Most Improper Miss Sophie Valentine (7 page)

She couldn't breathe. Copper sunset kissed his face, dazzled her eyes. Yes, he would catch her. She had no doubt he was strong enough. He had carried her across that puddle today as if she weighed no more than a lamb.

“I'm too old to jump,” she muttered.

“But not too old to climb trees?” A slow smile bent his lips. Leaning closer, he whispered, “Very nice drawers, by the way.”

She licked her lips. Her cheeks were very warm. “French lace,” she muttered. It was the only extravagance she ever allowed herself: frilly underthings ordered from Norwich. To know that she had them under her clothes where no one else could see was another clandestine indulgence cherished—like the naughty book.

“Not very patriotic, is it? French lace?”

She sighed, rueful. “I suppose not.”

“Well, I won't tell. Your secrets, Miss Valentine, are safe with me. All of them.”

She suddenly heard another voice approaching from her right. It was the rector, Maria's husband, coming through the vestry and softly muttering little reminders to himself. Confused, Sophie didn't know which way to turn. They were standing far too close. Lazarus Kane was discussing her drawers and looking at her mouth as if he would kiss it again, regardless of who saw.

Mr. Bentley would tell Maria he'd seen them together—or have it wheedled out of him. Maria would never be able to keep it from Henry or the rest of the village.

This man was a complete stranger and could be a murderer, for all they knew. Look how he had already put his hands on her…and his lips.

But in that moment, even with all her doubts, she wanted him to do it again. And he seemed of the same mind.

He raised his hand once more and let his fingertips trail along her jaw, lifting it as he bent his head.

“Marry me, Miss Valentine. Don't tell me I came all this way for naught.”

She felt his breath on her lips. Any moment now good, gentle, quiet Mr. Bentley would catch them being wicked together. And what of her promise to Henry—her vow to behave and cause him no further trouble? Look what happened the last time she leapt into the unknown. She raised one hand to the scar on her cheek.

“No,” she gasped. “It is quite impossible.”

“Your mind is made up?”

“Yes.”

His lips still hovered above hers. “Then I'll just have to make you change it, won't I?”

“You're wasting your time.” She shook her head, hand dropping from her scar.

“I'm not going away, Miss Valentine. I came here for one thing only, and I won't rest until I have it. I'm very”—he drew a finger across her lower lip—“very determined.”

“Are you, indeed?”

He nodded slowly. “And perhaps it works to chase other men away, Miss Valentine”—he stroked upward along her jaw with the backs of his fingers—“but all the temper tantrums and insults in the world won't work this time. Not now you've tempted me with those lovely lace drawers.”

“Please…Excuse me.”

She was ashamed of the way he made her feel, afraid of what he might do, and wary of the latent strength in his hands. She made a dash for the church door, leaving him standing alone in the glow of sunset.

She hurried back through the graveyard, angry with herself and the world in general. Even with her fondness for French lace.

He stared at the great arched door through which his future bride had just disappeared. He wanted to go after her, but he knew he couldn't. She needed time, yet. Unfortunately, he didn't have all the time in the world to woo her properly. He pressed a hand to his heart again, thoughtfully running a finger over the small bump. He might have years, months, or only days. No one knew.

Hearing footsteps, Lazarus turned to see a man in a black coat rounding the stone pillars. “Aha! You must be Mr. Kane.” The rector smiled warmly and extended a firm hand. “How glad I am to see you here. Please…do not let me chase you out. The church is especially beautiful at sunset, with the light through the stained glass.”

Lazarus agreed. In fact, he'd studied the window for some time and felt a little guilty not to be at prayer. He'd been too distracted by the angel depicted at the top of the arch, who looked down on him with her wings uneven and her halo oddly askew. “I was reminded somewhat of Miss Sophia Valentine,” he explained, gesturing toward the window as they walked up the aisle together.

“Really? I had not noted the resemblance, but I suppose…Yes, there is a likeness.”

