“Grams,” Lord Phineas said. “Must you be so loud?” His face was a bit flushed and he looked as though he’d had a nip too many, even though Sophia hadn’t seen him take a single drink.
“You’re the one who was talking about being in mourning. If you don’t want your dirty laundry to be aired, don’t hang it on the line.” She leaned toward Sophia. “What’s your name, dear?”
“Sophia,” she croaked. She was about to add her surname, but Sophia was afraid it would spark more conversations about the lightskirt.
The dowager duchess motioned toward Sophia with her thumb. “Why can’t you find a lady of quality like this one? Settle down and have a family. Between you and Robin, you’d think we’d have a house full of great-grandchildren by now.” She narrowed her eyes at Lord Phineas. “The illegitimate ones don’t count.”
Lord Phineas wiggled uncomfortably in his seat. “I don’t have any children, Grams. I promise.”
“You should get to work on that. I’d like to see at least one boy child before I gasp my last breath. Girls are fine, but I prefer the ones with dangly parts.”
Sophia choked. She couldn’t help it. And Lord Phineas looked pleased by her reaction. “Something wrong, Miss Thorne?” he asked, his voice as sweet as syrup and just as smooth.
“Nothing,” she gasped as she reached for her water glass.
“Mother, would you please temper your comments?” the dowager duchess barked from her seat.
The old lady waved her fork wildly in the air. “You act like you don’t want to hear about dangly parts. Everyone’s got them. Or at least a receptacle for them.” She cackled loudly on the last.
Lady Hammersmith jumped to her feet, her lips pursed like she’d been sucking on a sour grape. She tossed her napkin onto her plate. “I don’t have to listen to such poor conversation.” She tapped her husband’s arm. “Come along, Harold,” she said. “Receptacles, indeed. I’ve never heard of such a vulgar thing.”
“She’s never heard of it?” the old lady cackled. “That must be why her husband always looks so irritated.” She laughed so loudly that it made Sophia want to laugh with her. She covered her mouth, instead. The dowager duchess buried her face in her hands and groaned.
“I’m certain you’re right,” Lord Phineas said with a smirk.
“Eh?” the woman asked, raising her trumpet again.
“Never mind,” the duke’s brother said loudly. “We can discuss it later, Grams.”
“I count on you to tell me all the details,” she said with a wink toward his lordship.
“No problem, Grams.” Lord Phineas winked back at her. If Sophia didn’t know better, she might even like him.
Ashley’s grandmother looked toward the head of the table where Ashley’s seat sat open. “Where is that other grandson of mine?” she asked absently.
Lord Phineas arched a brow at Sophia. Damn his hide. “He’s absent from the festivities, Grams. Like usual.”
“That boy needs to get his head out of his arse and get back to business.”
“His business acumen is not in question.” Thank goodness Lord Phineas took up for him, because Sophia felt the need to do so.
His grandmother smacked the table. “The business of marriage and raising an heir.”
Just then, a large voice boomed over all the others. Sophia nearly jumped from her skin when she heard it. “Do you normally speak of dangly parts and my need to breed over dinner?” the voice called from the doorway.
Sophia spun to face Ashley, who leaned casually in the door frame, his arms folded across his chest. He looked amazing. He was splendidly turned out in his evening clothes. An emerald winked from the center of his cravat. He gave a tug to his jacket and started across the room.
“Robin, what are you doing here?” his mother asked as everyone jumped to their feet. Sophia rose along with them, although she was finding it difficult to draw in a deep breath. A lock of hair fell across his forehead when his eyebrows drew together, and she wanted to brush it back for him. What a ridiculous thought.
“I’m having dinner,” he said absently. Ashley snapped his fingers and held out his hand. It was almost immediately populated with a goblet of wine. He raised it high in the air. He cleared his throat, inhaled deeply, and said, “I’d like to make a toast.”
Sophia reached for her glass and waited anxiously.
