Valerian closed his eyes for a moment. It had been a rash suggestion, one prompted by his own inner devil and his desire to at least make verbal love to her. If he kept that promise, he’d be the one to pay the price. “Don’t you think you should leave that for Captain Melbourne?” he suggested. I’ll cut off his balls first, he thought.
Sophie wrinkled her pretty little nose in distaste. “I don’t think so. Somehow the idea of procreating with the captain is very … ridiculous. I can’t imagine him taking off his perfect Hessians.”
“He probably wouldn’t,” Valerian muttered.
Sophie looked at him in shock. “He wouldn’t? But how … But why …?”
“Come with me, my love,” Valerian said soothingly, “and I’ll tell you all about it.”
A combination of fascination and trepidation showed in her wide blue eyes. “Is it as horrid as Mother said?”
He had a momentary longing to throttle Sophie’s stern mother as well. “It depends on whether you end up with Captain Melbourne,” he said, “or with someone you can’t resist.”
Sophie giggled. “A man I can’t resist? I can’t imagine such a thing.”
He smoothed his hand over hers, keeping his touch light. “You’d be surprised, dear child. You’d be surprised.”
It was a beautiful day. The sun sparkled on the water in the harbor, the sky was a perfect blue, and Sophie de Quincey was by his side as they left the library and ambled down to the shore. A man couldn’t ask for much more, Valerian thought. Unless it was to be wearing breeches instead of a bloody day dress!
Sophie was looking out over the sea with a dreamy look in her eye. “Someday,” she said, “I’d like to run away from everything. Just get on a ship and sail away, with no one to stop me, no one to ask me questions, no one to lecture me about my duty to society.”
“Odd,” he said in a deliberately light voice, “I never would have thought you’d be the type with wanderlust.”
“Actually, I’m not,” she said. “I love the sea, but I’d just as soon see it from the window of a house on solid ground, rather than from a ship. I’m just feeling restless.” She gave him an impish smile. “Better now that you’re back, though.”
“Perhaps you should marry Captain Melbourne after all,” he said. “How old are you? Seventeen? Eighteen? There’s a reason why women marry so young.”
“Because they get restless?” Sophie supplied. “Is that why you married?”
“Let’s not talk about me,” Val said, sick of spinning lies. “Let’s plan your future instead. Much more exciting. Mine is already set in stone.”
“In stone? I wouldn’t have thought Mr. Ramsey would be quite so stubborn.”
“He is, dear friend, he is,” Val said grimly. “So we have Captain Melbourne applying for your hand. He’s very handsome, of course, though perhaps a trifle large.”
“Not as large as your husband,” Sophie pointed out.
“But you’re not as large as I am,” Val returned. “Other than that, your Captain Melbourne seems a pleasant enough fellow.”
“He’s not my Captain Melbourne. Not yet, at least,” she added truthfully. “He has other advantages. He lives in the Lake District. Far, far away from my parents.”
“Always a point in a future husband’s favor,” Val agreed politely. “Does he hunt?”
“Excessively.”
“Oh, dear.”
“And he’s very fond of his dogs.”
“Is that a point for him or against him?” Val inquired.
“I’m not quite sure. He tells me he’s a simple man, and I believe that’s what I want. I want to live in the country, and have a dozen babies, and put up jellies and jams and count my linens and tend my flowers.”
“Sounds idyllic. And Captain Melbourne would give you all those things, and then be so busy hunting he wouldn’t bother you,” he said, cursing himself for his honesty.
“Yes,” she said in a gloomy voice. “But when I conjure up that rosy picture, I simply can’t see Captain Melbourne beside me.”
“Well, perhaps he’d be amenable to breaking his neck once he got around to fathering those dozen children.”
Sophie giggled. “Life is seldom so opportune.”
“I suppose not,” Val said with a sigh.
“But if it was, perhaps your husband could continue without you on his travels, and you could come and stay with me. The Lake District is quite beautiful, you know.”
