Behind the Courtesan

chapter Seven



When Sophia saw Blake fall on his back, relief that he was alive warred with the panic that she didn’t know what was happening. As she neared, one of the big horses ran off down the road sending divots of rock and mud flying in its wake. Before she could reach Blake’s side, he was on his feet, resigned determination in the grim set of his lips.

Now one horse was dead, killed by Blake and his pistol, the other gone, terrified and panicked enough to never come back. Sophia felt...numb.

Should she mourn the dead animal? Thank God she was alive? Alone on the road, night encroaching, the scent of blood thick enough to attract nocturnal scavengers—should she worry?

And then Blake was at her back, his warmth a welcome reprieve to the cold nothingness descending. Strong arms encircled her, hugged her, held her. The reassuring weight of Blake’s chin resting on her shoulder made her forget she didn’t like to be touched. A childhood of memories stirred, lifted, swirled around in her mind until she turned in the shelter of his strength and cried against his chest.

“It’s all right,” he murmured, holding her tight.

His warm lips brushed against her forehead, her cheeks, her eyelids, first one and then the other, but it felt wrong. It had to be her decision, her instigating the contact, her in control. Sophia pushed against his chest, backed up until they no longer touched, but then gasped when she saw the amount of blood on his ripped clothes.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” He shrugged, a not-quite-contained hiss of pain giving his lie away.

Sophia arched a brow but didn’t dignify his words with more. She stomped back to the carriage to see what they had in the way of bandages. There must be something she could use to clean the blood and dirt and then bind his wounds. Anything to take her mind off his kisses and the heat infusing her cheeks.

There was nothing suitable at all, only filthy old blankets to cushion supplies. Pretty soon, the top skirt of her ensemble—the one she hadn’t wanted to sacrifice in the name of stubborn stupidity—was hiked up and out of the way as she ripped at petticoats until she had a handful of adequate strips to first clean and then bind.

“I’m all right, really, Sophie, don’t fuss.”

“Sit down,” she demanded. For once he did as she asked and sat before he was pushed. The damage was extensive, but didn’t seem life threatening. Down his left arm, an angry red graze already purpled as blood pooled beneath the skin. More blood trickled down his forearm to drip from his elbow. She started there, but was soon hampered by the torn linen of his shirt.

“Take your shirt off.” She kneeled next to him in the dirt, waited for him to comply.

Blake shook his head and attempted to stand. Sophia wouldn’t have it. Under the ferocity of her glare, hands on her hips, fire in her eyes, he finally pulled the shirt over his head and twisted his hands around it, dropping the bundle into his lap.

Her gaze followed the movement as she desperately endeavored to ignore rippling muscle now only covered by a sprinkling of dark hair. Her childhood friend had more muscle than all of the men at a London ball combined. Never had she seen such finely sculpted, individually corded, sinewy tone on another human being. On animals, yes. Men, no.

The thought of the dead horse, his screams permanently silenced, brought her back to the task at hand. When she looked up to gauge Blake’s level of awareness, wondering if the shock had set in, he wore a smug grin of triumph.

“I was merely looking for more wounds,” she squeaked, before any query was even voiced. It made her guilt all the more evident.

“You missed the one here,” he said with a chuckle, pointing to his side where yet more blood dripped.

“You are in a bad way,” she told him. She couldn’t clean the wounds without water and binding open lacerations could invite infection, especially since her petticoats were hardly sanitary.

She wound a makeshift bandage around his shoulder and upper arm to the elbow and prayed for a miracle, that the flow of blood had largely removed any debris that may have lodged inside. Sophia placed the back of his hand against her shoulder so he wouldn’t have to lift his arm. If his muscles were tensed while she wrapped the linen, it would become loose when he relaxed.

“Where did you learn to do this?” Blake asked.

Sophia wasn’t sure if he sought to make conversation or if he really wanted to know the extent of her skills. A lump formed in her throat at the thought of sharing more of her life with him, but she gave him some of the truth. He could do with it what he wanted. “I have had some nursing experience in an infirmary of sorts.” Her hands moved over the wound stretching over three of his ribs. As she gingerly probed the area, Blake hissed and flinched from her touch.

“You’ve broken a rib or two.”

