophia leapt from the family carriage and strode out of his life, everything turned black. She’d fled Derbyshire the next morning. No note. No parting words. No second thoughts.
He’d stayed on at Longcross and wallowed in self-pity for days.
Becca couldn’t get through to him, Liddy did her best to annoy him into animation, and Alistair knew enough to leave a gentleman alone to stew in his own heartache. Only one voice shook him from his misery. His father’s. He’d been summoned to the earl’s sickroom and given a ferocious lecture about duty and responsibility and finding a suitable countess that was, unfortunately, twenty years overdue.
Still, Grey had mulled the old man’s words. Mulled and wallowed, and then finally returned to London. With titanic effort, he’d kept himself from Bloomsbury Square. Of course, he didn’t need to haunt Sophia’s doorstep to see her face everywhere he looked. She haunted his dreams and his days. He laughed out loud, recalling something amusing she’d said. Chuckled to himself like a madman, remembering some moment of her cleverness. Tossed and turned in his bed because she was not beside him. He ached for her unceasingly.
So he’d done what he could to prove to himself that a man could change, creating outward signs as evidence of his transformation. He’d hired new staff, had the townhouse cleaned and several rooms repainted or wallpapered. While Sophia was no doubt carrying on redecorating Kit and Ophelia’s house, Grey was becoming adept at choosing colors and patterns himself for Belgrave Square.
But now the house was deadly quiet. No more raucous parties. No more drunken revels. No scantily clad women and heaving bodies grinding against each other in the library corner. The place was emptier than Longcross, and he didn’t even miss the noise.
He only missed her. He only missed Sophia.
After a scratch at the door, the new housekeeper, a wizened, fearsome woman, stuck her head in. “Visitor for you, Lord Winship. Says he knows you from Fleet Theater.”
Grey rolled his eyes and waved to indicate the visitor should enter. They’d come in droves at first. Old friends and comrades in sin, begging for admittance back into his Belgrave Square playhouse. He’d had a sort of cathartic satisfaction in telling them of its end. Of watching their eyes bulge or turn down in disappointment when he proclaimed himself an altered man.
Mr. Fleet himself had made a visit too, insisting Grey return to the stage. After negotiating the completion of one final play, the man departed in a door-slamming, profanity-laden huff. It couldn’t be the theater impresario calling again. The man had too much stubborn pride.
The visitor who strode into his library was the last man Grey expected.
“Have you come to murder me?” he asked Sophia’s brother, standing and reaching out to offer his friend a hand.
“I haven’t decided,” Kit said, rocking back on his heels, as if to remind Grey of his considerable heft and height. “But I’m not ready for that yet either.” He cocked a brow toward Grey’s outstretched hand.
“Fair enough.” Grey gestured toward one of the new leather furniture pieces he’d ordered for the library.
Kit sat on one side. Grey lowered himself to the opposite sofa.
“I truly believed Sophia too clever to succumb to your charms.”
Grey ran a hand across his scruffy jaw. Despite the pristine house around him, he hadn’t shaved in days. “I don’t believe she ever did.” Succumb was too weak a word for Sophia. As if she was a heroine in some Gothic novel who’d crumpled in his arms. Her affection, her love, whatever she felt for him, hadn’t come easily. Perhaps that was why he valued it so much. “She only stopped loathing me when I ceased attempting to charm her.”
Kit’s dark eyes lit with amusement. “Interesting strategy.”
“Sophia is honest and true. She wouldn’t be wooed any other way.”
“So you love her?”
“Yes, I love her,” he rasped out the word he’d taken too long to say to her. And why? It came so easily now. He’d shout love from the bloody rooftops if she’d hear him.
“But you’ve no wish to marry her? Commit to her?” Kit’s hand tensed into a fist along the sofa back. “My sister deserves more than to warm the bed of a man who won’t give her his name.”
Grey shot to his feet and lunged for the liquor trolley. Except that the damned thing wasn’t there anymore. He’d given up sipping at spirits too.
“Would you have me wed your sister? Me?” He pointed to himself and then at Kit. “You, of all men, know who I am. What I’ve done. Sins piled so high they’d bury me if I turned around.”
“You’re no less melodramatic, I see.” Kit hooked an ankle on the opposite knee.
“I’m an actor, remember?” Grey stared out the window onto the other whitewashed houses in the square. Weren’t all his redecorating attempts just an effort to whitewash his past? “A professional liar. Do you really wish your honest, beautiful sister to marry such a man?”