“I know,” Val said mournfully. “But I don’t think you can count on life taking such a convenient turn, dear girl. I expect I’ll be following Mr. Ramsey into the wilds. And I expect your husband will live to a ripe old age, and probably wear you out with your bearing all those children.”
“Nonsense,” she said. “I’m young and strong and healthy. I don’t intend to become some frail female who gives up the ghost the moment she starts increasing. I have every intention of living to be ancient.”
He looked at her fresh young face, her glowing eyes and soft, crushable mouth, and he smiled, feeling ancient himself. “I believe you can do just about anything you choose to do.”
“So tell me, dear Valerie,” Sophie said with a winning smile, seating herself on a large rock with a careless disregard for her pale muslin dress, “if Captain Melbourne won’t do, whom should I marry?”
He glanced at her. He didn’t have as many dresses to spare—having gowns tailored to his almost six-foot-tall frame was a difficult matter, and Phelan would likely complain loud and long if he destroyed his current toilette.
The hell with Phelan. He seated himself beside Sophie on the large rock. They were down at the edge of the strand, and all the bustle in town was conveniently distant. People might watch them, but no one would hear what he said to her. He could be as indecent as he dared. And he was in a wild, daring mood.
“I didn’t say you shouldn’t marry Captain Melbourne,” he said with great reasonableness.
“You think I should wait for someone with passion.”
“Did I say that?”
“Not in so many words. But I honor myself with thinking that I know you fairly well, even in such a short time, and you think it would be sadly tame of me to take such a poor way out. You probably think a bucolic life such as I described to be utter torment.”
“Not at all,” he said. “There are times when I’d love nothing more than a quiet farm by a lake, with sheep and cattle and the affairs of nature, not the affairs of man, keeping me busy. Though I tend to prefer Yorkshire to the Lake District.”
“I love Yorkshire as well,” Sophie exclaimed. “I knew we were well suited.”
“Unfortunately, I’m already married,” he said wryly.
She laughed, that glorious, warm laugh that was such torment to him. “True,” she said. “And you are unequipped to give me children.” She blushed slightly at her shocking statement.
At that moment he didn’t know which was stronger, his pride or his passion. He wanted to throw caution and sanity to the winds, drag her off someplace private, and show her just how well equipped he was, at that very moment, to give her things she hadn’t even dreamed about.
Self-preservation didn’t stop him. It was the smiling trust in her blue eyes. No matter how much he wanted her, how much he hated this masquerade, he couldn’t make her pay the price. And it might be the same price his mother had paid, twenty-five years ago. He wouldn’t do that to the innocent young woman he’d been fool enough to fall in love with.
He had to settle for the dubious satisfaction of grinding his teeth. “I must warn you, dear Sophie, that if you choose the way of passion, life can sometimes be extremely uncomfortable. Perhaps you’d be better off with your captain.”
“Perhaps,” she murmured doubtfully. “While you were gone I was almost convinced.”
He glanced at her. “And now?”
“And now I’m not so certain. Tell me, do you feel passion for Mr. Ramsey?”
Her words startled him into a laugh.
“No,” he said shortly.
“Then why should I expect to get anything more?”
“Because you deserve more.”
“What exactly do I deserve?”
He wanted to tell her. Even more, he wanted to show her. His gloved hands gripped the rock beneath him, and he felt the thin leather split beneath the force. He managed a calm smile. “You deserve to be happy,” he said.
“I intend to be,” she said, kicking her legs out in front of her, and beneath the muslin gown he could see her ankles, neat, well turned, and unbearably erotic. If he ever had the chance to make love to her, he’d want to start with her ankles. And then work his way up, slowly, deliberately, until by the time he got to the top of her thighs …
He scrambled down from the rock with more haste than grace, stumbling slightly. “Let’s walk,” he said in a harsh tone that was slightly deeper than the one he usually affected.
