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“Decide what?”
“You came here for advice, didn’t you? Or was it distraction?”
“Both,” Jeremy answered quickly.
“Then I’ll distract you soon enough. There’s a shoot today, if you wish to go?”
“Yes. That will do.” Jeremy nodded firmly.
Perhaps this is all I need, the chance to think of something else other than Sophia for a while.
“In the meantime, I’ll give you that advice.” Stephen turned back to look at Jeremy. “Decide if what you feel for Lady Elkins is addiction, or if it’s love. Because if it’s the latter…” Stephen paused and took a deep sigh, as if a thought pained him. “Then I do not understand why any man would turn his back on it.”
I do.
Jeremy kept the thought to himself. He had been down that road before and felt the pain of it. Why would he willingly place himself in such danger again? He would be a fool if he let his heart run away with him. He would be a man walking into the firing line of a gun.
“Now, how about that shoot? There are many pheasants about at the moment I am told,” Stephen offered, walking toward the door.
“Lead on.” Jeremy followed on behind him.
* * *
Sophia stepped down from the carriage. She had asked Jeremy’s butler to prepare it for her that morning and he had done so without hesitation. Now, she stopped on the very corner of her street, glancing back and forth, wary of anyone looking her way.
The road was relatively empty. There were a few early milk maids around, gone to collect the morning milk, and a couple of grocer boys too, making deliveries to the back doors of houses, yet they were all much too concerned with their own business to glance her way.
Relieved to see there was no one from the ton about at this time in the morning, Sophia hurried toward the house.
I must get inside, quickly. With a little luck, I can make it to my chamber without seeing Nick!
As she hurried forward, pulling up the maid’s cloak around her head to hide her features, she chewed her lip and fidgeted with her hands. An anxiousness had taken over her body since leaving Jeremy that morning. Strangely, it had little to do with the prospect of seeing Nick again and incurring his anger. It had everything to do with parting from Jeremy’s side and fearing never being with him in such a way again.
As Sophia stepped through the gate to the drive, she slipped through the trees, hoping to approach the house at an odd angle and enter through a side door. As she walked, the branches of the trees brushed against her arms reminding her of Jeremy’s touches in the night.
When she had woken that morning, she had longed to reach for Jeremy. She wishes to kiss him, to roll their bodies together, to make love to him again as she had done the night before. Yet… she had done none of it. She had sat beside him on the bed, watching as he slept peacefully, his occasional snore amusing her and pulling a smile from her lips.
In that moment, he had felt out of bounds to her, forbidden, and nothing had made her sadder.
Rachel was wrong when she talked about the fleeting excitement and thrill of a lover. No, a true lover, is one you struggle to leave.
She had climbed out of Jeremy’s bed very slowly after that thought and changed. Having already found it hard to part from his side, she didn’t wake him before she left. She was too fearful of what they were would say to each other. How could she part from Jeremy and tell him it was the last thing she wanted to do? How could she walk out of his house with him watching her with those eyes that pierced her, when she could remember how those eyes had looked at her as they had made love?
When Sophia reached the tree line, she tried to push away her whirring thoughts of Jeremy. She turned her eyes on the windows instead, flicking between the panes of glass to see if anyone was awake.
In the small windows that overlooked the servants’ quarters, she could see a few were awake, no doubt hurrying toward the kitchen to prepare breakfast for the day. Curtains were pulled across most windows, though, including Nick’s in the top recesses of the house. Sighing with relief, Sophia crept across the estate.
The dewy grass was damp under foot, making her boots glisten with droplets of water. That grass swished as she moved through it, lifting her hem over the worst of the dew, before brushing past cut back rose bushes to reach the side door.
With one nervous hand on the door handle, she pressed down, holding her breath to see if it was unlocked. With relief, she found the door open. Sighing, she stepped inside, out of the chill.
In the corridor, the cold dropped, and the wind no longer bristled her cloak. There was silence, and an eerie sort of quiet in the house. With the servants’ rooms so far away, their murmurs could not be heard.
Sophia tiptoed through the corridor, hurrying to another, doing her best to walk on her tiptoes, out of fear that the soft patters of her feet were comparatively loud in the silence. She only got so far before she realized that she was leaving damp footprints behind her on the long rug.
Cursing under her breath, she reached for a nearby cupboard and pulled out a towel, then she returned to where she had come in and dried the footprints, along with her boots, before she could make any more stains. Once all was done, she hid the towel under her cloak and crept forward once again.
Perhaps I have gotten away with this, after all?
She crept into the second corridor and reached for the staircase. In this room, there was little light. Though the sun had risen it was on the other side of the house, and that orange light hadn’t yet filtered in through all of the windows. The effect was a staircase cast in shadows, with the occasional beam of faint yellow light streaking the darkness.
Sophia’s first step on the staircase creaked. She paused, holding her breath, waiting to see if Nick would emerge, but no sound followed. Breathing deeply, Sophia climbed a few more steps. She only took two more when she heard a noise further up the staircase that froze her to the spot with one hand clutching at the wool of her cloak, and the other at the banister.
In the shadows above her, she saw a light emerge. Someone had lit a match from a vesta case and was lighting a pipe. The dark orange flame hovered for a second, before smoke plumed out of the pipe. That light revealed the very face Sophia had been trying to avoid.
“Good morning, Sophia.”