“Please do, Robin,” his mother sputtered as she motioned for everyone to pick up their glasses.
“Here’s to hell freezing over,” he said with a straight face. Then he looked directly at Sophia and winked.
***
“Robin, darling,” Ashley’s mother crooned. “So, happy you were able to join us,” she said as he motioned for everyone at the table to sit. They all dropped into their chairs like stones. His mother turned to the group. “Robin has been under the weather, you see,” she started.
He had? No, he hadn’t.
“I explained to everyone when they arrived that you were not feeling well, and that’s why you were not joining us.” She blinked her icy eyes at him.
“It’s quite unfortunate that you lied to everyone, Mother,” he said, his voice crisp even to his own ears. But he refused to compound her lies with any of his own. Nor would he ever. “I would have thought better of you. You could have simply told everyone how much I abhor crowded dinner tables and overstuffed sitting rooms.” He clucked his tongue at her. “Would have been much simpler. And it’s not as though I haven’t taken blame for things before.”
His mother’s face drained of color.
“I hope you’re all enjoying your stay,” he said to the table.
Anxious, worried gazes met his. Perhaps he’d been a little too candid.
“Nice to see you, Robin,” Finn said loudly. “And so nice of you to bring all your parts so they can talk about yours instead of mine.” His brother raised his glass at Ashley, then took a healthy swallow.
“I’ve been talked about for years,” Ashley said with a shrug. “It will be nothing new.”
Sophia coughed delicately into her fist and said, “May tonight be a night of new beginnings.”
“To new beginnings,” chimed the rest of the table.
Twelve
Ashley paced from one side of his bedchamber to the other. Perhaps he’d gone too far when he’d asked Sophia Thorne to visit him the dead of night, risking her reputation, her innocence, and her very life, if the rumors about his homicidal tendencies were true.
In the garden that afternoon, he’d nearly begged her to visit him under the cover of darkness. She’d agreed. Hadn’t she? He tried to remember their conversation verbatim. But he’d been so enamored of the way the sunlight played across her hair that he’d probably missed half the words.
Come and visit me tonight?
Will you be playing?
What difference does that make?
If you’re playing, I’ll have little choice in the matter.
Those weren’t the words exactly, but they were close. Yet it was well after midnight. All his mother’s guests were safely ensconced in their chambers, or their neighbor’s chambers, as the case might be with Finn. And Sophia hadn’t arrived.
He stopped to gaze out his window and sighed heavily. Was it his lot in life to be alone? Was it truly? He’d thought Sophia’s arrival heralded the beginning of new things to come for him. He’d attended dinner, for God’s sake. Dinner! With his mother and all of her friends. He’d labored through it with a smile on his face. Well, perhaps not a smile, but he’d been present. And he’d done it all for Sophia. She could probably snap her fingers at him and he’d drop to his knees to kiss her slippers—he was that enamored of her.
He groaned aloud. Enamored? Is that what this was? It was something he didn’t understand at all. He was two-and-thirty. And
he couldn’t figure out what his infatuation was with Sophia Thorne. He felt like a green lad who’d had his first kiss. First kiss? Ashley hadn’t even had the opportunity to kiss her yet. He could imagine the feel of her in his arms. The taste of her on his lips. He glanced absently around the room and wished she was there to brighten it.
His dressing gown lay draped across the bed. Ashley had run Simmons from the room almost as soon as he’d arrived. Ashley didn’t want him to encounter Sophia when she finally did decide to grace him with her presence. He flopped heavily onto the piano bench and plucked lightly at the keys.
Dinner had been painful. His mother’s guests all had held their tongues about matters of importance and discussed things like the scandalous clothing young ladies were wearing. It was dreadfully boring. Ashley would rather discuss politics. Or finance. Anything aside from fashion.
