Song for Sophia (4 page)

Sophia’s indignation was torn between his signing W.M., Wilhelm Montegue — as though she was either his old schoolmate or his lover — and his term,
addled female
.

Addled female? Not too shabby an effort? And she had missed a spot? Give her a clear shot, and she’d show him addled. Sophia snatched the pen left on the desk and scribbled,

Dearest Auntie Louisa,

Forgive the delay of my letter. I insist on hosting your Ladies’ Guild annual soirée at my estate in hopes that I can make it up to you. Please invite as many young debutantes and their mamas as you can muster. You are right as always; it is high time I settled down and fathered a brood of fine English children. At least a dozen, mostly high-spirited daughters, whom I pledge to educate sparing no expense.

In my advancing age I have come to dread the weight of my conscience and confess I heartily regret those qualities of character which render my company a trial to those who must endure it. In effort to atone for this grievous delinquency, I believe a gesture of humility is in order: Let it be known that I bequeath all my earthly possessions to the west wing chambermaid.

All My Love,

Willie

She exaggerated his loopy Y’s and elongated the frivolous tails on his Q’s and H’s, making an unkind but rather accurate mockery of his penmanship. Juvenile of her, and perhaps dangerously impertinent. Would it save her to claim that he had started it?

Her only reprimand was finding a selection of works by Herbert Spencer and Patrick Geddes stacked on his bedstand the next morning — men who preached that a woman’s intelligence steadily leached from her brain with every monthly cycle, that without the constant guidance of a man, her poor judgment would soon bring her a life of depravity.

Sophia fumed, completely understanding his meaning. Anabolic natured female, indeed! Surely he did not subscribe to that idiotic, chauvinistic philosophy? Riled, she laughed out loud in vindication, scrubbing away any thoughts of admiration for Lord Devon that may have budded unnoticed in the back of her mind.

She tossed his propagandist philosophy books into the fire grate, where the low morning embers would only nibble away at the covers, leaving plenty of evidence for her reply to Lord Devon’s challenge.
Sound the war cry, Lord Devon! I will answer!

Chapter 4

When Chivalry Is Rusted Yet Sturdy

The remnants of the Crimean 32nd Battalion officers gathered from the far corners of England to lounge in Lord Devon’s billiard room, as they did annually. Wilhelm enjoyed himself marginally until the men fell silent one by one. Their hands froze mid-gesture, while others stared stupidly with cigars hanging from their mouths, ashes ready to drop onto their laps.

Rosalie had done nothing to attract their attention, but they watched her gather bottles and glasses on a tray, their heads turned to peer like owls. Wilhelm heard a unison seizure of breath as she bent to retrieve a dropped linen, unwittingly presenting a view down the front of her bodice. The men stared after her as she exited the room.

“Upon my word, Devon!” roared Sir Vorlay. He slapped his knee and splashed his drink on the upholstery. “What is it you have been keeping here?”

“A mystery,” Wilhelm replied honestly without inflection. He had watched her as well.

“A mystery you will surely unravel for us! Tell, who is she?”

“Hear, hear!” a few others shouted.

“A respectable woman, no doubt, if Mrs. Abbott saw fit to employ her,” he groused.

“Come now, Devon. Share your tale of conquest. Or is it true you are a backdoor man?”

A few officers grimaced in distaste, others rose a brow in interest, likely hoping he would settle the matter of his tastes either way, in favor of men or women in bed sport. Damn them all.

Vorlay gestured to the mounted game on the walls. “Hunting skirts is not so far from hunting game; the strategy is the same for high-spirited and docile alike, in that — ”

Wilhelm interrupted, “Actually, Vorlay, my brother Roderick was the collector of trophies. Not me.”

“Too true, Devon, from what I hear. Indeed you must snare a little prize, perhaps … that one.” He glanced toward the door. The old soldiers in the room crowed in assent.

Wilhelm felt himself heat from the neck up and suppressed a warning growl. “I don’t hunt for sport, Vorlay, and I don’t take what is not mine.”

“Then you should have a care, Devon, because I do!”

His cronies sang a chorus of
Oh-ho
, daring Vorlay to have at it.

