Loving The Lost Duke (Dangerous Deceptions #1)(33)
‘About twenty principal bedchambers as I recall.’ Cal was frowning with the effort to remember and did not appear to notice her convulsive grip on the table edge. Best not to ask how many minor bedchambers. ‘Not that I took much notice before. I wasn’t very well for a lot of the time I was growing up and housekeeping details just passed me by.’
‘What was wrong with you?’ She had rarely seen a healthier specimen of manhood and it was hard to imagine Cal laid low by anything for long.
‘Some childhood ailment, I suppose.’ He shrugged. ‘The doctors never came up with a diagnosis, but it cleared up after I went abroad.’
What aren’t you telling me? He was just too casual about it, too glib. The temptation to ask Ralph was strong, but that would be disloyal. Probably Cal was embarrassed by a perceived weakness and would tell her all about it when they knew each other a little better.
Men require managing, Mama always said, although Sophie recognised that she managed Step Papa far less than she had Papa, which was interesting. Papa had not regarded women as anything but decorative accessories. To be loved and cherished, certainly, but if anyone had suggested that a female had a brain capable of reasoning and decision-making beyond the menu for the week or the choice of a bonnet, he would have thought they were mad. But Step Papa not only loved her mother, he admired her, asked her opinion, shared decisions.
‘Do you think me merely a decorative accessory?’ she asked before she had time to think about it.
Cal paused in the process of tucking the invitation list into his breast pocket. ‘Why do I sense a trap in that question? Decorative, yes. An accessory, certainly not, except possibly before or after some criminal act.’
‘Me? A criminal?’ Sophie protested. She tried to establish his true feelings and he insulted her?
‘No, an incitement to crime.’ Cal moved close. Very close. ‘To holding you to ransom for a million kisses, to kidnap so I can tempt you to all kinds of wickedness on some desert island. I want to make love to you in every public park in London, I want to tear the petals off every rose bush I encounter to strew over your naked body. I want to corrupt you utterly, my lovely Sophie.’
Oh. My. Goodness. She had thought to find a respectable, tame, marriage. One that was safe, comfortable. Suitable. And now she was betrothed to a barbarian, a tiger. A man who would consume her. Deliciously. Dangerously.
‘You may try, Your Grace.’ She went to the door, dropped a very proper curtsy and batted her eyelashes, making him laugh. ‘But I am determined to be the very model of a most proper duchess. Good day, Your Grace.’
The glimpse of his smile vanishing as she closed the door was very gratifying. Two could tease.
Chapter Ten - Where Sophie’s Past Comes Back to Haunt Her
Word of the betrothal spread through Society as fast as gossip could flow, even before the invitations to the house party were out and long before the wedding invitations were written. Within a day Cal was being congratulated wherever he went and Sophie was mobbed by her friends, gazed at enviously by her few enemies and pointed out as An Example by ambitious mamas to their daughters, regardless of protests that there were no more eligible dukes to ensnare.
‘I hadn’t told anyone, and even if all the people we invited to the house party have told their friends, it is still incredible how news spreads,’ she whispered to her mother one evening a week later. Yet another green-eyed matron had just congratulated Lady Elmham on her triumph before turning back into the throng at Mrs Wissonsett’s musicale.
‘Servants,’ Mama whispered back as they made their way to one of the sofas arranged around the string quartet. ‘It only takes one scullery maid to tell the footman next door and it is all over Town before you can say trousseau.’ She sat in a rustle of aubergine silk. ‘Good evening, Lady Horton.’
The dowager on her other side nodded and peered round to fix Sophie with a beady gaze. ‘And where is your young man, hmm? Vanished again, has he?’
‘The Duke had a previous engagement, Lady Horton.’
‘Fiddle-faddle. He can’t stand hearing catgut tortured and that’s the truth.’ The old lady nodded briskly. ‘Sensible man.’
Fortunately the ensemble began to play, leaving Sophie in peace to contemplate her new life married to the sensible duke. The wicked, passionate duke. The duke with dark secrets and hidden depths. Her duke.
She was still lost in a happy daydream of being the perfect duchess by day and the perfectly wicked one by night when the music came to a halt amidst a smattering of applause.
‘There is Cousin Harriet.’ Her mother stood up and waved across the room. ‘Keep my place, dear, I must ask after Cousin Wallace’s gout.’
For a moment she was free of curious well-wishers. Many of the ladies were discreetly making for the retiring room in case the next piece proved to be a long one and gentlemen were hurrying to the buffet to collect drinks for their partners. Sophie amused herself watching the whispered argument between the viola player and the cellist over a piece of sheet music and then froze, breathless. For a second she could not understand what had seized her with such apprehension, then a tall figure passed behind the platform, walking diagonally from a side door to the buffet.
Blond hair, an attractively elegant profile, a winning smile, just now directed at a blushing young lady in his path. Jonathan Ransome. Her past come back to haunt her.