To top it all off, he’d been unable to draw his eyes from Sophia Thorne’s person the entire night. He’d caught her looking back at him more than once, and not one time did she lower her gaze, shy away from his bold appraisal of her, or even flush when he let his eyes linger too long. She had simply smiled as though they shared a secret. Perhaps they did. Perhaps Sophia knew that Ashley was well and truly out of his league. Perhaps she was humoring an addled old idiot, making his heart and his loins swell with every bold glance she returned.
What if she was?
What if she did, indeed, feel nothing for him? He found that hard to fathom. But it was a possibility. Ashley clunked gently on the keys of the pianoforte. He let his fingers tickle the ivory keys. And it was only once he was engrossed in a song that he heard the door open behind him. His heart leapt into his throat as he turned his head and watched her glide into his room. She looked at him and smiled softly as she closed the door behind her. Into the lion’s den goes the lamb.
She was dressed the same way she had been the last time she slipped into his room in the dead of night, in a virginal nightrail with puffy sleeves and a frilly collar. She walked toward him, gazing at the piano until he stopped playing and turned to look at her.
“I thought you’d never arrive,” Ashley said hesitantly.
She laughed lightly. “I thought you’d never start playing.” She looked down at her state of dress. “Oh, goodness. I’ve done it again,” she said, shaking her head at herself as she drew her lower lip between her teeth and worried it absently.
“Done what again?” Ashley asked.
“I kept on my dress until only moments ago. Because I knew I’d be unable to resist you when you started to play. But then when you didn’t, I finally gave up and went to bed.” She rubbed the sleep from her eyes and yawned heavily.
“You went to sleep?”
She nodded as she walked closer and sat down on the piano bench and slid closer to him. Ashley parted his thighs so he could feel the length and warmth of her leg through his trousers. She didn’t back away.
“I did go to sleep.” She looked up at him with a quirky little grin. “Then you began to play.” She reached out one delicate little hand and stroked it across the front of the piano. Then she turned to him, smiled broadly, and said, “Thank you for attending dinner.”
“I did it for you,” he admitted.
“I know,” she said softly. “Situations like that must be difficult for you?” she asked hesitantly.
“Quite.” He didn’t know what else to say about that. It was nearly impossible to voice his thoughts. Even he didn’t understand the muddle inside his head. How could he expect her to?
“You did very well, even amid discussions of pantaloons and tall boots.” She giggled lightly, and the sound reminded him of the tinkle of the wind chimes he’d given to her. It was happy and melodious and it turned his insides to mush.
“You were worth it,” he said as he raised his hand to brush a lock of hair from her face. Her hair hung freely down her back, her combs having been removed. It fell in silky dark waves to land at her waist, and he wanted to gather it in his hands, bury his face in it, and inhale her scent. He shook the thoughts away. They would get him nowhere.
“It’s highly unorthodox for a lady to meet a gentleman in his bedchamber, is it not?” she asked hesitantly.
“It is,” he admitted.
“Yet you lure me here, anyway,” she said with a playful groan.
A grin tugged at his lips. “I believe I am the one who is being lured,” Ashley said.
“Directly into my web of deception,” she said with a tremulous quake to her voice. She tilted her head from side to side, as though mulling that thought over. “It’s not truly deception,” she whispered to him. “I’m here to help you.”
“You’re helping,” he croaked out. Dear God, he sounded like a lad of twelve. Only with the urges of a man. It was all he could do to keep his hands off her. He wanted to draw her into his lap and hold her tightly as he explored her body. As he gave her pleasure.
“I’m here for a time,” she said with a breezy wave of her hand. “Gone like the wind when my mission is over.”
Again with the mission? “Tell me more about this mission you refer to.”
She laid a hand on her chest. “Alas, I cannot. It’s forbidden, you see?” She blinked her pretty eyes at him, the flakes of gold that rimmed her irises glimmering in the candlelight.
He didn’t see. But he wanted to see. He wanted to see her stick her tongue out again to wet her parched lips as she had only a moment ago. He wanted to see her smile. He wanted to see what lay hidden beneath that nightrail. Ashley dragged a hand down his face in an attempt to wipe away his wayward thoughts. He failed. But he gave it a valiant effort.
