Loving The Lost Duke (Dangerous Deceptions #1)(56)

‘A ready-made family?’ Ransome interjected. ‘I had no idea you had previously been married, Calderbrook. How delightful for Soph… for Miss Wilmott to have a stepdaughter.’

Now, had that slip with Sophie’s name been an accident or quite deliberate? Cal looked across to where Sophie stood, her straight back turned to them, and let his affection show in his expression. ‘Sophie is going to make a wonderful mother and she has already made a great impression on Isobel.’ And that was something else he must tackle before much more time passed. Isobel had spent quite long enough contemplating how much she was going to hate her new mother, hate him for remarrying and plotting how to punish them both.

The familiar sharp pang of love for the child gripped him. She was brave and intelligent and a real little fighter, combining the toughness from both parents with her mother’s looks and ability to twist the unwary around her little finger. She was his and he adored her and she terrified him. How did one protect your child in this big, dangerous world full of carefully disguised sharks such as Ransome? But at the moment it was not on his daughter’s behalf that he needed to load his shotgun, it was his betrothed’s.





Chapter Seventeen - Where the Duke Suffers


Jonathan was talking to Cal. The fear prickled up and down Sophie’s spine and she could feel her feet almost twitching with the urge to turn around, see what was happening behind her.

But the conversational tone did not change, there was the occasional ripple of amusement and no sound of fist hitting jaw. Jonathan obviously had the sense not to antagonise Cal. Gradually she felt her shoulders relax and the social chit-chat came more easily. After all, what had she to worry about? Someone might be attempting to assassinate her husband-to-be, the child who would be her stepdaughter hated her, she would have a dangerous man sleeping in her sitting room that night, she was carrying on a secret correspondence with an enquiry agent and her former lover was blackmailing her. A normal house-party at a ducal mansion, no doubt.

And now she must tackle her hostess, behaving in a manner that would be tactless and insensitive if the woman was innocent, and possibly dangerous if she was not.

Sophie took a glass of ratafia that she did not really want and made her way over to Lady Peter who was, for the moment, alone on the sofa. ‘How nice, I have so much been wanting to talk with you.’ She sat down, sipped her drink and waited, as was only proper, for the older woman to speak.

‘You like what you see of Calderbrook Hall, Miss Wilmott?’

‘It is magnificent and yet I am sure it will be a wonderful home when it is lived in by a family again. It must owe a great deal to your direction of affairs while Lord Peter was the Duke’s guardian. How difficult to manage two great houses at the same time.’

‘I would not describe Pointings Manor, our own country home, as a great house.’ Lady Peter’s voice held no great affection. ‘It is considerably smaller and older. Very easy to leave while I was needed here.’

‘It must have been a sacrifice, even so. And what devotion to duty, to raise what must, in effect, have been another son, when all the time your own, the elder, would not be the heir of all this.’ Her gesture took in the drawing room, the house, the entire ducal estate.

‘When one marries a younger son, one marries his sense of duty to the family.’

‘Of course. And then for the Duke to be abroad in such dangerous and far-flung places! Again, duty must have come to your aid and impelled you to raise Mr Thorne so that, if the worst happened – ’ That could have been more tactfully put, Sophie! ‘– your own son could rise to the occasion as the heir. I must say how much I admire you for that.’

The silence that followed that crashingly tactless observation was so prolonged that Sophie risked a sideways glance at her hostess. Lady Peter was biting her lower lip, a demonstration of emotion that seemed extreme for such a rigorously controlled woman.

‘However ambitious a mother is for her son it is also her duty to raise him in the expectation that he makes his own way in the world within the sphere in which he finds himself,’ she said with dignity. ‘For Ralph to have succeeded as duke would require a tragedy to have happened and I am certain he never had any thought of such an eventuality.’

But he had, or, his father had. And beside her Lady Peter was looking at her husband, her expression unreadable. Lord Peter? Ambitious for himself and Ralph, or only for his son? A man who would sacrifice his own honour and duty to see his son a duke? She did not believe for a moment now that the woman at her side had tried to poison her nephew by marriage, and she rather thought that Lady Peter’s initial chilliness towards herself was due to suspicion that no woman was good enough for Cal. But something disturbed her inner peace, something made her suspicious of her husband’s intent, even though Sophie doubted she had ever articulated those fears to herself.

‘Dinner is served, my lady.’

Lady Peter pulled herself up as though startled out of thoughts that were a long way away, but she rose to her feet and supervised the ordering of her guests with calm authority. She had apparently decided on some informality for this second dinner and the long table had been split into three and another round table added to the vast dining room. The pairings to go into dinner had been changed, with less attention to the rank of guests and more to introducing those who had been separated the night before.