Loving The Lost Duke (Dangerous Deceptions #1)(63)

Cal woke to the smell of chalk and lavender. He lay listening to the clicking sounds close to his ear and, further away, the murmur of feminine voices, one soft and low, one higher-pitched and threatening to escape from a whisper.

He was in the nursery, he realised, not troubling to open his eyes. He felt warm, relaxed and considerably better than he had when he had yielded to Mrs Jenkins’s urging to lie down and rest himself.

He wondered vaguely what magic Sophie had created to enchant Isobel and then let himself drift towards sleep again. Time enough to get up and flex his muscles as he rather suspected he was going to have to do if Ransome continued to make Sophie so uneasy. No-one was going to distress the woman he…



Sophie saw Cal stretch and begin to sit up and whisked the linen square with its shaky pencil outline of a letter C into her sewing bag. ‘Don’t tell Papa, then it will be a surprise present.’

‘You’ll come back, show me how to sew it? Please?’

‘Of course.’ She raised her voice from a whisper. ‘The warning gong has rung for luncheon, Your Grace.’

‘Have I been asleep and neglecting three ladies?’ Cal stood and scrubbed one hand over his face. ‘What a dreadful example in bad manners to show my daughter. I must go down and change, I came here direct from the fencing bout.’

‘We have entertained ourselves very well, but I would be glad of your escort to my room.’ Sophie made her farewells, laying a finger on her lips in warning to Isobel who was obviously bursting with her secret, and let Cal take her arm on the stairs. His colour was back to normal and only the dark shadows beneath his eyes betrayed that he had been wracked with pain and sickness for most of the night.

‘You are an enchantress,’ he said. ‘What did you do to tame the child?’

‘I remembered one of our grooms showing me how to handle a colt who was so wild that no-one could get a halter on him. Jim would sit on the fence, polishing some leather, paying the animal not the slightest attention. It became unbearably curious and came closer and closer until it was butting him with its nose for attention. Then he would put out a hand, still not looking at it, and pet it. Within a few days he could do anything with it.

‘Isobel worries that I will try and replace her mother and that you will love her less if you… if you have someone else in your life. I told her that I have a stepfather and understand. And now we have a secret to keep from you and she adores that.’

‘What secret?’ He sounded so suspicious that she laughed up at him.

‘It is a secret. Cal, you look much better, I am so relieved.’

He drew her close to him and rested his cheek on the top of her head. ‘I knew, during the night when it was really bad, that you were there. I should have had the strength to send you away and not inflict that on you.’

‘Of course,’ Sophie said, rubbing her cheek against his shirt front. ‘And I should have realised how much better I would have felt if I had just gone back to bed and to sleep and left you there. Why, I would not have worried in the slightest.’

‘Wicked woman.’ He did not release her.

‘Does it concern you, hurt your pride, that I saw you when you were ill?’ she asked.

‘Hmm.’ That, she supposed, was agreement.

‘We are going to be married, Cal. I need to know you, to understand you. I know now that when everything is stripped away and you are in pain, you are still brave and still fighting.’ The hand that had been stroking her back went very still. ‘I want us to be honest with each other.’

‘Yes, let us be that.’ He released her and began to walk briskly along the corridor towards his rooms. ‘Now we must hurry if I am to wash and change and not be late for luncheon. And I must send a note to Prescott. I will need him here if things become… complicated.’

What had she said? Perhaps she had simply embarrassed him with what he saw as an excess of sensibility. Or perhaps he instinctively knew that she was keeping something from him.

Sophie let herself into her sitting room from the inner passageway and put down her sewing bag. The clock chimed, a thin silvery note, and she turned to the bedchamber door. She would be late for luncheon. There was no need to ring for Mary, her gown was in perfect order, so was her hair, she saw with a glance in the mirror. All she needed to do was wash her hands.

Her hand was on the dressing room door when she felt the prickle of awareness down her spine that warned her she was not alone. She turned and there, lounging on the bed in unconscious imitation of Cal on the nursery chaise, was Jonathan.

‘Get out of here. Now.’

‘We need to talk, Sophie dear.’

‘Not here and not now. Everyone will be going in to luncheon.’

‘All the better for a quick, private talk, don’t you think.’ He stood up and walked towards her. Sophie stood her ground, chin up, but he kept coming until they were toe to toe. ‘I am not enjoying myself much here, Sophie. I do not feel very welcome, the way you look at me, the way your duke looks at me. And his tame fencing master. I’ve been patient, but I want money. Now.’

‘I told you – I do not have any.’

‘Ask your duke, he’ll give you what you want. Take him to bed and please him. You lied to me, didn’t you Sophie? Made me think you were sharing his bed. But you aren’t are you? I checked.’