To her eternal surprise, he nodded once. “I can see that. It even makes sense, I will admit.”
Sophia didn’t bother to moderate her expression of befuddlement, and it made Larkin laugh.
“I’m a scoundrel and a brat, Sophia, but I’m no fool.” He smiled at her without any sort of mockery, and it stunned her what a pleasant smile it turned out to be. “You’ve a fortunate legacy in parts of Rosennor, make no mistake.”
“Thank you,” she murmured uncertainly, still completely lost by the change in him.
“Not as fortunate as mine,” he went on, making a face.
There he was.
Sophia rolled her eyes, her emotions returning to the bland irritation that pervaded her senses whenever he was around. “May I remind you that all of the rooms in your keeping bear furnishings that are mine?”
“And I can say the same to you, can I not?” He raised a daring brow at her.
She had no good response to that, and only scowled while she reluctantly nodded.
“Look, Sophia,” Larkin said with the first genuine sigh she had heard him offer yet. “My father sold our family estate in Sussex while I was at Cambridge, and rented London residences for the rest of his days. I don’t have a house either, and there was no entail or inheritance set on the house I grew up in, so I have no hope of reclaiming it. What sort of prospects are those for a gentleman?”
Not good ones, that was for sure, though she resented the small twinge of sympathy his words had created within her.
She made a face at the current discomfort. “Could you not take up a profession? The army, perhaps, or the navy. It would provide for you, and your prospects…”
“Have you met my mother?” he asked in utter disbelief, jerking his thumb in the direction of the corridor. “You think I can abandon her to the sea or to battle? Good heavens, woman, she’s daft enough!”
Sophia clamped a hand over her mouth to restrain a giggle, her cheeks heating with the shame of finding amusement in so evident a truth.
Larkin, to his credit, did not find this offensive and only waited for her recovery.
“What about the law?” Sophia suggested, dropping her hand to her throat, still smiling with the remnants of laughter. “Or the church?”
His face was suddenly devoid of any emotion but that of dubious derision as he stared at her. “What about my person and nature makes you think I am on any sort of good terms with the Almighty?”
She giggled again, this time choking them back by biting down on her lips hard.
“And as for the law…” He shuddered and made a face. “I am educated, that is without question, but it does not follow that I am intelligent or clever, and one must be both in order to go into the law and have any success. No, I was born to be a gentleman, and raised to be one. I am no London dandy, so the Season has no pleasure for me. As I have not fortune enough to purchase an estate for myself, Rosennor is all that I have. Indeed, it could very well save me a world of trouble.”
“That’s ironic,” Sophia replied as her laughter faded entirely, “considering all it has done is bring both of us more trouble.”
He seemed to consider that, and shook his head. “When I get to the other side of this life, Sophia Anson, remind me to find Sir Kentworth Jameson Edmund Howard-Dale and pummel him until I truly do earn my place in hell.”
Sophia nodded as sagely and sensibly as the comment allowed. “I shall direct the bystanders into their proper places so as to give you plenty of space to properly throttle him.”
Larkin smiled in response. “You are too kind.”
They stared at each other for a long moment, the momentary camaraderie somewhat off putting, given their entire relationship was built on mutual disdain.
She rather liked being joined in mutual amusement with him.
Which was a horrifying thought and if she could scrub her mind free of it, she would have done. As it was, she was going to find herself a church as soon as she could get away from him and plead with the Lord to forgive her grievous sin.
Larkin cleared his throat and stepped back, though they had hardly been standing close enough for that to have been necessary. “And there is my mother to consider, getting back to topic.”
Sophia frowned. “What does your mother have to do with anything?”
He blinked at her, then dramatically gestured towards the corridor.
As if that told her anything.
She mimicked the gesture with some mockery. “What? What does this even mean?”
“My mother is ridiculous!” he whispered, as if that were some secret. “Not constantly, but when she is, it more than makes up for the rest of the time.”
