Behind the Courtesan(15)

“They aren’t lies. It’s the truth.”

“No, Sophia. I think the truth is that you wished for a better life long before you had the notion to flee. I think that is why you never said goodbye. You wouldn’t have been able to hide your enthusiasm, your eagerness to start your new life.”

Sophia’s heart stopped its rapid thump-thump against her ribs. Stopped beating altogether. “Is that truly what you think? How you see me?”

“How many men did you sleep with before worming your way into the bed of a duke?”

Sophia shook her head until her hair came loose from the chignon she’d tied it in. He was wrong. Oh, how wrong he was and there wasn’t a thing she could say or do to sway him.

Suddenly, warm hands gripped her arms hard just above the elbows. “How many men, Sophia?” With each syllable, he shook her, shook her until her teeth rattled and her neck hurt.

Wrenching free of his brutal grip, Sophia pulled her hand back and swung hard. The resounding crack echoed in the night air, fog from their heavy and harsh breaths drifted into the sky above them. Sophia’s palm stung but she wanted to hit him again. She wanted to lash out and hurt him just as much. How could he be so wrong? He saw her with only disgust and pity and it gnawed her soul that his opinion had fallen so low.

Well, if he wanted the truth, she would give it to him, but in return she would know the same of him. “I will tell you how many men, but you must tell me how many women.” How she wished she had the eyes of a night owl. She would have given it all to see what he felt in that moment. His anger and condemnation she could feel but there was something else there. Some other kind of anguish that tore him up. That probably had nothing to with her and her occupation so much as his own hurt pride.

“I don’t have to tell you that and you shouldn’t ask.”

“Very well, then.” Whipping around so fast her dirty, ripped skirts snapped about her legs, Sophia headed back to the warmth of the fire. He would follow or he would not. For all she cared, he could perish in the dark on his own.

Shaking the blanket free of anything that might have taken a mind to crawl in, Sophia wrapped it around her shoulders and dropped back down in the space between the dead horse and the hot coals. A chill pervaded her body, but she doubted the night had anything to do with it.

The minutes stretched, the only sound came from the crackle of the fire and the occasional call of night birds. Just when she was about to give up and close her eyes, Blake’s heavy tread approached.

“How many?” he asked.

She sighed. “Why does it matter? What concern is it of yours?”

“It does matter. It matters to me for the stupidest reasons of all, but it matters.”

Finally she nodded and gave him the number. “Seven.”

“I’m not an idiot. Tell me the real number.”

Must he continue to heap insult upon injury? “That is the number. You asked and I told you. Now it is your turn.”

“I won’t tell you until you stop with the lies.”

Sophia jumped back to her feet. “What do you want me to tell you? Do you want to know everything? Do you want to know that I was saved from a fate worse than death when I arrived in London? That I was polished, preened and beautified until I shone and then sold to save my life? The reason I landed in a duke’s bed is because lies and gossip travel faster than the truth. By the time St. Ives found me, I had a notorious reputation for dazzling men in their bedrooms—all lies but lies that helped me stay alive.”

All was quiet for a time, Sophia’s chest rose with each breath she heaved in and then whooshed out. Why did he do this to her? Slumping to the ground, she rubbed a hand over her face and stared into the fire. “Believe what you will. I have nothing to lose by telling the truth.” Well, some of the truth. There was more to it but she would never reveal it. Ever. What would he do to her if he knew that when she arrived in London, she carried his father’s baby, his own half brother? He would never speak to her again. Even in anger.

“Do you ever feel regret?”

She did. All the time. Regret that she hadn’t run sooner. Regret that she hadn’t been able to truly trust Blake and Matthew to save her. Regret ate away her defenses each time she peered into the face of a baby knowing she would never have one of her own. Nothing in her life had so far gone to plan, but she had been happy, or at least some version of it. “Regret is a luxury I cannot afford,” came her eventual reply.

“Some would call that denial.”

“I define it as the intelligent option. And denial has its uses.”

“One day you will have to face it all, Sophie. What will you do then?”

She didn’t hesitate. “I’ll face it when it comes. But that won’t be this day or any other day soon.”

“How do you know? You can’t keep it at bay forever.”

Staring into the mesmerizing flames, she muttered. “Oh, yes I can.”





Chapter Eight



The distant sounds of horses’ hooves drifted through Blake’s mind, threatening to bring him more fully awake, to take him from a place where he was content. Beneath floating apple flowers, his hands molded her curves as his mouth brushed her jaw, her ear lobe, her cheek, consigning her taste to the deepest parts of his memories. In this place, in his dreams, Sophie was his wife and life was perfect.

He didn’t want to wake up, but the drumming of hooves meant a customer. His delirious dreams could wait.

He flexed his fingers and stretched but the woman of his nighttime invention didn’t move. She didn’t disappear when he opened his eyes, her apple scent continued to tickle his nose. Her warmth still filled his arms as he held her tightly to his side, heat radiating from both their bodies.

His sleepy gaze shifted as he remembered where they were. Who she was. Right about the same time she did.

A sudden stiffness infused Sophie’s body. Her head rose and her back straightened.

Shit.

Pulling his hands away from her, Blake cried out when pain exploded in so many parts of his body at once he thought he might die. The dream must have been God’s idea of a nasty joke.

The skin on his arm pulled, pain from ribs that were surely broken took his breath away, and a thousand other little hurts made themselves known. He couldn’t feel his sleeping lower limbs at all.

Before Sophie could berate him for his actions, before he could explain that he’d dreamed of happiness while holding her tight, she was on her feet and in the middle of the road.

“Sophie,” he called out to her.

“Don’t you dare say a word!” The finger she held out to him, the accusation in her eyes as she pointed in his direction, flustered and embarrassed him and made him click his mouth shut with a snap.

In the cold light of the morning, he was right. He wasn’t a duke and she wasn’t interested.

As crude as the truth was, Sophie sold her body to the lord with the deepest coffers. The very idea of sleeping with her head on his shoulder had to be causing no end of inner turmoil for her.

The silence between them intensified, the thumping in his ears testified to his weakened state, his aroused state. He’d lost enough blood yesterday to fell the mightiest of men and anything remaining had flooded south at the mostly innocent sharing of body heat.

He stared at Sophie, standing in the middle of the road, hands on hips, one foot tapping the gravel beneath her toe. What was she doing? Would she stand there until someone came along? He’d need help getting to his feet and was about to ask her when he realized the thumping in his head was actually the sound of horses, the sound that had woken him.

From where he sat, his back still against Monster’s, he couldn’t see down the road, but he could hear the driver’s order to the horses pulling the carriage to slow and then stop.

Doing his best to ignore the pain that racked his body, Blake rolled to his side, the side on which his ribs were unharmed, and willed blood back into his legs. The carriage could hold any manner of filth.

“Good morning to you, sir,” Sophie said, her voice clear and loud and sweetly feminine. “As you can see, we have met with some trouble and require assistance.”

“Who is it, Gaspar?” a voice asked from the inside of the carriage. Whoever it was sounded frustrated.

“A...lady, Your Grace.” The hesitation in the driver’s words made Blake want to punch the man in the face. He wasn’t at all sure if Sophie was a lady due to the richness of her clothes or just another woman standing in the middle of the road, but his hesitation implied he would as soon as run her down than render assistance.

“Please, sir, it has been a harrowing night already, I would be most appreciative.”

Why hadn’t she ever used that tone of voice with him? She sure knew how to stroke a man’s conscience.

He groaned, the pain in his legs taking his mind off the thought of Sophie stroking anything.