“When I first saw Miss Valentine, there seemed to be a halo of light around her…” He stopped, feeling foolish. “In any case…”

The rector sorted through books on the lectern but still smiled distantly, letting Lazarus know he was listening.

“I came here to marry her. Did you know?”

A Bible almost fell to the floor, but the rector caught it. “Marry? Sophia? Ah yes…the advertisement. My wife mentioned—”

“I fear she's changed her mind, however.”

The rector sighed. “Women
are
changeable creatures.”

“So I see. I hoped you might advise me, Rector. You know the lady well, I presume?”

“Indeed. I am married to Miss Valentine's sister. My name, by the way, is Bentley.”

“Then perhaps you can advise me, Mr. Bentley. I'm sore in need of good counsel in the matter of Miss Valentine.”

The rector hesitated. “Surely, sir, you know as much about the fairer sex as do I. Probably a great deal more.”

“Yet you're married to a Valentine.”

“And that, sadly, does not make one an expert. There is much I shall never understand about women, and being married to a Valentine introduced me to just as many mysteries as it uncovered.” Mr. Bentley struggled to explain. “When I married my wife, it was really her idea. I merely went along with it.” He paused, smiling wearily. “I find it easier to let the lady take the upper hand. I strive for a life of peace. That is my aim.”

Suddenly, Lazarus burst out, “Do you believe a man might find an angel on earth, Mr. Bentley? That an angel might come to fetch a dying man up to heaven?”

“A dying man?”

“Well…we are all dying men, Mr. Bentley. From the day we're born. We must make the most of every day we have.”

The rector nodded. “Indeed.”

“That's why I'm here—to achieve something good with my life before it's too late.”

“I see. Then I wish you every good fortune in your quest.” The rector was solemn, but his eyes were kind. “I should like to see Sophia more happily settled, but my wife and I were resigned to the idea of her remaining unwed.”

“I've not yet had the chance to discuss the matter at length with Miss Valentine,” Lazarus admitted. They'd had only a moment just now in the aisle, and she seemed to have trouble with her tongue. Yet earlier, when he'd carried her across that puddle, she'd had plenty to say. There apparently were two sides to Miss Valentine: one very proper and circumspect, the other full of hot, passionate temper and considerable mischief. With the former, she tried to quell the latter. It wasn't working, he mused as he glanced again toward the arched doorway through which she'd vanished so speedily.

“Her brother and I have not begun on the best of terms,” he murmured.

“Ah.” Mr. Bentley's smile turned sympathetic. “Yes. Mr. Henry Valentine is a force to be reckoned with. Yet his sisters are equally stubborn in their own way. Don't let Miss Valentine's quiet manner deceive you. She knows her own mind.”

Quiet manner? Oh no, he was not deceived. If the real Sophie Valentine thought she could hide from him behind her tightly laced corset, she was very much mistaken.

***

Tonight, Sophie couldn't settle her mind to anything. Instead, she paced about, opened and closed cupboard doors, picked up books, only to toss them aside again, pushed food about her plate at supper, and fussed with her fingernails. One she discovered unforgivably chipped and so nibbled away at it with unladylike ferocity. Finally, she retrieved her sewing and flopped into a chair by the hearth to attack a torn skirt as if her very life depended on it. For once, she had no argument with Lavinia. She completely forgot her existence.

Aunt Finn inched forward in her chair and whispered, “Would you partake of a little gin, my dear? I find it calms my nerves very well.”

Lavinia stirred slightly, smacked her lips, and repositioned her weight on the creaking, protesting couch. Her snores resumed almost immediately, her breath unsettling the stiff ringlets that fell across her drool-encrusted cheek.

Sophie managed a slight smile. “Thank you, Aunt Finn, but I think I should keep a clear head.”

Finn chuckled, her eyes bright with mischief, not unlike those of her niece. “I've never found much benefit in a clear head. I prefer my edges softly foggy. It makes everything look so much nicer, and I appear younger when I look in the mirror.”

