Behind the Courtesan

chapter Thirteen

“I think I left something on the stove, we had better turn around and check.” Words Sophia had never thought to utter under usual circumstances. Her knees almost knocked together beneath her dull gray gown, she was so frightened.

“You did not leave anything on the stove. You didn’t leave the axe anywhere near the path where someone could fall over it in the dark and for the last time, the piglets will not starve if you are not there.”

Sophia grimaced. She was out of excuses but so far none of them had worked anyway.

In the end, she’d dressed in her plainest gown, tied her hair back in a simple knot, squared her shoulders and stepped from her room.

When she considered how terrified she was on the carriage ride to Blakiston, how she feared a pitchfork-bearing, stone-throwing crowd, this was worse. Far worse. Even though Blake had only just handed her down from the cart, Sophia already felt the eyes of the judgmental, the frowns of the disapproving and the sharp sting of rejection.

She inhaled until she felt it all the way to her stomach and then exhaled slowly.

“You will be fine. You are Sophie Martin. If you remember that, you will be more than fine.” Blake squeezed her hand and towed her toward a barn where music, laughter and light spilled out into the wet night. As much as she didn’t want to go inside, they couldn’t stand there waiting for it to rain. Even the elements worked against her.

“I can’t do this, Blake.”

“Can’t go into a room full of people enjoying themselves? Or can’t be Sophie Martin?”

She bit her bottom lip. She wasn’t Sophie Martin anymore and they both knew it. She was, however, no longer Sophia Martin either. She hovered somewhere in the middle of an e and an a.

Of one fact she was most certain. She wasn’t a frightened mouse. She was a woman who had fled her domineering, greedy father to start her life anew still bleeding and battered from the ordeal. She was a woman who stood on her own two feet and didn’t let anyone or anything concern her. Least of all a silly little barn dance.

Her heart skipped a beat.

It didn’t matter how many times she told herself, she couldn’t quite believe the words.

As Blake pulled her through the wide doorway, Sophie tried to pull back, tried to come up with a plan, another excuse, anything, but by then it was too late.

It seemed every face in the room turned toward her, her breath hitched, her mouth dried and she actually flinched, hiding her face behind Blake’s shoulder.

Before she had a chance to process what happened, why no stone bit her skin, why no nasty whispers reached her ears, she was folded into the embrace of more women than she could count. Men kissed her cheeks, ladies squeezed her hand and a whole village thanked her for being there for Blake when he needed help. Some thanked her for keeping Blake out of the kitchen, some thanked her for cooking delicious meals and others thanked her for a friendly smile over a soup bowl. Even Annie smiled in her direction.

Finally, after being passed around the room, she ended up next to her brother.

“Did you do this?” Sophie asked.

“I had nothing to do with any of it.”

“It must have been Blake then?”

“You still can’t see it can you?”

“See what?” She turned to him, to search his face for that which he hadn’t said, but then Blake brought a very heavily pregnant Violet to join their conversation.

She had to change the subject before she blushed. “Violet, Matthew let you come?”

Matthew groaned, “Not you too.”

“We reached a compromise,” Violet said. “This is the last time I will be allowed to leave the house. For anything.”

“Just until the child is born and then you can go anywhere you want. I just can’t have you out of my sight in case anything happens.” Matthew’s eyes held so much love, so much concern, Sophie had to look away.

Violet spoiled for an argument. “Women have borne children in fields in the open since the dawn of time. Mary lay down in a dirty barn. In other countries babies are born in filthy huts on the floor, on the decks of ships and worse. I will be fine and so will our child.”

“I don’t think you will win this fight, Matty.” Blake clapped his friend on the shoulder hard enough to warn him to drop it and Sophie coughed to cover her laughter. “The women have the upper hand.”

“Shall we dance?” Blake’s eyes told her he wanted to, but she wasn’t sure if he asked because he didn’t want her to stand with her back to the wall all night. There wasn’t a man here whose wife would let him dance with her, good wishes notwithstanding.

“Let me ask again. Sophie, I want to dance with you.”

“That wasn’t a question,” she murmured as the blush she feared warmed her cheeks.

“Then I don’t need you to say yes.” With that, he took her hand and dragged her to the middle of the straw-covered floor, her hem twisting about her ankles.

“You shouldn’t do this,” she told him.

“Why not?”

“You are supposed to be injured, for one.”

He shrugged. “I feel much better already.”

The music began and in all the places, of all the songs, it was a waltz. In a barn. In the country.

As the first lilting strains filled the timber barn, Blake stepped toward her, took her hand in his and with his other, pulled her toward him, closer and then closer again. “You’re safe here. Have fun.”

Right now, right there, everything was perfect. Or perhaps that was the ale talking. She’d lost count of those too. As Blake swung her from one end of the crowd to the other, the courtesan extraordinaire actually laughed with real pleasure. She didn’t have to force merriment on this night. The simple knot that tethered her curls to her nape loosened until her black hair shook free and swished around her shoulders and still she laughed.