“Many people have ridiculous relations,” Sophia assured him without much sympathy, as it was true. Not many could claim the same height of ridiculousness as she had witnessed in Mrs. Roth, but ridiculous all the same. “Somehow they manage to still go on with their lives.”
Larkin looked at Sophia as though he had never seen anything quite like her, and not in a flattering light. “My mother spends most of her time in a cottage with my aunt, her sister, in Kent. My aunt has less patience for Mother’s tendencies than I do, and her response is to condemn her for some sins that brought this upon herself or to suggest she pray more. She has convinced her that scrubbing the linens against the washboard is a respectable occupation for a gentleman’s widow, and my mother believes she is creating music when she does so, which is quite a new delusion, I will have you know, and I wasn’t entirely accustomed to the others.”
There was too much truth to the barely hidden pain for Sophia to do anything but wince at hearing it, and it was all she could do not to run out into the corridor and take the poor woman’s hand. What she would do from that moment on was less clear, but that much she wished for.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured, helpless to express anything else.
Larkin scoffed softly. “I don’t require pity, and nor, I think, does my mother. She has no idea she is ridiculous, and she is blessed with a sort of innocence in her current state that she is ignorant of any and all abuses. I only left her with my aunt because I could not afford to keep her anywhere else, and her sister is not entirely heartless.”
“Apparently only rigorous in breaking one,” Sophia muttered darkly with a scowl as she thought of anyone taking advantage of a woman clearly not always in her right mind.
Her comment earned her a surprised look and a grin, though both vanished faster than a blink. “At any rate,” he went on, his voice warmer than she’d heard it yet, “the thought had occurred to me that in having Rosennor, I could also keep my mother here. There is plenty of room, and the country air is always something she appreciates.”
Sophia was nodding before he finished. “I agree, this would be wonderful for her. There’s that bedchamber we passed in the west wing, the one that had a large parlor adjoining. It would be a perfect place for her, and so convenient to the gardens as well. It does extend a bit beyond the main of the house, so perhaps we ought to engage one of the servants to be her companion. And when she adjusts to living here, should she wish for more privacy and independence, the gamekeeper’s cottage is quite spacious. We could have it renovated to her tastes, or the carriage house, perhaps. Either one could be made over into a lovely addition to the estate.”
Larkin took two steps towards her, closing the distance, and stooped to look rather directly in her eyes, squinting a little, then laid his bare hand against her cheek.
“What are you doing?” she protested, batting his hand away.
He shook his head and took her wrist in hand, apparently feeling for something. “Your pulse is abnormal, and you feel dreadfully warm. You must be unwell.”
Sophia slapped his hand and he released her wrist with a yelp. “That is not how you measure one’s pulse, and I am not warm!”
“No, indeed, you are a cold woman, I agree.”
She would kill him in the relatively near future, she was utterly
convinced.
Larkin chuckled and held up his hands in surrender. “I only meant that you offered my mother rooms in your wing of the estate, and you said we. I presume that meant you and I, being the beneficiaries of this place.”
It hadn’t even occurred to her that she had suggested her wing for Mrs. Roth. She hadn’t been thinking of the battle lines and boundaries, only what might suit her best. And she had said ‘we’ instead of indicating him, but surely that was simply a slip of her tongue, was it not?
Why shouldn’t his mother stay in her wing of the house? She might even become friends with the woman, and possibly convince her to take her side of the arguments that were bound to follow.
A slow, thoughtful smile found its way to her lips as her mind spun on those details, forming new ideas that quite intrigued her.
“What?” Larkin demanded the moment he caught sight of it. “What is that smile? What are you doing?”
Sophia nodded to herself and tapped her chin. “I have found a solution that should suit both of us quite well.” She quirked her brows and strode past him for the door to the entryway and the others.
“Why do I hate it already?” he wondered aloud from behind her.
