Behind the Courtesan(5)

He couldn’t help watching her as she ate, her eyes closed and a small smile playing over her lips.

“Nice?” he leaned over and asked as he remembered her earlier jibe about his food being bad.

When Sophie opened her eyes her cheeks flushed having been caught in her moment of flavor rapture. “Very. You must have a talented cook.”

“The vegetables are grown right here, in the field behind the kitchen.”

He tried to keep the inflection from his tone, tried to keep it light and nonchalant, but aggression crept its way into his words, though he longed to take them back. She knew where vegetables came from. He wasn’t sure why he felt the sudden need to remind her. Why did he continue to behave like a brute in her presence?

She ignored him anyway and turned to her sister-in-law. “Violet, I bought you a gift before I left London.”

“You did?” Violet said, shock written all over her delicate face.

“A cradle for the baby. It’s really very beautiful, I do hope you like it.”

Surprise filled Violet’s eyes and then was gone, not quite replaced by hostility, but close. “We already have one.”

Sophia hadn’t thought of that. She’d only been thinking to get rid of another reminder of her London life before it drove her insane. That she purchased it for them was only a little white lie. She couldn’t very well reveal over the dinner table that it should have held her own child.

“I am a carpenter, Sophia. I already made us one. Two actually,” Matthew told her with a forced chuckle.

“Of course you did.” She couldn’t meet his eyes nor anyone else’s as her cheeks flushed. From the edge of her vision, something happened between Matthew and his wife.

Violet cleared her throat. “It was a lovely gesture.”

Not by the tone in her voice, but Sophia gave her a half smile anyway and then returned to her meal. She would have to ask Blake to dispose of the cradle so she wouldn’t have to endure the constant sight. This was the first day in a long time that she hadn’t given herself over to tears and grief over the miscarriage she had suffered some months before. She sighed. The day wasn’t done yet.

“What are your plans while you are here, Sophia?” Matthew changed the subject with grace. She could have hugged him.

“I don’t have any.” She wouldn’t admit her only plan had been to rest and try to find direction for her life. To try to find a way to accept her existence would never be the same now that she had come to realize what her choices had robbed her of. Matthew’s invitation had arrived opportunely. She didn’t regret decisions made when she was a scared fourteen-year-old but now she was an adult and had to take matters more firmly in hand. Yet another failed pregnancy had forced her to open her eyes and stop living in the moment, although some days she wished denial still cloaked her.

“You could venture forth and meet people. There’s a dance organized for Sunday afternoon at the McFarlane farm.”

“I don’t think so.” She shook her head to clear morose thoughts and painful memories. The second to last thing she wanted to do was be in a place where the women would scowl at her and the men would wonder at her availability. The absolute last was to be openly shunned.

“I’m sorry. Our little dance probably isn’t sophisticated enough for you anyway.”

“Blake.” Matthew’s warning tone rang out across the table, but Blake paid him no heed.

“You would especially hate market day. Your delicate hems would never stand up to the crowd, to the manure on the road, the dirty children brushing past your expensive skirts. Perhaps it would be best if you stayed in your room?”

Sophia’s mouth fell open. She wasn’t quite sure where this vitriol had come from but she wouldn’t endure it. Not quietly anyway. “You think there is no manure on the road in London? No dirty children? What are you really saying, Blake?”

“I’m saying you aren’t cut out for country life, you would only get in the way.”

“I would not. You know nothing about me to make those kinds of assumptions.”

“You are a delicate woman now.” Blake picked up one of her hands and turned it in his. “Your pretty hands, your polished nails, one day of work and you’d be a mess.”

“I would not,” she repeated, doing her best to ignore the warmth that crept from his skin to hers.

“I don’t believe you,” he taunted.

Sophia wanted to punch him. This man who insulted her, who made her out to be some sort of aristocratic invalid, she wanted to make him hurt. What the hell had Blake Vale done that was so special anyway? Poured ale for dogs for twenty years? Scrubbed vomit off the floor occasionally? He had no idea what she’d had to face, how strong she’d had to be. She snatched her hand from his grip. Let him live through even half of what she had.

“I’ll prove it,” she said, pushing her chair out with a scrape of timber against timber.

“For one week?” Blake said, leaning back in his.

“I beg your pardon?”

He came to his feet, arms crossed over his chest. “It’s all well and good for you to milk a cow or to prepare a single meal but could you do it for a week?”

“Certainly. But why would I want to?”

“That’s right, Duchess. Why would you want to? You have servants to cook your meals and run your bath. Do you have a maid to dress you? Wipe your arse?”

He’d called her that name in the yard as well, that name that made her insides shudder with dread, and try as she might, it was impossible to ignore the jibe. “I dress myself, thank you, and as to my other habits, they are none of your business.”

“I thought so,” he replied with a smug look on his infuriatingly smug face.

Instead of the physical harm she dreamed to inflict, she nodded and said just one word. “Agreed.”

“What?” three voices echoed in perfect unison.

“I’ll do it for one week—I might even do it for two.” Perhaps then he would see her as more than a courtesan.

Blake snatched up her hand and shook it vigorously. “Two weeks then, Duchess. This is going to be fun.”

As Sophia sat, fuming that he thought her useless, the realization sunk in that she had been goaded into spending her visit working. Alongside an insufferably judgmental oaf. He would probably have her mucking out stables or shoveling the very same mud she’d worn not four hours earlier and she had fallen headlong into his trap. At least keeping her hands busy might relieve her mind from its current state of anxiety.

Without warning, Violet dropped her spoon on the table and clutched her stomach with a groan.

Both Matthew and Blake shot to their feet, the silly challenge momentarily forgotten, but it was Matthew who got to his wife first. “Violet, are you all right? Do we need to call for the doctor? Is the baby coming?”

When Violet looked at her husband, she seemed furious. “’tis just the baby moving. I do not need the doctor.”

“You should be at home resting,” Matthew growled.

“Yes, I should,” she said with a pointed glance in Sophia’s direction and then back to Matthew.

“You begged me to take you somewhere!”

“But not here,” she hissed.

“Sophia is my sister and I wanted you to know her.”

“I think perhaps I am a little more tired than I thought,” Violet said into the thick silence that followed the argument.

“Take her home, Matthew.”

Matthew ignored Blake and turned to Sophia. She nodded her agreement. As much as she wanted them to stay, there were no words she could say to Violet. Apologies were sure to get her nowhere.

“If you’ll excuse us?” Matthew helped his wife to her feet, cast Blake a scorching look of censure—to which Blake shrugged—and then they shuffled from the room.

As soon as the door closed behind the pair, Sophia whirled on Blake, murder once again on her mind. “What just happened?”

“What did you expect? Violet is a delicate woman.” Blake kept his eyes on his plate, idly toying with his food.

“I think Violet would have survived a meal in the same room as me given the chance.”

“You have no idea what Violet could endure. Is one dinner enough to take her measure? A dinner forced upon her at the last minute?”

“I would like to get to know her.”

“Why now? You didn’t want to know her before.”

“Let’s not pretend this is about Violet. You attacked me and then you challenged me in front of them. Are we to be as uncivilized as snarling bears?”

“You think folk here are.”

“Where does all of this come from?” They did nothing but talk in circles. Sophia narrowed her eyes. “Are you drunk?”

“Would that I was,” he muttered.