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“No. But I do know right from wrong.”
“And I don’t?”
“Honestly, I don’t know, Jay. I don’t know you very well at all.”
Again, she said it completely seriously. And he realised that all the strange, blunt things she said weren’t mocking or cruel or even deliberately tactless. She was just saying exactly what she thought, as though she had no filter. It unnerved him.
Jay was someone who very much needed to be seen through a filter.
The housekeeper finally arrived with his beer. He drank a third of it in one go, then wished he hadn’t, because he had to suppress a small belch with the back of his hand. Sophia looked at him impassively.
“We really don’t know each other, do we?” he said, suddenly finding it strange, given they’d practically grown up as neighbours.
“We don’t quite move in the same circles.”
“Balls to that. Of course we do. Your aunt married a viscount or something, didn’t she? You’re a family friend of the Orton-Greys, which is more than we can claim. We’re barely even cousins, despite sharing half a name. They only tolerate us because it would make a scene if they didn’t. And obviously they’re toowell-bredfor that.”
She just watched him while he talked, then went back to fiddling with her dress. It was long, stopping mid-calf, a little higher now she had her legs crossed. Her ankles were the same golden tan as the rest of her. It didn’t look fake. She must sunbathe naked to be so evenly tanned everywhere. Or maybe she was just naturally golden.
She looked up enquiringly, and he realised he had fallen silent. So he started talking again.
“You know, of course, of the great feud between our families? Caused by my grandfather, who resented your grandfather for being a mere Major—an upstart no-one with no greater claim to nobility than having served our country in the war and won the Victoria Cross. Twice.”
He sipped his beer, getting into stride. He liked to talk, and he’d been stuck in the house alone for days. Not a single one of his so-called friends had visited or called or even messaged him.
“Whereas my esteemed forebear made his claim to eternal greatness through the original genius of being born. A feat which I, of course, managed to replicate, if you will allow me to brag.”
She looked at him quizzically and almost smiled. “You’re proud of that then?”
“Well, yes. My conception was the high point of my existence. It’s all been downhill from there.”
He continued quickly before her frown could turn into sympathetic platitudes. “Luckily my grandfather died twenty years ago, and my father has been too busy breaking my mother’s heart with a string of mistresses to properly keep up the enmity.”
“Like father, like son then.”
He laughed, becausethat, that had definitely been a deliberate jab. And she was smiling slightly to prove it. “Not at all,” he deadpanned. “I’m not married.”
“But you are very promiscuous,” she pointed out, once more completely, breathtakingly guileless.
He coughed on his beer and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I suppose you could say that. Is it a bad thing though?”
Sophia frowned. “I don’t know. I couldn’t say.”
Seeming to realise what she had just revealed about her love life—or lack thereof—she got suddenly to her feet.
“I must go home for lunch. But Jay… Is it…? I would like… You see, I have a favour to ask you. Can I speak to you tomorrow?”
Chapter four
Sophia
TheyarrangedforJayto come to her house. She hadn’t wanted to make him travel in his state, but he had insisted, saying he’d be glad to go out for a bit.
He had also tried several times before she left to get her to explain more about the favour she wanted, but she couldn’t tell him then, not without preparing herself more fully. Finally, she escaped to the car and drove away with Jay standing on the grand steps of Rakely House watching her go, a speculative expression on his face.
Even now that she had purposely invited him here with the sole intention of explaining her request, she wasn’t sure she was going to be able to go through with it.
It was too embarrassing.