She wasted no time or breath in responding to him. “Mrs. Roth, would it terribly inconvenience you to come and live here at Rosennor and be my chaperone? It would mean the world to me, and then your son would be able to be near you so as to properly take care of you better.”
“You conniving, weasling…” Larkin muttered from behind her, his words trailing off as his mother squealed for joy, the sounds echoing through the vast and rather ornate entryway.
“So, you will both reside here, then?” Mr. Tuttle-Kirk asked with the most hopeful manner she had ever heard.
Sophia smiled and looked at the Arthurs in expectation. “Do you think I shall be ruined if I live here with a chaperone as well as Mr. Roth?”
The Arthurs looked at each other, then back at her. “I’m not sure…” Mr. Arthur began.
“Excellent, excellent,” Mr. Tuttle-Kirk overrode with a clap of his hands. “Let us all return to London, and I shall draw up the necessary papers for the official releasing of the estate to the both of your care.”
Sophia glanced over her shoulder at the scowling and steaming Larkin Roth, who looked as if he might throttle her. “Yes,” she said, responding to the solicitor’s suggestion while keeping her eyes locked on her rival. “Yes, let’s.”
“So, she just took over? Just like that?”
“As simple as could be, plain as day. Won over my mother, the solicitor, and probably all of the suits of armor.”
“Is that an extensive amount?”
“I counted at least a dozen throughout the place. It is quite the establishment.”
“And it comes with its very own shrew, what a prize!”
Larkin grinned at his oldest friend, the Earl of Harwood, otherwise known as Taft. The moment he had returned from the ridiculous venture out to Rosennor, Larkin had given up his usual seclusion and sent a note to Taft, asking to meet him at their club. Taft, ever the good sport, agreed to meet him the next day.
Now here they were, lounging in Brooks’, Taft looking every inch the earl he was in his finery, though not to a foppish extent. Larkin, by comparison, looked like a country bumpkin.
He didn’t care; he wanted to rusticate in the country forevermore, if he could. At Rosennor, if he could turn it into something profitable and comfortable.
Preferably without the accompanying shrew.
“So, what now?” Taft asked, leaning back in his chair and surveying Larkin with his cool green eyes.
Larkin returned his look in confusion. “What now?” he repeated. “Now we wait for the solicitor to draw it up, and go back to the humble abode and try not to kill each other.”
Taft’s brows shot up nearly to his hairline. “You’re not serious.”
“About?”
His friend snorted without reserve and sat forward, his dark golden hair turning darker still as he left the light from the nearby window with the action. “Lark. You cannot live in an estate with an unmarried woman and expect to come out untarnished.”
“Shh!” Larkin glanced around the room for eavesdroppers, even though Taft had kept his voice down. The risk of being discovered in his unconventional situation was too great. “What other choice do I have?”
Taft blinked at him. “Not living there? Setting the law on the wench?”
“She’s not a wench,” Larkin protested halfheartedly, wishing he could say otherwise. It would have been so much easier if Sophia Anson were a disreputable young woman of no morals and no real claim.
“Defending her, are we?” Taft scoffed and tapped his head on the table in apparent dismay. “Lark, you’ll never survive this. And she will never survive this.”
“Physically speaking or societally speaking?” Larkin asked with mild amusement, though he knew this was no laughing matter.
Taft was not amused. “If word of this gets out…”
“How would it get out?” Larkin demanded, interrupting his friend without hesitation. “Who is going to tell? You?”
That earned him a scolding look. “You know better than that. I have no desire to see your reputation ruined or, worse, to see you forced into marrying a woman you despise.”
Larkin shuddered at the thought. “Well, at least our children would be exquisitely beautiful.”
A swift smirk appeared on his oldest friend’s face. “Beautiful? You never said she was attractive.”
