Behind the Courtesan

chapter Eighteen

Later that day, Sophie stood by a makeshift corral as yet another fine thoroughbred went under the hammer and more of Daemon’s money spilled into the pocket of a ducal toad. She wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but Daemon had purchased a total of fifteen horses, much to the disgust of the other men who’d traveled for the auction. She wanted to ask him what he would do with them all, but she could only stand and smile prettily as her brain whirled with questions. The barns at his estate were tiny and he wasn’t a horse man at all. And then there were the dozen more questions about his relationship with Blake she longed to have answered. Why hadn’t he ever mentioned even traveling to Blakiston? She also wondered how often the half brothers saw each other. Too many scenarios skated in her mind.

“Are you all right, m’dear?” Daemon asked, looking pointedly at where her hand was supposed to rest lightly on his arm. Instead her grip was tight, his coat bunched beneath her gloved fingers.

Sophie relaxed her hand and smiled. When she peered at the others around her to make sure no one else had noticed her agitation, she met the gaze of Blake who scowled in her direction as if she was the one bidding on all of the flesh.

“I’m perfectly fine, thank you.” If she could have a guinea for every time she had said those particular words in the past week...

“You don’t look fine. Perhaps you need to sit for a moment?”

“No, thank you.” She leaned closer so no one would hear her. “What are you doing?”

“What do you mean? I’m trying to see to your obvious lack of comfort.”

“Why are you buying all of them? That one over there looks as though she is about to fall over. Her ribs are poking out.”

The stiffness under her hand was not imagined and when she looked to his face, Daemon was now the one wearing a scowl. “He has not fed them properly in a month. Wait till you see the foaling mares. He’s lucky this mob haven’t taken matters into their own hands and hung him from his own barn.”

She didn’t want to see the foaling mares. Not if they appeared as pitiful as the last two. She didn’t want to be there at all, but the whole village had turned out and she didn’t want to be left behind at the tavern on her own. And she still had to find a way to confront Blake with what she knew. And soon.

Four pathetic beasts later and finally, a spirited gray gelding was led into the corral. This one was skinny like the others, but intelligence and defiance shone in his stormy eyes. When he whinnied and reared onto his back legs, the shadow he cast over those standing closest made them shuffle back in fear.

“Ten pounds,” Blake called as he stepped from the shadow of the barn.

A laugh was the only answer from her left as Blakiston also stepped into the light. “You’ll need to do better than that, Vale.”

“Only if there is another bidder,” Blake said, looking around at his fellow villagers and friends. There was just enough firmness in his tone to let everyone know this beast was marked as his.

Sophie waited for Daemon to buy this one as well, but his mouth remained closed, his lips drawn in a tight line. Fascinating.

“Thirty pounds,” came from a stranger in a dusty bowler hat and black coat.

“Fifty,” came Blake’s reply.

Her heart sped up a little in anticipation.

“Sixty pounds,” Bowler Hat countered.

“Eighty.”

This went on for several tense minutes until the amount reached a staggering one hundred and sixty pounds. From the corner of her eye, Sophie noticed the man in the bowler hat look to Blakiston. If she wasn’t standing so close, she wouldn’t have noticed Blakiston’s small nod, which prompted Bowler Hat to place another bid. The duke was cheating to push the price higher. She wondered if Blakiston had more men in the crowd bidding on his own flesh.

Once the sum hit two hundred pounds, Blake had to be almost at his limit, and yet Bowler Hat kept countering with ten more pounds to his every bid. He was about to pay far too much for the horse and everyone present knew it. Sophie let go of Daemon’s hand and began to drift through the crowd toward Blake, but before she moved more than three steps, Matthew appeared at her side.

“Where are you going?” he asked as he blocked her path with his body.

“Blake is being swindled. I have to warn him.”

“Blake knows what he’s doing, Sophie. He’s a big boy.”

“And Blakiston is cheating him out of more money than that horse is worth.”

“He knows that.”

What? “He does?” What hadn’t they told her?

Matthew led her away from the auction and crowd. “Of course he does. Why do you think St. Ives has purchased every horse so far? They have a plan.”

“Do you know what it is?” Sophie wondered if they’d told Matthew of Blake’s claim to the title or their real relationship.

