Behind the Courtesan

chapter Five



When Blake knocked on Sophie’s door the next morning, he expected to find her in that nightgown that hid nothing, her dark curls in disarray over her shoulders, and still half-asleep. But when she answered his first knock bright eyed, dressed and wearing a vibrant smile, he wanted to close the door, knock again, hope she answered the way he’d wanted her to.

“Good morning, Blake.”

“Good morning, Sophie. Are you ready to start the day?” he asked with a smile. This was one instance where he didn’t want to spark her anger and cause her to do the opposite just to spite him. If he told her he needed to go to Sheffield and she declined to go with him, then he would look the fool and she would instantly know he staged the day.

Instead of walking through the kitchens and out to the barn, Blake put a hand on her shoulder and steered in the direction of the private parlor.

“What...” The softly spoken word died on her lips as eggs, ham and fresh bread came into view.

“I thought we could break our fast early today. We have to get the chores done and then hitch the wagon to make a trip to Sheffield.”

“No milking cows and collecting eggs today then?” she asked with a heavy amount of suspicion.

“I was going to wait until next week but my...churner broke and I need to replace it. Don’t worry, Dominic can handle the work for today, tomorrow it will be back to cows and chickens for us.”

She didn’t appear as though she believed a word he stuttered, but she didn’t argue. Merely inclined her head and ate her breakfast as though it was to be her last meal ever.

When she flicked a glance in his direction, he couldn’t help but keep staring.

With an odd look, she ran her tongue over her teeth, wiped her mouth with a linen and then stared back. “Do I have something on my face?”

Blake shook his head. “I haven’t before seen a grown woman eat like you.”

One dark brow lifted and he wished he didn’t now raise her suspicion in every inconsequential comment. As a girl, she’d never been a particularly fussy eater. Those in the country couldn’t afford to be. But he’d served many a titled gentlewoman in his private parlor, and more often than not, there were complaints about his menu options. As though he should have served only the finest of foods.

“I am hungry.”

“That you are,” he said with a laugh, trying not to think of her as a fancy lady.

“If I am hungry, I eat. After yesterday’s deprivation of breakfast and lunch, I thought to take advantage now.”

And there it was again. Even though they didn’t exchange insults, she was still mad. He was trying his hardest to be a gentleman now, but with retorts like that, it would be very difficult indeed.

Moving about the kitchen after breakfast, he washed the few pans and pots used to make a meal fit for a duchess and let his mind wander to the events of the day and their journey to Sheffield.

He planned to be his most charming self no matter her half remarks and reminders of the day before. He would let her chat away, listen when she talked, murmur the appropriate phrases when she drew breath and generally play the role of gentleman. It was the only weapon he had left now. Not in the sense of hurting her. No. He was beyond that. Seeing the hurt in her eyes did things to his heart that didn’t feel comfortable.

Hanging his wet dish rag on a hook by the hearth, he took one last look around his kitchen with pride. Everything was where it was supposed to be. Each pot had a shelf or hook, each plate, spoon, fork and bowl had been earned and lovingly cared for. He’d worked hard for every item his gaze roamed over. His was a good life, but he wished it had turned out differently.

When he was just five years old, his mother had left him on the doorstep of this tavern. She hadn’t left a note. No explanation. Nothing. But his uncle had known why he’d gained an extra mouth to feed. A woman couldn’t live alone with a child and not earn scorn and derision from her friends and neighbors unless she was a widow. It would have been so much easier for them all if she had been.

The only problem he’d seen through the eyes of a five-year-old child was that she’d abandoned him to a fate worse than derision or tomato target practice in the street. It had only taken twelve short months for Blake to become intimate with pain and humiliation. To dodge and duck the fists and slaps meant for his head and back. He’d missed his mother madly and held hope for a long time that she would come back and save him. That she would miss him so much, realize life was better when they were together and come back. After a few years, he’d forgotten the color of her eyes, how she looked when she smiled, the sound of her laughter. Resentment eventually had a way of shadowing the good times and turning them all bad.

His reprieve from the nightmare his life had become came in the form of Matthew Martin and a few years later his little sister.

Little Sophie who wasn’t afraid of anything. Not even Blake’s violent uncle.

But then just like his mother, she’d fled. Disappeared without a trace, without a goodbye or trail to mark the route she took. Slowly the days grew dull again, his uncle’s beatings took their toll and he hardened himself to any kind of emotion that required he invest more than a kind word or smile.

