Behind the Courtesan

chapter Three

unconsciousness. Then it got louder. And louder. And louder. Once she realized it was her door someone was trying to knock down, she leapt from her bed. Not bothering with a wrapper or shawl, she gripped the handle and threw the door wide.

“What?” she asked into the gloom. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

“It’s time to wake up, Duchess.”

Sophia tried to comprehend just what had happened that would make Blake wake her in such a manner. He was dressed in a thick brown coat buttoned only halfway, a shirt the same color peeking from beneath. Navy breeches replaced yesterday’s trousers and were tucked into high boots, mud already marring the dark surface. As her sleepy gaze traveled back up to his face, he also wore that smug look that clearly came as second nature. Most other people smiled, she thought sourly.

“Get dressed, we’re already late.”

Puzzled, she answered, “Late for what?” But Blake was already gone. His long strides carried him along the corridor where he thumped down the stairs and into the lower parts of the tavern.

Sophia closed the door and peered into the darkness overlooking the rear yard. It was pitch black out. Why did he wake her? For a moment she’d worried that something had happened to Violet through the night.

But then those anxious feelings sank to the pit of her stomach with a weight she did not like. Why would Violet need her help with anything? It was clear her sister-in-law wasn’t enamored of her. She lit a candle and sat on the edge of her bed, staring at the cradle in the corner of the room. She should have left it in London with everything else she wouldn’t need for the rest of her life. It would have fit next to the chest holding her ball gowns and crystal slippers. Right beside the tiny gown her own child would have worn had it been born.

With a shuddering breath, she tore her gaze away. Today was not a day for tears. Today was a day for taking her mind off London and what-should-have-beens. Today she was going to show Blake Vale that she was a perfectly capable woman.

The memory of last night’s challenge almost sapped her will. Surely normal, everyday folk didn’t rise before the rooster had the chance to crow his crow? She knew farmers rolled from their beds at god-awful hours, but not tavern keepers. What could possibly need doing before the guests or patrons had even thought of breakfast or their first ale for the day?

Sophia contemplated the comfortable bed. She could settle beneath the warm blankets and go back to sleep, but Blake would expect her to do that. He would expect her to quake at the first hurdle, and to get up before the sun definitely counted as a hurdle. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction so she threw a blanket over the cradle and then opened her dresser and rifled through the gowns hanging in the cramped space. Eventually Sophia decided a riding habit would have to suffice. She didn’t have clothing suitable for mucking out stables. And she was sure that’s what Blake had in mind. He wouldn’t stop today until she begged for mercy. It wasn’t the first time her stubborn pride had gotten her into trouble.

The next knock at the door startled her so much her hands shook and the shoelace she tied snapped off in her fingers. “Damnation,” she swore beneath her breath. She didn’t have another pair of shoes she was willing to sacrifice in the name of idiocy and her riding boots had a heel on them that would leave her with a limp by the end of the first hour.

With a muttered curse she tucked what was left of the laces into the top of her shoe and stalked to the door. She took a second to school her features and when she opened it, gave Blake the brightest smile she could summon. “Good morning, Blake.”

“That’s not going to work with me this morning, Duchess.”

“What?” Feigned innocence was one of the best weapons she had at her disposal and she did it well.

“Your pretty smiles and feminine airs will not help you today, so stop looking at me like that.”

Was she supposed to grunt her morning greeting as he did? “I was merely being polite. Next time I will scowl.”

Blake opened his mouth to issue probably yet another insult but then obviously changed his mind.

“Come,” he said with a gentler tone. “We are already behind.”

Sophia hid her answering smile and hoped tomorrow morning’s awakening wouldn’t be quite so brutal since she hadn’t muttered one protest.

But after two steps through the back entrance of the tavern, she hoped tomorrow morning would never come. A thin layer of frost covered the ground, and as she bit her lip against the cold, her breath fogged. She considered running back to her room for a blanket to wrap about her shoulders.

Blake must have noticed her hesitation on the stoop, because he called to her over his shoulder, “You won’t be cold for long, Duchess. Now, keep up.”

“Do you think you might call me by my name today?” she asked his broad back as she lifted her hems to keep up as requested.

He stopped so suddenly, she nearly ran into him. “And what name would that be? Sophie? Sophia? Grand, adventurous Madam?”

“My name is Sophia. Not Duchess. Not Sophie and definitely not Madam.”

“Your name is not Sophia and we both know it. Just because you change a letter at the end does not make it so. And I like the ring of ‘Duchess.’”

“Very well.” Sophia shrugged as she lifted her arms to rest her hands on her hips. “I shall call you swine.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“As you should! You have done nothing but goad and insult me since I arrived. Your behavior is much what I would expect from a pig.”

