Behind the Courtesan(35)

She didn’t want to see the foaling mares. Not if they appeared as pitiful as the last two. She didn’t want to be there at all, but the whole village had turned out and she didn’t want to be left behind at the tavern on her own. And she still had to find a way to confront Blake with what she knew. And soon.

Four pathetic beasts later and finally, a spirited gray gelding was led into the corral. This one was skinny like the others, but intelligence and defiance shone in his stormy eyes. When he whinnied and reared onto his back legs, the shadow he cast over those standing closest made them shuffle back in fear.

“Ten pounds,” Blake called as he stepped from the shadow of the barn.

A laugh was the only answer from her left as Blakiston also stepped into the light. “You’ll need to do better than that, Vale.”

“Only if there is another bidder,” Blake said, looking around at his fellow villagers and friends. There was just enough firmness in his tone to let everyone know this beast was marked as his.

Sophie waited for Daemon to buy this one as well, but his mouth remained closed, his lips drawn in a tight line. Fascinating.

“Thirty pounds,” came from a stranger in a dusty bowler hat and black coat.

“Fifty,” came Blake’s reply.

Her heart sped up a little in anticipation.

“Sixty pounds,” Bowler Hat countered.

“Eighty.”

This went on for several tense minutes until the amount reached a staggering one hundred and sixty pounds. From the corner of her eye, Sophie noticed the man in the bowler hat look to Blakiston. If she wasn’t standing so close, she wouldn’t have noticed Blakiston’s small nod, which prompted Bowler Hat to place another bid. The duke was cheating to push the price higher. She wondered if Blakiston had more men in the crowd bidding on his own flesh.

Once the sum hit two hundred pounds, Blake had to be almost at his limit, and yet Bowler Hat kept countering with ten more pounds to his every bid. He was about to pay far too much for the horse and everyone present knew it. Sophie let go of Daemon’s hand and began to drift through the crowd toward Blake, but before she moved more than three steps, Matthew appeared at her side.

“Where are you going?” he asked as he blocked her path with his body.

“Blake is being swindled. I have to warn him.”

“Blake knows what he’s doing, Sophie. He’s a big boy.”

“And Blakiston is cheating him out of more money than that horse is worth.”

“He knows that.”

What? “He does?” What hadn’t they told her?

Matthew led her away from the auction and crowd. “Of course he does. Why do you think St. Ives has purchased every horse so far? They have a plan.”

“Do you know what it is?” Sophie wondered if they’d told Matthew of Blake’s claim to the title or their real relationship.

He shook his head, but the expression he wore said he knew more than he let on. She kept walking until they were both a safe distance from prying ears. “Do you know about Blake?” she demanded. If she didn’t talk to someone and soon, she would explode.

Matthew became instantly wary. “What about Blake?”

He was her brother, so surely she could share with him a secret that wasn’t her own. It was Blake’s fault he hadn’t told her the truth when he’d had the chance. She’d answered his questions honestly when he’d asked, but all he’d given her were lies and subterfuge. She owed him nothing. “Did you know that Blake is indeed the true heir to the Blakiston title?”

“He is a bastard. He cannot inherit.”

“He is no more illegitimate than you or I.”

“That’s impossible. Why didn’t he say anything to me? Why would he tell you?”

“He didn’t tell me. I overheard him telling his brother to burn the documents proving his claim.”

“He has no siblings. We are the closest he has to family. Are you sure you were listening in on the right conversation?”

“Of course I’m sure. Daemon and Blake are half brothers. Daemon tried to talk Blake into ousting Charles and taking the title himself.”

Matthew paced away, one hand rubbing his forehead as he processed the information. “What? How? I don’t understand.”

“I don’t know the entire tale, but needless to say, Blake would do a much better job than Charles does now. Charles doesn’t care about the village or its people. He only cares about gambling and women. We have to do something.”

“No.”

“No?”

“We do nothing. Leave it be.”

“We can’t just stand by and wait for Blakiston to destroy our home.”

“This is not your home. Why are you so worried for us now?”

His sudden hostility caught her off guard and she didn’t know how to respond. He was right. She didn’t belong here and what happened after she left would have no effect on her further than what it meant for Matthew, Violet and her niece or nephew.

Sometime over the course of a week, Sophie had begun to think of Blakiston as home. She’d barely thought of London, the clinic, her friends. In the parts of her mind where hope still shone, she’d even thought of how it would be to live out her life in the tavern alongside a man like Blake. Down the road from the estate where her life had ended and Sophia’s had begun.

But who was she kidding? She’d blamed her errant thoughts on nearly losing him. She’d blamed them on the fact that her world had been turned upside down when he’d kissed her. So many feelings she’d long buried had risen to the surface. As a child, she’d idolized her older brother’s best friend. As a young woman, she’d watched him grow, watched him fight and run and laugh but it had been a hopeless child’s crush. When she’d overheard her father’s plans to sell her to the old duke, all thoughts of a happy life, being courted and wooed, spending her summer days with Blake and Matthew, all had flown from her mind. Even up to the day her father marched her up the steps to the estate and handed her over, she hadn’t thought he would go through with it. Surely his only daughter was more important to him than a piece of land.

Evidently not.

It made her skin crawl and her stomach heave to recall the many times she’d wished the old duke would kill her rather than touch her again.

He almost did kill her, several times over. If it hadn’t been for the drink, she would have died. Instead, he’d drunk to such an excess, he forgot to turn the lock on the door all the way. After spending what seemed an eternity before daring to try the door, Sophie hadn’t even known if it would be night or day when she finally emerged from the lowest levels of the house. When Blake had told her how they’d searched for her, the hours her father had spent looking for her...she had been there all along.

Nothing had been more important that night than putting distance between herself and the man who traded her innocence for a farm. Sure, she could have woken her brother and let him see the bruises, but then they would have both had to run. She should never have written to let them know she was alive. She should have let her brother and her friend think her dead, but her sadness had weighed too heavily so she’d put pen to paper. She could have told them so much more, but the rest she kept to herself. Only the old duke knew the whole story and he was dead.

Blake would never understand that a courtesan’s life was preferable to no life at all.

She’d seen an opportunity to escape and she’d taken it. When she looked back on her flight that night, she was very lucky to have made it to London at all. She could have fallen into a ditch in the dark. She could have been attacked by animals or chanced upon a stranger on the road. It was no small miracle that she’d survived to reach the capital. She’d lived every day since as if it could be her last. She developed street sense with the help of her friends and she’d made decisions that were right at the time, not right for the future. The situation she now found herself in was no different. She had to make a decision about the information she now held and she needed to make it now, not for her future or Blake’s, not for their pasts or the possible outcomes, but for the future of her niece or nephew and the life he or she would lead.

Charles may not be exactly the same as the old duke, but he already showed he was not the man to take care of these villagers. To take care of her family.

Whether Sophie accepted the village as her home or not, she had to ensure her family would be happy, taken care of, protected. She would accept nothing less and, like it or not, Blake was the only one who could make sure that happened.

* * *

With each swing of the heavy axe, Blake split huge logs into smaller pieces for the kitchen fire and the tavern pit. His side hurt a little with the exertion but nothing compared to how his heart thundered in his chest. For the hundredth time since Sophie had arrived back in his life, he asked himself what the hell he was doing. The headache attested to the fact he was nowhere near the answer.