Though Cate had clipped one notice she insisted Sophia read. From a gossip rag, of all sources. A report that the “infamous Earl of W—— had set off for the Continent to flee whispers of madness.” A tour of Europe seemed too easy an escape for the man, but Sophia suspected his mother had come to the end of her tether with the man’s escapades.
Along with attempting to forget Westby, her time in Derbyshire, and Grey, Sophia strove to find value in spinsterhood. She’d begun attending a lecture series on writing given at the local college, and she’d joined a ladies’ auxiliary that sewed clothes for needy children in the East End. Never mind that she’d always been awful with a needle. The struggle to improve her stitches occupied her mind, and that was at least halfway to distracting her heart.
She’d almost convinced herself their parting and his disinterest was for the best. They were too different. In character, they were opposites. He didn’t want anything for his future that she wished for hers.
“I suppose I should go up and change,” Sophia said wearily. Lately, she’d felt achy and listless, fatigued by heartache, and prepared to tear up at the least provocation. Perhaps a bit of sun and air would do her good.
“Oh, are you going to see him now?” Cate had begun scrubbing a cloth along the freshly painted wainscoting.
“In an hour.” A thought struck, and Sophia turned back as she stepped up the first rung of the stairs. “Would you come with me?”
“Me?” Cate shook her head until one of her dark pinned curls came loose. “You don’t need me tagging along.”
“Please, Cate. It’s utterly proper for me to have a chaperone, and I nominate you.” Sophia managed a grin. Or at least she thought she did. Her cheeks felt odd and stretched.
Cate sighed and returned a tight smile. “Very well. I’ll accompany you. Let me go and speak to the housemaids and cook to let them know I’ll be out for a bit.”
“Excellent.” Something rattled around in Sophia’s chest. Not quite joy or even happiness, but a lift of eagerness to be out of doors and spend time with Cate. If she could finish her chat with Ogilvy quickly, they could stop in at a teahouse for scones and a warm cup of Earl Grey before Kit and Ophelia returned from the Ruthven publishing offices.
After changing into a modest day dress, brushing her hair, and finding her new pair of boots—that were not stained and waterlogged from diving into Longcross lake—she returned downstairs to find Cate waiting by the door, tapping her foot impatiently.
“You’re suddenly eager for this venture.” Sophia pulled on gloves but dispensed with a hat.
“We’ll need to find a cab or omnibus,” Cate said as she started out the door.
“Will we? I thought we might simply walk up Oxford Street.” She tipped her head back, closed her eyes, and basked in the afternoon sun.
Cate reached for her hand and tugged. “You know how I loathe being late.”
She didn’t know that about Cate, though the fact didn’t surprise Sophia. Cate had been five minutes early to her interview regarding the housekeeper job at Kit and Ophelia’s, and anytime she stepped out, she made a habit of returning before she was due.
“All right,” she agreed, “let’s find a cab. The omnibus is often overflowing in the afternoons.”
A polished two-seater hansom appeared as if by magic, and Cate rushed toward the rig to secure their ride. Sophia followed at a more sedate pace, fighting a wave of queasiness, and took a spot beside Cate. And they waited. Carriage traffic thickened as they approached Oxford Street. More than once, she turned to Cate, on the cusp of suggesting they return to her original notion and walk. But then the clog finally gave way and the horse clopped a few more paces toward Hyde Park.
The cabbie let them off near Marble Arch, and they headed into the park. Cate set a blistering pace.
“How do you know where we’re going? Did you read Ogilvy’s letter while I was upstairs?” Sophia asked, if only to slow her companion down and catch her breath.
“Not at all. Just assumed he’d want to meet near the carriage drive. It’s in view of the Serpentine and has a line of benches. There aren’t benches everywhere in the park, are there?”
Sophia shrugged. She hadn’t taken enough time to search the huge green swath in the center of London well enough to know.
“There we are.” Cate pointed to an empty stretch of benches near a line of trees that were just beginning to feel the nip of early autumn in the air. The tips of their leaves had begun to change color.