Wilhelm shot out of his seat, his vision darkened, and he gave way to the surge of fury. A grizzled red-headed man called to him in thick brogue, grabbing his arms — Colonel O’Grady, his trusted friend, urging him to let go. Wilhelm cursed himself. He had done it again, lost control. He forced his fingers one by one to release Vorlay’s throat. Spattered cognac streamed down Vorlay’s face,
tap, tap, tapped
as it dripped on the floor. Stunned silence filled the room.

Wilhelm shoved Vorlay back into the chair, his stupid expression and the shriek of furniture legs skidding on the floor gratifying to the beast roaring in Wilhelm’s head.

“I do not take what isn’t mine, but I sure as hell protect it.” His voice emerged gritty and ugly, but his every ounce of control was devoted to restraint at the moment.

• • •

“Oh, Wilhelm. No.”

Wilhelm had been caught spying. Aunt Louisa paused at his side in the library doorway and followed his gaze.

Rosalie stretched over the balustrade of a three-storey split staircase. She reached with a tool to hook the chain of the great hall’s crystal chandelier. Wilhelm had never thought about the beastly chandelier other than to count the 1,260 glittering pieces, which she would have to clean one by one. There were four footmen on the pulleys, but one mishap, a slip of the hand, and … he could not bear to think about it. Or the sixteen-yard fall to the marble floor below. A human body would drop nearly three seconds before impact. A shudder raked down his spine. He tried to banish the image —

Aunt Louisa’s hand clamped over his. The splintering noise was him, cracking the doorframe in restraint. He had been about to go to
her
. He wanted to. Would do so now if she had not already stepped away from the railing, guiding the chandelier to its resting place on a pile of drop cloths. The footmen secured the rope below, and the danger passed.

“Who employed her?” Aunt Louisa whispered coldly, the familiar sound of disapproval strong in her voice.

“Mrs. Abbott, although I do not blame her directly. She said Rosalie Cooper came highly recommended by Lady Lambrick, and who could dispute that?”

“She is not young,” Aunt Louisa conceded.

“A widow. Supposedly.”

Rosalie reached over the chandelier for the rope but dropped it and sucked in a breath, clutching her abdomen. She grimaced and breathed deeply with her eyes closed, then sighed as she resumed her work. Wilhelm had seen her do this before; it made him wonder whether she was expecting a baby or battling an illness. Aunt Louisa studied Rosalie with a hard glare.

Rosalie waved her rag to halt a team of footmen transporting a rolled rug. “No, that is the Axminster. It goes in the music room with the seventeenth cent — ” She pursed her lips at the footmen’s blank expressions. “The red rug. It lies perpendicular to the red rug. Adjacent? Oh for heaven’s sake, there is a square of darkened flooring where it belongs. And the Tabriz Persian, the gold one, goes here.” She sighed, sending an escaped lock of hair flying.

Wilhelm wanted to touch it, that unruly piece of hair, to wrap it around his finger.

The footmen each answered with a respectful
Yes, ma’am
, as though she were mistress of Rougemont. Wilhelm had always thought authority was ninety percent bluster, and Rosalie had it in spades. “How can you not like her, Aunt? She knows her rugs.”

“I see no humor here, Wilhelm Montegue. What are your intentions? And try not to use dockyard language.”

Wilhelm considered shocking her just for sport, then decided he wanted to be taken seriously. “I mean to have her, of course.”

“To what end? Until you tire of her and send her away with your bastard? Heaven knows you can afford a dozen bastards, but I always imagined more honor in your character.”

“Imagined? Dear Aunt, you cut me to the quick.”

“Leave her be, Wilhelm.”

“I don’t think I can help it.”

“After all this time? You choose a domestic? When you have rejected the Princess of Belgium?” She dabbed her forehead with a lace-edged handkerchief and tucked it into her sleeve. “Think of the scandal. Think of your
duty
.”

“Princess Astrid rejected
me
, not the other way around.” He tore his gaze away from Rosalie to smile at his feisty little aunt. “And now you have persuaded me to be contrary, solely for using the d-word.”

