Behind the Courtesan(43)

“I have to tell you something before you ruin the moment and distract me from my purpose. Will you cease your noise?”

She nodded and he took his hand away a heartbeat before she would have tried to bite him for manhandling her. “What—”

“Sophie!” His warning was received. She nodded again and snapped her mouth shut.

“You are the most stubborn woman I have ever met. Even as a girl, you had to have everything your way. If you could have controlled the sun rising you would have told it to give you an extra hour in the day to get your hands dirty.”

He was right.

“You also never listen. You hear, but you don’t listen.”

“Are you going to stand there and list my flaws? I’m tired, Blake, I want to get back and wash and rest.”

“Will you shut up? I’m trying to tell you that I want you to stay. I want you to stay in Blakiston.”

“Why?” She wasn’t going to tell him she’d already decided to stay. She wanted to hear what he had to say.

“Because I don’t think I could live through losing you again. Because this past week has shown me that life with you is a hell of a lot more interesting than without you.”

“But we fight. All the time. Interesting isn’t a word I would associate with our friendship.”

Blake stepped toward her and cupped her dirt-smudged cheek. “What if ours isn’t only a friendship?”

She blinked. Held her breath.

“I love you, Sophie, and I want you to stay here with me. I want you to work alongside me, sleep alongside me, live with me.”

She gulped. Gulped again. Sophie racked her brain trying to think of a reason he would have to say all of the things he was saying. Was it because she’d been gone and he’d worried for her? Did he mistake fear of loss with love? The look on his face when he’d seen her was one of pure relief. Perhaps he thought he owed it to her to keep her safe? His idea of safe anyway.

“You don’t have to do this.” She stepped back. Instantly her cheek was cold from the loss of contact. His contact. “You don’t have to try to save me.”

“I’m not trying to save you. I’m trying to save me. No woman has ever lived up to your image in my mind. I stopped looking and hadn’t even realized I had until you came back into my life and turned it inside out. I didn’t know how miserable I was without you.”

Sophie was torn. Did she believe him? Trust him? Or did she trust as she always had, only in herself and no one else. Then she wouldn’t be let down, she couldn’t be hurt or left out in the cold.

Blake must have taken her silence as refusal as he forged ahead. “I’ll be anyone you want. I’ll be a duke or a tavern owner or even a farmer, just as long as you stand beside me.”

“As your what? As your maid or your mistress? Perhaps your close friend?” She had to hear the words. She wouldn’t believe it until she heard it from his mouth, checked the sincerity in his eyes against the reaction in her body. What if his relief at her safety and gratitude over her help this week coerced this declaration? She wouldn’t know if he offered her a life out of guilt and he wouldn’t know if she accepted out of desperation.

“I want you as my wife and the mother of my children. Imagine retelling this tale to the little ones.” His smile was the brightest she’d seen since they were children.

She could see in her mind the picture he painted. But there was just one problem with the vision. “There’s something I have to tell you before you say anything else.”

“If it’s no, then I probably don’t want to hear it. Do you need time to think on it? Do you need me to get down on my knees and apologize and tell you what an idiot I’ve been? How ashamed I am for the names I called you?”

“It’s not that.” She shook her head, her eyes burned with tears and the words stuck in her throat. “Before I came here...”

“Let’s forget the past. Put it all behind us and never look back ever again.”

“Can you do that?”

“Can you?”

“No.” It was the simplest answer. Whether he stayed an innkeeper, became a farmer or took the title, her past was always going to come between them and they would be hopelessly naive to think otherwise.

“No?”

“Before I came here, I was pregnant.”

“What?” This time it was Blake who stepped away from her. Exactly the reaction she’d expected from him.

“I lost the baby. And not the first one. Blake, I can never carry a child.”

“How many times have you been with child?”

The disgust she’d thought would follow his initial reaction was strangely absent in his question.

“Becoming pregnant is not always avoidable in my profession.”

“How many times?”

“Five. This one was to be the fifth child I would have liked to hold in my arms, heard her tiny cry...” Had someone to love and be loved by.

“I don’t understand. I’m sorry for your loss, but what does this have to do with anything between us?”

“If you take the title, I won’t be able to give you an heir. You’ll never be a father and I will never be a mother. We won’t ever have a family to call our own.”

Blake raked a hand through his already mussed hair and took a deep breath. His chest hurt with the effort not to explode and rail and rant. Not at her, but for her. And mostly at himself. He should have known there was something off about Sophie when she’d looked at him from her perch in the carriage in the yard that first day. When she’d alternated between fear and fury and then resignation, he’d thought her acting skills had matured while in London. But she really had been angry and upset...hurt. Why hadn’t he just let her be?

“Children don’t make a family, Sophie, love and commitment do. I’ll still take the title if that’s what you want. After the fathers we had to walk in the shadows of, I’m not even sure I want to be one. Matthew and Violet have plenty enough babes to go around now.”

“You say that now, but what about the future?”

“I’m already thirty-three years old. This is the future.”

“You are the only one who can decide to take the title or not. It will be your burden to bear, but I know you can do good. Would do good.”

“Haven’t we made enough decisions in our lives without asking for help or considering others?”

“I thought you said you understood why I made those choices.”

He took her hands in his. “I’m not judging you. I’m saying we should consider each other now. If you’re to be my wife, then we need to make the choices here on in.”

“I haven’t agreed to become your wife.”

“You will.” Blake chuckled. He felt lighter now than he had in fourteen years. This time it didn’t matter what she did or where she went. He would follow her and never let her go.

“You think to force me? Wear me down?”

Blake took her hand in his and began walking toward where the horse stood grazing quietly. He didn’t want to let her go. Not even for a second. “I would never force you to do anything.” He stared at her sideways. “Well, I may force you to take a bath. You look as though you rolled through a paddock.”

“I may as well have,” she muttered as her hand relaxed in his and her stride lengthened to keep pace.

“So a boy and a girl? Are they really all right?”

“They’re excellent. It was the most difficult night of my life. And the best.”

“Do you think maybe you could make a life out of delivering babies?”

Sophie’s nose wrinkled and she shook her head. “Never. I would never want to do it again for as long as I live.”

They both laughed at that. He didn’t want any of the details, but he could imagine.

As he walked alongside the animal, wondering how they were both going to fit on the narrow saddle, relishing the idea of holding her on his lap as they made their way back to the inn, the sounds of hooves reached him again.

At first he thought they might belong to Daemon, but the noise came from the other direction and the rising level signaled more than one horse.

Blake held the reins in his hand and without a word, helped Sophie into the saddle.

“I don’t ride well, Blake, and this is not a side saddle.”

The feeling of unease multiplied in him when a carriage and pair barreled around the bend, headed straight for the fork in the road behind where they stood. He recognized at once the conveyance and the driver behind the horses, a look of anger and desperation on his face.

He was not in the mood for a confrontation with a debt-ridden former duke.





Chapter Twenty-One



“Charles is fleeing,” Sophie stated, her voice low despite the distance between them and him.