He shook his head, but the expression he wore said he knew more than he let on. She kept walking until they were both a safe distance from prying ears. “Do you know about Blake?” she demanded. If she didn’t talk to someone and soon, she would explode.

Matthew became instantly wary. “What about Blake?”

He was her brother, so surely she could share with him a secret that wasn’t her own. It was Blake’s fault he hadn’t told her the truth when he’d had the chance. She’d answered his questions honestly when he’d asked, but all he’d given her were lies and subterfuge. She owed him nothing. “Did you know that Blake is indeed the true heir to the Blakiston title?”

“He is a bastard. He cannot inherit.”

“He is no more illegitimate than you or I.”

“That’s impossible. Why didn’t he say anything to me? Why would he tell you?”

“He didn’t tell me. I overheard him telling his brother to burn the documents proving his claim.”

“He has no siblings. We are the closest he has to family. Are you sure you were listening in on the right conversation?”

“Of course I’m sure. Daemon and Blake are half brothers. Daemon tried to talk Blake into ousting Charles and taking the title himself.”

Matthew paced away, one hand rubbing his forehead as he processed the information. “What? How? I don’t understand.”

“I don’t know the entire tale, but needless to say, Blake would do a much better job than Charles does now. Charles doesn’t care about the village or its people. He only cares about gambling and women. We have to do something.”

“No.”

“No?”

“We do nothing. Leave it be.”

“We can’t just stand by and wait for Blakiston to destroy our home.”

“This is not your home. Why are you so worried for us now?”

His sudden hostility caught her off guard and she didn’t know how to respond. He was right. She didn’t belong here and what happened after she left would have no effect on her further than what it meant for Matthew, Violet and her niece or nephew.

Sometime over the course of a week, Sophie had begun to think of Blakiston as home. She’d barely thought of London, the clinic, her friends. In the parts of her mind where hope still shone, she’d even thought of how it would be to live out her life in the tavern alongside a man like Blake. Down the road from the estate where her life had ended and Sophia’s had begun.

But who was she kidding? She’d blamed her errant thoughts on nearly losing him. She’d blamed them on the fact that her world had been turned upside down when he’d kissed her. So many feelings she’d long buried had risen to the surface. As a child, she’d idolized her older brother’s best friend. As a young woman, she’d watched him grow, watched him fight and run and laugh but it had been a hopeless child’s crush. When she’d overheard her father’s plans to sell her to the old duke, all thoughts of a happy life, being courted and wooed, spending her summer days with Blake and Matthew, all had flown from her mind. Even up to the day her father marched her up the steps to the estate and handed her over, she hadn’t thought he would go through with it. Surely his only daughter was more important to him than a piece of land.

Evidently not.

It made her skin crawl and her stomach heave to recall the many times she’d wished the old duke would kill her rather than touch her again.

He almost did kill her, several times over. If it hadn’t been for the drink, she would have died. Instead, he’d drunk to such an excess, he forgot to turn the lock on the door all the way. After spending what seemed an eternity before daring to try the door, Sophie hadn’t even known if it would be night or day when she finally emerged from the lowest levels of the house. When Blake had told her how they’d searched for her, the hours her father had spent looking for her...she had been there all along.

Nothing had been more important that night than putting distance between herself and the man who traded her innocence for a farm. Sure, she could have woken her brother and let him see the bruises, but then they would have both had to run. She should never have written to let them know she was alive. She should have let her brother and her friend think her dead, but her sadness had weighed too heavily so she’d put pen to paper. She could have told them so much more, but the rest she kept to herself. Only the old duke knew the whole story and he was dead.

Blake would never understand that a courtesan’s life was preferable to no life at all.

She’d seen an opportunity to escape and she’d taken it. When she looked back on her flight that night, she was very lucky to have made it to London at all. She could have fallen into a ditch in the dark. She could have been attacked by animals or chanced upon a stranger on the road. It was no small miracle that she’d survived to reach the capital. She’d lived every day since as if it could be her last. She developed street sense with the help of her friends and she’d made decisions that were right at the time, not right for the future. The situation she now found herself in was no different. She had to make a decision about the information she now held and she needed to make it now, not for her future or Blake’s, not for their pasts or the possible outcomes, but for the future of her niece or nephew and the life he or she would lead.

Charles may not be exactly the same as the old duke, but he already showed he was not the man to take care of these villagers. To take care of her family.

