Behind the Courtesan(30)

He shrugged. “I didn’t want to do too much too soon.”

He lied, but she let him. That grin that was so ingrained in him stretched his lips and she wanted him to lean down and press his mouth to hers. But that was a bad idea. A terrible idea. “What do we do now?”

“Now?”

She pulled the bed coverings tighter over her chest and sat up, forcing him to do the same. “Where do we go from here?”

“I’m going to the kitchen to get started on breakfast. I’m due at a town meeting about the bridge at midday.”

“We aren’t going to discuss what happened here?”

“I think we both know what happened here.”

Sophie wasn’t sure if he was being deliberately obtuse or stubbornly pigheaded. Maybe both. “And I think we need to talk about it. About last night as well.”

“Are they two different events?”

Sophie would have slammed her hands down on her hips if she hadn’t held the sheets in a death grip. His flippancy fueled her anger as she recalled more and more of the night before. “You know what I’m talking about. The villagers are miserable under Blakiston’s poor excuse for a rule.”

“Oh, that.” His gaze dropped and he stood, giving her his broad back.

“Yes that. What are you doing about the high taxes and levies?”

“What can I do? If you think he’ll listen to me, then you have rocks in your head.”

“So you’ll stand by and let your people be bullied?” She climbed from the bed and stood, only a blanket and sheet to hide behind.

He spun to face her, fury glittered in his eyes. “They aren’t my people, Sophie.”

“You may not be the legal duke, but they look to you. They respect your opinion and treasure your advice. You could go to Blakiston, you could get him to act.”

“You are too romantic in your observations. They ask me because I know this area better than most. They ask me because they fear my temper, not because they see me as a bastard duke.”

“You could have been a real duke.”

“I am a bastard, not a duke. Is that what this is about? Do you wish me a duke, Sophie? Do you feel as though you lowered yourself by sleeping with a commoner and a farmer at that? Should I pay you or was that one free?”

Deep inside her chest, Sophie’s heart gave one thump and then an eternity later, another, and then split in two. “That’s not fair. Not fair to me or to you.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“I slept with you because I wanted to. Because I stupidly believed that the man you are would be enough for me. But you’ve just proved you haven’t changed one bit. All the work I’ve done, all the mornings, all the... It seems you’re the one who feels he has sunk low, not me.”

“I didn’t mean it like that. Jesus, Sophie, you bring out the worst in me every time I’m near you.”

Her eyes pricked and burned and it was hard to push the words out. “I want you to go.”

“I will but before I do, will you tell me what is so special about your duke?”

“You won’t understand. You don’t understand anything I try to tell you.”

“So now I’m ignorant, too?” He stalked toward her.

She stepped back but not far enough, she couldn’t get away from his fury, the pain in his eyes and the rigidity of his body. They’d had this conversation already. She doubted he would listen any better now than he had then.

“Will any title do or does it have to be a duke? Is a deep purse enough? A hunting lodge and mansion on Mayfair too? What is it that makes your callers so much better than me?”

“That’s the part you’ll never understand.” Sophie tried to remain calm, tried to leash her temper and not enter yet another fray with him. But it was too late. It was inevitable. “It has nothing to do with titles, purses, hounds or horseflesh. Daemon treats me like a lady even though I’m as far from it as any woman can get. When he looks at me, he sees only me. He doesn’t see my occupation, he doesn’t see the men who have gone before him, he doesn’t even care about the dress I wear or the house I live in. He cares about me. Sophia Martin. Not the courtesan, but the woman. That is the part you will never understand.

“You’ve been so caught up on the ways in which I have changed that you haven’t actually seen the changes. This is who I am, Blake Vale. This is the woman I have become and this is the woman I want to be. St. Ives accepted that and never tried to change me. He never made me feel filthy. That is the difference between a duke and a tavern owner, between Daemon and you. He is a gentleman down to his very soul. You are a bastard through and through.”

Her chest heaved with the effort to breathe. Her hands clenched until her nails bit into the palms of her hands, leaving crescent moons in their wake. She should take back her words. She should never have spoken them to start with, yet there they were, out in the open, like a ravenous wolf, who wants only to eat the hearts of the pained and lonely for his breakfast. Tears burned her eyes, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing them fall.

“I understand.”

Sophie slowly calmed, as if his answering words had popped the bubble of her anger. Blake’s shoulders slumped and for a moment she had to bite her lip against an apology. What had started out as a pleasant evening of companionship and passion had ended in pistols at dawn after all. She wondered who had won.

“If it means anything to you, I am sorry.”

God, why did he have to punish her so? And why did she have to believe he meant what he said? “You should go.” Before he specified if he was sorry for the hurtful words, or sorry that he’d crawled into her bed.

But before Blake could take one step, there was a frantic knocking at the bedroom door. She met his gaze with a little shake of her head, willed him not to answer, not to make a move or a sound.

“Who is it?” she called, panic filling the pit of desolation.

“It’s Dominic, miss. There’s a problem downstairs and I can’t seem to find Blake.”

Sophie shuffled to the door, careful to keep the blanket around her still naked body. “What’s the problem, Dominic?”

“The Duke of St. Ives has just arrived and there’s no breakfast and no one in the dining room to tend him. I have to take care of His Grace’s flesh and I can’t do it all by myself.”

“I’ll be down in a moment. Keep looking for Blake.”

“Thank you, miss. Thank you.”

Sophie held her breath until long after his thumping footsteps had receded. She turned, her head fell forward until her chin almost rested on her chest, a single tear fell down her cheek. “What have I done?”

“There’s no need to tell him.” Blake actually sounded concerned but when she looked up and met his gaze once again, she saw only fury.

“I wasn’t going to tell him,” she said. “Nothing happened. Nothing more than a bad mistake.”

“So that’s what it was? A mistake?”

“What else could it have been? You said it yourself, you are no duke and I’m nothing but a gold-chasing whore.”

“Sophie—”

She held up one hand. “No. I asked you to leave and I meant it. Get out.”

“I can’t go out there now. What if St. Ives is standing in the hall?”

“I don’t care. I’ll tell him you were fixing a chair or stoking the fire or something.”

“While you are undressed?”

Her cheeks burned. He made her feel hot and cold at the same time despite treating her worse than a free tumble at the docks. She should have slapped him then and there. She certainly shouldn’t have opened her heart or her body to him. Why had she ever thought that he’d changed? That he was different? That in his mind there might be some small place that didn’t think her useless or dirty or tainted. Mistake was an understatement.

He may not be his father, but like his sire, he used her, hurt her, made sure she had no idea which way was up and which was down. At least this time the damage was on the inside—invisible but no less intense—rather than bruises and broken bones.

She had to watch while Blake pulled his shoes on, the same clothes he’d worn the night before when they’d danced and laughed and enjoyed each other’s company. When he opened the window and stretched a leg over the sill with all the grace of a panther, all signs of his previous injury gone, she turned to face the wall. She couldn’t bear to watch him leave like this. She wished she could go back and wake up with a smile, not bring up the subject of his heritage, just ask for breakfast. If only.

When she turned back again, words on the edge of her tongue that would take the sting out of the morning’s insults, he was gone.





Chapter Sixteen