The Charmer (22 page)

“That is exactly what I thought, since you insist on treating me like an invalid.”

“I am only worried about you. The physician said three weeks of quiet bed rest.”

“The physician is an ass. As I said earlier, I am practically good as new and am in fine condition.” He closed his hand on her breast. “I'll prove it.”

He silenced her startled objection with his mouth and conquered her brief resistance with his caress. She melted and her pliant body curved into him.

“That is wickedly wonderful,” she whispered as he played at her through the thin fabric. “But if you exert yourself we will probably have to call the physician again.”

“I do not plan to move much at all. All of the exertion will be yours.” He went to work on her ear. “I will tell you what to do. As a beginning, curl up facing me so I do not have to twist like this.”

That made it easier for him to kiss her properly and to reach her whole body, to finish undressing her. He plunged into the bliss of pure sensation and expectant hunger. Her arousal escalated beautifully, until she was with him kiss for kiss and breath for breath in their private world of emotion and pleasure.

He wanted, he wanted . . . all of her. All that he had known with her and all that he hadn't and all that he might never know again. The images of what he desired sent him veering toward the breaking point. He took her in a gentle, exploring kiss while he forced some control. Her mouth smiled against his.

“My need amuses you?” he asked.

“No more than mine does. No, that kiss made me remember Jacques' lessons in love on the boat. I will have to tell him that you are not at all clumsy and crushing when you peel apart a rose's petals and lick its nectar.”

“Jacques' metaphor was not about a woman's mouth, Sophia.”

She went still for a moment. He sensed her working out what it
was
about.

“Do you want that?”

“Yes.”

Another moment of stillness.

“Tell me what to do.”

He told her. After he had brought her to a thunderous climax he slid from between her kneeling legs and came up behind her and took her while she hung limply against the bed board.

It destroyed whatever restraints still existed between them. He did not leave the exertions to her after all. All night long he made love to her, oblivious to his healing ribs and bruises. He molded her recurrent arousals to his explorations while a ferocious, aching hunger tried to have enough of her to last a lifetime.

chapter
22

S
uch an impressive palace.” Attila's cry echoed from where he stood gaping in the middle of the immense ballroom. The room's dimensions turned his bearish form into a diminutive spot of astonishment. “Your home is as big as the Louvre.”

“As always, our friend exaggerates,” Jacques said while he strolled beside Sophia, inspecting the luxurious appointments. They had arrived an hour earlier and she was giving them a tour. “However, you are more important than I ever imagined. Everdon must be one of your country's great titles.”

“Let us just say that if it had been a French title forty years ago, the likes of you would have sent me to the guillotine in the first wave.”

“It appears that your countrymen seek to cut off some heads of their own now, only the weapon will be this new law instead of a blade. The result will be a half-measure, and incomplete.”

Sophia could tell that, like all young men of radical disposition, Jacques found half-measures unpalatable. Captain Brutus had been like that.

“Perhaps we are fortunate that you are French and not English,” she teased.

“The condition of men anywhere is everyone's concern.”

“I hope that you have not been instigating riots while you are here.” She made it a mock scold, but admitted the possibility of outside interference that she had never considered before.

“I would never misuse your hospitality that way. However, it is inevitable that men have come here from other countries to use the turmoil to their own ends. Your husband, I think, can tell you how it works.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“You told me yourself that your husband is a spy and agent provocateur. A dangerous man.”

“I made that up, Jacques. It was a silly tale.”

“Silly tale or not, I think that you touched the truth. Perhaps your heart suspected.” Jacques fingered a gilt candelabra. “Magnificent. All of it. How many chambers, did you say? Eighty-four?”

“You disapprove.”

“I prefer your house in London, and your
maison
in Paris. This is majestic, but empty. Cold, and full of echoes. Perhaps when you and Monsieur Burchard fill it with children it will be different.”

She had come here to settle things for herself. A good first step would be to set Jacques and Attila straight about her relationship with Adrian.

She stopped his stroll and looked him in the eyes. “As I told you before, I am not married. Not to Adrian, or to anyone else. I lied to you about that, just like the part about my husband being a spy. Adrian exploited the lies so you would not interfere when he came to bring me back to England. I had never seen him before that night of my
seraglio.
”

Attila joined them in time to overhear the last few words. “You plan another
seraglio
? Here? The cost of the silks for the ceiling would be exorbitant. Perhaps the east drawing room would be better. Much more intimate.”