Whether Sophie accepted the village as her home or not, she had to ensure her family would be happy, taken care of, protected. She would accept nothing less and, like it or not, Blake was the only one who could make sure that happened.

* * *

With each swing of the heavy axe, Blake split huge logs into smaller pieces for the kitchen fire and the tavern pit. His side hurt a little with the exertion but nothing compared to how his heart thundered in his chest. For the hundredth time since Sophie had arrived back in his life, he asked himself what the hell he was doing. The headache attested to the fact he was nowhere near the answer.

He wasn’t the kind of man who slept with his friend’s paramour. He certainly wasn’t the type of man to sleep with his brother’s woman. But Sophie had been his first. Not in the flesh, but he had loved her long before St. Ives had “saved” her. Blake snorted and dropped the axe once more, the sharp crack only just distinguishable above the steady patter of rain.

If the old duke had asked Blake to find the woman he’d wronged, Blake would have brought her home. He wouldn’t have offered her a position in his bed. Not as his mistress anyway.

He leaned over and hefted half a tree branch, resting it between two stumps. As he lifted and dropped the axe, rendering the useless limb down to kindling, he kept thinking what it would have been like to have Sophie by his side all these years. Even if he became a duke now, he couldn’t have her. Despite Daemon having offered her marriage, they both knew it took more than even love for a duke to marry his mistress and certainly not a courtesan. It had been done but Sophie would be whispered about and the title would be eternally plunged into scandal. Generations of his future family would be tainted.

But what of her? What of Sophie? There was nothing he could do for her.

It wasn’t him. A duke wasn’t who he was. He was the boy delivered to his uncle as a child and beaten into a man. He was the boy who had been told so many times how useless he was that he almost believed it.

When next Blake picked up another log, water dripped from his fingertips, mixing with the sweat he would be covered in if it weren’t for the still falling rain. He wished the droplets would wash away his troubles. But nothing could eliminate the truth. No matter how hard he denied it, he preferred instead the safe life he’d built.

That’s what she did.

He supposed, but it was different. At least his safe illusion didn’t hurt anyone. Hers hurt her family, her friends, the woman she could have become.

Blake shook his head and tipped it back, cold rain washing over his closed eyelids. Damn her and how she made him think.

“I’ve been looking for you,” a voice called from his left.

“I’ve been right here.” Blake shrugged, then swung the axe with more power than he truly felt.

“Sophie told me some interesting tales this afternoon.”

Blake swallowed, dropped the axe and turned to his oldest friend. “Oh?”

Matthew returned his gaze—wary, hesitant, unsure of how to proceed. Blake’s stomach dropped. Well, here it was, the lecture he’d waited to receive, that he needed to have in order to bring him back to reality. Funny that it should be Matthew and not Daemon.

“She told me you are Blakiston’s real heir, not Charles.”

His head snapped up so quickly it was a wonder he didn’t fall over. “What did you say?” Matthew should have said, “How dare you sleep with my sister and then treat her like that!” or something along those lines. He should call him out, punch him in the nose or throw him in the dirt. Not this.

Matthew stepped forward. “You were supposed to be the Duke of Blakiston. How could you not tell me?”

Lie, his subconscious breathed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t give me that rot. I asked you to be the godfather to my child because you are an honest, trustworthy man, who would make an excellent role model. I didn’t know then that the deception went so deep. How could you never tell me any of this?”

Blake flinched from the anger in Matthew’s voice. “I didn’t tell you because it isn’t true. Where did Sophie hear this?”

“She heard you with your brother. Don’t cover your lies with more lies. Now would be the time to tell the truth, Blake, and hope to God that this village doesn’t turn its back on the one man who could have made life so much better all these years.”

“It’s not as easy as that.” But that was also a lie.

“Tell me you aren’t Blakiston’s legitimate son. Tell me you were truly born on the wrong side of the blanket and I’ll tell Sophie she was wrong.”

He heaved great lungfuls of frigid air as his hands fisted at his sides. How dare she? From the moment she’d stepped foot in his yard, she’d tried to ruin his life. How could he even for one moment think she could be his other half?

“If you’ll excuse me,” he said to Matthew before turning on his heel in the mud and storming toward the kitchens. He had to make sure Sophie kept her mouth shut and her meddling to herself.