Sometimes Sophie felt much older than her aunt. She envied the lady her ability to be so completely without care for what anyone thought of her. At what point, she mused sadly, did all her caution and anxiety set in? Whenever it was, Aunt Finn had apparently skipped that year. Not that anyone knew with any surety exactly how old she was. The lady not only lied about her age but frequently forgot what she last said it was.

Sophie sighed heavily and glanced over at Henry, who sat in the corner and was going over his accounts by the wavering light of a candle stump, trying, no doubt, to make the numbers grow by some magical means.

That evening at supper, he'd told her Lazarus Kane did not want to marry her. According to Henry, the stranger came there only because—hearing the name Valentine—he expected a good dowry. Now he knew there was only a very small one to be had, he'd rejected her.

She knew, of course, this was a falsehood. The man she met earlier in the church had made his intentions clear, and they did not match Henry's words. But she did not want her brother to know she'd defied him by speaking to Kane against his express wishes. Better she stay silent in the matter. Perhaps it might all die down and be forgotten in a day or two.

Ha!

She turned her eyes turned back to her sewing and shook her head, knowing she was trying to fool herself with vain hopes. Thanks to Maria's flapping tongue, the entire village would now know why the stranger had come. There could be no hiding it.

In that moment, she saw herself again at the balustrade, setting down a cup of punch and preparing to leap into the darkness to embrace the unknown. If only she'd stopped and reconsidered, she wouldn't have this scar today, and many things might be different. She could be safely married to James by now and have a handful of children to fuss over. There would be no time for mischief, then.

She closed her eyes tight and sought the past through that soft, velvety darkness. She saw James's sly glance over one shoulder, followed by the stolen caress of a blushing cheek. She heard the music, just as it played that night years ago while she stood outside in the chill September air. Her heart had raced as she watched the maid's lashes flutter and her tray of glasses tremble. And again, she caught the edge of James Hartley's knowing smile. He'd never touched
her
so fondly as he caressed the cheek of Lady Grimstock's young housemaid.

Perhaps, like other wives, she might have learned to overlook his dalliances. On the other hand, perhaps she could never have turned the necessary blind eye.

Sadly, if she was there again, hovering on the precipice, there was every likelihood she would still jump, even now.

***

That evening while it was still light, she walked out to the gatehouse with a small, shallow bowl of water for the hedgehogs. If she left her shutters open when she went to bed, their little mating snuffle could be heard every night. She stood a while, staring down the lane to the dark, ungainly shadow of Souls Dryft. They had no candles or torches lit, yet. Tuck, she remembered with a smile, always waited as late as possible before he lit the candle in the lantern under the door arch—ever the good economist.

The sun, like a playwright with all the winding threads of his imagination exhausted, put down his quill and dipped his weary head to rest. Long shadows slowly crept across the ground, the bronzed fingers of sunset stretching to ease the cramp of a long day's writing.

And, stirred out of its dreams as if it felt her watching, the house down the lane appeared to open one eye, a flickering orb against the inky shadows. It was Tuck, of course, lighting the first candle of the evening and setting it on a window ledge where the shutters were left open.

As that house squatted there, waiting, its eyelids—all but for that one—closed and its mouth half-sunken into the earth, it might easily be mistaken for a dead thing, which is what it wanted any casual observer to believe. Only by lingering long enough might one witness that bowed belly move, softly exhaling, unsettling the weeds around it. Some might mistake that exhalation for a breeze that shattered the delicate puff of dandelion seeds by the wall, or else a mouse, moving through the tangled grass. But they would be wrong. It was the house letting out a gentle snore.

Sophie had spent the happiest years of her life in that house. She knew every inch of it, had whispered all her secrets and dreams into its walls.

Well, it seemed she would never go back there again. One day it would have a new mistress—someone bold enough to accept the rough hand of mysterious, reckless Lazarus Kane. It couldn't be her, of course. After all her daydreams of dark warriors riding to her rescue, in the end, she didn't have the gumption to leap into his arms. He'd called her bluff.

With a sigh, Sophia left the bowl of water and went to bed.

