Jilting the Duke (8 page)

Chapter Nine

Aidan was rereading Tom's letter when Ophelia swept into his study, clearly frustrated.

“It's lovely seeing you, Ophelia.” Aidan suddenly remembered Tom joking,
“There are two rules for managing my sisters when they are upset: notice their clothes, and compliment their taste
.
”
Tom had developed his rules when his sisters were barely out of the schoolroom, but Aidan thought they might still work. “Is that a new dress? It looks lovely on you; the green offers a perfect accompaniment to the rich auburn of your hair.”

“Don't compliment me, Aidan Somerville. Not while I'm ashamed of you,” Ophelia objected, but the tense set of her shoulders softened slightly.

Aidan stood and stretched his hand out, directing her toward the couch. Her use of his childhood name signaled ill. “I'm not sure what you mean. I've seduced no innocents. I haven't taken a new mistress, though my old one left me months ago. I've no new lovers among the widows of the
ton
. And I pay my creditors when their bills come due. What is there to be ashamed of?”

Ophelia looked at his hand, then at the couch. She moved toward it, but did not sit. “I can't stay; Sidney expects me to gather him up from Whitehall. But I had to stop in. I've just come from Sophia. For a man reputed to know how to please women, I really expected you to . . . to . . .” Ophelia sputtered.

“Expected me to what, Phee? Seduce her in the drawing room?” Aidan found himself almost amused. From the moment his father had agreed to help rear Aidan's orphaned Gardiner cousins, Aidan had considered Tom's three sisters as his own. He preferred their easy laughter to the watchful aloofness of his elder and only sister, Judith. But he hadn't anticipated Phee's casting herself as Sophia's avenging angel. No, that was more the role he would expect from Judith; he would have to mollify Phee.

“No, certainly not.” She began removing her gloves, pulling on each finger with short brisk movements. “You couldn't know, but I've been worried about Sophia. I was pleased Tom named you co-guardian. I thought it would protect Ian against that worm Phineas. But I never expected you to take Ian from London.”

“If you must know . . .” He sat on the couch and patted the space beside him.

Ophelia refused the seat again. “I must.”

“I offered to make just the occasional visit.
Sophia
insisted I play a greater role in her son's life.”

“She believes she's fulfilling Tom's wishes.” Ophelia shrugged. “She's spent too much of her life doing as Tom wished, though I never understood why. Had my brother been a saint, he wouldn't have been your friend, Aidan Somerville.” Ophelia wasn't yet appeased.

“I assure you, Ophelia: she believes Ian would be best served by spending the summer at Greenwood Hall.”

“But
you
can't possibly believe it. Even with a child as agreeable as Ian, I don't give you three days before you want to send him back to his mother.”

“That may be true.”

“Of course it's true. I've known you your whole life. Besides, it's not a good idea to take Ian away. Sophia's fragile, worn out . . . by grief perhaps, but something more as well. You must have seen it. She's more likely to defer to another person's opinion, less likely to express her own.”

“To tell the truth, Phee, Sophia appeared perfectly in control, a bit reserved perhaps, but otherwise self-sufficient and calm.”

“Then you don't deserve half the credit for observation I've given you. Ian will be fine, but Sophia shouldn't be left alone.”

“Then perhaps Sophia should accompany us.” A splendid idea. He wondered why he hadn't thought of it before. A summer in his country home, the two of them—and Ian of course. Little possibility of interference. One hundred possibilities for seduction.

Phee finally sat on the couch beside him. “Actually, Aidan, that's not a bad idea. It might even be brilliant. I've often suggested Sophia take a week at Tom's country place. But she refuses. Leaving London might offer the recuperation she needs. Of course you would have to host a house party. She couldn't come alone with only Ian.”

“It's a big house. She's a widow. He's my ward.” Aidan patted Ophelia's hand as if to console her.

“That won't matter if someone in the
ton
objects.” Ophelia pulled her hand away in refusal. “
Her
reputation may be spotless, but
yours
isn't.”