* * *

“How could you never have breathed a word about your relationship with Blake?” Sophie decided the direct approach was the only way she would have the answers she needed to complete the puzzle.

“Blake and I are friends, but I have a feeling that’s not what motivates your question.”

Sophie wandered around Daemon’s room and folded the towel he’d left draped over a chair. What a perfect picture of domesticity they made.

“I overheard you and him talking this morning.” She didn’t have to look in his direction to know he’d frozen to the spot.

“What exactly did you hear?”

“Enough to know that Blake and you are brothers and that he is indeed the heir to the dukedom.”

“You heard all that?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “What are you going to do with this new information?”

“No, Daemon. What are you going to do with the information? Why are you really here and why did you purchase almost every one of Blakiston’s horses?”

Daemon dropped into the chair before the cold hearth and beckoned for her to sit as well. She did so, even though her anxiety rocketed higher with each and every question that sprang to mind. There were so many.

“Charles is in deep to some very nasty men. The auction was the quickest way he could acquire the funds to flee England.”

“I don’t understand. Why does he not ask the Crown for help, or his friends? Surely a loan would put him back on the straight and narrow?”

“He has no friends in funds and the King has already helped as much as he is prepared to. Charles owes money to so many men, even if the estate and title could be sold, it wouldn’t even be a drop in the ocean to his creditors.”

“But what has this got to do with Blake? Why do you bring it all up now?”

“We’ve known who we are to each other for about a decade. My mother considered herself in love with the old duke until he showed his true colors and almost ruined her life. St. Ives paid no heed to her in the early days of their marriage and didn’t particularly care when one of his oldest friends did. Discreetly of course. Discretion is the middle name of the ton. If it weren’t for the secretiveness of the upper echelon, duels would have wiped half the aristocracy from the country.”

“And you wouldn’t be in the position you are now.”

“Heard that too did you, minx?”

“Why aren’t you angry with me?” He should have been furious, but instead he sat with his ankle on his knee, his hands steepled before his chest and a thoughtful look on his face.

Daemon shook his head, leaned forward and took one of her hands in his. “I’m not angry with you, because it is a wasted emotion. It is you who should be upset with me.”

Sophie covered their clasped hands with her free one with a sinking stomach. She wouldn’t pretend she didn’t understand the tone in his voice. “I could never be upset with you. You have given me more than I deserved, more than I would have thought to ask for.”

“What will you do now?” he asked.

“I’ll wait for my niece or nephew to be born and then I’ll go back to the city and pack my things. I don’t belong there anymore and I suddenly find I want more than can be found in London.”

“What about your friends and the infirmary. You enjoy working there.”

Sophie shook her head. “In a way I always thought the clinic needed me but they only need my money. Well, our money. I can donate from anywhere in the country. I think in truth it was me who needed them. A way to stay connected with both the lives I lost. As for my friends, they only need to know that I’m safe and happy.” Safe and happy in Blakiston? She wondered if that were truly possible.

“But will it be enough for you? Rotting away in the country?”

Sophie laughed at the irony, at him using her own words. It felt like a lifetime ago since she’d spoken them, so much had changed. “I believe I shall cope. Violet will need help with the baby and if she lets me, I should like to be a real aunt, perhaps even a friend.”

“I think she would like that.”

“What about you? What will you do about Blake?”

“I intend to set to rights the wrongs we have all wrought.”

“How are you going to do that, when he so adamantly refuses to take the title?”

“He can reject the name and title as much as he wants, but he will have to make an official decision. He isn’t aware of it yet, but he is already a duke. The King stripped Charles of the title last week, and is only giving him the time to flee. It’s why I purchased the horses with Crown money. Charles will have the funds to start again somewhere new rather than board a ship for his sins. Blake will have the means to save the Blakiston name and build the fortune he’ll need to run the estate with the King’s help. It’s going to take a great deal of hard work but if anyone can do it, he can.”

“And if he still won’t take it? He is the most stubborn, pigheaded, irrational man I’ve ever met.”

“It sounds to me as though you care for my brother.”

Before she could decide one way or another which answer to give, a banging started on Daemon’s door and then it flew open to reveal Blake. A very, very angry Blake. “Well, well, well. Isn’t this cozy?”