“Sophia is not planning another
seraglio,
” Jacques said. “She is explaining again that she is not married to Monsieur Burchard. This time I find myself believing her.”

Attila's happy expression fell. “It is so? You have been playing a very dangerous game. When your true husband learns what has transpired with Burchard, it could be very ugly.”

“There is no husband at all,” she said.

“No husband? But Jacques said that you told him . . .”

“She lied to me.”

“And a few others,” Sophia admitted.

“You lied to Jacques? But why? I will admit that I was wounded to learn that you took him into your confidence and not me, too, but if it was a lie, you only insulted him.”

“She lied to me and others to discourage us.”

Attila turned on Jacques with wide eyes. “Discourage you? Are you saying that you
tried . . . ?”

Jacques responded with one of his shrugs.

“I am speechless, Jacques.”

“I doubt that I will be so blessed.”

“To think that you would take advantage of our sweet lady's generosity. Have the French no shame? To have pressed her to the point where she took refuge in a lie . . .”

Sophia slipped away while Attila continued his harangue. Jacques bore it patiently, looking to the ceiling with resignation while the lecture poured down on him.

She had debated all the way to Marleigh just when to do it. By the time she arrived she had laid out a schedule that would not require confronting the ghosts until a few days had passed. Therefore it surprised her when a fit of cold resolve gripped her as she left the ballroom.

Why not just face it now? It was why she had come. Best to get it over with. Delay would not make it easier, and might give her too much time to lose her courage.

Steeling herself, she wound through the house's chambers and up its grand staircase. At the third landing she looked at the door to Alistair's suite of rooms.

Sickening dread made her turn away. She would face a gentler ghost first, even though it would probably be more painful.

She made her way to Brandon's chamber. A mellow sadness swelled with each step. She could only contemplate this because she had already faced the worst of it at Staverly. She had only succeeded in that because Adrian had helped her.

Adrian. She wished he were here to hold her together again. But she knew, she just knew, that it was important to do this on her own.

She thought about the man whose passion could make her feel beautiful and magnificent. The thought of him pierced her heart with regret. She was not giving him everything like she wanted to. She loved him, but the deepest level of her spirit held back. Was there a sadder pain in the world than aching to believe and trust and love without question, and discovering that you are incapable of it?

That was why she was here. To reclaim the part of her soul that had learned to hide too well. There was a danger in the quest. She could discover that it was not hiding, but was dead.

She turned the latch and stepped inside the chamber. Its starkness startled her. Fury split her mind.

Nothing of her brother remained. She had always assumed that Alistair had left it as it stood on that summer day. Instead he had wiped it clean of Brandon's life.

He had done it on purpose. He had known that one day she would want to feel Brandon's presence again, and he had deliberately robbed her of it. He wanted to make sure she could never reconcile what had happened. He needed her to wallow in guilt.

Scathing resentment maddened her thoughts, turning them harsh.
I can do the same, Papa. I can go into that suite and wipe out your years there. I can burn the clothes and furniture and sell all the items that you used. I can even refuse to have a child. I can obliterate you.

She stiffened with sudden self-awareness. The ugliness of her rage shocked her. The internal voice had sounded horribly familiar. Its cruelty reminded her of Alistair himself.

She forced some calm and blocked out the thought of him. Not yet.

She sat on the bed and closed her eyes and pictured this chamber as it had once been.

The image that came to her was from childhood, during the years when she and her twin lived one life. They used to make a fort out of a velvet quilt and bounce a ball down the chamber's long length. It was how she remembered this room best. After they had begun to mature, she had rarely ventured in here.

Memories flew by, and she embraced them all. Heartrending nostalgia made tears drip down her cheeks. She saw him as a little boy and as a young man. She had forgotten how much he looked like their mother, bright-eyed and dark-haired and quick to smile. There had been little of Alistair in him, much to their father's annoyance. Too soft. Too kind.
Weak,
Papa had called him.

Not weak. Thoughtful and sensitive and giving, but not weak. A good person, full of their mother's quiet strength. No, there had been little of Alistair in him. Unlike her.

