Ross could not restrain a burst of laughter. “You just said that was my own concern!”
“Well, yes, but I am your mother, and I have a right to know if you have taken an interest in someone.”
He grinned at her avid curiosity. “I admit to nothing.”
“Ross,” she protested. She rolled her eyes and smiled. “Well, it has been a long time since I have heard you laugh. I was beginning to think you had forgotten how. But really, dear… a servant? When you could have your pick of all the well-bred heiresses in England?”
Ross met her gaze directly, aware that the very idea of marrying a member of one’s household staff was considered an appalling social transgression. Sexual liaisons with servants were acceptable, but a gentleman would never marry one. Ross did not give a damn. Years of interacting with everyone from royalty to the poverty-stricken had shown him that the class consciousness of his own society was sheer hypocrisy. He had seen that noblemen were capable of committing foul crimes, and that even the lowest street scavengers sometimes behaved with honor.
“Miss Sydney is a viscount’s daughter,” he told his mother. “Though I wouldn’t care if her father had been a rag seller.”
His mother made a face. “I fear that working so long at Bow Street has given you some rather democratic sensibilities.” Clearly, the remark was not intended as a compliment. “However… a viscount’s daughter? One could do worse, I suppose.”
“You’re making assumptions, Mother,” Ross said dryly. “I haven’t said that I have any intentions toward her.”
“But you do,” she returned smugly. “A mother knows these things. Now, tell me how a young woman of supposedly good blood has come to work at Bow Street.”
His eyebrows arched into sardonic crescents. “Aren’t you going to ask about my wound?”
“I vow to give you another wound if you do not tell me more about Miss Sydney!”
Chapter 7
Sophia did not come to Ross’s room for several hours after his mother and brother had left. He fretted impatiently, wondering what menial tasks took precedence over him. She sent Lucie upstairs with his supper tray and medicine, as well as some reading materials to divert him. However, he had no appetite, and his head had begun to hurt. As the sun set and the walls darkened, Ross tossed and turned in the stuffy room. He was dry and hot and he ached everywhere, especially in his shoulder. Most maddening of all, he felt isolated. The rest of the world was carrying on without him, while he was confined to a sickbed. Awkwardly he stripped off his nightshirt and lay with the sheets pulled up to his waist, stewing in annoyance.
By the time Sophia appeared at the hour of eight, Ross was surly and exhausted, lying facedown on the mattress despite the pain it caused him.
“Sir Ross?” She turned up the lamp a bit. “Are you asleep? I’ve come to change your bandage.”
“No, I’m not asleep,” he grumbled. “I’m hot and my shoulder aches, and I’m tired of lying in this accursed bed.”
She leaned over and felt his forehead. “Still feverish. Here, let me turn you over. No wonder your shoulder hurts, when you are resting on it like that.” Her slender but strong arms helped him to lift up. Ross flopped over with a disgruntled sound, the sheets slipping down to his hips. Keeping an arm behind his neck, Sophia brought a glass to his lips, and he drank the cold, sweetened barley water in gulps. Her fresh scent seemed to cut through the stale atmosphere of the room.
“Who closed the windows?” she asked.
“My mother did. She says the outside air is bad for a fever.”
“I don’t think the night air will do you any harm.” She went to open the windows and admit a refreshing breeze.
Ross leaned back against the pillows, relishing the relief from the stifling sickroom climate. “You’ve been gone all day,” he said testily. He pulled the bed linens back up to his chest, wondering if she realized that he was naked beneath. “What have you been doing?”
“The girls and I cleaned the kitchen range and flues, and blackened the ironwork, and then we did some laundering and mending. Then I spent the rest of the afternoon making currant jam with Eliza.”
“Let Eliza take care of those things tomorrow. You stay with me.”
“Yes, sir,” Sophia murmured, smiling at his autocratic tone. “If you wanted my company, you had only to ask.”
