April Moon (23 page)

Which, Sophie sternly reminded herself, of course they weren’t. Nothing in her life ever came so easily, just as nothing like a carriage with a cross-tempered old woman, her brother and a host of others would be leaving her life with any ease, either.

“Come, Potts,” ordered Mrs. Mallon. “Stop your dawdling, and come directly. I cannot bear the draft from this open door upon my knees much longer.”

Yet still Sophie didn’t move. She’d always believed she’d made her own choices in life, hadn’t she? It had been her decision to put her dying father’s worries to rest by returning Harry’s letters unread, her decision to become a governess and support herself. Now she could choose a place in Mrs. Mallon’s carriage, Sir William’s children and
safely boring respectability or she could choose Harry and…whatever it was Harry was offering.

These were her choices to make, weren’t they?

A fire in the grate and a sturdy roof over her head against the rain or stars and moonlight and dew wet on the grass beneath her feet.

The rest of her days running in the same worn path as these past ten years or one night of adventure and passion.

Predictability or ruin.

Security or Harry.

She raised her chin and drew back her shoulders and gazed squarely into the other woman’s eyes. “I am very sorry, Mrs. Mallon,” she said, her voice steady with her decision, “but I regret that I cannot accept your offer.”

Mrs. Mallon’s eyes narrowed beneath the stiffened curls of her wig. “Cannot, Potts, or will not?”

But it was Harry who answered for her. “Cannot, should not, will not, shall not and forget-me-not, too,” he said. “I ask you, ma’am, how much more clearly can the poor lass speak it?”

Slowly Sophie came to stand beside Harry. She didn’t stare soulfully into his eyes or take his hand or otherwise make a foolish show. Standing beside him was reassurance enough that he was there with her: once again partners, conspirators, lovers.

And for at least this night, until the moonlight
faded with the dawn, she would not be alone, but with Harry.

“I thank you, Mrs. Mallon,” she said, “and you, too, Lord Charleck, but I have decided. I shall continue to place my trust in his lordship’s company, and travel with him.”

“Then you will travel straight to the devil, with that man as your guide,” predicted Mrs. Mallon with grim finality. “I am through with you, Potts, and so I shall tell Lady Wheeler. Come, brother, let us leave these two to their—their folly and wickedness.”

Yet Sophie did not answer beyond what she’d already said. Instead she stood as proudly silent as she could, her arms folded squarely over her chest as she watched Lord Charleck hurriedly mutter goodbye and then hoist himself into the carriage beside his outraged sister. The driver cracked his whip over the horses’ backs and the carriage lurched forward while the mounted guards followed, and in a matter of moments, the only sound once again came from the water running and dancing beneath the arched bridge and the sleepy birds in the branches overhead.

Her heart racing, Sophie finally turned toward Harry, only to find that, for the second time that night, he was already looking at her. His smile was so wide it was almost foolish, and so unguarded he seemed years younger.

“Damnation, Sophie, you stayed,” he said incredulously. “You did that for me.”

“Because of what you did for me, Harry.” Her chest felt tight and knotted with not knowing what would happen next, yet she could not have looked away from him if her life had hung balanced on the edge of a sword—and maybe, in a way, it did. “That’s why I stayed. For this night. For you.”

“For you,” he repeated softly, echoing her truth with his own truth. “For you.”

Swiftly she looked away toward the grazing horses, unable to keep holding the intensity of his gaze. “But it wasn’t wicked, the way Mrs. Mallon said, and it’s not folly, any more than you shall lead me to the devil.”

“I mean to try,” he said. “Though you gave them every reason to believe I already had.”

“I did not!” she exclaimed indignantly. “The only scandalous thing I did was to refuse to ride in their silly carriage!”

“You didn’t have to say a word, pet.” His voice dropped lower, deeper, with enough of a rasp to it to make Sophie shiver. “Charleck and his sister had only to look at you to learn the truth.”

“What truth is that?” she scoffed skittishly. “Make sense, Harry.”

“I am,” he said, reaching out to touch her cheek. “You tried to play your governess role again, scraping your hair back and putting on that grim,
grim face, but this time it didn’t work. This time you couldn’t make yourself proper. It was too late. The truth was writ clear across your face, my dear Sophie.”

He slipped his fingertips from her cheek to her mouth, rubbing his thumb across the swell of her lower lip, still sensitive from their kiss. “Here’s the truth, here for all the world to see. This mouth doesn’t belong to a respectable governess, but to a woman who’s just been caught with her lover.”