“I could have the dower house prepared for her and Ian,” he suggested.

Ophelia considered his words. “Actually, that might work. Of course Kate and Ariel and I could make a trip to the country as well.”

“You are always welcome at Greenwood Hall.” Aidan offered the expected invitation.

“Oh, I feel so much better.” Phee leaned over and kissed Aidan's cheek. “Now we must convince Sophia. She's wary of you. Apparently tourist gossip in Italy did not stand you in good stead.”

“I'm yours to advise, Phee. What would you have me do?” Aidan knew that by appearing to follow Ophelia's guidance, he gained the chance to allay any later suspicions she might have.

“I want you to be charming and solicitous, but more subtle. None of those hungry looks that make women run after you.
And
I want you to escort her to my house for a family dinner tomorrow night. I won't tolerate excuses. It's been far too long since you dined with us.”

“Then I will offer none. If Sophia agrees, I will play coachman. A charming, solicitous,
subtle
coachman.”

Ophelia smiled broadly. “Then it's settled. Of course, you must promise that once you are ensconced in the country, you won't grow bored and seduce her for entertainment.”

“Phee, I'm crushed. You think I would seduce the wife of my childhood friend and the mother of my ward?” Aidan pretended to be wounded.

“Well, to be perfectly honest, neither of you is married. If you were discreet . . . well, I would offer no recriminations. She's not the sort of woman you typically prefer, but perhaps you could find her attractive. It might even bring some life back into her. . . .”

Aidan sat back in his chair, laughing, and stretched out his long limbs. “Phee, I've never known you to encourage me in an affair, so I'm unsure what to say. I will promise you this however: if I were to seduce Sophia, it wouldn't be from boredom.”

* * *

Ian was lively and animated at dinner, hardly able to contain himself.

“He knew the battle as well as Papa.” He pulled his leg up to sit on it in his chair.

Sophia pretended not to notice. Ian rarely forgot his table manners, and she didn't wish to interrupt his excitement. “It was kind of Forster to stay so long.”

“He said he would come back tomorrow. I've planned another battle, a harder one this time. I wonder if he'll know it.” Ian bounced back and forth on his bent leg.

“Which battle, darling?”

“Bosworth Field, though I have to put little pieces of paper on the men to show which side they fight on. When Papa lost—he always played Richard—he used to run around the room, and call out, ‘a horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse.' Then he'd let me stab him. Papa said I made a fine Henry Tudor. Do you think Forster knows about Richard III?—he was a hunchback and murdered his nephews. Or will I need to tell him?”

“The Duke was very well-read when your father knew him. But if he doesn't know, I'm sure he wouldn't mind your telling him. He always liked to learn new things.” It was dangerous to think of Aidan as he had been as a young man, but his kindness to Ian had made Sophia remember his unusual patience with his own younger brothers, patience she'd always believed he'd cultivated to make up for Aaron's many cruelties.

“I'd like him to know. It would be fun for him to say the line—Papa said it was from Shakespeare. Do you think Forster would read me the part? I'd like to hear it from the play. Papa never read me the play because I was too young. But I'm not too young now, am I?”

“No, darling, you're not too young.”

There was almost no need to answer. Ian's pleasure ran faster than his words. Forster was well on his way to becoming her son's hero.

Sophia listened as Ian detailed each step of the battle to come, how Henry Tudor's troops would be outnumbered, how Richard would divide his army into three groups, how Richard's noble allies would fail him.

She asked questions about which generals led which troops and how they positioned themselves on the battlefield. Ian had not been so excited since before his father died. Perhaps she and Aidan could share a mutual affection for her son, and if there was nothing else between them, that mutual affection could stand for friendship.

* * *

Sophia kissed Ian good night, entrusting him to Sally's care. She watched as the pair, laughing, ascended the stairs to the nursery, before she turned to her own room.

At the door's opening, Artemisia ran from the open balcony doors, not to greet her, but to escape into the hall and down to the kitchen, where she would spend the night hunting mice and being disappointed. Even mice were afraid to intrude on Cook's domain. “At least,” Sophia said, more to herself than the cat, “you have the good grace to rub against my ankles before you abandon me.”