“Are you all right?” she asked, sliding down the rock after him, so that he had no choice but to put out his hands to catch her, to hold her for a brief, torturous moment.
“Perfectly splendid,” he said between clenched teeth. “I just had a sudden longing for the sea.”
“We’ll walk,” she said, “and you can tell me what to do with Captain Melbourne.”
“I beg your pardon?” It was getting worse and worse, Val thought miserably.
“You’re a woman of the world. You understand far more than most people. If my husband is more interested in his dogs and his hunting than he is in me, what should I do about it?”
“If your husband is more interested in his dogs and hunting than in you, then he’s a lost cause,” Val said flatly. “And you shouldn’t marry him in the first place.”
She wasn’t to be deterred. “I could wear filmy clothes,” she mused. “Or perhaps nothing at all, except the baroque pearls my mother gave me on my come-out. They’re really too big for me, but they were my great-grandmother’s, and they’re awfully pretty. Have you seen them?”
“Yes,” he said. He’d seen the damned things, all right. Pearls the size of his thumbnail, a matched set of them clasped around her slender neck. She was right—they were too big for her. They overpowered her muslin gowns and demure neckline. With nothing but her creamy skin, she’d be perfect.
He tripped, cursed, and righted himself. “It sounds as if you’ve made up your mind,” he said in a cool voice.
“I have,” she said serenely. “I won’t marry him.”
Relief flooded him. “Why not? I thought you wanted the Lake District and a tolerant husband.”
“I want someone who loves me more than his dogs, and I don’t know if I can compete with a water spaniel,” she said with a small smile. “I think I’d best wait for your brother.”
“I’ll kill him,” Val muttered.
“You don’t want me to marry your twin either?” she asked, nonplussed.
For a moment Val didn’t have the faintest idea what she was talking about. And then it sank in. “Oh, my twin. Valerian? You haven’t even met him. The two of you might not hit it off.”
“Does he look like you?”
“As much as he possibly could, given that he’s a man,” Val said with complete truthfulness.
“And is he like you in nature?”
“He lies,” Val said flatly.
Sophie’s face fell. “Truly?”
“Truly,” Val said.
“Then I suppose I shan’t marry him either. I cannot abide being lied to. It’s the one thing I cannot forgive.”
Splendid, Val thought grimly. If he’d had any wild hope of a miracle happy ending, that faint possibility was now completely dashed.
“I think I shall be an eccentric,” Sophie said calmly. “If I can’t find the right man to marry, then I shan’t marry at all.”
“What about those half-dozen children?”
“Oh, I’ll have them anyway,” she said with a mischievous smile. “All by different fathers. My mother told me women are slaves to men and there was no reason for it. I can simply be an original.”
“Not as original as you might think,” Val said. “I thought your mother wanted you to marry Captain Melbourne.”
“I think she felt I could handle him. That he wouldn’t interfere with my pleasures.”
“She’s right in that. Most women seek a husband who doesn’t interfere with their whims. It always seemed a cold kind of future to me.”
“But I thought you and Mr. Ramsey lived separate lives,” Sophie said, her pretty brow wrinkled in confusion.
“We do. More’s the pity,” he said mendaciously. “I think you should hold out for the kind of true love you read about in novels. Where your heart pounds, your pulse races, your stomach churns, and you tremble and shake.”
“It sounds like the influenza to me,” Sophie said in a caustic tone. “Most unpleasant.”
“But worth it, my child. Definitely worth it,” he said with a sigh.
“Have you ever been in love, Val? And don’t fob me off with some story about Mr. Ramsey, because I won’t believe you. If ever there was a marriage of convenience, that one is it. Have you ever really loved someone?”
“Yes,” he said, looking at her.
“And it ended badly?” Her voice was soft with sympathy.
“Yes. It was bound to. I knew it was hopeless from the start.”
“Why? Love shouldn’t be hopeless!” she said with the passion of her eighteen years.