Ross scowled and remained silent as she changed the dressing on his shoulder. His aggravation was soothed by the sight of Sophia’s serene face, the dark lashes screening her blue eyes as she concentrated on her task. Remembering the sweet fire of her response, Ross felt a glow of triumph. Despite her fears, she had been willing to let him make love to her. He would not press the issue now, not until he was well again. But then… oh, then…
Sophia finished tying the ends of the bandage and dipped a cloth into a bowl of water. “No signs of festering,” she said, wringing out the cloth. “I think the wound is healing. Perhaps your fever will break soon, and then you will be more comfortable.”
The cool cloth moved over his hot face and forehead. A breeze from the window fanned across his damp skin, making him shiver in enjoyment. “Are you cold?” came Sophia’s gentle voice.
Ross shook his head, his eyes closed. “No,” he whispered. “Don’t stop. That feels good.”
She moistened the cloth again. He let out a slow breath while the coolness glided over his throat and chest. How long had it been since anyone had taken care of him? He couldn’t remember. Steeped in gratitude, he listened to Sophia’s lilting voice as she hummed a tune. “Do you know the words to that?” he asked drowsily.
“Some of them.”
“Sing them to me.”
“My voice is not distinguished,” she said. “You will be sadly disappointed if you expect anything beyond the mediocre.”
He caught at the slim fingers on his chest. “You could never disappoint me.”
Sophia was silent for a long time, her fingers unmoving beneath his. Eventually she sang in a kind of melodic, tranquilizing whisper.
When I have found out my true love and delight I’ll welcome him kindly by day or by night; For the bells shall be a-ringing, and the drums make a noise To welcome my true love with ten thousand joys
When Sophia fell silent, Ross opened his eyes and saw that she wore a bittersweet expression, as if she were thinking of past heartbreak. Equal parts of jealousy and concern coiled inside him, and he searched for a way to jolt her from the mournful memories. “You’re right,” he said. “Your voice is not distinguished.” He smiled as she adopted a threatening scowl. “But I like it very much,” he added.
Sophia laid the damp cloth on his forehead. “Now it is your turn to entertain me” she said impishly. “You may begin at any time.”
“I can’t sing.”
“Ah, well. I didn’t expect you could, with a voice like yours.”
“What is wrong with my voice?”
“It’s gravelly. No one would expect you to possess a golden baritone.” She laughed gently as she saw his disgruntlement. She slipped her hand beneath his neck and brought the glass of barley water to his lips. “Here, drink some more.”
He drank the sickroom distillation with a grimace. “I haven’t had barley water in years,” he said.
“Eliza says you are never ill.” Sophia set the glass aside. “In fact, most of the runners are amazed that you were wounded. They seem to think that mere bullets should have bounced off you like raindrops.”
Ross smiled ruefully. “I’ve never claimed to be superhuman.”
“Nevertheless, they all believe you to be so.” She watched him closely as she continued. “Above human needs and weaknesses. Invulnerable.”
They were both still, their gazes intricately locked, and Ross understood suddenly that she was asking some kind of question. “I’m not,” he finally said. “I do have needs. And weaknesses.”
Sophia’s gaze lowered to the counterpane, and she smoothed away a wrinkle of fabric with great c
are. “But you don’t give in to them.”
He caught her fingers in his, drawing his thumb over the velvety surface of her short nails. “What do you want to know, Sophia?”
Her lashes swept upward. “Why have you not married since your wife passed away? It has been a long time. And you are still relatively young.”
“Relatively?” he repeated with a scowl.
She smiled. “Tell me why you are called the Monk of Bow Street when you could so readily find someone to marry.”
“I didn’t want to marry again. I’ve managed well enough on my own.”
“Did you love your wife?” she asked.
“Eleanor was easy to love.” Ross tried to summon the image of his wife, her delicate, pale face, her silken blond hair. But it seemed that he had known her in another lifetime. With surprise, he realized that Eleanor was not quite real to him anymore. “She was refined… intelligent… very kind. She never spoke harshly of anyone.” A reminiscent smile touched his lips. “Eleanor hated to hear anyone curse. She worked diligently to cure me of the habit.”
