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She was sitting in the window seat. She was sound asleep and he stood there, watching her. She really was exquisitely beautiful. She looked as fragile and lovely as a porcelain doll, with her perfect skin, her sweet mouth, her golden curls, but he knew just how deceptive that was. She was as fierce as Boadicea, the female warrior who’d fought off the Romans. She was tricky and deceptive and determined, and their clash of wills was evenly matched. He was going to triumph, at least in the matter of marriage, but it was never going to be easy with her. Then again, he’d never been interested in easy.
He moved into the room, only half hoping she’d wake and they could start their bickering once more, but she slept on, shadows of exhaustion beneath her soft eyelashes. He took the chair nearby, settling into it quietly, and watched her breathe.
He ought to let her go and he knew it. She wanted freedom, or at least she believed she did. He could change her mind—she was halfway there already—but why did he want to? If he really loved her, he would let her go.
And he did. Love her, that was. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, and he had no idea why. She was scrappy and contrary and vain and . . . delicious. Maybe it was when he found her asleep on the tor, proof that she’d been watching him for weeks. Maybe it was when he’d found her dancing in the garden in nothing but her shift, and he’d taken her in his arms and danced with her. Maybe it was when she came, and wept, and she was a woman who didn’t weep.
It made no sense, but he loved her. And if he told her so it would give her one more weapon against him. She didn’t recognize that they were . . . soul mates was a ghastly phrase, but it suited them. They belonged together; he knew it with an absolute certainty.
She seemed to know that they didn’t, with the same kind of certainty. Which one of them was right?
He still had no idea why she was refusing exactly what she’d wanted. She wanted a wealthy, titled husband, and he was hers. On top of that, he had already shown her he could give her the kind of pleasure she’d never felt before, and he knew she found him physically appealing, no matter how she tried to hide it.
So why was she fighting it?
If she told him no he’d have to let her go. It didn’t matter that he needed to satisfy the dictates of honor—no one knew she’d lived beneath his roof without benefit of a chaperone, that he’d touched her, kissed her, taken her. If he couldn’t seduce her into doing what he wanted then he couldn’t, wouldn’t, force her.
He should let her go, he told himself again, watching the soft curve of her breasts as they rose and fell beneath the pretty yellow dress. If it were up to him he would always dress her in yellow, or in nothing at all.
He should let her go.
He couldn’t.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
SOPHIE CAME AWAKE WITH a start. She’d fallen asleep in the window seat, and her neck hurt; her entire body was stiff from a day in the carriage and then falling asleep in an uncomfortable position. Alexander must have plumbing in this house . . . a long, hot bath would do wonders for her amour propre.
She heard a deep, growling noise, and it took her a moment to realize it was her stomach. She’d refused to eat in the carriage, which meant she’d had nothing since breakfast, and she was a girl who liked to eat. Or was she now officially a woman? What made the difference in the eyes of the world—being compromised or being married? If it was marriage, then she was definitely still a girl and would be for a while, if she had any say in the matter.
She stretched, slipping down off the window seat and glancing around her. The gaslights were turned down low, but she could see the room quite clearly. She ought to change for dinner, she supposed, but she needed a bath more than anything. The bathing room was at the end of the hallway, and she quickly filled the tub and got in, soaking in the warm water.
She’d had odd dreams while she slept. She’d dreamt that Alexander watched over her, not the mocking, overbearing Alexander, but the man who’d kissed her, who’d taken her to bed, who’d danced with her in the moonlight. If he had been watching her it would have been to make sure she didn’t escape, but she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that he’d watched over her with . . . caring. She laughed to herself at the notion. That would hardly have been Alexander.
If she hadn’t realized she was starving she would have stayed in the bath forever. She put the yellow dress on once more—at least it had only a light wearing—and stepped into the hallway, to see Alexander waiting for her.
“Dinner’s ready,” he said, his eyes traveling down her body with a slow, deliberate caress.
She ignored it, and the small shiver it sent down her spine. “Good,” she said in a clipped voice at odds with her inner warmth. “I’d change but since I’m shoeless I decided you prefer informality.”
His mouth curved in a faint smile. “Maybe I just prefer your bare feet.”
“Did you ever consider that my feet might be cold?” They weren’t, but she wanted to make him feel guilty.
“I could warm them for you.”
She remembered his hands on her feet in the carriage, the delicious sensation that had spread through her. A very different sensation from what he’d done beneath her skirts, but nonetheless wonderful. “They aren’t cold,” she said quickly.
“I didn’t think so. It’s been warm the last few weeks.” He held out his arm. “I believe my brother awaits us.”
His brother, she thought. The man who could help her, even if she’d rather cuddle up to a snake. She looked into Alexander’s dark, beautiful face, and put her hand through his arm. “Lead on, Macduff.”
She’d had worse meals, including the one Rufus Griffiths’s mother had interrupted. Alexander’s brother was doing his best to be the charming, amusing center of conversation, and Alexander laughed at his slightly malicious stories, but Sophie had the sense that he was uneasy as well. Perhaps it had nothing to do with his brother and more to do with second thoughts about marrying her.
The thought should make her rejoice. Instead her appetite fled after a few bites, despite the fact that Alexander had a decent cook, and she sat in silence, wiggling her toes beneath the table as she tried to come up with a plan.
She n
eeded to leave him before he decided to let her go. Pride demanded it. Which meant tonight. She still had the tight slippers Gracie had given her, and while St. John’s Wood wasn’t in the very heart of London, she certainly could find a hackney, even at this late hour. She could excuse herself, and instead of going to bed she could simply walk out the door before he realized it, and never see him again.