“He was a bastard. Ill-born, running away from a crime, without a penny, without a scrap of a future,” he said, watching her carefully to gauge her response.
“Did he ask you to go with him?”
“No, he wouldn’t. He had that much honor left to him. He didn’t ask. And I didn’t offer.”
“Then you mustn’t have really loved him,” she said in sturdy tones.
“You know nothing of the matter,” he said stiffly.
She took his big hands in her small ones, clinging tightly, and her expression was very fierce. “You mustn’t have really loved each other,” she said again, “because if you had, you would have seen it through. Love can conquer anything. I truly believe it.”
He looked down at her, at the soft, determined mouth, bright blue eyes, and cloud of golden-blond hair. “I only wish I could,” he said. “I only wish you could convince me.”
But he was older and wiser. And he knew there was no happy ending for them. No happy ending at all.
CHAPTER TEN
Sutter’s Head was still and silent as Juliette crept from the building. It was just before dawn, that cool, still time of morning, and the birds were singing their hearts out after their night of silence. The tide was coming in; Juliette could hear the rush of it along the sand, and the early morning mist caught in her hair, turning it into a mass of unruly curls.
She was running away. She’d had a stay of execution the day before, though she wasn’t quite certain why. She only knew her reprieve wouldn’t last long, and the sooner she escaped, the safer she’d be.
Phelan Romney hadn’t come near her once she had run from him. The name Mark-David Lemur had been enough to terrorize her, and he hadn’t bothered to pursue her, obviously thinking he’d cowed her.
Just the opposite. She’d always known she’d have to escape. The fact that he had learned the truth about her only made the escape more imperative. For all she knew, he’d take her back to her husband, probably pocketing a handsome reward.
No, he’d already claimed his reward. The diamond-and-pearl earbobs must have led him to her husband. And doubtless Romney would now lead her husband straight to her.
She’d rather die. She’d rather walk straight into the sea and have done with it than return to that man. And she would, if she were left with no other choice.
Everyone at Sutter’s Head was still sleeping. Valerian had returned late that night, a dark expression on his usually sunny face, and he’d disappeared into his room, taking a bottle of wine with him, a
nd hadn’t been seen again, according to Dulcie.
Phelan had dined in a solitary state, with Hannigan in attendance. Juliette had eaten in the kitchen, content to keep Dulcie company and listen to her prattle. All the while her mind was feverish with worry. When the night grew late and Romney still hadn’t demanded her presence, still hadn’t come for her, she told herself she should be relieved. Instead, her panic increased.
She hadn’t planned to sleep. She hadn’t dared, knowing that Phelan Romney had entered her room once before, knowing that locked doors and barred windows wouldn’t keep him out. She didn’t even make the attempt. It was a warm night, and without the fresh sea air filling the room, she felt stifled, strangled. She lay in her bed in the darkness, waiting for sleep, waiting for the early morning light so she would make her escape, waiting for the confrontation she dreaded. Not certain which she wanted to come first.
Sleep came first, claiming her weary body despite her misgivings. And then came the dreams.
The room was candlelit, haunted with shadows. Lemur usually came to her in darkness, wanting the night to cover his perverse deeds, but tonight was different. She was in bed, watching him, knowing there was no escape. When she tried to run, he hurt her, even more badly, and she knew her best chance lay in being perfectly still and compliant.
She watched him as he crossed the room. He’d always insisted she keep her eyes open so that he could see her hatred.
He was a handsome man. In his prime, without an ounce of extra fat around his middle. His brown hair was un-streaked with gray; his features were even, pleasant; his manner was kindly. He was a monster. She knew what he was going to make her do, and she choked at the thought, shielding the hatred from her eyes. She knew, to her sorrow, that her hatred excited him.
“Turn over,” he said in his soft, hushed voice.
She had no choice. He would try, and he would fail again. And then he would hurt her. It had happened so many times, she’d lost count.