Sophia took a seat, but Cate remained standing. “Think I’ll have a peek at the Italian Gardens,” she said. “Just down the way. I’ll return soon.”
“Why don’t I come with you?”
Cate lifted the watch pinned to her shirtwaist. “Don’t want to miss him, do you?”
Sophia didn’t blame Cate for wishing to avoid Ogilvy. She had half a mind to escape before his arrival herself. “Very well. I’ll come and find you once he’s gone.”
As Cate bustled north, Sophia craned her neck to look south, down the long stretch of the Serpentine. Ladies and gentlemen and children were ambling throughout the greenery, but she spotted no gentlemen with Timothy Ogilvy’s features. She’d forgotten her own pin watch, so she didn’t know the time, but even a few minutes of waiting seemed interminable. She stood and stretched her back, rubbed at the churning in her belly, and cast a gaze toward the east end of the park.
In the distance, behind the thick trunk of a tree, she caught a glimpse of a woman who looked very like Cate. Narrowing her eyes, she shifted to get a better view around two gentlemen who stood nearby smoking pipes and discussing horses.
The woman moved, so that most of her body was obscured by the tree, and then a man stepped back on the opposite side of the trunk. A tall man, long and lean, with bronze hair.
“Excuse me, miss.” A nanny pushing a baby in a pram tried to get around Sophia.
She’d inadvertently planted herself in the middle of a walking path and dodged back to make way. When she cast her gaze toward the tree again, both figures she’d seen—one very like Cate and the other very like Grey—were gone.
Rubbing at the center of her chest, at the spot that ached whenever she thought of him, she turned back to her bench, only to find two elegantly dressed young ladies had taken the spot she’d vacated.
Pivoting on her heel, she started toward another area of seating closer to the lake. Grey stepped out of the tree line onto the path in front of her.
Her mouth dropped open as goose bumps pebbled her skin.
She narrowed her gaze. Perhaps the water sparkling off the Serpentine had created a mirage. She’d read about such optical illusions in a magazine.
“I fear I’m not the man you expected to encounter.”
“Not expected, no.” Her body fizzed from head to toe. Was her voice vibrating too? He wasn’t the man she expected to see, but he was the one she’d longed for a glimpse of for days, weeks that had dragged on like years.
“Unfortunately”—he lifted his right hand, where he held a letter between two fingers—“you have a conspirator in your midst.”
“Cate.”
“She told me where you’d be, if I wished to speak to you alone.” He stepped toward her, didn’t stop until he was close enough to touch. Until his juniper scent made her mouth water. “I do want to speak to you, Sophia.” He reached out as if he’d touch her, then pulled back. “It’s the least of what I wish to do.”
“Speak quickly.” Not because she didn’t wish to hear every word or savor the sound of his voice. But because the longer he stood there, his hair glinting in the afternoon sun as the Serpentine reflected daylight back on him like his own bank of limelights, Sophia knew she couldn’t hold out much longer.
Every nerve and muscle in her body pulsed with the urge to go into his arms.
“Quickly?” The dimples that had been flickering to life in his cheeks dimmed. Crumpling Cate’s letter in his hands, he gazed at Sophia, panic-stricken, l
ike an actor who’d forgotten his lines. “Kit came to visit.”
“Did he?” So there was more than one conspirator in her midst. Who else knew about this plot? Ophelia? Clary? The postman?
“He gave me hope that you might wish to see me.” Quieter, he added. “He reminded me what you deserve.”
A frown tautened the skin between her brows. “Did you need reminding?”
“No.” He frowned too, and she remembered the times she’d smoothed her fingers over those lines on his forehead. “Perhaps. I can be a thick-headed man.”
Sophia pressed two fingers to her temple, where warning bells had begun to clang. Nothing would be easier than rushing into Grey’s arms, getting lost in his clear gray gaze. But she didn’t hear enough certainty in his tone. She’d pulled herself back from the agony of walking away from him. She had her writing now, her ladies’ auxiliary, her class at the college. That could sustain her.
Enough to keep her from risking her heart ever again.
She sucked in a deep breath, tasting the soot and rust of London air.