“Frankly, no, I don’t wish her to marry a liar. But the man I knew usually left those skills on stage each night.” Kit’s eyes were stark, but his mouth twitched in a grin. “I also know your good qualities. Your loyalty—”
“I abandoned my family.”
“So did I. We were self-indulgent asses while it lasted, and now we’ve changed. Ophelia changed me. I admit as much.” Kit looked around the spotless library. “Apparently, Sophia has turned you tidy.”
“Our last encounter didn’t . . . end well. If I ask your sister to marry me, do you believe she’ll say yes?”
Kit sat forward, hunching his shoulders and planting his elbows on his knees. He smiled up at Grey. “Now you’re asking the right question.”
“Will she?” All he could see in his mind’s eye was the moment she’d left him. The moment she’d walked away. The pain of it stabbed at him every single day.
Kit stood and clasped Grey’s shoulder. “That is the question. That is risk. When you’re willing to take it, you’re ready to give her everything she deserves.” Kit reached into his waistcoat pocket and extracted a folded note.
“Is this from Sophia?” Grey clutched the folded foolscap, stroking the paper as if he’d found a bar of gold.
“No. From Mrs. Cole, our housekeeper. She said you’d understand.”
“Please don’t tell me it’s another letter from Ogilvy.” Sophia lifted her hand, heaved out a sigh, and waited for Cate to drop the envelope into her hand. “My last note to him was firm. He couldn’t have mistaken my request to stop writing.”
“He did seem a tenacious sort.” Cate laid the letter in Sophia’s palm. “You’re going to read this one, aren’t you?”
“Why should I? I’ve no wish to be hounded by any man.” Sniffing, holding back tears as she had for days, she reached for a penknife and sliced the paper open. “I’d rather remain a lonely spinster than fend off men in whom I have no interest whatsoever.”
“Oh, to have that sort of problem.” Cate grinned, tipping her head, as if urging Sophia to give in to mirth too.
Unfortunately, Sophia still felt hollow inside. No mirth, no eagerness for the future, not even any true ire for Ogilvy. In truth, the man had only sent two letters, and the second had likely been written before he received her first reply. Though this third was worrisome. The last thing she wanted was for him to turn up on Kit and Ophelia’s doorstep again. Now that they were back home, there would be myriad questions she had no wish to answer.
“It’s typed,” Sophia said as she unfolded Ogilvy’s note.
“He is a businessman. Typewriters are plentiful these days, as you well know.” Cat nudged her arm.
Sophia had recently purchased her own typewriter. She’d learned to type while helping her father with his business correspondence, and now she found writing her new story on the machine made the words pour out quickly. Something about the clack and rhythm of hitting the keys made the ideas flow.
In the weeks since parting from Grey, writing had been her one source of solace. Well, one
of two sources. Her spirits were incrementally lifted by Effie Breedlove’s adventures and Cate’s good-natured friendship.
Cate remained the only person in the household aware of Sophia’s feelings for Grey. She’d been tempted to confide in Ophelia, but it didn’t seem fair to ask her sister-in-law not to tell Kit.
“He’s requesting a meeting.” Sophia lowered the note and frowned at Cate. “I can’t meet him. He’ll get ideas, and I’ve no wish to give him hope.”
Cate began tidying the umbrellas in the hall stand and dusting off the table they used to collect hats and gloves. “Where does he wish to meet you?”
“Hyde Park.”
“No place better,” Cate insisted as she rubbed at a spot on the hallway mirror glass. “Busy, open, very public. If he proves bothersome, you can simply walk away.”
“Or run away.” Sophia surprised herself with her first attempt at humor in days.
Cate tipped a grin. “Just keep your corset loose. Makes running easier.”
“Do you really think I should meet him?” Sophia relied on Cate’s advice.
Though she hadn’t yet confessed everything about her time with Grey, a few details had slipped out. Then gradually more. Cate was clever enough to deduce the rest, but she’d kept surprisingly mum about how Sophia should handle her heartache. Cate didn’t condemn Grey, nor did she urge Sophia to seek him out and go rushing back into his arms. Assuming he wished her to do any such thing. Sophia wasn’t certain at all. He’d made no attempt to contact her. No notes, no visits. He hadn’t even made an appearance at Bloomsbury Square to welcome Kit and Ophelia back from their tour of France.
“Might do you good to get out and catch a bit of sun.” Cate sorted a pile of magazines into perfect order. “You’ve been in the house too much these past days.”
Hiding was what she meant to say. Sophia thought leaving Derbyshire would help her forget Grey, but London reminded her of him too. More so. Had he returned to his London lodgings? Was he back up on stage each night at Fleet Theater? She dared not read the papers for fear of seeing his name mentioned.
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