Jilting the Duke (19 page)

She stood to gather her reticule and shawl. “I need to go home.”

“Did someone trouble you while I was gone?”

She looked startled. He'd hit on the truth.

“Which of your suitors was it? Sewell's a bounder and a rake; I saw him in the corridor earlier.” Aidan kept his tone level, but his was a cold anger.

“None of them. It wasn't anyone I . . .” She remembered the whispered warning, how little time had passed between her assailant's leaving and Aidan's arrival. Her assailant might still be close, listening. “I . . . I'm not feeling well. Would you mind escorting me home?”

He knew that look, remembered another time when her voice had trembled in the same way, when she had turned up her chin just as bravely. Once again, he had to help, whether he wanted to or not.

“I'll call for my carriage.” He turned to go.

“No! Let me go with you.” She grabbed his arm. “I don't want to . . . explain to Phee or the girls why I'm leaving. They'd feel obligated to cut their evening short. I don't wish to ruin Kate's birthday.”

“You don't want to take your leave of them?”

She shook her head no.

“All right then.” He pulled her shawl over her head, veiling her face. “We've been seen together in my box, but with Phee and her sisters as chaperones. If people see me spiriting you away through the back of the theater, we'll start rumors. So we must be quick.” He looked out of the box into the hall. Intermission had not yet ended. Most of the boxholders remained in the gallery taking refreshments. For another moment or two, the hall would be empty.

“Stay here.” His box had easy access to the actor's quarters and the prop storage room. A long-ago mistress who'd sung in the chorus had given him a key, and he still kept it hidden in his box. He walked to the end of the hall, slipped the key into the lock, and felt the bolt turn. He returned.

“There's a door down the hall to your right. It's painted the same color as the wall. Walk in front of me, but quickly.” Shielding her body from view, he hurried her to the end of the hall. He could hear voices approaching. The end of intermission had been called.

He opened the door, and they were through. The storage room was barely lit, only a lantern at the opposite end of the room and, below it, an outside door. He pulled the door tight behind them and relocked the latch. He stepped in front of her. “Let me lead. I know my way.”

She said nothing. Nothing, when he took her hand and led her through the darkness, through the narrow space between the rows of costumes. Nothing, when, hearing a door open to their right, he pulled her tight against him out of the sight of the actor who picked up a prop, then left as he had come. Nothing, when finally at the outside door, he opened it and looked outside. Nothing,
until
he tried to leave her safe in the storage rooms to call for his carriage.

“My coachman always parks on a side street near the theater to avoid the crowds. I will get him. Wait here, but keep your face covered.”

“No. I'll go with you.”

“It's bad enough that I'm sneaking you out of the theater without telling Phee we're leaving. Or that I've taken you out of the public space into the isolation of a prop room. Now you want to walk through the dark into an alley to get in my carriage.”

He stood facing her. In the dark he could hardly see her face. She leaned her head against his chest. “Please.” He smelled her hair, the hint of lavender. He wrapped her in his arms. She lifted her face. He touched her hair, her neck. She responded with ardor. Perhaps he had misinterpreted her distress in the box; perhaps she had simply decided on a night of passion.

But this wasn't the place for the seduction he had planned. Soon they would be at her house. He brushed his lips against her forehead. “Home first.” He shielded her from view as he opened the doorway, then pulled her out behind him.

“Quickly.”

The door opened into an alleyway near the back of the theater and into near complete darkness. Unless someone came upon them face-to-face, there was little chance of being recognized. The greater danger was of course his empty box and people's noticing that she had left with him. But the coach, his coachman, and a postboy were not far . . . just ahead.

At the coach, he handed her in, the only observers those of his household. With a word to the postboy and a coin to deliver a message to Ophelia, he returned to Sophia.

In the dim light of the coachman's lantern, he could see she was sitting as if she were looking out the window, into the darkness, but the curtain was drawn, and her hands twisted in the fringe of her shawl. He sat next to her and pulled her toward him, resting her back against his chest. He tapped the roof, and the carriage began to move.