“You are too innocent for a man like me,” he finally breathed instead. Then he hopped up from the piano bench and went to pour himself a glass of whiskey from the sideboard. He immediately felt the loss of her as he moved across the room.
Sophia walked toward his bed and picked up his robe. “Would you mind?” she asked as she slung it around her shoulders. She waited for his nod of acquiescence before she tied the sash. “I feel a bit underdressed,” she said.
Ashley glanced down at his own jacket and waistcoat. Simmons had had a wonderful evening putting together his wardrobe. It had been quite some time since he’d been so fancily attired. But she was right. She was in her nightrail. And he was fully dressed. Something about that thrilled him.
Yet he shrugged out of his jacket, anyway. Then he loosened his cravat and tugged it free. And finally, he removed his waistcoat and pulled his shirttail from where it was tucked in his trousers. It was scandalous to be wearing only shirtsleeves and an open collar in front of a lady. “Better?” he asked.
***
Better? No, that wasn’t better. Now he was as poorly dressed as she was. Her eyes lingered at the vee of his shirt, where a sparse dusting of dark hair could be seen. She ached to pull his shirt open and look closer at it. To see what he looked like beneath his clothes. Instead, she said, “I am not here to seduce you, Ashley.”
He swallowed hard. So hard she could hear it. “Oh, how I wish you were,” he mumbled.
She covered a grin with her hand. “What would people say if anyone knew I was here?”
“They would say all sorts of unkind things. Then they would try to drag you from me before I could cause your demise.” He avoided looking at her when he said the last. Now her heart ached for him.
“Yet I do not fear you,” she said, watching his face. He sat down on the piano bench facing her, and she dropped into an overstuffed chair beside it. It was probably better to put some space between them. Though she wanted more than anything to touch him. He looked like he needed to be touched. “When was the last time someone embraced you?” she asked quietly.
He looked deep into his whiskey glass instead of at her. “Tonight, when I went to kiss Anne good night.”
<
br /> That was a lovely thought. But it wasn’t the kind of embrace she was referring to. “No. I mean a hug from someone other than your daughter.”
He shrugged. And avoided her gaze some more.
She stood up and walked closer to him. He sat there on the piano bench until she was within arm’s reach. Then he reached out quickly and put his hands on her hips, and dipped his head so that the top of his head lay on her belly.
What an awkward embrace. She put one hand in his hair and one on his shoulder. The hand in his hair stroked along his scalp. He sighed long and loud and drew her even closer. He lifted his head ever so slightly so that his forehead was now on her stomach.
“Sophie,” he groaned, the sound vibrating within him.
Sophia impulsively dropped to her knees in front of him. “Ashley,” she said as she laid her elbows on his knees and looked at him. He was hurting. She knew it. But she didn’t know how to fix it. “I would like to hug you,” she said with a smile. “In fact, I would enjoy it immensely.”
He shot up quickly from his seat, wrapping his arms around her at the same time as he stood. He nearly lifted her from the ground as he set her on her feet and drew her to him. She fell into him as though she was meant to be there. Her head tucked just beneath his chin as she wound her arms around his waist. She turned her face so that her cheek lay above his heart. She listened to its beat and felt the slow, steady breaths he took in. Only his breaths were not slow and steady. They were quick and tortured. She looked up at him.
“You ask too much of me,” he groaned, swiping a hand through his hair in what might be agitation. She couldn’t be sure.
“A hug is too much?” she asked hesitantly.
“I made you a promise the last time you were here.”
She wracked her brain, trying to remember a promise. “I don’t recall.” She pulled back from their embrace to look up at him.
“I promised that the next time you found your way to my room in the middle of the night, I would kiss you.” He tilted her chin up gently with his crooked finger. His blue eyes were dark and stormy, clouded by something she didn’t fully understand.