As anger flared to life in his eyes, she knew she had said something critically wrong rather than simply rude.

“I have insulted you, but you turn up your pretty little nose at everyone and everything. Do you think if you had come to town with a friendly greeting and a smile, we might be in a different situation right now?”

Sophia rose to his bait in a heartbeat. She wondered if he stopped to consider the fact that she had nothing to smile about. She stepped forward but stopped short from poking him in the chest with her pointed finger. “And is that the only issue you take with my character, Blake? It has nothing to do with the fact that you hate everything about me and what I do?”

“I do not hate you. I merely feel sorry for you.”

“Well, I don’t need your pity. I am perfectly happy.” And apparently not above lying just to prove him wrong.

“I don’t pity you for sleeping with men for trinkets. I grieve for the girl you once were. The woman you could have been.”

He went to walk away, but Sophia decided in that moment that Blake needed to know a few truths about the woman she would have become if she hadn’t fled Blakiston all those years ago.

She ran around him, the swirl of her skirts about her ankles letting the cold seep beneath. “Would you like to know what my father had planned for me? What price he put on my body to start the bidding?”

“What are you talking about?” His eyes rolled heavenward as though her excuses meant nothing to him.

Sophia opened her mouth, but then she snapped it shut again. Why should she defend her actions or her decisions to a man who would never understand them anyway? He wouldn’t believe her. Her own brother wouldn’t have believed her father’s intention to sell her to the Duke of Blakiston in exchange for the neighboring farm. “Prime land for a prime filly,” he’d said, laughing. Well, she hadn’t laughed. She’d been terrified.

She bit her lip, welcomed the sting as she stepped out of his way. “It doesn’t matter. You wouldn’t understand.”

All was quiet for what felt like decades, and then he spoke. “I wouldn’t understand because I am a swine or a simpleton?”

Sophia looked up into gray eyes narrowed in frustration. She could hear the hurt in his voice, but he could never comprehend her decision. She would have been foolish to tell him anything. “No, Blake,” she replied with a sad shake of her head. “Because you are a man.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Men will never grasp the female mind and its intricacies.”

“Nor do we want to.”

Sophia forced a chuckle. It was a very good thing the males of their species were not perceptive in the least. It was also convenient that they were easily distracted. “What is first on your agenda, Blake? Chickens? Cows? Pigs?”

“I am not the one with the agenda, Duchess.”

With a glare thrown over her shoulder, Sophia turned toward a low building at the rear end of the yard. “I am not going to talk about this anymore. Either we find a way to work together or I am going back to bed.”

Mumbling beneath his breath, he passed her and made a track for the double doors at the far end of the barn. She almost called for him to slow down so she wouldn’t have to trot to keep up but figured that wasn’t worth yet another disagreement. She had to show Blake she could do anything he did. Keep up with his daily chores. Match him task for task. Otherwise he won.

She could not let him win.

As he threw the first door wide and then the second, heat washed over her along with the scents of hay and manure. It was an earthy, rich smell that didn’t make her nose wrinkle as she’d envisioned. The moment was almost nostalgic. After all, she’d spent half her life mucking stalls, feeding horses, milking cows and collecting eggs.

Her first few steps into the barn made her think of her father and her brother in their happier years. Back to a time when her gangly limbs and freckled cheeks had been nothing more than a child’s cuteness. The years before her breasts had formed, before her body had curved and filled out in all the wrong places.

“What are you thinking about?” Blake asked. He stood with his hands on a horse’s bridle half lifted from its spike on the wall.

“Home,” she admitted with a sigh.

“London?” His question broke the spell and Sophia grimaced. London was her home now. Thankfully there were no cows to milk at dawn and the only eggs she had to deal with were the kind one held up with a fork to put in one’s mouth.

Ignoring his question—and the Pandora’s box it would open if she were to dwell on her answer—the curiosity in his eyes, she wiped her hands on her skirt and asked, “Where do we begin?”

* * *

Blake should have put her out of her misery. With every yawn she tried to suppress, he wanted to release her from their bargain and tuck her back into bed. He wanted to apologize and rescind all the hurtful words he’d said. But there was also a part of him that wanted to punish her.

Nothing he’d said to her so far was a lie. She needed to hear the truth, for surely she lived in a fantasy land. How else could she think she’d made the best decisions for her life?

He leaned against the side of the barn and watched as she hefted the heavy pitchfork fully laden with straw into the open horse’s stall. He had to admire her gumption. Not once had she complained when clearing the muck. Not once had she surrendered or begged for mercy. Not that she would. The stubborn set of her shoulders, the tight grip she had on the timber handle, the spark of her eyes when their gazes happened to meet and clash, told him Sophie would endure.