“I have not,” he scoffed as if he were a child, but his tone lacked any real conviction.

She gave him another of her best glares.

“Very well, I may have bruised the bone, but I don’t think anything’s broken.”

Silence fell as she did her best to pad the area. “Had we needle and thread, I would stitch this.” Another length of linen came away from her petticoat to make a piece long enough to wrap around his torso more than once.

“Why do they let you tend this clinic of sorts?”

Sophia’s hands stilled, her breath slowed, her eyelids fell. “Not all people think me lower than the dirt that mars their hems. And some don’t have the luxury of being nursed by a real physician.”

Warm fingers closed over her cold skin and squeezed just so. “I didn’t mean to insult you. I merely want to know the kind of life you lead. The real life. Not the one you talk up to defend your actions. I want to know who Sophia Martin is, who Little Sophie has become.”

A single tear escaped, rolled down her cheek to land on the mess that used to be her gown. When she met his frank gaze, she had to admit to a moment of terror even more frightening than being thrown from a moving carriage. It gave her a vision of the one person in the world who could know who she was. Who she wanted to be. Her deepest desires and darkest fears.

But he wasn’t the one—this man who insulted, berated and belittled. He couldn’t be the one to share her secrets with. She couldn’t trust him. She couldn’t trust anyone.

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” she eventually replied, tying the bandage off just below his armpit, checking with a slight tug of pressure that the knot would hold.

“And you don’t know who you are anymore.” Lifting the shirt he held in his hands and holding it to the gash on the side of her head, Blake’s voice held years of pain, emotion so familiar to her that she leaned away from his comfort and stood.

“Perhaps I don’t want to know.”

Blake could well believe she didn’t want to know her real identity. It might scare her into doing something drastic. In her society world where the sun shone every day on her happiness, had she lost sight of what it felt to be a real person? He wondered how long it had taken to talk herself into this level of veritable blindness. He wondered at the necessity for such an illusion.

There was a moment in her past that created that fear. He saw it in her eyes, in the tense line of her body, especially in the way she hesitated before getting close to him. Even before climbing on the bench with him in the cart, she’d eyed him warily as if to measure the chances he would grow a second head and attack her once they were out of town. But fear was nowhere to be found now as she tended to his injuries.

These tiny flashes of fear filled him with sadness, another factor that made her Sophia. Another stone of guilt to add to the pile that dragged at his shoulders. It was partly his fault that she’d run away. Not in any literal sense, no. His guilt came from her not knowing how deeply he felt about her all those years ago. Perhaps if she’d known the full extent of his love—that he would have laid down his own life for hers—she would have come to him, told him of her father’s plans. He would have run away with her. He would have taken her all the way to freedom and safety if it meant she hadn’t been alone.

A shiver worked its way through his body as the sun dropped lower behind the clouds. It was going to be a cold night.

Blake struggled to get to his feet. When he put his left hand on the damp ground, his ribs screamed in pain and he had to bite his tongue against crying out. He tried with his right. When there was only a slight pull from his grazed skin, he pushed up until he was back on his feet. For a moment the countryside swayed around him, black spots swam in his eyes, but then the horizon settled and he took first one step, then another, putting his ruined shirt back on as he went. His body would be sore come morning.

Ensuring he made enough noise that she would know he was there, Blake approached Sophia where she perched on the end of the buckboard. He held out his right hand. “Truce?”

She sighed, lifted her watery blue eyes to meet his.

“Do you think we can call a truce?” he asked.

She shook her head and jumped from the cart as a blush tinged her cheeks. “All we do is fight. Do you think we are capable of a ceasefire?”

“I think we have to try to get along better. It’s likely we’ll be stuck here all night and—”

“I beg your pardon?” The tension that usually held her rigid returned as she arched her neck and looked down her nose at him.

“No one will even know there is something wrong until morning. Even then, they might assume we were delayed and decided to stay in Sheffield for the night. Dominic knows what to do if we don’t return on time.”

Misty knew her way back to the tavern and the warm barn. If she arrived without the cart strapped to her back, a search party would be organized, but they wouldn’t be able to set out until morning. The dangers were too high to blindly grope about in the dark. Especially on a road that hadn’t seen a repair in years. Damn Blakiston’s laziness.

