Page 58

Her hand stilled. A blot of ink fell onto me, as if to rectify the lie.

She had once been comfortable with the Darneys. With the entire village. She had known every smiling face, remembered to ask after the expectant mothers and take hot meals to the households that fell ill. Even when Belmaine Hall’s renovations were completed and the St. Quintons moved out of their cottage, Sophie and Edmund had made frequent trips into town to socialize.

She continued going alone, after he ran off to the naval academy. Continued still, after he sailed out. She stopped only after his death. The condolences, the glossy eyes, the hand presses—all well-intentioned—had crushed her broken heart into even smaller shards. It was easier to stay stowed away in that big old house with her parents, where everyone ached and pretended they didn’t.

But now she had missed out on a great deal of her friends’ lives. To write to them suddenly, feigning wellbeing and asking for favors … Well, it felt selfish.

Selfish.

Favors.

She shuddered. Destroyed both written lines with ink, placed her elbows on the desk, and let her head sag into her hands. It was Edmund she wanted to talk to.

Some days she dwelled on memories of him; other days she lamented everything that had changed, all that had been lost, every person who smiled and went on and no longer spoke of him. But the sickest, most helpless feeling of all was this one:

Just missing him. Not missing the past or the months or who she used to be, but an undiluted panic that he was gone. Not here. Never here.

A tear landed on the page, emulsifying the wet ink into black sludge. She swiped at her eyes with the backs of her hands.

If Edmund were here, he would have something shockingly amusing to say about how jealous his sister had been of Miss Penney in the park this morning. He would have mimicked Mama’s expressions as she upbraided Sophie, and made the scold feel lighter.

Instead, Sophie alone had tried to dissolve the tension between herself and her mother at dinner. She had forced herself to make small talk about the upcoming concerts and races, and to smile when Mama mentioned Lord Hansbury—again.

Her parents were permitted to manage her with teeth. She’d been hinting at her desire for their autocracy before they had even left Sussex. Her sacrifice would feel more true, if they guided her path.

If she ended up marrying this Lord Hansbury fellow, well, he sounded like the sort of man to not give a whit what his wife did with her time. She had heard tales of his debauchery, yes, but also of his carelessness. Over five hundred guineas, lost on a horse race this spring. A man like that, the wife of a man like that, might do anything.

She might be a philanthropic force among London’s charities while he caroused through the city with different women. He might not care if she invested in a larger school for the Royal Hospital for Seamen, so that the men as well as the children might receive an education. He might scarcely notice if she took one particular child under her care entirely.

There might not be happiness in such a life, but purpose, certainly. If only her innards did not roil at the thought. Her, with him, and Mr. Balfour with …

Anyone but herself.

“No,” she whispered hoarsely. “No. Don’t think that.”

It was not a travesty. They were not Dido and Aeneas, betraying love in the name of duty. They had been perfectly open about what they wanted from their futures.

She clamped her teeth into her lower lip. They still had to see one another. She was walking two paths, and it was the reckless one, the one that lived for the darkness, that had connected her to Barnard.

That child was worth slipping around for, and, yes, even worth the dear price of having to squirm in Mr. Balfour’s presence some more.

sixteen

“You need to hurry it along.” Thomas’s voice was a deep scrape, the kind of cut that usually shut Rafe within himself. But today, emotions ran high.

He had awoken to blistering dreams of Sophie, his right hand now permanently insufficient to soothe the ache since he had kissed her, held her, pleasured her. The sweaty dawn hour in his bedchamber would have been enough to unseat his day, but then his father had saddled him with the worst variety of surprise: an impromptu outing with the Penneys. And then …

He could still see the rage burning in her copper eyes. God, she wanted to kill him! Probably thought he’d lain with her in that hall last night, all the while intending to court Veronica Penney today. Beneath it all was his own ugly jealousy, spurred onward by the determined purse of her mouth when she had spoken of Lord Hansbury.

That tenacity, that vibrant, deeply intellectual beauty, could win any man in under a minute. Even a marquess, who, by all accounts, was soon to be a godforsaken duke. The perfect sort of husband for the elder St. Quintons’ ambitions.

“Did you pay no notice to how the chit looks at you?” Thomas’s heel scraped as he turned by the front door of the townhouse. Delightful, this. It had been going on for minutes now, the hulking, bellowing man pacing from door to marble-top table, again and again, screeching criticisms loud enough to wake all of Berkeley Square’s residents.

“How could I fail to notice?” Rafe asked flatly. He leant against the door casing, legs crossed at the ankles and head bowed. He made a silent study of his fingernails, irritated by the minute variations in length. “But that’s all the more reason to not rush into a proposal. She loathes me.”

Thomas stopped before him. His eyes were wild, somehow huge even surrounded by so much sagging flesh, and the frigid blue seeped through Rafe’s clothes. “And it’s no wonder! Why shouldn’t she loathe you, when you seldom try at all?”

“I offered her my arm.” He forced himself to hold that gaze. Belittling oneself only fueled Thomas’s rage, made him hungry for more. “She refused it.”