Behind the Courtesan(14)

Her first months in London had been terrifying but she had done it, with the assistance of her four friends. Molly, Addison, Caroline and Amy were the closest to sisters she could ever lay claim to. They had supported her through some very, very tough times and she them. But the five of them could be no more different than sisters could. Amy worked in a gaming hell at night as the woman who distracted men so they lost more money to the tables. Addison was a milliner’s daughter, her father owned a shop on Bond street and was far too busy to notice his daughter’s habit of disappearing for days on end.

Molly worked in a brothel, second in charge to the madam who ran the establishment. Molly had been Sophia’s second friend in the world after Caroline. The brothel was actually a lovely building close to Mayfair. From the outside, it was a shop front boasting a fine tailor. Upstairs was an entirely different matter.

Caroline was possibly the most presentable and respectable of them. When they had first met by the pond, Caro crying her eyes out over a boy, she had been a scullery maid. Now she was companion to a gentlewoman, who gave them the majority of their funding. Mrs. Pendleton’s husband had died, leaving her a very wealthy widow. But he had also left her a shell of the lady she had once been. Sadness had taken over her life and turned her into a hermit. Caro was her only window to the outside world.

“How often do you work there?” Blake’s question pulled her from thoughts of her life and her far-away friends.

“About three days a week when Daemon is out of town.” Damn. She hadn’t meant to mention her former lover or indeed anything to do with her occupation.

“Daemon is your duke?” he asked without scorn, without insult. Perhaps they had reached a truce.

Sophia didn’t correct him. Daemon was a duke but never hers. “He is the Duke of Clifton.”

“St. Ives?” Blake asked.

Sophia nodded again. “Do you know him?”

“He was close to the old duke.”

Sophia’s heart skipped first one beat and then another. “No, he wasn’t.”

“He didn’t tell you?”

“You must have your dukes mixed up.”

“I can assure you he was close to Blakiston.”

“They were not friends.” Why had Daemon never mentioned the connection?

Perhaps because you never told him where you came from.

Not even with her first protector, Noah, had she shared all the details of her life before London. The more years that went by, the more she had stuck by her decision, tried to forget. She knew deep down that if ever she was in need of a safe place, the town of Blakiston would be there, undiscovered, undisturbed. But while the old duke and her father lived, she would not have stepped foot anywhere near the town or her borders.

In fact, since she had fled, she hadn’t visited outside of the city at all. Until now. And look how it turned out.

Silence once again engulfed them. They were mere inches away from each other and yet worlds apart. She was a courtesan, and he was a countrified tavern owner.

Never mind that as children they’d seen each other without clothes, that they had lain on the banks of a river and quenched their thirst. They had endured so much, had each known everything about the other, yet the years had borne a gap too wide to breach. Sophia missed the camaraderie they once shared more than she would ever admit aloud. Blake had been a brother to her just as much as Matthew had. But that was over now. They were no longer children, no longer friends. But there were things she wanted to know.

“How long ago did your uncle die?” It was blunt but she didn’t think he would mind much. There had never had been love or affection between Blake and John.

“Six years. Best thing that ever happened to me.”

“Did Blakiston ever try to claim you as his son?” she asked, snapping a twig between her fingers and feeding it to the hungry flames of the fire.

Blake shook his head. “Never. The cur tried to destroy me but it didn’t work. Eventually he gave up trying and let me be but by then it was obvious to all with eyes that he was my sire.”

“What did he do? To try to ruin you?”

“First there was the poison.”

Sophia gasped.

“Not intended for me,” he assured her. “Took down every last cow and chicken I had, nearly got the horses as well, but they were fed a different grain then.”

“What did you do?”

He shook his head. “Not me. We. The town rallied around me, ate vegetable pies for a month, gave me a cow for milk, a few chickens for eggs to make the basic biscuits, bread and cake. I was able to start again.”

“Did you confront him?”

“I went to the estate,” he said but offered no more.

“He actually let you in?”

They hadn’t had a choice when he’d kicked the front door down and strode in as if he did indeed own the mansion. If the old duke had been nicer to his mother instead of making her appear his mistress, if his mother had demanded respect from the man who married her and then denied it and had had the evidence destroyed, he would have owned the place.

Unfortunately for the folk of Blakiston, there appeared no legitimate son to take the mantle, to carry on a name dragged through the mud and back for generations. It fell to Charles Falston, not even a real man, more a sniveling brat, who now had power and the hunger to wield it, to fill the shoes of the depraved duke.

Charles could have it. Blake didn’t want any part of a title or the responsibility. He’d been raised a bastard. Nothing would change that. He and St. Ives had made sure of it.

“You don’t have to talk about it anymore.”

Her voice pierced his internal rage, gave him something to hold onto, to pull himself out of the pit of anger and despair that tried to drown him. “Or do you not want to hear it?”

This is why he didn’t talk about it. He tried not to think of his mother, the woman who’d birthed him and then abandoned him. So many people in his life had betrayed him. Sophie would always sit at the top of the list. “You and my mother are the same, you know.”

“We are not,” came her indignant reply.

“You both just threw away my love like it never mattered a damn.”

The awful silence, the one that held the demons of their pasts, settled around them again. How did she manage to draw his emotions from him like a bucket dipped into a well? It was none of her business and deep down, Blake knew she didn’t care. She had her grand life in London and in a matter of weeks, this trip would be but a distant memory, more fodder for the gossip that filled drawing rooms and salons. Salons she would sit in with St. Ives and live her shallow life.

He couldn’t sit still anymore. He was a fool and a hypocrite. He wanted her to open up to him, yet he hadn’t done the same with her. Hadn’t told her of his friendship with her protector or that he and St. Ives were related.

For the first time ever, he was actually jealous of his only two friends. Matthew had Violet and the baby. St. Ives had Sophie and her trust. He had nothing. Nothing at all.

As he got up and stamped away into the cold night, wishing she would call him back, wishing he had the courage to stay, he realized he was the biggest fool of them all.

Despite what she was, whoever she was now, he still loved her and that made him angrier than anything else had in the past fourteen years.

* * *

“Damn you Blake! Damn you and your fool notions. I am nothing like your mother!” A temper difficult to leash pushed her to her feet and drove Sophia to follow the stubborn man into the dark. She stumbled, nearly fell, righted herself only to stumble again.

Out of nowhere, his body loomed until he stood face to face with her, his eyes and mouth twisted into a fury so great Sophia trembled but stood her ground. There wasn’t anything he could do to her that hadn’t already been done.

“You are the fool,” he roared. “You could have had it all, a family, a husband, a good life, but you were a coward. You should have stayed and fought your father but you ran away and hid from it.”

If it was a fight he wanted, it was a fight he would get. “I’m the coward? You hide behind your so-called farming accomplishments so you won’t have to step out on a limb and make something of yourself. You could have had it all too, Blake. You could have been so much more, but you were too frightened to make your father see you. Too busy hiding from responsibility and respectability.”

“Is what you think? That I should have been a duke? Would you have had me then, Sophia? If I came to you in London and told you I loved you, would you have given it all up to come back here with me? To rot in the countryside with thousands of pounds and an estate? Because that’s what you want isn’t it? That’s why you never wrote me, never thought of me. I’m just a peasant and you want a title.”

“What are you talking about? I don’t want a title.”

“That’s what you say, but it’s all a lie. You sleep with St. Ives in the hopes that he will one day offer you the life you ran away for. How did you first get the notion? Did you read it in a book? Did you meet him when he came to visit the estate? Did your London friends help you think up the lie of your father selling you to Blakiston to win Daemon’s heart?”