Her lover: no wonder her heart raced, because he was
right.
Why hadn’t she realized it herself? It hadn’t been a parrot on her head at all when Harry and Lord Charleck had looked at her so oddly. It had been Harry’s kiss lingering on her lips, boldly there for the entire world to see.

Yet wasn’t that what she’d chosen for this night, a lover’s kiss to be treasured and remembered? She pressed her lips against his thumb, kissing his finger the way she’d kissed his lips. For now, she wouldn’t be Miss Potts; she was only Sophie, Harry’s Sophie, and he was hers.

“So what will come next for us, Harry?” she asked breathlessly. “Where shall we go?”

“A place where I won’t have to share you with anyone else,” he said, turning her hand so he could kiss her palm. “We’ll go to Hartshall.”

“H
ARTSHALL
?” asked Sophie with a little frown of confusion as she drew her face away from his hand.

Ah, thought Harry, he’d no right making any suggestions when her thoughts were winding along other, more agreeable, paths. For that matter, he’d little wish to leave those paths himself, as much as he knew he must.

“Hartshall’s a house of mine,” he explained, “a little hunting lodge not far from here. I don’t know why I didn’t think to go there before this.”

“Perhaps because it’s not the hunting season,” she said softly, following him now. “I do remember hearing of it, though. You would go there with your father and Georgie.”

“Yes,” he said, his mood clouding further at the mention of his brother. “We’ve always belonged to the nearby hunt, and when Father was still able to ride, he’d be sure to bring us along. A proper manly adventure, it was.”

“And you would take me there now?” she asked wryly. “Am I part of the proper manly adventure?”

“The very centerpiece,” he said, then sighed. The moment for such flirtation seemed oddly gone, as if the same moonlight that had charmed them earlier had changed from silver to dull brass. Now he sensed danger hiding in the shadows of every tree, and heard warnings in every owl’s hoot and cracking twig, and he’d no desire to tempt fate by spending the rest of this night with her on the open road. “But I suggested Hartshall because you don’t have a taste for inns.”

She shook her head, curling a wisp of hair behind her ear. “You wish us to go to Hartshall instead of Winchester?”

“For this night, yes.” He took her hand, threading his fingers into hers. “Perhaps it’s having been shot at once this night or maybe because we’ve heard so much of highwaymen and roving thieves, but I’m finding it damned difficult to feel at ease here alone with you beneath the stars.”

She grinned, but he didn’t miss how her fingers tightened around his. Did she seek reassurance, he wondered, or did she mean to give it?

“You’re afraid, Harry?” she asked, not expecting him to admit it. But why should she expect otherwise, given how he’d made a name for himself for cheating death however he could? “And here I’d always believed nothing could frighten you.”

“Nothing did,” he said, daring to hope that Sophie—being Sophie—would realize how rare this
next confession was. “But that was when I’d only my own sorry neck to look after. Now I have you, as well, and I’ve turned skittish as an old hen.”

“Ahh,” she said, understanding even more than he’d intended, exactly because she
was
Sophie. “But that knife cuts both ways, you know. You have me to watch over, true, but I must also do the same for you.”

He frowned, reminding himself that the same reasons that Sophie understood him made her speak this sort of nonsense as well. As independent as she could be, even Sophie must realize that men were here on this earth to protect women, not the other way around.

Or perhaps not.

“Here,” she said briskly, releasing his hand so she could flip aside the front of his coat. “If you believe we shall be travelling in danger, then you should give me one of those pistols after all. If you wish to play the highwayman, then I can just as well be the highway-
woman
.”

Deftly he dodged to one side, avoiding her hand while at the same time taking her arm by the elbow.

“A highway-woman, hah,” he said as he steered her toward their horses. “Only if the full moon had stolen my wits.”

“Please, Harry,” she protested, making her steps stubbornly, willfully clumsy. “You know I’m perfectly capable with a pistol. Think of all the wagers
you could win at that London club of yours if only you’d lay bets upon my marksmanship!”

Likely he could, but that wasn’t the point. He helped her up into saddle and handed her the reins.

“What I know,” he said firmly as he retrieved their hats from the grass, “is that if I’d a shred of common sense, I should have put you into that carriage beside Mrs. Mallon myself, and let you find your way to Winchester with them.”