Sophie and Daemon stood at the same time, as though they’d been caught in the throes of passion. “What is the meaning of this, Blake?” Her voice came out much higher than she’d intended.

“I warned you not to meddle in my affairs,” he roared as he stepped closer.

“You will not talk to her like that, brother.”

Sophie almost sighed with relief when Blake’s penetrating gaze switched from her own face to Daemon’s.

“What did you tell her?” he demanded.

“Nothing she didn’t already know,” Daemon replied. He half stepped in front of Sophie so she was protected from Blake if things got out of hand. But Sophie didn’t need that kind of protection, she never had.

She placed an arm on Daemon’s shoulder and pushed until he once again stood beside her. “Get angry, Blake. Stomp and shout and accuse everyone else, but at the end, when the fury runs out and there’s only the truth of the matter left, you’ll see what a coward you are being.”

He came at her, his nose level with her nose, his finger pointed at her chest, and she quailed. “I am the coward? You are the one who ran from here as fast as your legs could carry you and not once did you look back. Why do you care now? What do you care what happens to any of us when you won’t be here to endure the outcome?”

“This used to be my home. One day it will be again. My brother lives here and my niece or nephew will too. How many times could you have helped the villagers with their problems? How many times could you have made life easier for your friends? My family? And I didn’t run from you. You pushed me away like you do with anyone who gets close enough.”

“This will never be your home! Even now after living with us and creating the illusion of making friends, you still do not belong and you never will.”

“Why do I not belong? Why did I run in the first place, Blake? If you had the power of being Blakiston’s heir, perhaps you could have saved me. Perhaps I would have stayed here for you had you any way to play the knight to my distress. But you didn’t. You hide behind your cowardice and blame dead men for all of your troubles.”

“And you don’t? You flout the story that your father was going to sell you to cover for the fact that even then you were an ambitious slut. Me. I would have saved you, Sophie. I would have killed that man had there been one ounce of truth to your fears.”

For a second she saw red. Her hand lifted, drew back, and then let loose, her palm connecting with his stubbled cheek with an echoing crack. But he didn’t cower, he didn’t show shame or remorse. His face was so close, she could see the raindrops that dripped from his clothes and hair and reminded her of their night of stupidity. How could she ever have thought he would make a difference? He could. But he wouldn’t. Not in her life and not in anyone else’s. “F*ck you,” she breathed.

“You already did, Duchess. Did you smell the hint of possibility and decide to throw a free bedding my way just in case?”

She staggered back, her hand on her chest, stinging with the urge to slap him again. Or worse.

“You mongrel,” Daemon yelled as he came at Blake, fists swinging as the two went down. She’d almost forgotten he was even there.

She should have seen that sleeping with a man who thought her no better than the mud he traipsed through would come back to haunt her. His derision went so much deeper than she could ever imagine possible. To think he claimed to have once loved her.

Skirting the edge of the room, the two men pummeling each other, she gathered up her shawl and fled the inn. She needed to get out of there. She had to get back to London and her life and leave Blake and the village of her nightmares far, far behind.

* * *

“I should go and see if Sophie is all right,” Daemon wheezed. One hand held a steak against his eye while the other dabbed at a cut on his lip with a handkerchief.

“She’ll be fine. She doesn’t need us to fuss. When she calms, she’ll return, pack her things and be off.”

“You wouldn’t let her leave just like that, would you?” This question came from Matthew who’d arrived at precisely the right moment to break up his fight with Daemon. Blake had anger on his side, but his brother was a renowned fighter. There was never any doubt who the victor would be.

Besides, Blake rather thought it about time he received a pummeling from one of the two men in the room. It was a surprise that Matthew hadn’t placed a few kicks of his own after discovering the source of their rage was his very own sister. Like it could have been anyone or anything else.

“She doesn’t need to be here,” Blake sighed. “She’ll take one look at that babe and tear back to London anyway.”

Matthew stood and glared. “You don’t know that. And I need her here. Violet needs her here. Her father hasn’t given a damn about her in years and her brother is busy with his own land. There are no other females in our lives, and my wife is convinced she will birth a girl. She will need her aunt.”

“But will she need a frightened courtesan?”

It was Daemon who jumped to her defense once again. “Sophia is so much more than that. Why can’t you see her for who she is?”