“You've heard, of course, what she's done now?”

“My dear Mrs. Flick, of course I heard. Poor Sophia.”

“Poor Sophia, indeed! She makes her own trouble, does that creature. Fancy placing an advertisement in the newspaper! We're fortunate only one man came. We might have been overrun. At my time of life, the less of
that
there is, the better.”

“Henry must be at his wit's end.”

“He should have reined her in before now. We reap what we sow.”

Just then, Lazarus—hiding under the arch of the bridge—saw the very object of their animated discourse moving slowly down the lane toward them. Immediately, her critics turned, still gathered in a knot, and headed for the church gate.

Whether she saw them or not, her face betrayed nothing, and her gaze wandered along with the bubbling stream. She came to a halt and looked up into the branches of the blossoming hawthorn tree at the foot of the bridge. Something had caught her eye and held it. She used the bridge wall to boost her height and reached up into the tree, leaning precariously. Intent on the elusive object she sought with her fingers, she failed to see the man below, half-hidden in the shadow of the bridge, watching and listening.

For a brief moment, Lazarus took her for a spirit or an angel again, so ethereal was her appearance framed by the sharp light of that May morning. But the whispered curses coming from her lips were not the words of an angel.

She leaned farther, and a few tendrils of amber hair fell loose from the knot in which it was kept. Her slender arm stretched out, and her face colored with the effort of reaching. He feared she would fall, but if he called out a warning, he'd give his presence away.

Her lips broke apart with a sigh of frustration, and he saw the pink tip of her tongue before her teeth closed upon it. Her slender eyebrows lowered. Her eyes—the rich, unusual color, visible even from a distance—considered their prey with fierce determination. As she leaned and stretched, her body dipped, her back arched, and the low collar of her coat parted, the motion causing the weight of her breasts to nudge the material. It was a slight swell at first, but the farther she reached, the more it grew, her ladylike corset apparently unable to contain the complete fullness.

Lazarus drew back and suffered considerable agony of a sort most inappropriate for a Sunday. Still, he mused, God made her to be appreciated. He was, therefore, doing the Good Lord's will.

Aha! She had what she'd sought and, victorious, tucked it under the peak of her bonnet. Out of all the flowers, many closer to her reach, she'd chosen that one in particular for some reason and put herself to all that trouble for it. To him, the flower looked just like all the others, but she had set her heart on it and would have no other. Now she slid back, out of his view, leaving the sky above him empty again and dull.

***

That sprig of hawthorn flowers peeking out from Sophia Valentine's bonnet was surely a sign of defiance and rebellion. The fresh white petals, newly blossomed, stood out like luminous clouds as she came down the aisle and took her place in the pews. She stared up at the stained glass window, so deep in thought she must be somewhere else entirely. Her body was merely holding a place on the pew beside her brother. Lazarus sat at the very back of the church in a seat from which he could unobtrusively observe Miss Valentine and her nodding posy…and the back of her brother's head with its crimson-tipped ears.

Several faces turned to look at him on that first Sunday, but theirs did not. Arms folded, he leaned back and studied the Norman arches of the little church as he breathed in the dampness of the ancient stone and listened to the dull echo of the rector's sermon.

Suddenly, he became aware of a face turned his way—a pale blur amid the bonnets. It was a young woman with a bland face, very prominent teeth, and large eyes that blinked rapidly now as she inclined her head in his direction. A little way farther on, two more ladies turned to nod in greeting until the elderly woman seated between them hastily drew their attention back to the sermon with quick pokes of her elbow.

He looked ahead to watch three little boys giggling in a pew across the aisle, making faces at one another, fighting and paying no heed to their mother's frantic whispers and threats. They all looked to be under the age of ten, and as sharp-eyed as fox cubs. One of them saw Lazarus watching and stuck out his tongue. He would have stuck out his tongue in return, but at that moment, Sophia Valentine, seated in front of the boys, turned her head and dropped a folded piece of paper into the ringleader's lap. Disregarding Henry's stern frown, she whispered something to the boy, and he quickly relayed it to his companions. All three looked at the folded paper and then settled down considerably.