Brandon's childish face suddenly froze in one of those memories. He was looking at her after learning that she had gotten him into trouble for something he had not done. She forgot the crime now, but remembered the lie. She had implicated him because she did not want to face their father alone.

His eyes focused on her, gazing with a wisdom beyond his years. In them she saw understanding. And forgiveness.

The image held. Her eyes and throat burned. Then the memory was gone.

She looked around the vacant chamber. A peaceful elation moved her. She had not needed his clothes or books or toys. Opening this door to the past had brought more comfort than pain. She should have known that it would.

She walked to the door and glanced back at the emptiness. Maybe Alistair had not erased Brandon's history because of her, but for himself. Perhaps he had feared remembering even more than she had.

There would have been no images of happiness and forgiveness waiting on the other side of the door if it ever blew open for him. He probably knew that.

She did not need clothes or objects in Alistair's chambers either. They were all there, of course. Not even Celine would dare to erase the late Duke of Everdon from his home. Sophia had rarely seen him in this inner sanctum, however, and its contents held no special meaning for her.

That disappointed her. She had counted on it just happening when she walked in the door.

She sat in a chair near the cold hearth. She would have to do it on her own. Of course she would. None of this really had to do with Marleigh's chambers. It was all inside her.

She let the memories come, steeling her composure to face them.

Alistair critical and harsh and cutting.

A thousand little hurts when she was too young to understand anything but that Papa was busy or angry.

The nagging suspicion as she got older that it was not just his manner.

The eventual admission that he really did not love them much at all.

The more recent ones were harder, and she cringed against their cruelty. She watched his triumph when he captured Captain Brutus. She relived his blunt satisfaction in throwing the truth of all that in her face. She mentally turned away from his expression during the fierce browbeatings and terrible whipping that he had used to force her to speak at the trial.

Finally, she called forth the steely coldness with which he treated her after Brandon died, as if he would gladly exchange her for the body in the grave.

She did not cry. Alistair never evoked that response. It had always been something much worse. He killed her confidence and joy. He made her feel worthless and insignificant. He sucked the strength and life out of her.

It was vital not to let him do that today. She battled to hold on to the woman Adrian had helped her to begin discovering.

“They say you were a good duke,” she said aloud to the memory.

I executed my duties better than most.

“Did it consume you? Is that why there was nothing left for us?”

I did my duty to you too.

“I am not speaking of duty.”

You have always been sentimental and emotional, Sophia. It does you no credit. Such things are not for the likes of us. You must learn to control those tendencies, and your willfulness and impetuousness and extravagance and . . .

“I am well aware of my deficiencies. You cataloged them for me often enough. Did you not love us at all? Were we only duties?”

I cared for you in that way, to the extent that I was capable.

“Which is your way of saying very little. Did Everdon make you that way, or were you born thus?”

Your question is impertinent. Another failing that requires self-discipline.

“The question is important to me. You see, I have come back. It is mine now. I want to know what goes with the power and precedence and wealth.”

You are unsuitable and will fail. A duke is born to the title, but his sense of duty is molded. I educated your brother for it, not you. He was too soft, but I had him shaping up. That you are all who is left . . .

“I am not afraid of the duties. I will not fail if I accept them. But will they turn me into what you were? Or was your inability to love a part of your nature?”

Which answer would you prefer?

“The first, I suppose. I can always run away from Marleigh. I can never get rid of the other legacy, the part of you that is in me.”

Running away. You are good at that. It took your half-breed lover to get you to admit it.

“Do not insult him. Adrian is good for me. He sees wonderful things in me.”

It is in his interest to do so.

“That is not true.”

So he gives you affection and pleasure and asks no more in return? A rare man, considering your position. Except that you do not truly believe that. Which is why you cannot love him.

Her jaw clenched against the accusation.

Ah. So that is what this is about. All of this talk of love. I dared to hope for a moment that we were having an intelligent conversation. Listen carefully. I only bother because you are all who is left. You are Everdon now, and Everdon is a power to be used. Others will want to control it, and will try to use you in order do so. You know that. It has already happened. There is no place for sentimentality in any of it. You must be nimble, clever, and sometimes ruthless. Love will only leave you vulnerable. Imagine how much more I would have been disappointed in you if I had loved you.