“We’ll have to build a fire against the cold and a shelter in case it rains.”

“We can’t...” she stuttered. “I can’t stay here all night.” She whirled around and started to walk. “If we go now, we’ll make it in a few hours.”

“Sophie,” he called after her. “It’ll be at least three hours until you reach Blakiston on foot and full night in less than one. There are dangers in traipsing about the countryside in the dark.” He didn’t want to add to her anxiety, but nor could he walk back to the inn in his current state.

She stopped, turned back to glare her haughty glare. “You will protect me. Now come along.”

He shook his head, ignored her imperious command. “I’m not walking anywhere. I hurt, I’ve lost too much blood and I know ’tis pure folly. I’m going to find wood for a fire. You may do as you wish.” As he turned his back, he knew she debated ignoring him and forging on, but he guessed it would have been a very long time since she’d been alone in the wilds of England. By day the pastures and fields may look innocent enough, but by night foxes prowled for their dinner, wild dogs, bats and more he didn’t even want to think about, foraged. At least with a fire and the protection of the cart, they stood half a chance.

He stepped over the ditch at the side of the road but lost his balance and fell to his knees with a strangled cry of pain.

In the time it took for the agony to subside and his vision to clear, Sophie was instantly at his side, her small hands around his shoulders. He was more hurt than he had planned to let on.

“You shouldn’t have moved so quickly,” she admonished, her gaze snapping this way and that, presumably searching for a suitable place to push him back on his arse.

“I’m fine.” But the way he hissed the words through his teeth once again belied any conviction.

“You most certainly are not fine. You will sit and I will collect wood for a fire.”

“What?”

“I do know how to find sticks to start a fire, Blake. I have not forgotten everything from my childhood.”

You could have fooled me. He bit his tongue on the smart retort. He knew she would worry less if she was kept busy, so he inclined his head and let her lead him to the back of the cart. He was then forced to watch as she stepped off the road, scouring the ground as she went.

In no time, she found kindling to get started and then went back for larger pieces. By the time she returned again, Blake had dug three blankets from beneath the softer fruit—cushioned so as not to spoil and bruise with every bump in the road—and draped one over Monster’s back. One he wrapped about his own shoulders and the other he placed in his lap to warm for Sophie. They would have to spend the night leaning against the dead horse but what remained of his warmth would keep their teeth from rattling when the cold set in.

When finally she sat next to him, the fire a warm glow against her pale skin, Blake knew she must be exhausted and freezing. He placed the blanket on her shoulders, felt the stiffness of her back as he smoothed it over her arms and tucked it around the edges of her skirts. “Now is not an ideal time for maidenly sensibilities, Sophie.”

She relaxed a fraction, her hands outstretched over the small flames, and let him come closer. They would have to rely on each other this night to stay comfortable. Though the way she bit on her bottom lip in consternation worried him. He didn’t break the silence. Let her be the one to vent what was on her mind. For sure as he drew breath, she had something to say.

“Do you really think we can have that truce?” she asked into the darkness, her head turned away so he couldn’t accurately read her eyes.

“Only if we can agree to be civil.”

“Agreed,” she said as she turned her face back to the fire.

Awkward silence descended once again until Blake felt compelled to take advantage of their unexpected isolation. Perhaps this was the time he needed to discover who she had become. The faces she let everyone see were not hers. They were all masks and he desperately wanted to pull them away so he could see her.

“Tell me more about your infirmary,” he prompted.

She shrugged her shoulders in a gesture that was so much more Little Sophie and a lot less Sophia than he’d seen from her in the past three days. “I was very ill not long after I arrived in London and I had no money for a doctor. My friends took me to the infirmary where I was nursed back to health. As I got better, I helped where I could and now I give back to those who helped me.”

“But you aren’t a doctor or a nurse.”

“No, but I can bandage, stitch wounds, play with children who are sick and in need of more than their parents or guardians can offer. You have no idea what it’s like in London. People lie down on the side of the road and never get back up again in the poor quarters. No one should ever have to be that alone.”

“I’m shocked.” And that was an understatement. He could picture her in a white apron bent over a child with a skinned knee crooning words of comfort more easily than he could picture her in a ball gown laughing with a lord.