Her hair was up, tied again with beads, but the curls felt soft against his cheek. No reason not to follow up the spontaneous kiss with a more measured pressing of his advantage. He brushed his lips against the side of her neck. She stiffened, but did not pull away. He blew softly against the back of her ear, breathed in the faint scent of lavender water from her hair. He kissed slowly a line from her ear to her shoulder, ran his hand from her shoulder to her hand, and let it rest there, her hand under his.

He kissed again, this time from her shoulder back to her ear, into her hair, savoring each step. As in the garden, it was as if his dream had merged in the darkness with the real Sophia. He felt the ache of desire as he had each time he'd dreamed of her for the past ten years.

When she tilted her head to let him reach her neck more easily, he moved his hand, not back up her arm, but across the center of her body, pulling her tighter against him, but stopping right below the line of her breasts. She did not resist. He whispered her name in her ear, and she leaned back farther into him. Only then did he move his hand, upward for a moment, then back down across her body, back to her hand.

Ian was in Kensington. There would be no reason not to stay. Given her passion in the garden and at the theater, her willing acceptance of his touch in the carriage, he found it difficult to believe she would say no.

* * *

Aidan opened the door to the library, then helped Sophia remove her cloak. He walked past her to the sherry on a table at the far end of the room. He poured two glasses, filling hers to slightly more than she normally drank. Once more pushing her limits . . . but he would have to be subtle. Even now he could see her stiffening in the light, the pliant Sophia transforming once more into a statue. He'd promised to give her time to decide, so he had to give her a reason to choose him, tonight.

He walked toward her, the hand with her drink outstretched. She took it from him, but didn't drink. She fingered the outside of the glass.

“Thank you for bringing me home. But I'm fine now, and you can go. I was just a bit overset.” She walked away from him, holding the glass.

“I can't let this fine sherry go to waste.” He stood, waiting for her to offer him a seat. But when she didn't, he sat on the edge of the desk near her. “Besides, something happened, and I will not leave until I know what. Who disturbed you in the box? I promise I won't call him out.”

“I don't know.” Still turned from him, she crossed her arms under her bust, as if comforting herself.

“You don't know?” Aidan willed himself to appear at ease. But he still felt in his body the tension from touching her in the carriage.

“I didn't know him, though his voice sounded familiar.” She put her hand to her neck and rubbed behind her ear absently.

“Then what did he say to upset you?” Aidan took a long drink from his sherry and refilled the glass.

“I can't tell you.” She turned to him, her eyes imploring, then looked away.

“Can't or won't?” He let the question hang, waiting on her answer.

She pressed her fingers against her temples. “He told me not to tell anyone what he said.”

“Who do you trust more? A man who comes to your box and threatens you, or me?”

“When you frame it like that, I suppose I must choose to trust you.” She smiled wanly. “The man said Tom had some papers that belonged to him, and he wanted them returned.”

Aidan hadn't been prepared for that. He'd thought Sewell had imposed on her, upset her with licentious comments or an inappropriate kiss. And Aidan had been honest when he'd said he wouldn't call out whoever had upset her. Not when it had sent her into his arms. But this, this might lead to what Walgrave wanted. “Describe him.”

“He came up behind me. I didn't see his face, only his gloves and the knife.”

“Knife?” Aidan felt his temper spike. “He had a knife.”

“Yes.” She looked up, remembering. “It was long, curved, with a pattern in the metal.”

Not a penknife, though those could still do sufficient damage, but a Damascus blade. Someone who was serious about his knives. A collector or an assassin. It was simply unbelievable. But to what purpose would she make up such a tale? No, her distress in the box had been real. Whatever Aidan's reservations, appearing to believe her was the better tack.