* * *

She was gorgeous. Blake couldn’t tell her in words just how much she had helped him over the past week but he could make sure she had a night of fun. Everywhere he looked he saw his friends delighted at the way she had rushed to his aid. More than cooking and running his inn, she’d kept everyone happy until he was better and could return to doing what he enjoyed. He owed her this night.

His problem now was, he loved having her there. He enjoyed watching Sophie work. He wasn’t taking a perverse satisfaction out of seeing her break her back; Dominic was doing all the heavy lifting, but it was nice to see the pleasure in her smile when a recipe came together or when she’d helped a sow deliver her piglets.

Blake tamped down that line of thought. He’d fallen in love with her once before and it was not going to happen again. It couldn’t. He’d only just survived when she’d left by putting one foot in front of the other, taking more beatings for his “soft” heart and sullenness. Until he’d grown bigger than his uncle. By then he was beyond being upset. Blake long ago had hardened his heart to love, to family and to women. They were nothing but trouble.

Beautiful trouble, he thought as he watched the curve of Sophie’s throat as she laughed, felt the whisper of her silky hair over his hand when he turned her.

“May I cut in?”

Blake stopped so suddenly, he had to tighten his grip on his dance partner to stop her from falling to the floor. “Don’t you have someone else to annoy, Blakiston?”

“It doesn’t appear so, no.”

Blake dropped Sophie’s hand, his own fist clenched, ready to set the duke on his arse for interrupting possibly the best moment of his life. When Blakiston’s mouth stretched into a vile grin, Blake wanted to wipe it from his face with the back of his hand. Or perhaps a pistol. At dawn.

“Blake,” Sophie warned. “Be nice.”

“Yes, Blake, be nice.”

A gentle squeeze by Sophie and he stepped away. To hit a duke in front of so many witnesses would leave his inn without an owner for a lot longer than bruised ribs had. “As long as the lady approves.” The words left a sour taste in his mouth.

“Of course, Your Grace.”

The stiffness in her spine when Blakiston took her fingers in his almost made Blake feel better but the emptiness in his hands, in the circle of his arms, made him seek the ale cask and a very big cup. Leave it to Blakiston to ruin a perfectly good evening with his very presence.

“You know you could have given him one. No one here would have complained or borne witness.”

Blake turned to Matthew and raised his now full cup. “Thank you, but I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. Anyway, Sophie can dance with whomever she pleases.”

“You and I both know he doesn’t please her in the least.”

“I don’t care either way.” As the lie left his lips, try as he might, he could not bring himself to look away from the couple they made. Her life in London depended on suitors like him, on the income and the trinkets they could provide.

Every time he began to see her as simply a woman, something or someone had to remind him that she was more than that.

What really bothered him was that he needed the reminder at all.

* * *

To enjoy oneself at a London ball or ton event meant gluing a smile to one’s lips and if one made it through the night of warm champagne and stale food without someone making a snide remark, then it was also deemed a success. Sophie had smiled so much on this one night that her face felt as though it might crack. The only time she had to force the action was in the arms of that disgusting toad, Blakiston. The sooner his attention was caught by some fleeting chit or more interesting gossip, the better!

As soon as her dance with him, where he squashed her toes not once, not twice but three times, was over, Sophie rushed back to the table where Blake and Matthew sat and squirmed her way in between the two large men. She suddenly felt the need to be protected. One look in Blakiston’s direction and the calculating way he watched her told all present that he had more than an interest in her dancing.

She reached forward, took Blake’s mug from his fingers and gulped the remaining contents.

“Thirsty?” he asked, his tone heavy with sarcasm.

“Why does he pay so much attention to me?”

Blake and Matthew shot her identical knowing frowns.

“Apart from that,” she muttered. “I have done all I can short of outright asking him to leave and still he pursues.” She tapped the cup on the table and stared at Blake until he refilled it from a jug.

“Why don’t you say the words then? Even a man as thick as Charles would get the message if you made it clear.”

She looked at her brother and returned his frown before gulping more of the sweet ale. “I can’t be so rude to a duke, Matthew.”

“I would,” Blake said. “Did you want me to tell him to leave off?”

“I hardly think he would take well to that. No. I will be gone soon and the duke’s affections will be taken with something or someone else. I’m sure he has horseflesh or a young maid to salivate over.”

“I hear he’s selling the old duke’s horses in the next few days.”

“To whom?”

Blake and Matthew shrugged, but Sophie thought she detected a hint of uneasiness in the two. “Then why? Surely he doesn’t need the money?”

“Don’t know that either,” Matthew admitted. “We aren’t involved in the inner workings of the estate and anyone who is won’t speak of the business. They’re terrified they’ll lose their positions.”

“Perhaps it is about the money then? Not much else would have the staff as scared as they are. Especially not him.” Blake pointed to where the duke had missed his mouth with his cup and spilled the contents down the front of his jacket.

The men burst into laughter and once again, Sophie relaxed. Finally, even though the divide between them was wide, she began to feel as though she was home.

As the duke flicked ale from his coat, he cast them a foul look before disappearing into the rainy night. Piercing her bubble of contentment was the reminder that theirs were precarious positions and upsetting a duke wasn’t going to help anyone.