Blake stared long and hard at his brother before shaking his head. “She doesn’t even know who she is. What can she have to offer our village? She can’t return as the girl she was when she left. Too much has happened.”

Matthew snorted and sat back down on the smooth floor timbers. “I wouldn’t expect her to return the girl she was. She is a woman now, as well you know. The rest of the village seems to have forgiven her life choices. Why can’t you?”

“She’s just so damned stubborn and proud. What happened to her humility? Her gentleness and laughter? When I look at her, I don’t see any of that.”

“You see what you want to see,” Daemon said from the foot of the bed. “When you look at her, you see a prostitute, a coward and a betrayer, but when I look at her, I see a beautiful woman. A woman, who, in the face of all the odds, is still alive and happy for the fact. Do you know what happens to girls when they arrive in London alone and terrified?”

Blake shook his head. He had a fair idea, but he hadn’t witnessed any of it firsthand.

“Well, most don’t even make it. The ones that do are vulnerable and naive and can be taken in by a kind word or plate of food. Greedy people take advantage of their desperation. Sophia is lucky she happened across good people, otherwise you may well have never heard from her again.”

“Lucky? She should never have left in the first place!” Blake clenched his fists, the broken skin there already dried, stretched and uncomfortable over his knuckles. “She would have had a good life here.”

“As Blakiston’s child bride? You must have rocks in your head.”

“Matthew, is it true? Did your father truly think to trade Sophie for land?”

Matthew sighed and nodded.

Every muscle in his body tensed when the color drained from Daemon’s face at the same time his brother gave his head a shake in Matthew’s direction.

“You knew about it?”

Matthew inhaled, exhaled, twisted his fingers in the same way Sophie did when nervous. “First, believe me when I say I had no idea about any of it before she left. I only discovered it all from our father on his death bed. Sophie doesn’t even know how much I know.”

“Get on with it,” Blake ground out.

“I don’t know all the details, only those muttered by Father in his last moments. He asked for forgiveness, but then he also asked for the land he thought he was still entitled to.”

“I know she was to be sold to Blakiston, I know she was terrified and thought we wouldn’t be able to help her so she left. What more is there?” said Blake.

“It was all an act—Father’s tears, his panic, the search parties. All the time we searched high and low for her body, he knew she was at the estate with Blakiston. The deal had been signed and done.”

“He actually delivered her there?”

“Yes, and then walked away without wondering what would happen to her.”

“Oh, God. There’s more then, isn’t there?” He didn’t want to know. He was sure he wouldn’t be any better off with the information burned into his brain.

Daemon took over the story from there. “For three days she was locked in the lowest levels of the house where he beat and raped her. Maybe worse. Only he and she will ever know.”

Emotions battered his already fragile thoughts. All this time he’d blamed her for leaving. Blamed her for overreacting, for never saying a word to him, for taking so long to write to Matthew and let him know she was alive. All that time, she would have been terrified the duke would find her and bring her back.

“Why?”

Blake’s question was rhetorical, but Daemon replied. “Before I was born, when my father paid no attention to his new bride, Blakiston fell in love with her. The fact that I stand here proves their affair. Blakiston fell in love and begged Mother to marry him, to be with him and live the kind of life she deserved but she said no. Mind, that’s only Blakiston’s side of the story. He kept journals in those days. All the dukes of Blakiston did. Instead of farming figures and weather facts, his were full of entries of despair about the child he would never get to claim, of the happiness he would never feel again. I think the fact that she rejected him cracked him in a way. Next came your mother and she reminded him of mine. The journal entries are sporadic for a time, sometimes ranting, sometimes coherent but all lead back to my mother.”

“Did he love her? My mother?”

“I don’t think he didn’t love her. He always had a temper difficult to leash and drinking fueled the fury. By the time he took Sophia, he was more often drunk than not. It is the only explanation for what he did.”

Blake groaned again. “Do you think he took her to get back at me? Did he know how much I loved her?”

Daemon didn’t react for a few moments. “I suppose that could have had something to do with it, but as far as I can tell, things only went so far wrong when she refused to say ‘I do.’”

Blake’s intake of breath echoed in the room. “He wanted to marry her?”

Daemon nodded again. “He looked for a bride who would make him happier than he thought my mother ever could. This was a way to get back at her.”

“Did he write all of this down?” Blake asked. Did he need to burn that damned mansion to the ground to be rid of yet more evidence of depravity and betrayal?