“Why didn't you tell me earlier? I might have been able to catch him.” But even as Aidan said it, he knew it was unlikely, not in the press of the theater, and particularly not at intermission. But it would have been a way to test her story.

“I didn't think. I wanted to come home. And he didn't hurt me, just threatened to do so if I don't find what he wants. So go, please. I have imposed upon you enough, but I won't be able to sleep until I find whatever it is he wanted.”

Sophia turned away from Aidan, dropping her fichu on the couch. Her dress scooped from shoulder to shoulder. At the base of her neck, Aidan saw the bruising imprint of fingers, and he saw a thin line of blood, now dried, across her backbone.

His heart went cold. “Sophia. Tell me the story from the beginning, trying not to leave out any details. That way, I'll know what we are looking for.”

* * *

The library, the nursery, the study, and her bedroom. Sophia insisted those were the only places where Tom's things might be.

She'd answered Aidan's questions directly, and for the most part he believed her. She had been startled by the intruder into his box and afraid more for Ian than for herself. He even believed that she didn't know what exactly the intruder wanted her to find. But she'd hesitated when he'd asked if Tom had any secrets he should know. Now his job was to find them out . . . if not for her, then for the boy and the Home Office.

He'd gone along with her insistence to start in the library, though he'd searched most of it already. At the end of each shelf, he refilled her glass of sherry. At one point he had excused himself, claiming to visit the water closet, but instead he had slipped to the kitchen to retrieve Cook's jar of laudanum. The sherry had hidden the taste.

Then he waited for her to succumb to the aftermath of fear, liberal doses of alcohol, and a drop or two of laudanum. There was much to be done—and better done without her. He felt a twinge of guilt at drugging her unaware, something he rarely felt when working for the Home Office. But he forced himself to see it as a sort of kindness, allowing her to sleep heavily through a search that only would have distressed her further. He promised himself that he would make amends to her later in some way, even if she never realized what he had done.

While he waited, he searched the part of the library he hadn't yet examined. He missed nothing, feeling the binding of each book for irregularities, watching that the end papers were firmly glued down. He watched for odd marks that might indicate a key for a code. But without the coded documents themselves, what good was a key? Tom's marginalia revealed only an active mind arguing with an author.

Completing the last rank of shelves, he turned to find Sophia, still wearing her silk opera gown, folded asleep over a ledger.

He walked to her side and touched her hair. He let his fingers trace gently its sensuous curls, thinking of how one day soon, he would trail his fingers down each one of her limbs. Tucking one hand under her arm, he lifted her to her feet, cradling her head and shoulders against his side. He felt her resist. “Bed. You are overtired.”

She shook her head, but didn't move out of his arms. “Not yet. Need to search.”

“Whatever it is, you won't recognize it without rest. Come along. We'll begin again in the morning.”

He led her through the lamplit hallway and up the stairs. The remains of a fire placed her bedroom in a seductive half-light.

The dress was elegant in its simplicity. And he'd spent much of his time at the theater imagining the most efficient way to take her out of it. This particular design relied on two long ribbons, each one beginning atop a shoulder, then crossing between her breasts below her bodice, and wrapping flat across her chest to her back, making a bow in the front and another in the back. Once the ribbons were undone, the whole fell to the floor, leaving her in only a shift. She wore no stays. He lifted her out of the puddle of silk and half-carried her to the bed. He was too aware of her body, thinly clad, pressed to his.

Her hair was, once more, sewed up in ringlets by beads on dark-colored threads. By the flickering light of the bedside lamp, he cut the threads with his penknife. Her hair fell over her face, and he brushed it back with his hand, allowing the soft ringlets to run through his fingers. His desire for her ran hot as it had all evening, but he tamped it down.

He pulled the covers over her, thankful for the dark that made it impossible to do more than imagine the press of the transparent chemise against her limbs. But his imagination was more than sufficient. He could imagine himself stretched naked above her, his chest covering hers, his thighs between her legs. He turned away.