Was this the her he wanted to find out about or was it yet another front to make her decisions easier to live with?

* * *

Sophia smiled for the first time in hours. She was glad to shock him. Every time she tried to convince him there was more to her than her courtesan status, he mocked or huffed or openly disbelieved. He didn’t know the half of it. She wouldn’t label herself a philanthropist, but she did help as much as she was able. What more could she do? Sit back and watch as children died because the most basic aid couldn’t be found? Mothers lost babies because they didn’t know the difference between a fever and a disease. Men lost their lives because they were too stubborn or poor to seek help. The infirmary had saved so many. They had saved her when the pregnancy she had tried so desperately to hide in those early days had gone terribly wrong and nearly killed her. The memories of her first miscarriage, the fever that followed and the fear that even after everything she had already gone through, she was going to die anyway, would stay with her forever.

Her first months in London had been terrifying but she had done it, with the assistance of her four friends. Molly, Addison, Caroline and Amy were the closest to sisters she could ever lay claim to. They had supported her through some very, very tough times and she them. But the five of them could be no more different than sisters could. Amy worked in a gaming hell at night as the woman who distracted men so they lost more money to the tables. Addison was a milliner’s daughter, her father owned a shop on Bond street and was far too busy to notice his daughter’s habit of disappearing for days on end.

Molly worked in a brothel, second in charge to the madam who ran the establishment. Molly had been Sophia’s second friend in the world after Caroline. The brothel was actually a lovely building close to Mayfair. From the outside, it was a shop front boasting a fine tailor. Upstairs was an entirely different matter.

Caroline was possibly the most presentable and respectable of them. When they had first met by the pond, Caro crying her eyes out over a boy, she had been a scullery maid. Now she was companion to a gentlewoman, who gave them the majority of their funding. Mrs. Pendleton’s husband had died, leaving her a very wealthy widow. But he had also left her a shell of the lady she had once been. Sadness had taken over her life and turned her into a hermit. Caro was her only window to the outside world.

“How often do you work there?” Blake’s question pulled her from thoughts of her life and her far-away friends.

“About three days a week when Daemon is out of town.” Damn. She hadn’t meant to mention her former lover or indeed anything to do with her occupation.

“Daemon is your duke?” he asked without scorn, without insult. Perhaps they had reached a truce.

Sophia didn’t correct him. Daemon was a duke but never hers. “He is the Duke of Clifton.”

“St. Ives?” Blake asked.

Sophia nodded again. “Do you know him?”

“He was close to the old duke.”

Sophia’s heart skipped first one beat and then another. “No, he wasn’t.”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“You must have your dukes mixed up.”

“I can assure you he was close to Blakiston.”

“They were not friends.” Why had Daemon never mentioned the connection?

Perhaps because you never told him where you came from.

Not even with her first protector, Noah, had she shared all the details of her life before London. The more years that went by, the more she had stuck by her decision, tried to forget. She knew deep down that if ever she was in need of a safe place, the town of Blakiston would be there, undiscovered, undisturbed. But while the old duke and her father lived, she would not have stepped foot anywhere near the town or her borders.

In fact, since she had fled, she hadn’t visited outside of the city at all. Until now. And look how it turned out.

Silence once again engulfed them. They were mere inches away from each other and yet worlds apart. She was a courtesan, and he was a countrified tavern owner.

Never mind that as children they’d seen each other without clothes, that they had lain on the banks of a river and quenched their thirst. They had endured so much, had each known everything about the other, yet the years had borne a gap too wide to breach. Sophia missed the camaraderie they once shared more than she would ever admit aloud. Blake had been a brother to her just as much as Matthew had. But that was over now. They were no longer children, no longer friends. But there were things she wanted to know.

“How long ago did your uncle die?” It was blunt but she didn’t think he would mind much. There had never had been love or affection between Blake and John.

“Six years. Best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Did Blakiston ever try to claim you as his son?” she asked, snapping a twig between her fingers and feeding it to the hungry flames of the fire.

Blake shook his head. “Never. The cur tried to destroy me but it didn’t work. Eventually he gave up trying and let me be but by then it was obvious to all with eyes that he was my sire.”

“What did he do? To try to ruin you?”