“Like I said earlier, he thought I was the vicar come to take his deathbed confession.”

Sophie had already been a duchess. His mother had been the first, but by the time he did the same with Sophie, his mother was dead. Sophie was the dowager duchess of Blakiston. Now he almost wished he had the title.

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” Blake asked his brother.

“I did offer to tell you.”

“Only yesterday.”

“I guess sometimes the ugliness of the truth can hurt so many more people, you keep it to yourself and spin a pretty tale instead. She wouldn’t be the first and she won’t be the last.”

What would life have been like for her? His own mother had fled the old duke after he’d wrapped his hands around her throat in a fit of rage. Would Sophie have been better off living on the streets in London than as the child bride of an angry drunkard? They would never know. He did know one thing. He would have been forced to watch from the sidelines as his childhood love swelled with another man’s child. His father’s child. If the man hadn’t killed her first.

Suddenly her reactions made sense. When he touched her to remove the straw in her hair and she tensed as if he was going to throw her down on the floor then and there. It all made perfect sense. Why didn’t she despise him more for being the spawn of that man? How could she lie with him when she had been through so much?

“You have to let it all go,” Daemon said. “You have to forget about the past and think to the future. Yours and hers.”

“We have no future together.”

“I never said together. You and Sophie are already entwined through Matthew, Violet and their child. You will always have to suffer her presence as long as you and Matthew are friends. She needs to be in contact with her family.”

What had he done? Once again he’d let his out-of-control emotions rule the day rather than stepping back from the carnage-to-be to consider the angles. “Could I be more selfish or thoughtless?”

His brother, the mind reader, said, “No, but you could start by apologizing and telling her what she means to you.”

“I don’t know what she means to me.”

“Well, I know how much you mean to her. For that woman to have shared your bed means she cares a great deal.”

“How long has it been since she shared your bed?” Why had he asked that? He didn’t want to know, but he had to. He had to know if he could live with the knowledge that she liked Daemon more. Especially since he hadn’t called her an ambitious slut. This question had nothing to do with titles at all.

“Months. Several months. We are more friends than anything else.”

“I don’t really think she would have me after everything that has happened.”

“True, she turned me down,” Daemon helpfully pointed out.

“I think she would still turn you down if you were to suddenly inherit the kingdom and become a prince,” Matthew said.

“I will have to convince her.”

“How?” both men asked.

“I will have to show her how much I need her and pray she believes me.”

* * *

A string of violent and extraordinarily vile curses dropped from Sophie’s lips as she trudged through the mud in her favorite boots, her shawl dripping from her shoulders and her hat dangling from numb fingertips. She directed another curse over her shoulder in the direction of the inn. If Blake had already been duke, the bridge would have been strong enough to carry the horse and carriage over safely and she would have already made it to Violet’s to say her goodbyes.

For that’s what she was doing. Only she did it on foot with the rain still falling in sheets across the countryside. No sooner had she made it across the bridge on her own two feet, had there been a roar of water carrying half an uprooted tree in its current. She’d only just gotten to the slippery, grassy banks before the bridge had literally floated away before her eyes.

She prayed Matthew had a good horse in his barn that she could borrow. She’d made it to London from the house once before in the dead of night, she was sure she could do it again. From the city she would send the horse back and have her things collected. She never wanted to lay eyes on Blake again as long as she lived. But before she could leave, she had to say goodbye and tell Violet all about Blake’s claim to the title so someone else could harass him in her stead. She had no doubt the women of the village could talk some sense into his thick head. Once Charles fled, they would be on their own until the land reverted back to the crown and a new man could either buy or earn the title.

If she knew anything about the King, he would already have a man in mind. She wondered if that new man would find his place here, the place that she couldn’t.

“Stupid, pigheaded, stubborn idiot,” she mumbled. As if the heavens agreed with her, lightning lit the afternoon’s darkness and a crack of thunder made her jump. Within two steps, her nerves heightened from anger to apprehension.

Taking off in the storm hadn’t been the smartest of her latest moves and when Matthew’s farmhouse, the home of her somewhat happy childhood, came into view, she sighed and lengthened her stride. Her skirts pulled this way and that in the wind and her teeth chattered uncontrollably.