“I prefer the countryside.” She wrapped her arms around her middle and continued. “London has its appeal but preferably in short doses.”
“All right.” Grey arched one brow as if flummoxed by the changed of topic.
“I only ever want to make love to one man. My husband. And I want children. Two, so they aren’t lonely. Maybe more.”
He tilted his head like a confused puppy, licked his lips, and swiped a hand through the impossibly perfect and yet completely untamed waves of his hair. “Understood.”
“I prefer tea. You like coffee. Cleanliness is a preoccupation with me, and I’ve noticed your tendency to be messy.”
“A man can change,” he said, as a grin began teasing at the corners of his mouth. “Come to Belgrave Square with me, and you’ll see. As to the countryside, I’m returning to Derbyshire.”
“What of London and the theater?”
“I’ve left Fleet.”
“But you love acting.” And he was marvelous on stage. She’d never forget the single performance she’d seen.
“What I love,” he said, taking one step closer, “is you. Acting may be a talent, but it served mostly as a means of escape. From the past. From myself.” He cocked a rakish grin. “Is it my turn to convince you why we should never part again?”
Sophia shook her head and searched for more. There had to be other reasons they were wrong for each other. They were too different. Opposites in essential ways. He was an aristocrat, and her father had worked for his money. He was an actor—former actor, apparently—and she was a writer, of sorts. She was a spinster, and he was a notorious scoundrel.
“We are too different.”
“Perfectly so.” He took one long step, one that brought his chest close to hers, tangled his legs in her gown. “I need your cleverness and good sense. Your goodness and refusal to give up.” His grin burst into a smile. “I admit you’re getting the worst of this deal, Sophia, but I do promise to encourage you to be impure in body and mind, to be bold rather than meek, to seek as many pursuits as you like outside the home. As long as you always come back to me.”
Sophia opened her mouth to reply, and he finally touched her. One finger slid with aching tenderness against her cheek.
“I know you say we’re different,” he said softly. “But I’ve changed. You, Sophia.” He slid an arm around her waist, gently, tentatively. “You inspire me to be a better man.”
“Are you?”
“Marry me, and I’ll show you how much.” He pulled her tighter against his body.
Sophia felt her ramparts of rational arguments falling away. Her heart didn’t wish to be wary, even as her mind spun for any vestige of doubt.
“Shouldn’t you have altered before we marry?”
“I have.” He bent his head back, tipping his mouth in contemplation. “Though the process is ongoing, I suspect.” Catching her gaze, he vowed, “I never want to lose you again. I have changed, love.”
She saw the truth in his eyes. Heard the certainty in his voice. She couldn’t deny the rightness of being in his arms.
“Not too much, I hope.” Slipping her hand along the edge of Grey’s lapel, Sophia savored the heat of his chest against the backs of her fingers. “I did fall in love with a scoundrel, after all.”
Confusion shaded his eyes, and then he smiled. A brilliant, dazzling, dimple-popping display that kicked her heart into a gallop. That was new. For days she’d felt hollow, but now her pulse thudded wildly in her ears.
“Are you rejecting my attempts at reform?” There was a question in his eyes, a tentative hopefulness, a hint of fear.
“Not entirely.” Sophia tipped onto her toes and nuzzled the delicious bay soap-scented plane of his cheek. “I love you, Grey. Now. The man you are right this minute.”
“So you want me, scoundrel and all?”
“I do.” Sophia smiled and pressed closer, wrapping her arms around the man she was going to marry. “As long as you’re my scoundrel.”
EPILOGUE
Derbyshire, October 1895
Sophia held a curl of hair in place while Cate searched for an additional hairpin.
“Should have brought more from London,” Cate grumbled as she scoured her traveling bag.
“Perhaps Liddy has extra.”
“Have you seen the girl’s coiffure? Between the two of you, I doubt there’s any pins left in Derbyshire.” A moment later, she drew back her hand and thrust a piece of bent metal in the air, as if she’d just pulled Excalibur from the stone. “I’ve found one.”
Sophia smiled, and then her eyes bulged. “Oh no.”
Cate dropped the pin and lunged for a small stone basin in the corner of the vestry, quickly returning to Sophia’s side.