“Didn’t I?” Larkin murmured. He sat back slowly, senses on alert, knowing he needed to tread carefully here. “She happens to be quite remarkably pretty, which makes her temperament all the more off-putting. She gets this furrow between her brows when she is cross, and it’s only one line, but it is perfectly centered. You could draw a line through it and take it completely down to the tip of her nose, and all would be in perfect alignment. I happened to take pride in making her cross often, so I became quite familiar with it.”
Taft began to laugh under his breath, his shoulders shaking with mirth as he covered his face with one hand.
Larkin frowned at that. “What?”
Taft waved a hand, still laughing and, apparently, unable to speak.
This was no laughing matter, and he could not for the life of him think what might have thrown his friend into such hysterics. He slowly drummed his fingers along the table, waiting for sanity to return. When it did not do so in an expeditious manner, he drummed his fingers three more times, growing louder with each drum.
Finally, Taft sighed away the last of his snickering and looked at Larkin with bright eyes. “At the risk of sounding rather changeable, I think I will give up my resistance to the whole endeavor. Take up your rightful place at Rosennor, by all means.”
Larkin raised a brow. “Are you serious? I tell you my mortal enemy is pretty and suddenly risking both our reputations is acceptable to you?”
“Yes, quite frankly.” Taft shrugged his broad shoulders. “Your mother will be there to chaperone, after all. And you intend to live in completely opposite ends of the house. I daresay you will never know the other is there.”
“Oh, we’ll know,” Larkin assured him darkly. “Sophia will plague me until I die in my wing, and no doubt there is an addendum to the novel of Sir Kentworth’s will that will say she inherits all upon my death.”
“I will console her creditably in your honor,” Taft replied, bowing his head in a gentlemanly manner.
Something in his tone gave Larkin pause. “You’re not the consoling sort, Taft. And Sophia will need none anyway.”
Again came a shrug, this time defiantly roguish. “She may find she misses you more than she thought, once you are deceased. I can be very comforting.” He grinned in perfect unison with the tone of his body language.
Larkin gaped in horror, positive he was imagining things. “You’re not suggesting… Taft, you cannot mean…” He lo
oked around quickly and sat forward. “You would go to my estate and console my rival and murderer and then make her Lady Harwood? Are you mad?”
“Quite possibly, in this hypothetical,” Taft said without shame. “I need a wife eventually, after all. The earldom depends on it, and a fiery beauty would suit me quite well. Especially if I can be a hero that swoops in to save her from the dragon with which she dwells.”
Abomination. This man was an absolute disgrace to the name of gentleman, as a friend, and as any decent human being. Why in the world was Larkin friends with such a creature?
He sat back roughly, shaking his head. “In the space of five minutes, you completely changed your allegiance. After all we’ve been through, you choose her over me. Et tu, Taft?”
Taft scoffed loudly. “Come now, I don’t want you to die. All I’m saying is that I would make the best of the situation, should it arise.”
“How comforting,” Larkin muttered dryly. He exhaled and rubbed at his eyes, weary from the last few days and the expanse of what lay before him. “So, to your point, how will we keep this all from getting out and ruining us to the point of a horrific marriage?”
This time, Taft waved a dismissive hand. “No one cares about what happens in the country, truly. Neither of you are Society pets.” He suddenly gave Larkin a hard look. “She isn’t, is she? You haven’t told me her surname, so…”
“I highly doubt she is,” Larkin said with a laugh. “You, of all people, would know her identity if she were.”
“I would only be so fortunate,” came the thoughtful reply. Then Taft cleared his throat. “No, it should be fairly tame. No one knew much of your Sir Kentworth, as he was not about in Society, and unless your solicitor has a wagging tongue, who’s to say what is going on there?”
Larkin smiled at the thought. “I have a hard time imagining Mr. Tuttle-Kirk as one joining the gossip-mongers. No, I believe he is a man quite wedded to his profession and its responsibilities. We’re quite safe there.”
The Rivals of Rosennor Hall (Entangled Inheritance Book 3) Page 6