Even though straw and dirt clung to her full skirts and God knew what sullied the hems, she still struck a magnificent view. Her black hair gleamed as it slid across the smoothness of her back, the fabric of her blouse pulling this way and that with her exertions. He was surprised to notice it was damp between her shoulder blades as her makeshift plait swung over her shoulders.

He wondered when the last time was she’d worked up a sweat, but then dismissed the thought. He didn’t want to know what made her perspire. He didn’t want to know about her life in London.

But she was still Sophie. The world hadn’t ended when she’d lifted her skirts for the first nobleman to look her way. Her life hadn’t ended when she’d made the worst decision a woman could make. And that was one of the hardest parts of it. The world should have ended, it should have mourned the loss of an innocent girl the same way he had.

“Am I doing it wrong?”

Blake snapped his gaze from her back and looked into her eyes as she peered over her shoulder at him. “No.” He shook his head.

“Then why are you staring at me like that?”

Blake shrugged his coat off and hung it on a hook. He wanted to hurl another insult her way and ask the question burning the tip of his tongue. He wanted to ask about her. The real her. The woman she’d become, but he couldn’t. He wouldn’t. So he told her the truth. “I was watching you work.”

“Why?”

He shrugged again. “Why not.”

Her curious glance turned suspicious and her lips parted as if to retaliate, but then she snapped her mouth shut and turned back to the stall.

Taking a deep breath against the urge to snatch the pitchfork from her and do the job himself like a gentleman would, he took a few steps away and instead took up a shovel.

“What are you doing now?” she asked when he returned to her side.

“I was going to help you. The lunch and evening meal will not prepare itself.”

“Do we not get to break our fast?”

It was a simple question. She hadn’t whined it. She hadn’t huffed childishly. It made him feel like the bear he’d been since she’d arrived with her airs and orders. “I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I don’t take breakfast until the barn is tended, but it doesn’t usually take this long.”

She sighed and hefted the fork again. “Then it should be my turn to apologize. I am slowing you down.”

For a second his heart lodged in his throat. He liked her better when she gave him reason to be rude in return. “Let’s just get it done. The day is nowhere near to being over yet.”

With his back behind the shovel, the stall was mucked, cleaned and refreshed in thirty minutes. It could have taken her all day to do the simple task.

He had to remember that under her courtesan exterior and fierce glares, she was still a delicate woman not up to the tasks of a farmer. Despite her protests to the contrary.

“Can I have a moment to clean up?” Her voice cracked the hard shell of his thoughts. “It wouldn’t do to enter a kitchen with this filth hanging from me.”

“I don’t want you entering my kitchen like that either.” He chuckled. She now had straw in her hair and dirt smudged across one pale cheek.

Blake stepped toward her, his hand rising of its own volition. Sophie stepped back.

He paused with his fingers in the air. For a second she had been frightened of him. He’d seen the flash of fear skate across her eyes. “I wasn’t going to do anything,” he said defensively, as though he’d already laid hands on her person.

Her reply was a nervous laugh, her blue gaze darted from his face to the door of the barn behind him.

She gauged her escape. He knew it more surely than he knew his next breath would come. He lowered his voice. “I’m not going to touch you, Sophie. I was merely going to remove the field of straw you have in your hair.”

“Oh?” She patted her hair until she located the offending stalks and dropped them to the ground, but not before her hands trembled enough to betray her. “I can do that myself.”

As she whirled away from him, color high on cheeks that had been so pale, he wondered what the hell had just happened. How was it that she let men touch her for coins and trinkets, yet she’d been terrified to have her childhood friend approach? He meant no harm. She had to know that. Never once in their younger years had he raised a hand or even his voice to her. He’d loved her more than his own life in those fragile years when a boy becomes a man.

There were only two conclusions he could draw. Either she had been hurt at some stage of her sordid London life. Or she was repulsed by his callused hands. If he were to do more than slide a fingertip over her skin, he would probably scratch her. He was no gentleman, nor did he have the soft hands of one.

“Go and get cleaned up,” he snapped, angry at each and every scenario that played through his mind. “I don’t want one of my patrons to find flakes of horse shit in his soup.”

He never resorted to these types of games with anyone else of his acquaintance. Even the men he hated with a bloodthirsty passion didn’t receive the insults and scorn he heaped upon her. But then they hadn’t hurt his heart the way she had. A heart he never knew he had until her disappearance had shattered it into a thousand pieces.