Why did he have to be so rude? Did the man not know how to bite his tongue and keep his opinions to himself? He certainly wouldn’t last long as a duke in the capital if he couldn’t learn to think before he spoke. Someone would call him out at the very first slight.

Lightning lit the sky again followed a split second later by another deafening crack of thunder. This time the sound was so loud, Sophie felt her entire body rumble. She ran the last twenty or so steps to Matthew’s front door, arriving breathless and terrified of the elements. Even if Matthew did have a horse, she wouldn’t be going anywhere until the weather eased a little.

She shook the excess water from her hands before knocking on the door first once, then twice then a third time with no answer. Sophie bit her lip as she turned her back to the door and peered into the distance. Matthew should be back from the village and Violet wouldn’t be anywhere else but the farmhouse.

She knocked again. Still no answer.

Thunder boomed in the sky again and with a little squeal, Sophie pushed her way in, all sense of good manners gone with the howling wind.

At first she only registered that the main room of the farmhouse had changed spectacularly in fourteen years. It was hard to believe she walked into the same room. The hot glow of coals in the hearth lent the space a glow that touched on a mismatch of rugs, throws and cushions. Fresh flowers with tiny pink buds erupted from a pot on one side of the huge, curtained window and to the other side, a table overflowed with well-loved books. Everywhere her gaze touched looked cozy and inviting, so different from her father’s limited, rustic taste. Trailing her fingers over the back of an old day bed that appeared to double as a sofa of sorts, Sophie moved farther into the house.

Just as she got to the kitchen, the back door opened and Violet hurried in, one small hand supporting her overly large stomach.

“Violet?”

“What are you doing here?” The pail of water Violet held in her other hand crashed to the floor in a bid to outdo the noise of the thunder that followed.

Sophie stepped back from the obviously distressed woman. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have come in, I know, but you didn’t answer the door, and I...I...” She was out of excuses. “I’ll leave, I’m so sorry to have entered your home.”

“That’s not what I—” Violet stopped talking mid-sentence, leaned over her belly and let out the loudest, longest moan Sophie had ever heard.

Oh good God, no. Not now. “Is the baby coming?”

“I think so, yes...no. I don’t know, but something isn’t right.”

“Matthew didn’t come back?”

Violet shook her head, her face pale, drawn, in pain and terrified.

“No matter how you feel about me, I can’t leave you like this.” She couldn’t tell her that unless Matthew could swim a flooded river, then he wouldn’t be home any time soon.

“What are you talking about?”

Sophie bit her lip. Honesty? It was probably time for it. “I am a courtesan and I don’t belong in your very pretty home.”

“I never said that. Well, not those exact words.”

Before she could reply, another contraction ripped through her sister-in-law and Violet bent again. This time her knees gave out. Sophie only just caught her by the shoulders before she would have hit the rough floor.

“How long have you been like this?”

“Since last evening.”

With slow, sure steps, Sophie managed to herd Violet back into the sitting room where she lowered her onto a chair. “How could Matthew have left you?”

“He didn’t know. First babies always take so long and I didn’t want him to fuss.”

And he would have been home well before dark if Sophie hadn’t dragged him into her mess. Perhaps Blake wasn’t the only one who needed to think before they spoke.

“Please, don’t leave me. I need you.”

She met the pleading eyes of a woman who didn’t care who was in the room as long as she wasn’t alone. “I’ve never actually delivered a baby, Violet.” She’d had the opportunity, but always left it to the experts to take care of. What if she did something wrong? She knew the loss of a child and would not be the cause for another woman to feel it too.

“I have. I’ve—” Another scream filled the air and wound its way into Sophie’s heart.

Once the worst of the pain had passed and Violet caught her breath again, she said, “I’ve attended births. You only have to do what I tell you and we’ll both be fine.”

There was that word again. Fine. She sure hoped so. “What do I do first?”

“Hot water and linens.”

“That’s it? Nothing else?”

“We don’t have time for anything else...” The last word drew out as Violet’s scream turned to a moan.

Sophie took her hand and let her squeeze until the worst had once again passed. It took only minutes to gather the supplies Violet told her to get, linens from the chest upstairs and hot water from a kettle on the corner of the stove, but the time that passed felt like years. Silently she prayed to whoever listened that this birth would be uncomplicated and easy for her sister-in-law. She prayed for a miracle.