“Oh, butter and beans,” she muttered darkly, jamming her bonnet down on her head. “What you should hope and pray is that your final dying thought won’t be that you should have given me the pistol.”

“What kind of governess has such murderous thoughts?” he asked as he guided his horse alongside hers and back to the road. “Or is that how you keep the peace among your little charges?”

“It works perfectly well with young boys,” she said, still irritated enough that she kept her gaze on the road ahead and not on him. “I am accomplished at the usual schoolroom studies, but I’m also skilled in such diverse areas as pitching cricket balls and tying flies for fishing—things that all young gentlemen must learn. And, of course, I can catch a frog or tadpole with nothing more than my hands.”

“Is that what you teach the daughters? How to catch a tadpole bare-handed?”

“What, instead of a husband?” Finally she
laughed, a sound he’d missed so much. She hadn’t bothered to straighten her bonnet, leaving it haphazardly askew with a dash that complemented that laugh.

“I suppose you could try the same techniques at Almack’s,” he suggested, “and see what kind of toad you can catch.”

“Precisely,” she said, laughing again. “Which is why I’ve never accepted a place with daughters. I couldn’t, not in good conscience. I could teach girls their French and grammar well enough, but when it came to the skills a young lady needs—fine stitching on linen, playing the pianoforte, genteelly wielding a fan and pouring tea—I would utterly fail. I doubt I could so much as tie a decent bow for a hair ribbon.”

“I’m sure you could,” he answered loyally, “if you wished to.”

“But how could I teach what I never learned myself?” she asked with her usual logic. “It’s on account of being a motherless girl, I suppose, and spending too much time running about the manor with you and George.”

“We always were to blame, weren’t we?” It was reasonable that she’d speak of his brother so freely and with such affection, given that they’d shared so much of their childhood in each other’s company. But each time she’d mentioned George’s name this
evening, it had been as if he still lived, even as if he were waiting for them at Hartshall.

Could she really not know otherwise? It was possible; the numbers of young men, even gentlemen, being killed in these wars with France were numbing, and the notice of George’s death had been only one more among many.

“You’re very quiet,” she said, making him wonder how long he’d been riding in melancholy silence beside her. “More hobgoblins in the trees?”

“Their eyes are glowing on every branch.” He forced himself to smile. No hobgoblins, he thought grimly, but ghosts, or at least one freckle-faced ghost in particular who’d died too young. He knew he should tell her of George’s death now, that putting it off would only make the inevitable more awkward and painful, but he wasn’t yet ready to reopen the raw wound of grief and guilt. Coward that he was, he couldn’t do it, not even with Sophie.

“Then perhaps we might call upon those hobgoblins to show us the way,” she said wryly. “We’re lost, aren’t we?”

“Not at all,” he said, squinting purposefully up at the moon and all the stars around it. He might not be able to read the night sky with a sailor’s finesse, but he did know enough to find north from south. Although they’d left the woods for open fields, rolling away on either side of the road behind low stone walls, ahead of them lay another copse
of scrubby trees and bushes with an ancient oak twisting from the center. He’d recognize that oak anywhere, a gnarled signpost that was unmistakable to him.

“You see that old oak tree, there, with the branch blasted off by lightning,” he said confidently. “Directly beneath that is the gate to Hartshall.”

“You’re certain we’re not lost?” She looked to where he was pointing. “This is still the road to Winchester?”

“Tonight it is,” he said, wishing she would forget Winchester altogether. Hell, he wished
he
could forget Winchester.

She sighed restlessly, twisting her hands around her reins. “I hope you’re right, Harry. It’s strange, but grand open spaces like these make me more uneasy than when we were in the woods.”

“We’ll be safe enough at Hartshall,” said Harry. “You’ll see. The lodge may not be large, but it was conceived like a veritable little castle. Even though King Charles was back on the throne when my ancestor built it, he still designed it as much as a fortress against Roundheads as for hunting.”

Yet as they drew closer, the twisted old oak seemed hardly welcoming, with the narrow road to the lodge overgrown with last summer’s brambles and moldy leaves.

“No gate?” asked Sophie warily as Harry’s horse picked his way along the neglected road.

“No gate, nor walls, either,” said Harry. “There never have been any. No clues for Cromwell’s men, I suppose.”

“No clues for anyone,” she said, her uneasiness clearly growing. “You
are
certain this is Hartshall, Harry? I promise I will not think the worse of you if you must admit to being wrong.”

