Behind the Courtesan(34)
“She gave her body to me. And no. I didn’t know. She kept her secrets very closely guarded.”
“Yet once you did know, you didn’t bring her out of her degradation. You didn’t save her, you just kept her in the same state you found her, only more comfortable.”
“What Sophia and I had is none of your business. I offered to marry her and she refused me. She still has no idea who I am. Her reputation and her beauty and her unavailability are what led me to pursue her. It seemed a betrayal of who she had become to tell her everything, to dredge up the nightmare and cause her to once again look over her shoulder every day. You’ve seen the light in her eyes, the vibrancy of her soul, I couldn’t remind her of her past and dull that light.”
“It’s not right. She should know who you are.”
“She should know who you are.”
“I am a tavern owner, and in her eyes, a pig. She wouldn’t believe your lies any more than Charles or the magistrate would.” For more than a few minutes, Blake’s treacherous mind stumbled over the truth and all its possibilities. She had said no to a duke. Here was an honorable man offering her a way out, offering a life devoid of labor and filled with comfort and coin, and Sophie had said no. There were so many questions and a less than zero chance for the answers.
“So you won’t even think about it?” Daemon’s softly spoken words interrupted Blake’s thoughts as they chased each other from one side of his mind to the other, from one side of the argument to the other.
He had thought of it. He’d thought of little else since Charles had taken the Blakiston name and dragged it into the mud. When the Branson child died because Charles refused the loan of his carriage to fetch her to the doctor, he’d thought how differently he would have handled the situation. When the taxes continued to rise, but the roads remained in their sad state of disrepair, the bridge to the south almost crumbling into the creek it sat over, he’d thought of nothing else. There were so many things he would have done differently had he been duke, but it wasn’t that simple. It could never be that simple. And he’d made a promise to his mother all those years ago. Even though she’d left him and never looked back, he would honor the promise and stay true to himself.
Great wealth warped the minds of those who held it. It made strong men weak and great women greedy and conniving. It made those in high positions think whatever they wanted was theirs for the buying. The untitled may not be rich, but they were happy. He was happy. Or at least he had been before Sophie had re-entered his life and thrown it into chaos.
Blake shook his head. He didn’t need a dukedom. He didn’t need wealth or an estate atop a hill. He simply needed to remember who he was and who he wanted to be. Sophie was right when she spouted off about choices and decisions. His wasn’t even a hard one to make.
“No.”
“No, you won’t think about it, or no, you won’t do it?”
He sighed and looked directly into Daemon’s unwavering sea-green gaze. “I will never be a duke. Not ever. Burn the remaining documents and forget what you know. Forget that I should have been Duke of Blakiston and wait for Charles to go to hell so you can find a new successor. If you can’t do that, forge some new documentation and thrust it on another man, because I don’t want it.”
“Do you understand what you’re giving up? You could have it all. A wife with an entrée into society, children, a fortune.”
“I do understand. I don’t want any of that. I have never wanted that kind of power or responsibility.”
This time it was Daemon who shook his head as he stood to leave. “You’re making a mistake here, brother.”
“A mistake is something you grow to regret,” Blake muttered. This was one decision regret would never sink its claws into.
* * *
A duke? Blake was the rightful Duke of Blakiston? Sophie couldn’t have heard right. She couldn’t have. But that wasn’t even the worst revelation of her eavesdropping. Daemon and Blake were half brothers? Why hadn’t she ever known that? Daemon had asked her questions only hours earlier and hadn’t let on one little bit that the two were related.
She turned from Blake’s office door with a hand pressed to her suddenly fluttery stomach. No wonder Blake never wanted to talk about his sire. No wonder he’d gotten so angry when she’d asked him why he didn’t want to be a duke. But he’d told her bastards don’t inherit. He’d said it over and over. She thought for a moment that she would cast up her accounts right there on the floor. Everyone had their secrets, but this? This was a flat-out lie. A betrayal of everyone whose life depended on work from the estate, on the duke, on the word of a man who had apparently been born on the right side of the blanket after all.
This was it. This was the moment she could either confess to what she’d heard and confront the two men who claimed to care something for her. Or she could take the new information away and think on what she could and would do with it. She felt her head would explode from the pressure.
She fisted one hand in the skirts of her gown, and with the other, pushed the door to Blake’s office open. Daemon saw her first and began to rise, but Sophie stopped him with a curt gesture. Blake was slower to her presence and didn’t make to stand, didn’t make a move at all.
“Sophia.” Daemon addressed her warily. “Is it luncheon already?”
She drew breath, opened her mouth and asked, “Blake would you fetch more wood for the fire in the common room? That rain is still falling and it’s bringing a chill with it.”
Both men stared at her for a moment too long, and she wondered if one would call her on her hesitation or her flimsy lie. Blake rose without a word and Daemon picked his glass up and drained the amber contents in one swallow before addressing her.
“You heard all of that, didn’t you?”
She gave a shake of her head, another curl breaking loose from the knot she tried to tame them into. “Heard what?”
Daemon smiled then. It was a lifting of lips that for as long as Sophie had known Daemon, he reserved just for her. Only today there was something else there—a weariness he didn’t normally let show.
She did have so many questions. How did they find out they were siblings? How long had they known? Was the old duke aware of Daemon as his son? So many questions, but if she blurted them all out now and Daemon told her to mind her own business, how would she respond? She had to work it all out in her own mind and choose carefully what she wanted to know. Daemon was a private man and only released the details of his life that he wanted to be made public. The rest were cards he held very close to his chest.
“Are you ready to eat?” she asked, shifting all her jumbled thoughts to the back of her mind for later. For now, all she wanted was to eat a meal with a man who didn’t insult her at every turn. Or make her head hurt with the effort to decipher him.
Chapter Eighteen
Later that day, Sophie stood by a makeshift corral as yet another fine thoroughbred went under the hammer and more of Daemon’s money spilled into the pocket of a ducal toad. She wasn’t quite sure what was happening, but Daemon had purchased a total of fifteen horses, much to the disgust of the other men who’d traveled for the auction. She wanted to ask him what he would do with them all, but she could only stand and smile prettily as her brain whirled with questions. The barns at his estate were tiny and he wasn’t a horse man at all. And then there were the dozen more questions about his relationship with Blake she longed to have answered. Why hadn’t he ever mentioned even traveling to Blakiston? She also wondered how often the half brothers saw each other. Too many scenarios skated in her mind.
“Are you all right, m’dear?” Daemon asked, looking pointedly at where her hand was supposed to rest lightly on his arm. Instead her grip was tight, his coat bunched beneath her gloved fingers.
Sophie relaxed her hand and smiled. When she peered at the others around her to make sure no one else had noticed her agitation, she met the gaze of Blake who scowled in her direction as if she was the one bidding on all of the flesh.
“I’m perfectly fine, thank you.” If she could have a guinea for every time she had said those particular words in the past week...
“You don’t look fine. Perhaps you need to sit for a moment?”
“No, thank you.” She leaned closer so no one would hear her. “What are you doing?”
“What do you mean? I’m trying to see to your obvious lack of comfort.”
“Why are you buying all of them? That one over there looks as though she is about to fall over. Her ribs are poking out.”
The stiffness under her hand was not imagined and when she looked to his face, Daemon was now the one wearing a scowl. “He has not fed them properly in a month. Wait till you see the foaling mares. He’s lucky this mob haven’t taken matters into their own hands and hung him from his own barn.”