It didn’t mean he didn’t long for a family or children, a wife to wake next to, to share his secrets with, the toll of the days or the happiness of a good harvest. He just didn’t want them bad enough to put his soul on the line. Not again.

Never again.

* * *

“Well, that was...interesting,” Sophia commented from the bench seat of Blake’s cart.

That’s not quite the word he would have used for the day they’d just had.

Nothing had gone wrong. He’d introduced her as his old friend, Sophie, and she had gritted her teeth and let him. He had towed her from market stalls to store fronts and then back to the market stalls. By the end of the day she laughed and smiled and even took care of some of the negotiations for his spices and fruits. Altogether it had been amicable, enjoyable even. But inside, Blake was torn and it made him angry and upset. It made him feel like roaring.

For years he had read far too many news sheets and heard tales involving courtesans and prostitutes, and for all of those years he had imagined her standing on some corner by the docks, displaying her wares for all to see. He imagined she had lost a tooth somewhere along the way, stacked on forty pounds and lost most of her hair. Clearly the stereotypes he read about were very far from the truth, and that made him angry as well.

She came home all this time later with confidence and her spine straight despite what she had run away to do. Despite what she had become.

“Blake, are you all right?”

His hands tightened on the reins and he had to bite his tongue. Hard. “I’m fine. Just tired.”

“I’m not surprised.” She chuckled. “Do you not have anyone at all to help you when you travel to Sheffield?”

Did she imply he had no friends? “I don’t tend to go mid-week and usually Dominic comes with me while Maria cleans the rooms.”

“Maria?”

Why did she ask so many questions? Why could she not close her mouth and let him stew? He sighed. “Maria is Dominic’s younger sister.”

“Why have I not seen her yet?” This was not a casual question. There was a hint of outrage in her voice and he almost smiled.

“She only works one day a week, since she is only thirteen.”

“Thirteen?”

Blake nodded. Dominic’s father had died the year before and their mother struggled on her own, so the town’s people helped where they could. Maria cleaned his rooms, dusted and scrubbed the floor in the bar once a week and he provided them with fruits and vegetables for their meals. Maria had said she preferred to be away from the gloom at home, and it gave her a sense of satisfaction to earn her way.

At least no one in that family had fled to London to warm beds.

He shook his head and closed his eyes for a moment. He had to stop doing this to himself. He had to stop seeing her in his mind. He had to start seeing her as she stood before him and that wasn’t as a gap-toothed dove. The problem was that he had no idea where to start with this new Sophia. His body kept telling him to hate her but his brain longed for just one question to be answered.

“Why didn’t you say goodbye?”

Sophie froze on the seat next to him and he called himself a dozen different kinds of idiot. He hadn’t meant for the words to actually be said. Or had he?

It was the first question he would have asked his mother had she ever returned for him.

Even the horses felt Sophie’s sudden panic as she gripped the edges of her seat. They strained at the bit and tugged on the reins. He applied a little more backward pressure on the straps until the ancient pair fell into a smooth rhythm on the dilapidated road.

“This is neither the time nor place to have this discussion, Blake.”

“You’re wrong. This is the perfect time and the perfect place.” She had nowhere to hide.

“Why do you want to rehash this? It was so long ago now. No good can come from going over it again and again.”

That’s where she was mistaken. He had never rehashed anything. He’d never gone over the truth again and again, because he’d never had it. All he did have were the stories his mind conjured to reason why she had left without a word. He needed this confrontation.

It wasn’t even the fact that she had left that now infuriated him, because nothing could change what she had done or what she had become. He knew that as well as she did. But there were things he needed to know. Why hadn’t she said goodbye? Why hadn’t she come to him for help and most of all why had he never rated a mention in any of her brief missives to Matthew?

It was never Matthew saying, “Sophie sends greetings and asked how you are.” No, the only reason Matthew spoke of the letters at all was because he knew Blake fretted just the same as he did. The worry ate at Blake, sometimes so much so he couldn’t function with her in his thoughts.

The silence lengthened, stretched, widened the emotional distance until he wanted to draw the cart to the side of the road and shake the truth from her.

“Perhaps you don’t remember?” Immediately he regretted his snide tone, the sarcasm in his voice.

When her hands and fingers ceased their fidgeting, Blake worried she wouldn’t speak. But then she surprised him. “I wanted to say goodbye to both of you. I really, truly wanted to tell you where I was going, but I couldn’t.”

“Why not?” It was easy for her to say that now. He would not make this easy for her.