He laughed. “For you, Sophie, I would admit it, if it were true. But it’s not, so I won’t, unless you wish me to lie, which I have never, ever done to you.”

“Because you swore not to,” she answered promptly. “I would not forget that. You swore that if you ever told me a falsehood, your tongue would turn black and your nose would fall off. At the time, I rather wished you would tell me a lie—just a small one—so I could see the effect.”

He made a face at the prospect. “Forgive me if I don’t oblige. There’s the lodge now. I didn’t lie about its being a fortress, either, did I?”

Squat and square, the lodge did look like a medieval fort, and even the wash of the moonlight couldn’t soften the hard gray stone or diamond-paned leaded windows. Severe pointed arches ran along the lower floor, framing a narrow porch and the windows with gothic severity, and the flat slate roof had a small square tower on each corner that seemed better suited for sheltering long-ago archers than its true purpose of masking the chimneys.
Carved dragons disguised the rainspouts, and a web of ivy spread tightly over the walls, as if trying to pull the stones back into the ground.

How long had it been since he’d been back to Hartshall—four years? Five? No, he must be honest: he hadn’t come back since George had died.

So why, then, had he brought Sophie here? Could he be honest enough to answer that?

“This lodge had better be manly, Harry, because no woman would be charmed by such a place,” Sophie was saying now, not bothering to hide her misgivings. “Is there a caretaker or other servant?”

Harry shook his head, and swung down from the horse, then helped her dismount as well. “There’s a man from the village who comes in with his wife every few weeks to make sure all things are as they should be, but no one lives here. No one ever has.”

He stepped up onto the edge of the porch, balancing on the corner while he reached up into the dragon-downspout’s mouth, ignoring the pointed stone teeth and curling tongue to grope inside the moss and old wet leaves.

“Here we are,” he said, wiping the old-fashioned iron key to the front door on his sleeve before he held it out to Sophie. “You can go inside, while I see to the horses.”

“I’ll come with you,” she said quickly, then flushed. “That is, if we tend to the horses together, than we’ll be done that much sooner.”

“Whatever you please.” He grinned wickedly, his thoughts bounding back to other stables, other haylofts he’d shared with her. “Though I can’t say whether you wish to be with me, or whether you’re scared of the house.”

“If I’m frightened,” she said tartly as they led their horses to the small stable in the back, “it’s because you’ve made me that way, with all your talk of thieves and hobgoblins and Cromwell’s marauding zealots.”

“Not you, pet,” he said as he lit one of the lanterns hanging near the door, the practical yellow glow so different from the moonlight that had guided them this far. “You’re the bravest creature in the entire universe, hands down.”

“Oh, yes, quite the bravest,” she said, bending to unbuckle her horse’s saddle, the rounded curves of her hips and bottom pressing unwittingly against her skirts to tantalize him so badly he nearly groaned. Her bonnet had slipped off and her unpinned hair was a golden tangle down her back. He liked it that way, mussed and disheveled instead of smooth and prim, and he had a considerable need to muss it—and the rest of her—a great deal more. “As if any creature could be brave after you insisted on keeping your pistols to yourself, and making me helpless.”

“Helpless, hell,” he said, coming to stand behind
her. “You, Sophie Potts, have more weapons than any mortal man could survive.”

“I do not,” she answered promptly, and began to twist to face him.

“Don’t turn,” he ordered, spanning her waist with his hands, holding her steady before him. “Stay like this. Please. For me.”

She shook her hair back over her shoulder, but as he’d asked, she didn’t turn, still bending slightly with her hands resting on the mare’s curving side. Gently he ran his hands along the sides of her body, tracing the differing outlines of her waist and hips, back up across her ribs. Even through the rough woolen fabric he could feel the warmth of her skin, the vitality of her flesh, full and ripe and waiting for him. His fingers grazed the undersides of her breasts, his touch making her shudder even through the layers of clothes.

“Harry,” she whispered, her breathing ragged. “Oh, Harry, I—”

“Shhhhhh,” he said, drawing her against his body, her back snugged against his chest. He guessed she was wearing some sort of stiffened linen corset or stays—he could trace the whalebone channels—but even so he could also feel how her nipples had tightened, hard little knots of desire jabbing at his palms. His touch grew bolder, his fingers spreading to caress her more intimately, and she
rested her head back against his shoulder, her eyes fluttering shut with surrender.

“There you are, lass,” he whispered, kissing the shell of her ear for good measure. “You know how good we are together.”