“First there was the poison.”

Sophia gasped.

“Not intended for me,” he assured her. “Took down every last cow and chicken I had, nearly got the horses as well, but they were fed a different grain then.”

“What did you do?”

He shook his head. “Not me. We. The town rallied around me, ate vegetable pies for a month, gave me a cow for milk, a few chickens for eggs to make the basic biscuits, bread and cake. I was able to start again.”

“Did you confront him?”

“I went to the estate,” he said but offered no more.

“He actually let you in?”

They hadn’t had a choice when he’d kicked the front door down and strode in as if he did indeed own the mansion. If the old duke had been nicer to his mother instead of making her appear his mistress, if his mother had demanded respect from the man who married her and then denied it and had had the evidence destroyed, he would have owned the place.

Unfortunately for the folk of Blakiston, there appeared no legitimate son to take the mantle, to carry on a name dragged through the mud and back for generations. It fell to Charles Falston, not even a real man, more a sniveling brat, who now had power and the hunger to wield it, to fill the shoes of the depraved duke.

Charles could have it. Blake didn’t want any part of a title or the responsibility. He’d been raised a bastard. Nothing would change that. He and St. Ives had made sure of it.

“You don’t have to talk about it anymore.”

Her voice pierced his internal rage, gave him something to hold onto, to pull himself out of the pit of anger and despair that tried to drown him. “Or do you not want to hear it?”

This is why he didn’t talk about it. He tried not to think of his mother, the woman who’d birthed him and then abandoned him. So many people in his life had betrayed him. Sophie would always sit at the top of the list. “You and my mother are the same, you know.”

“We are not,” came her indignant reply.

“You both just threw away my love like it never mattered a damn.”

The awful silence, the one that held the demons of their pasts, settled around them again. How did she manage to draw his emotions from him like a bucket dipped into a well? It was none of her business and deep down, Blake knew she didn’t care. She had her grand life in London and in a matter of weeks, this trip would be but a distant memory, more fodder for the gossip that filled drawing rooms and salons. Salons she would sit in with St. Ives and live her shallow life.

He couldn’t sit still anymore. He was a fool and a hypocrite. He wanted her to open up to him, yet he hadn’t done the same with her. Hadn’t told her of his friendship with her protector or that he and St. Ives were related.

For the first time ever, he was actually jealous of his only two friends. Matthew had Violet and the baby. St. Ives had Sophie and her trust. He had nothing. Nothing at all.

As he got up and stamped away into the cold night, wishing she would call him back, wishing he had the courage to stay, he realized he was the biggest fool of them all.

Despite what she was, whoever she was now, he still loved her and that made him angrier than anything else had in the past fourteen years.

* * *

“Damn you Blake! Damn you and your fool notions. I am nothing like your mother!” A temper difficult to leash pushed her to her feet and drove Sophia to follow the stubborn man into the dark. She stumbled, nearly fell, righted herself only to stumble again.

Out of nowhere, his body loomed until he stood face to face with her, his eyes and mouth twisted into a fury so great Sophia trembled but stood her ground. There wasn’t anything he could do to her that hadn’t already been done.

“You are the fool,” he roared. “You could have had it all, a family, a husband, a good life, but you were a coward. You should have stayed and fought your father but you ran away and hid from it.”

If it was a fight he wanted, it was a fight he would get. “I’m the coward? You hide behind your so-called farming accomplishments so you won’t have to step out on a limb and make something of yourself. You could have had it all too, Blake. You could have been so much more, but you were too frightened to make your father see you. Too busy hiding from responsibility and respectability.”

“Is what you think? That I should have been a duke? Would you have had me then, Sophia? If I came to you in London and told you I loved you, would you have given it all up to come back here with me? To rot in the countryside with thousands of pounds and an estate? Because that’s what you want isn’t it? That’s why you never wrote me, never thought of me. I’m just a peasant and you want a title.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t want a title.”

“That’s what you say, but it’s all a lie. You sleep with St. Ives in the hopes that he will one day offer you the life you ran away for. How did you first get the notion? Did you read it in a book? Did you meet him when he came to visit the estate? Did your London friends help you think up the lie of your father selling you to Blakiston to win Daemon’s heart?”