“Because you would have done everything in your power to try to aid my stay rather than see me escape.”

There seemed to be so much pain in her words. Or was it regret? “We were sick with worry. All of us.”

The wry chuckle that slipped through her lips held disbelief. “My father lost no sleep with worry over me,” she assured him.

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

“How long after I went missing did he begin the search?”

“The very next morning. When you didn’t come home he searched high and low. He paid men to dredge creeks and look under rocks for your body.”

He saw from the corner of his eye what appeared to be a huge sigh before she replied. “He paid men to find me and bring me home, Blake. I was of no use to him dead and even less disappeared.”

“I still don’t understand. You have to tell me why you left.”

“You won’t believe me. No one would have.”

“I may not have understood, but I would have listened.” He spoke softly even though he wanted to roar and shake her. He had been more in love with her than any other person dead or alive. She had been the anchor in the storm his life had become. Each time his uncle beat him, he’d closed his eyes and dreamed of Sophie, of the comfort she provided by simply being there. It had made her betrayal that much harder to bear.

“Do you remember the Mason farm?” Sophie asked.

“I do, right over the creek from your father’s. Matthew owns the rights to it now.”

For the first time since they had started to converse, her head snapped up, her gaze searched his face. “When did he buy the rights?”

“He didn’t. Your father did. About two years after you left.”

He thought he heard her curse, but he might have been mistaken. “Why is that so significant?”

She sighed, drew a deep breath and then told him the one thing he hadn’t wanted to hear. Ever.

“My father was to sell me to Blakiston.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me correctly.”

“I don’t believe it.”

She laughed that same humorless chuckle that said so much more than her words. “I told you, you wouldn’t. No one would have.”

“How do you know?”

“I heard them making the deal. Father had asked a few questions in the weeks before that seemed rather innocent fatherly questions: was I seeing any local boys, did I plan to marry and who. All odd enough when strung together but on their own hadn’t struck me as nefarious.”

“A father would ask questions like that, Sophie. He had the right to know if you were thinking of boys.”

“One night I was still awake when Blakiston’s man came to the house. It was late, very late, and I snuck out to see what the commotion was. I thought perhaps the duke had died or had an accident or some such thing. But no. He came to seal the bargain. To make my father sign a contract detailing that he would hand me over in return for use of the Mason land.”

“Are you sure?” It wasn’t that he didn’t believe her. Mason had no sons, no family, and it wasn’t as though fathers didn’t regularly bargain their daughters away in marriage, but she had been so young. Fourteen years old was too little to have been just given away. Although not to a powerful duke who got everything he demanded.

He just didn’t understand why. The old duke was charming enough that he had women falling over themselves to be his duchess without even considering his monetary worth. Blake imagined it was that charm that also first attracted his mother. She was not the type of woman to marry for anything less than a man who would treat her right.

So if his sire could have had anyone, why would he need a fourteen-year-old girl who wasn’t willing? Then again, his father’s problem had never been in attracting women, his problem had always been keeping them once they discovered his temper. His mother had left the estate because she had been beaten. His memories of her bruises would never fade in his mind no matter the time that passed.

“I had to flee. I had no choices then, Blake. No way to say no. To beg my father to see what he did was wrong. You and I both know how he coveted those lands. When old Mr. Mason was found hanging in his barn, the magistrate came to ask my father the first questions. No one actually accused him, but there were whispers that he tied the knot that killed that kind old man.”

“You put too much stock in whispers. Mr. Mason was riddled with disease, dying a slow and agonizing death. Your dad didn’t hang the man and if he did, Mr. Mason would have begged him to do it. There are two sides to every tale, and I think you’ve put all your faith in the only ones to reach your ears.”

Her body stiffened, her chin rose and her eyes flashed fire. “Is that a kind way of telling me I overreacted?”

“That is not what I’m saying. And you haven’t really answered the original question. You say you didn’t want us to stop you. But that is not what I asked. In your first note, your hastily scrawled note to your brother, you didn’t even mention my name. I never warranted a how-do-you-do in your second either.” By the time the words flowed from his mouth like a flood of spring rain, he longed to take them back. At least ask them without a boy’s insecurities driving them. But it was too late.

“I... I...don’t know what to say. All of those letters were for Matthew. I had to let him know I was all right.”

“The second letter came to me. Inside an empty envelope with my name on it was a letter to Matthew, but what of me?” Where did this all come from? And how could he dam the flow?