“She must have been a special woman.”
“Yes,” he agreed. “But Eleanor was physically fragile—unusually so. In fact, her family did not want her to marry at all.”
“Not ever? Why?”
“Eleanor became ill very easily. After I took her driving through the park one autumn afternoon, she caught a chill and had to rest in bed for a week. Her constitution was frail. Her parents were concerned that she would be overtaxed by the demands of marriage, not to mention my husbandly attentions. They feared that pregnancy might kill her.” Guilt thickened his voice as he continued. “I managed to persuade them that I would protect Eleanor, and that no harm would ever befall her.” Ross did not look at Sophia as she turned the cloth on his forehead. “We were happy for almost four years. We thought that she was infertile, because she never conceived. I was actually relieved by the idea.”
“You did not want to have a child?”
“It did not matter to me. All I wanted was for Eleanor to be healthy and safe. But one day she told me that she was expecting. She was overjoyed at the news. She said that she had never felt so well. And so I convinced myself that she and the baby would be fine.”
Ross stopped speaking, too troubled to continue. Any mention of Eleanor was unbearably difficult and private. Yet he did not want to withhold any part of his past from Sophia.
“What happened?” she whispered.
Ross felt something unlocking in his head. All his rigid self-control seemed to have dissolved. He began to tell her the things he had never confessed to anyone—he found it impossible to hold anything back from her.
“The day her labor pains began, I knew that something was wrong. Eleanor didn’t bear the pain well. She became too weak to push. The labor lasted twenty-four hours, and as the second day began… God, it was a hellish nightmare. I sent for more doctors, and all four of them argued about what should be done for my wife. She was in hideous pain—she begged me to help her. I would have done anything. Anything.” He wasn’t aware that his fists were clenched until he felt Sophia’s hands rub softly over the backs of them, soothing the knotted muscles and cords. “The only thing the doctors could agree on was that the baby was too large. I had to make a choice… Of course I told them to save Eleanor… but that meant they had to—” He broke off, his breath catching. It was impossible for him to tell her what they had done next. There were no words. “There was so much blood. Eleanor screamed and begged me to stop them. She wanted to die, give the baby a chance to live, but I couldn’t let her go. And so they both…” Ross paused and fought to control his choppy breathing.
There was no movement or sound from Sophia. He thought that he had disgusted her, had said too much. She must be horrified.
“I made the wrong choice,” he muttered. “They both died because of it.” The coolness of the room, so enjoyable before, now made him shiver. He was numb, sick, frozen.
The cloth was removed from his forehead, and Sophia stroked his face. “It wasn’t your fault,” she said. “Surely you know that.”
Clearly, she didn’t understand the whole of the story. Ross tried to make her see the depth of his selfishness. “I shouldn’t have married Eleanor. She would still be alive if I had left her alone.”
“You don’t know that for certain. But if that is true, and you had never married her, what would her life have been like? Cocooned, kept away from the world, unfulfilled, unloved.” Sophia drew the covers higher around him and went to fetch a blanket from the bottom drawer of the dresser. She laid the weight of the quilted fabric over him and resumed her seat by the bed. “You did not force Eleanor to marry you. I am certain that she understood the chance she was taking. But the risk was worth it to Eleanor, because for the time that you were married, she was happy and loved. She lived as she wished to. Surely she would not wish you to blame yourself for what happened.”
“It does not matter that she wouldn’t have blamed me,” he said gruffly. “I know where the fault lies—directly with me.”
“Naturally you would think so,” came Sophia’s wry response. “You seem to believe that you are omnipotent, and that everything good and bad should be attributed to you. How difficult it must be for you to accept that some things are simply beyond your influence.”
Her tender mockery was curiously comforting. As Ross stared into her eyes, he was conscious of an encroaching sense of relief. Although he didn’t want to accept the feeling, he couldn’t quite dismiss it.
“You are just a man, after all,” she added. “Not some godlike being.”
Just a man.