“They aren’t lies. It’s the truth.”

“No, Sophia. I think the truth is that you wished for a better life long before you had the notion to flee. I think that is why you never said goodbye. You wouldn’t have been able to hide your enthusiasm, your eagerness to start your new life.”

Sophia’s heart stopped its rapid thump-thump against her ribs. Stopped beating altogether. “Is that truly what you think? How you see me?”

“How many men did you sleep with before worming your way into the bed of a duke?”

Sophia shook her head until her hair came loose from the chignon she’d tied it in. He was wrong. Oh, how wrong he was and there wasn’t a thing she could say or do to sway him.

Suddenly, warm hands gripped her arms hard just above the elbows. “How many men, Sophia?” With each syllable, he shook her, shook her until her teeth rattled and her neck hurt.

Wrenching free of his brutal grip, Sophia pulled her hand back and swung hard. The resounding crack echoed in the night air, fog from their heavy and harsh breaths drifted into the sky above them. Sophia’s palm stung but she wanted to hit him again. She wanted to lash out and hurt him just as much. How could he be so wrong? He saw her with only disgust and pity and it gnawed her soul that his opinion had fallen so low.

Well, if he wanted the truth, she would give it to him, but in return she would know the same of him. “I will tell you how many men, but you must tell me how many women.” How she wished she had the eyes of a night owl. She would have given it all to see what he felt in that moment. His anger and condemnation she could feel but there was something else there. Some other kind of anguish that tore him up. That probably had nothing to with her and her occupation so much as his own hurt pride.

“I don’t have to tell you that and you shouldn’t ask.”

“Very well, then.” Whipping around so fast her dirty, ripped skirts snapped about her legs, Sophia headed back to the warmth of the fire. He would follow or he would not. For all she cared, he could perish in the dark on his own.

Shaking the blanket free of anything that might have taken a mind to crawl in, Sophia wrapped it around her shoulders and dropped back down in the space between the dead horse and the hot coals. A chill pervaded her body, but she doubted the night had anything to do with it.

The minutes stretched, the only sound came from the crackle of the fire and the occasional call of night birds. Just when she was about to give up and close her eyes, Blake’s heavy tread approached.

“How many?” he asked.

She sighed. “Why does it matter? What concern is it of yours?”

“It does matter. It matters to me for the stupidest reasons of all, but it matters.”

Finally she nodded and gave him the number. “Seven.”

“I’m not an idiot. Tell me the real number.”

Must he continue to heap insult upon injury? “That is the number. You asked and I told you. Now it is your turn.”

“I won’t tell you until you stop with the lies.”

Sophia jumped back to her feet. “What do you want me to tell you? Do you want to know everything? Do you want to know that I was saved from a fate worse than death when I arrived in London? That I was polished, preened and beautified until I shone and then sold to save my life? The reason I landed in a duke’s bed is because lies and gossip travel faster than the truth. By the time St. Ives found me, I had a notorious reputation for dazzling men in their bedrooms—all lies but lies that helped me stay alive.”

All was quiet for a time, Sophia’s chest rose with each breath she heaved in and then whooshed out. Why did he do this to her? Slumping to the ground, she rubbed a hand over her face and stared into the fire. “Believe what you will. I have nothing to lose by telling the truth.” Well, some of the truth. There was more to it but she would never reveal it. Ever. What would he do to her if he knew that when she arrived in London, she carried his father’s baby, his own half brother? He would never speak to her again. Even in anger.

“Do you ever feel regret?”

She did. All the time. Regret that she hadn’t run sooner. Regret that she hadn’t been able to truly trust Blake and Matthew to save her. Regret ate away her defenses each time she peered into the face of a baby knowing she would never have one of her own. Nothing in her life had so far gone to plan, but she had been happy, or at least some version of it. “Regret is a luxury I cannot afford,” came her eventual reply.

“Some would call that denial.”

“I define it as the intelligent option. And denial has its uses.”

“One day you will have to face it all, Sophie. What will you do then?”

She didn’t hesitate. “I’ll face it when it comes. But that won’t be this day or any other day soon.”

“How do you know? You can’t keep it at bay forever.”

Staring into the mesmerizing flames, she muttered. “Oh, yes I can.”