“Are you sure that’s not for holy water?” Sophia slapped a hand over her mouth.
“I have no idea, but if you don’t wish to cast up your accounts all over your wedding gown, I suggest you make use of it.”
Sophia lowered her hand, bent over the basin, and shook her head. “It’s gone.” She shrugged and straightened in her chair. “Probably just nerves.”
Cate narrowed her eyes and dragged a chair up next to Sophia’s. After settling onto the creaking wood, she clasped Sophia’s hand. “You may keep news of the babe from others as long as you like, but I’ve known you were increasing from the moment you returned from Derbyshire.”
Sophia gazed in the mirror she’d used to don her gown and dress her hair. “That obvious, is it?” A persistent ruddiness lit her cheeks, but her belly had only rounded slightly. She stroked her fingers over her stomach, and her breath caught in her throat.
Joy welled up inside, so much happiness after so many years of doubting she would ever find contentment.
“Why have you not told the man?” Cate asked softly.
Sophia swiped away a tear. “Today Grey is vowing himself to me for the rest of his life. A wife seems enough to take on for one day.” She turned her head and grinned at Cate. “I plan to tell him tomorrow.”
“I wager he’ll be over the moon. Never seen a man so smitten as yours is with you.” Cate bent to retrieve the pin and stood to place the final touches on Sophia’s coiffure.
Sophia didn’t interrupt while Cate worked at rearranging a few curls, but as soon as she’d finished and stepped back to survey her work, she asked, “Cate? Who is the gentleman I saw you speaking to in the church this morning?”
Cate’s dark eyes widened. “Mr. Lassiter? He’s a gentleman from London.”
“Yes, that must be where I’ve seen him. He’s come to call at Kit and Phee’s, hasn’t he? I thought he was a workman or one of the designers who have been working on the townhouse.”
“No.” Cate shook her head. “He’s a brewer by trade.”
“How intriguing.” Sophia pressed her lips together to suppress a grin. “And how did you meet this gentleman brewer?”
Cate planted a
hand on one hip. “Did one of the housemaids tell you?”
“Not at all,” Sophia insisted, bending her head so that Cate could clasp the Ruthven family pearls around her neck. “I solved the mystery on my own.”
“Go on, then, lady detective,” Cate teased. She’d read every word Sophia had written about Effie Breedlove and continually asked for more pages. “Tell me how you solved this one.”
“Not terribly challenging. A pair of missing scissors, a newspaper with rectangles cut out of the personal ads, and a tenacious smile on one Catherine Cole’s lips.”
Cate’s cheeks pinked as she patted Sophia’s shoulders. “Very well, Miss Sleuth. He’s a good man, but there’s been no mention of marriage. I’m content to take each day as it comes.”
Sophia patted her friend’s hand. “I wish you happiness.”
Cate smiled back at her in the mirror. “And I’m so glad you’ve found yours.”
A rap at the door and they both turned as ladies filed in. Liddy led the way, lifting the beaded hem of her gown to keep from tripping. Clary followed behind, garbed in her signature mauve hue. Phee and Juliet finished the queue, both bearing bouquets of white freesia and myrtle sprigged with ivy leaves.
Cate took both bouquets and fussed with the ribbons surrounding each, making sure they were perfectly wrapped. Clary positioned herself behind Sophia’s chair and wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
“You look perfect,” Clary said wistfully. “Like a fairy tale princess. Or a Greek goddess.”
“A viscountess,” Liddy enthused. “That’s what she’ll be.”
Sophia’s tummy gave a lurch again, and she slid a hand over her belly. She only wanted to be Grey’s wife. And to manage to say her vows without losing her breakfast.
“I won’t have a title,” Liddy announced dramatically. The other ladies in the room quieted, waiting for her to say more.
“Why is that?” Clary finally asked.
“Because I’m going to marry Clive Holden.”
Clary, Phee, Juliet, and Cate frowned in confusion, but Sophia sprang up from her chair and embraced Liddy. When she pulled back, she took care not to mar the girl’s elaborate upswept curls.
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