‘No. I fear that you may become a target of sorts. Once it is known that you are important to me, of value to me, then others might seek to attack me through you. I do not want to frighten you, only to put you on your guard.’
Sophie had not realised how warm and happy and safe she had felt a moment ago. She had told Cal her secret and he still wanted to marry her. She was going to be a duchess, married to a man she liked and desired – and now it was as though she had taken a step and found a pit beneath her feet.
‘Cal, has someone been sending you threats?’
‘No, nothing of the kind.’ She was not certain that she believed his reassuring smile. ‘Perhaps I have become so used to travelling in dangerous parts of the world that I have come to expect perils around every corner. There is nothing to worry about, but I would not have you doing anything incautious.’
‘Of course.’ And why did she not believe him for a moment? And yet, despite the cold sinking feeling in her stomach she realised that she still felt safe with Cal. He would look after her and she would look after him, Sophie resolved. Someone needed to do something about that darkness he hid so well, and who better than a wife?
Cal ran down the front steps, jammed his hat on his head and strode off down Wimpole Street. Damn and hell and… He exhausted an extensive repertoire before he turned towards Cavendish Square and was forced to slow by the crowds on the pavement. Had he let his true feelings show? He thought not, hoped not, because he did not want to hurt Sophie and it was his problem, not hers, that he felt so bitterly the fact that she was not a virgin, that he would not be her first lover.
It was illogical, emotional and downright unjust to feel like that. He was not a virgin, for God’s sake, hadn’t been when he had married Madeleine, hadn’t stayed celibate after her death, so why did he feel like this about Sophie? It was not as though she was playing fast and loose, taking lovers, here there and everywhere. She had fallen in love with this man, whoever the bastard was, found she was mistaken in him and had been regretting it ever since. And, however it had played out, it had been bad enough for her to feel safer carrying a weapon now.
He went back over what he had said to her. Yes, he had managed to keep the disappointment, the irrational anger with her that he knew was unjust and unfair, out of his voice, out of what he had said, otherwise he was certain she would have refused to marry him.
So, he was starting this marriage with a mountain of lies. He was angry and disappointed that she’d had a lover. He was not telling her that he thought his life might be in danger and was marrying her anyway. She had told him frankly about her past and he had carefully not revealed anything of his first marriage.
‘Cal? Didn’t expect to see you around here.’ Jared stood directly in front of him, a rock in the river of passers-by who muttered and frowned and flowed around him on either side. No-one would jostle him of course, not after one look. ‘You have a face like thunder. Coffee might help.’
Cal shrugged as Hunt took his arm and steered him through the door of a nearby coffee house, grunted when offered coffee then sat and drummed his fingers on the scarred table top until his friend slapped his own hand down to still the noise.
‘Stop that, you are driving me mad. What’s wrong?’
‘I took a good hard look in a mental mirror and didn’t much like what I saw.’
Hunt waited until the coffee came, then pushed one cup towards Cal. ‘Drink it, then confess these dark sins that cloud your soul and I will shrive you.’ When Cal scowled at him he shrugged, grinned and lounged back in his chair, fingers curled around his drink.
‘I asked Sophie Wilmott to marry me.’ Cal swallowed the coffee in one gulp, wincing at its bitterness.
‘And she refused you?’ Jared was gratifyingly amazed.
‘She accepted me. I didn’t tell her about our suspicions, I didn’t tell her about Madeleine and I was… reticent about my feelings over something she confided in me. Not a very admirable start to a marriage.’
‘You stumbled into the last one like an innocent lamb to the slaughter,’ Hunt remarked with brutal honesty. ‘Perhaps you are due your secrets this time.’
‘Damn it, should I have told her why I left England? Should I even be thinking about taking a wife, starting a family, with this unresolved?’
‘What if it never is? Do you wait until your uncle and cousin predecease you before you risk it?’
‘No, of course not.’ Cal snapped his fingers at the waiter for more coffee. That revelation about Sophie’s lover had plunged him in to a fit of the blue devils and he needed to haul himself out of it. Fast. ‘I marry her, as soon as possible. If there is a long engagement then she is vulnerable. Married, I can protect her. And I go to Calderbrook, start making my presence felt, start acting the duke. Either that will provoke them and I deal with it, or they will have accepted it and given up, or we were mistaken all along.’