After the service, the rector waited at the door to see his parishioners on their way. At his side stood his wife, a rather noisy, restless creature—another Valentine—whose lips were in constant motion in a conversation that trailed on without pause and with little encouragement from the reluctant listeners. Although she wore the pert look of someone disinterested, her husband was obliged to introduce her. She had dark hair, unlike her sister, and her eyes held no haughty air of mystery. They pinned him to the spot with a demanding curiosity, as if she could measure each limb just by looking. When she opened her mouth, that breathless speech tumbled out like apples from a dropped basket, rolling all around him in every direction. Meanwhile, Henry Valentine steered his other sister hurriedly away down the path, not allowing her to stop and greet anyone.

At last, Lazarus managed to interrupt Maria with, “I hope you will attend my party next Friday, madam? I mentioned it to your husband when we met.”

She glared at the rector, who immediately crumpled in weary apology, aghast at having forgotten to tell her of the invite.

“Oh, really!” She bounced on her small feet. “Frederick, you're so forgetful. I'm always the last to know anything!”

“You will come, I hope? All of you?” Lazarus persisted.

“Well I…” She looked at her sad, repentant husband.

“I think we might attend, my dear,” he offered gently.

“Yes, I suppose so.” And her eyes narrowed as she sought the figure of her brother, who was now almost out of sight, vanishing under the lych-gate. “If I am able to come…”

“I hope to see you there.” Lazarus bowed and walked on, leaving her to nag at her husband, probably for another five and twenty minutes about being so absent of mind.

As he passed through the gate, he glanced right and saw Sophia by the stream with the three little boys, helping them float that paper boat she'd made for them in church. In answer to their eager pleas, she showed them how to fold more boats, using pages torn from the back of her prayer book. Soon, each in possession of their own vessel, they proceeded to race them down the quick-flowing stream while she perched on a worn stone marker that pointed the road to Norwich in one direction and Yarmouth in the other. The boys ran back and forth, tripping over the grass and shouting to one another and to the smiling woman who watched, that nodding sprig of hawthorn flowers reflected in the glow of her cheek.

Her pose, seated on that marker, was very prim and ladylike: her gloved hands gathered in her lap, her shoulders pressed back. But there was something about that woman, something that warned she was not what she appeared to be. However somber her appearance, however determinedly she sought to pass herself off as a meek, virginal spinster, she utterly betrayed that act by giving in to an apparently greedy appetite for misbehavior. She couldn't help herself, it seemed, and had a wanton disregard for her own safety. The same spirit that caused her to write an advertisement for a husband had also set her mind upon the retrieval of a blossom far beyond her reach, when any other, much closer and easier to attain, might have done just as well. There was also the matter of two secretive hazel eyes, which claimed dutiful timidity even as their mistress privately flaunted the rules by climbing trees and studying naughty books. Finally to be considered: the undeniable existence of an extremely well-made figure that could not be disguised, even by stiff stays and an ugly coat. Miss Sophia Valentine was a wolf in lamb's fleece.

But she refused to acknowledge the existence of that wild creature inside her. It was up to him, therefore, to lure it out. He'd warned her he would.

He took only one step in her direction before he was unfortunately apprehended by a young woman who leapt in his path, dragging with her a startled-looking elderly gentleman with thick, fluffy white sideburns.

“Oh, Mr. Kane, I know this is most improper, and I should wait for an introduction, but I shall plow ahead in any case and cock my nose at the ensuing
scandal
!” She tittered gleefully while he squinted down at her. “My name is Miss Osborne, sir, and this is my dear papa.”

Her father, it turned out, was a prosperous dairy farmer, the owner of a property he'd passed and admired upon his arrival in the village. Within a few minutes, he was invited to Sunday luncheon, and Miss Osborne would take no excuse. She hastily linked her arm under his, and with her father on her other side, she drew them back down the lane away from Sophia.