Her voice stilled on the word
abandon
. She knew—and had known long before she realized that Tom would die—that she held so tightly to Ian because she had suffered so many losses of her own. Before she'd turned fifteen, she'd lost all the people she'd loved: her parents, her beloved aunt Clara, then her adored governess Mrs. Lesley. Perhaps that was why Sophia had acquiesced when Aidan had told her he was going to the wars. Everyone else she'd ever loved had left; why not Aidan as well?

Sophia blinked her tears away. To distract herself from sad thoughts, she curled up on the chaise longue to read, long, round pillows behind her back, and an oil lamp at her side for when the evening light waned.

Perhaps a book would quiet her restless mind.

She first opened Burney's novel, but the plight of the heroine—nameless, alone, reliant on the kindness of strangers—only made her more sad. So, she turned to
Don Juan
, an anonymous satire on literature and society that everyone attributed to the exiled Lord Byron. The poem recounted the love affair between a hapless Don JOO-un (as the rhyme told her to pronounce it) and the older, beautiful, and married Donna Julia. Throughout, Byron offered clever digressions on the work of other English poets. Sophia found much of the first canto amusing. But at Donna Julia's defense of women trapped in unfulfilling arranged marriages, Sophia grew pensive. Donna Julia's farewell to her lover reminded Sophia of herself and Aidan.

Closing the book on her finger, she leaned her head back against the arm of the chaise. Tears welled in her eyes, but did not fall.

She had believed their passion would connect them across the years, that they could not meet without emotion, even if it were hate. She had been wrong. And like Donna Julia, she was left with a heart still his, remembering every caress as if it were burned into her skin.

Yet, she consoled herself, the meeting she had dreaded for a decade had come and passed. And she had survived.

Tomorrow she would set her love for him behind, knowing that no spark was left. But for what was left of tonight, she would mourn.

She opened the book to the place marked by her finger. She read again Julia's parting lines to Juan, this time adapting them as a farewell to her passion for Aidan:

That night Sophia dreamt of Tom. He was handing her the papers. “Are you sure you want the responsibility of these? I could send them to Aldine with instructions to keep them sealed. When it was time, you could instruct him how to proceed.”

She'd refused. “The risk is too great. They could go astray. Someone could read them. They will be safer with me.”

He'd covered her hands with his hands and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “You are remarkable, Sophia. Few women would agree to this.”

It had been the last time they had touched.

* * *

For a decade, Aidan's dream had begun the same. Sophia slipped into his room, smiling, her long dark hair loose around her shoulders, a white shift sheer against her limbs. Locking the door behind her, she would run soundlessly into his arms, kiss his neck, his face, his lips. Her hands would caress his chest and back. She would thread his hair through her fingers, as she held him tightly, passionately. She would lead him to the edge of the bed, holding her finger to her lips for silence. He would watch, silent, as her clothes dropped to the floor around her feet. In bed, he would be entranced by the sight of her, naked above him, beneath him, caught in the embrace of her long, slender arms. He would revel in her caresses, then sate his desire in the softness of her body, as she called his name in ecstasy.

If Aidan could have awoken at the moment of their shared climax, he might have found the dream a pleasant residual of youthful passion—a strange quirk of memory that allowed him to enjoy her body over and over. But the dream never ended there. It always shifted to any of a series of endings, all betrayals. Sometimes she would simply disappear from his arms to the sound of mocking laughter. Sometimes he would search for her, calling her name in the darkened halls of his family home, but finding only the echo of his own voice. Other times she would run away from him, and no matter how hard he ran he could never catch her. Frequently he would find her in a lighted ballroom, dancing, being swept away by partner after partner, always out of reach. Often, she ran into the arms of another man, a man he trusted and called friend, and that man would lead her into a waiting carriage. Aidan would stand on the porch steps, helpless to stop the carriage, watching it disappear into the night, her name unvoiced on his lips.