Of course he knew that. However, it wasn’t until this moment that Ross acknowledged the burden he had felt to convince the entire world otherwise. He had done everything humanly possible to prove that he was invulnerable, and for the most part, he had succeeded. It was nearly a requirement of his position. People wanted to believe that the Chief Magistrate of Bow Street was all-powerful; they wanted to know that while they rested in their beds at night, he was working ceaselessly to protect them. And for years Ross had lived in isolation as a result. No one truly knew or understood him. But for the first time in his adult life, he had found someone who did not regard him with awe. She treated him as if he were an ordinary man.
Sophia left the bedside and moved about the room, quietly straightening articles on the washstand, folding discarded cloths and towels. Ross watched her with predatory intensity, thinking of what he would do to her, with her, when he had recovered his strength. Surely she had no idea about the turn of his thoughts, or she would not be quite so calm.
Chapter 8
“You are a terrible patient,” Sophia exclaimed when she saw that Ross was dressed and out of bed. “Dr. Linley said that you should stay abed at least another day.”
“He doesn’t know everything,” Ross replied, working his feet into his shoes.
“Neither do you!” Exasperated and worried, she followed his movements as he went to his dresser and searched in the top drawer for a fresh cravat. “What are you planning to do?”
“I’m going to my office for an hour or so.”
“No doubt you’ll spend the entire day working!” In the past four days since Ross had been shot, it had been increasingly difficult for Sophia to make him rest. As his strength returned and his shoulder mended, he wanted to resume his usual breakneck pace. To keep him still, Sophia had brought piles of paperwork from his office, and had taken reams of notes while he dictated in bed, or in a chair by the hearth. She had served his meals and spent hours reading to him. Often she watched over him while he dozed, her gaze taking in every detail of his sleep-softened face, the way his hair tumbled onto his forehead, the relaxed lines of his mouth.
Sophia had become familiar with his scent, how his throat moved when he drank his coffee, the dense texture of his muscles beneath her fingers as she changed his wound dressing. The bristle of his jaw before he shaved. Th
e rusty catch of his laughter, as if he were not used to making the sound. The way his black hair sprang in unruly waves before he brushed them smooth each morning. The way he surprised her with kisses when she collected his tray or straightened the pillows behind him… kisses like dark, sweet conspiracies, his hands gripping her with gentle insistence.
And instead of denying him, she responded with abandon.
To Sophia’s shame, she had begun to have lurid fantasies about him. One night she had dreamed that she climbed into Ross’s bed and laid her naked body full-length against his. She had awakened to discover that her sheets were damp with perspiration, her heart was thumping, and the place between her legs was alive with sensation. For the first time in her life, she had put her fingers to that throbbing peak and stroked gently. Delight shot through her loins as she imagined that Ross was touching her again, his mouth tugging at her breast, his fingers working skillfully between her thighs. Steeped in shame and guilt, she continued to stimulate herself, discovering that the more she rubbed, the sharper the pleasure became, until it ended in a wash of heat that drew a shaken moan from her lips.
Rolling onto her stomach, Sophia lay there dazed and puzzled. The feeling ebbed and her body became pleasantly heavy, and she wondered how she could face Ross the next day. She had never known such a feeling, a physical need that was alarming in its urgency.
In addition to her sexual attraction to Ross, Sophia felt an inescapable liking for him. She was fascinated by the quirks of his character. When confronted with an unpleasant duty, he did not try to avoid it, but instead threw himself into it with singular determination. Duty meant everything to him. If called on to wear a hair shirt for the sake of his dependents, he would have donned one without question.
She was amused by the fact that although Ross never lied, he shaded the truth to suit his purposes. If he ever raised his voice, for example, he asserted that he was not shouting but being “emphatic.” He denied being stubborn and instead described himself as “firm.” Neither was he dominating, only “decisive.” Sophia laughed outright at his claims and discovered, to her delight, that he was not certain how to react. He was not a man whom anyone dared to tease, and Sophia sensed his cautious enjoyment of her baiting.