Page 89

“And how,” she asked tensely, “will you go about it?”

“I don’t know.”

She stood abruptly, nearly taking the brush, which was mid-stroke, with her. Three strides saw her to the dressing table. Two swift jerks covered her body with a shapeless dressing robe. One look told him all.

“Now, Sophie,” he said, putting out a staying hand, “don’t be angry with me.”

“Do not tell me how to feel.” Her hands made tight fists at her sides. “I never took you for prideful, but I see now that you must be.”

“What?”

“You could solve all this with a single choice, but instead, you must take the very masculine, very honorable path, and attempt to solve all of England’s problems instead.”

Rafe stood. His jaw was tight, and he hoped it stayed that way. A proper clamp for his writhing tongue. “I am only seeing to problems that affect myself and that of my parents.” He wasn’t looking at her, but shaking out his trousers and pushing his left foot through them.

“All you would have to do is call on my father in the morning. Tell him what’s happened between us, make him see that no alternative exists but to grant us permission to marry. With my dowry, we could solve the entirety of this nightmare.”

She took a few, pacing steps. Her bare feet passed him on the carpet, right beside the place where his shirt lay. He snatched it up.

“You’d have no need to worry about work,” she said. “We could let a nice place for ourselves and Barnard, make arrangements for your mother. You say she has need of a new nurse, we could employ two.”

The angry plodding of her feet put a pain in his temples. He crammed his arms through his shirtsleeves and caught her by the shoulders when she passed. “Stop.”

Her eyes narrowed, the mouth that had kissed him time and time again curling into a snarl. “You refuse to listen to reason. Why?”

“This isn’t reason. It’s a plan of cowardice.” He shook her gently. Begging. “This ‘nightmare’?” The word turned ugly on the tip of his tongue, almost as unbecoming spoken as heard passing from her lips. “Is my life. It has been, for a good many years before you met me. I don’t put it to bed if I take your path, I just make myself an unforgivable lummox who can’t face his own damned crises.”

“And what do you gain, precisely, from going about it your way?” She pushed against his chest, setting her arms free. “You could get hurt, Rafe. You could be injured and never return.”

He tucked his shirt in. “Better to die a man than live a coddled fool.”

A sharp shove made him stumble on his feet. He caught himself by the bedpost, the red tassels on the bed hangings rattling over his head.

Sophie pursued him, stalking toward him like a beast after its prey. Her eyes were wild, painted in glass and venom. “You beast. How dare you say that? To me?”

Her voice trembled. The only other time he had seen her like this … Her brother. Of course. What a bloody fool he was.

“Sophie, I didn’t mean—” His outstretched hand was sidestepped cleanly.

“You did mean it. You mean it still.” She swiped roughly at her eyes and turned away. “For that, I have nothing else to say to you.”

He was finding, again, that his beloved concept—freedom of choice—was seldom pleasant. He pulled his boots on, barely settling his heels in them before going to the half open window. Cold air sieved in, piercing his skin through the thin linen shirt.

“I’ll call on you when I return, then.”

“Please, do that,” she snapped, and he felt her eyes between his shoulder blades like two serrated blades, but he did not turn. “But don’t go expecting me to wait for you. I’ve heard that promise before, you see, and believing it near to killed me.”

His hand dropped from the window ledge and he spun around. “Sophie, please—”

“Good night, Rafe.” Her voice was high and stern, with about as much yield as the heartwood of an oak tree.

“Fine.” He clapped his palms together. “You wish to command how this goes? Very well.” He hoisted his right leg out the window, the damp cold of night racing up his trouser leg. “Who’s without reason now, Sophie?”

The last thing he saw, before twining his hands in the vines of ivy and scaling down to the garden, was the sharp set of her back.

twenty-five

Dawn bled onto the carpets. Rafe could not withstand the silent eeriness of his father’s townhome any longer. It crawled with specters: The veil of apprehension that never lifted. The black shadow of threatened violence. The imaginary and ever-tightening noose of being a disappointment, less than a son, because he was not enough.