She waved her hand at him, plainly struggling to maintain her disapproving glare. Inexplicably Aunt Louisa liked him, no matter how uncouth his behavior. “You cannot carry on this way when the clock is ticking. What will become of your title? Surely your pride will not allow you to be the one Montegue since Cromwell who fails to pass the earldom to his son?”

“Blame Roderick for dying. I never should have had the title in the first place.”

Aunt Louisa lowered her voice, as though ghosts couldn’t hear if she whispered, “I bless the nitwit for dying. It was the only sensible thing your brother did, leaving the title to you.”

“Now you are being sentimental, Aunt. Stop or I may weep on your shoulder.”

“Wicked man.” She rapped him on the head with her fan. He was surprised she could reach. “I cannot dissuade you?”

“Not a chance. Have you ever seen a woman more lovely, more full of fire?”

“By the dozen.” Her tone betrayed her true answer:
Sadly, no
.

Plainly, Wilhelm had found a diamond in the rough. “Look on the bright side … .”

“There is one?”

Yes — for you, because I doubt she will even want me in the first place
. “She is not American,” he said instead, resurrecting their most volatile argument. So many in their acquaintance had made marriage alliances that amounted to trading old English titles for new American money. Aunt Louisa thought it a sign of the apocalypse, but apparently she was too upset to take the bait.

Then he had an idea. No reason he should let Aunt Louisa’s talent go to waste. “I wonder if you might help me. And in turn I promise I will not lay her out on a silver platter dressed only in grapes when I next host a ball.”

They exchanged smirks. Wilhelm never hosted balls.

“
Mercy
. Anything for you, Wilhelm.” However grudgingly, she meant it.

“Find out who she is.”

• • •

Mr. Cox finally sent a letter. She pretended not to care when a curious Mrs. Abbott handed her the envelope, but in private Sophia tore it open and unfolded the paper with fumbling hands. Clever Mr. Cox, her solicitor who had found her the position here at Rougemont with the help of the prankish and brazen Lady Lambrick, a dear friend of her mother’s. Flaming liars, the three of them, but for a worthy conspiracy.

Sophia saw her father’s name near the top of the letter. A jolt of anxiety made her heart leap and her skin flush cold. She would read that part later. But first, the information she had specifically requested:

Wilhelm Cavendish Montegue, Ninth Earl of Devon. Retired lieutenant-general in Her Majesty’s Royal Army, decorated in the Russian war, Order of the Garter, etc., etc. Before that
his military record is suspect, shrouded in scandal concerning the death of enemy officers and rumors he acted as a spy in Turkey.

A second son, he inherited when the eldest perished of illness, but some believe the succession unlawful. Lady Lambrick recalls his mother Margaret Montegue claiming Wilhelm was fathered by another man, yet her husband acknowledged him as his own.

He is never seen in London except to sit in the House of Lords. Regarding his insanity and unnatural practices, I find only rumors. Please have a care, Miss Duncombe. The man is inarguably wild and dangerous. I know such a warning would send your mother — God bless her — straight into the arms of such a man. However, I expect more sense from you.

She didn’t want to, but Sophia now forced herself to read the information about her father.

Last month Lord Chauncey located Lady Chauncey in France. Her ignorance concerning your whereabouts, however prudent, cost her dearly. She asked me to tell you, and I quote, “No worse than usual.” I assure you Lady Chauncey is being looked after in Edinburgh. I believe I have finally convinced her to go into hiding, but I doubt she will disappear as skillfully as you have, Miss Duncombe.

Regardless, Lord Chauncey discovered that you returned to England. I learned of four investigators hired by your father. One paid me a visit the past Tuesday. I sent him to Scotland on a false lead, which I pray succeeded. I will send some men after the investigators to keep watch and alert you of any danger. Meanwhile, stay hidden. Trust no one.

That night Sophia dreamed of blows striking between her shoulders, raw lightning bolts where the fabric tore. Each lash grew more vivid and scorching than the last. She felt paradoxically warm and cold; the chill air cooled her flayed skin, yet her shoulders dripped streams of scalding blood. Too much of it pooled around her hands and face, both from her dog and herself. She thought ironically that the blood of the animal and human ran the same dark color.