Most Improper Miss Sophie Valentine (19 page)

Rain clouds folded around the chimneys and buffeted the crooked roof, casting their shadow over the yard and through the windows. Only the fire in the main hearth gave out any light, and this is where Tuck stood, heating a kettle of water.

“Miss Sophie!” the old man exclaimed.

The house was just as she remembered it; almost nothing had changed. Even Tuck seemed to have the same patch on his breeches. Walking to the fire to dry her skirt, she heard the door open again.

“Tuck! You're still here?”

“Mr. Hartley,” Tuck mumbled with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. “Where else would I be?”

“And now you have another new master. I wonder how long this one will stay.”

She glanced over at Lazarus and saw him stiffen, hands behind his back, feet apart—a man on guard. “Long enough,” he spat.

James smiled coldly and pulled off his gloves. “Just until the harvest is in, so I hear. There can't be any reason for you to stay after the work is done.”

“Don't trust all you hear.”

Now they looked at her, both accusatory. She ignored the tension and that they knew, all too well, who everyone was, and said cheerily, “You've not been properly introduced. James, this is Mr. Lazarus Kane.” She nudged his elbow, prompting. “Mr. Kane, this is my old friend, Mr. James Hartley.”

They did not shake hands. The eyes of Lazarus Kane grew darker, which Sophie hadn't thought possible until then.

“Are you making tea, Tuck?” she asked. Ah, yes, tea! Always the perfect solution. The old man muttered he supposed he could make tea. If she wanted it. He'd actually been heating the water for his aching feet.

“That would be lovely.” She tugged James out of his coat and spread it by the fire. “Once the mud has dried, I can brush it off. It won't be so bad.”

While she fussed over him, James reverted to a sulking boy, and Lazarus strode to the hearth, where he rested one arm along the mantel while watching in dour silence. No one sat, although she urged James to rest his leg, for he was limping very badly now.

Taking a deep breath, she sailed forward into the still, angry silence. “Well, isn't this weather bleak? One would hardly know it for summer.”

Only Tuck managed a belated, “Aye.”

The air was taut as a drum. The conversation, as she forced it out, falling in clipped, slight sentences, splintered on impact like icicles on stone. Sophie, deciding they were all being quite ridiculous, soon stopped trying to find topics of mutual interest to discuss. If Lazarus chose to hover here like a sharp-eyed, black-haired bird of prey, then so be it. She was tired of trying to prevent people making fools of themselves; she had her own madness to tend.

When the tea was ready, she offered to pour it, and Lazarus shrugged, as if he didn't care what she did. She handed him a cup, which he wouldn't take and, in coldly refusing it, wouldn't even look at her but kept his gaze fixed upon the fire, his hands clasped behind his back.

James thanked her profusely for his cup, even though he disliked tea and seldom drank it.

“Mr. Kane, you're not from around these parts?” he asked suddenly, breaking into another long silence.

“No,” came the terse reply.

“From another county? Do I detect a note of the Cornish tongue? Or is it Welsh?”

Sophie turned to look at Lazarus, also curious. He merely shook his head.

“Somewhere far from here?” James persisted.

“I've lived in many places. Never called any home for long.”

“Ah. A man much traveled, then. Quiet, nondescript Sydney Dovedale seems an odd destination for a young man well traveled.”

Sophie took offense at the adjective “nondescript” applied to the village she loved, but James didn't see her scowl, as he was too busy preparing his next offensive.

After a pause, during which rain rattled at the windows and both men smoldered with sullen unease, James continued. “I hear you have quite an interesting past, Mr. Kane.”

Sophie almost dropped her cup. She felt the air move as the man standing by the fire tipped from one foot to the other, restless and agitated.

“Interesting past?” Lazarus spat the words from the corner of his mouth.

“Perhaps you've been in trouble with the law? That would account for your having traveled about so much.” Then he smiled, as if he were teasing.

“I don't know which rat hole you frequent to get your information, but you'd best not go nose first down it again, or next time you might find it bitten off.”

“I beg your pardon. Do you threaten me?”

“I warn you,
sir
.”

James wisely backed down. “As you advise, I won't pay heed to all I hear.”

Sophie once again offered their host a cup, which he refused just as sharply as he answered James's questions, and then she was truly annoyed. He had no right to treat her so. She slammed the teapot down on the tray and felt his eyes on her, hot and angry…and something else, almost as if her display of temper gave him satisfaction. She turned to James and said merrily, “Do you stay long in Morecroft this summer?”

“Yes,” he replied, “I think I might remain a while yet. I've been too long in Town, and the air here is so much fresher, more convivial to good health. And Grandmama has begged me to visit her more often. She does so enjoy my company.”

Lazarus muttered something very low, which she ignored.

“I've not seen Lady Hartley in many years.”

James made a sorrowful face. “Too many years.”

“I'm not certain your grandmama would consider it too many,” she remarked dryly.

Lazarus wondered aloud what took Chivers so long to mend a wheel and marched outside to see for himself.

James now apparently felt safe enough to sit, taking a chair beside hers. “The man is barely civilized,” he muttered in her ear as he propped his injured leg on a bench. “Are you sure he's not American?” he huffed. “I wouldn't be at all surprised.”

Tuck began banging pots and pans about.

“He puts on no airs and graces, but he's usually very polite,” she replied firmly. “And he's done many favors around the village.”

James sneered, “Well he certainly got above himself coming here to answer that advertisement. How old is he, in any case?”

“I have no desire to talk of it, James.” She sipped her tea, acting as if this were a perfectly normal situation, another afternoon visit between friends, where polite gossip could be exchanged and harmless laughter shared. “I would like to forget that advertisement was ever written.”

He laid a hand on her knee, and she looked down at his well-tended fingernails. He touched her as if she were a young child under his guardianship—a touch meant as much to calm as to reprimand. “But it brought me back to you, so there was some good in it, my darling Sophia.”

The door opened, and Lazarus returned. His stern gaze instantly went to that hand on her knee. She stood, as if she'd been about to do so anyway, and set her cup down. “Mr. Kane, I believe I left my apron with you,” she exclaimed, having sought urgently for some reason to stand up, and then clutched desperately at the one cause she could find. “When I lent it to you for the mushrooms.”

He stood just inside the doorway, arms swinging slightly at his sides. He was wet now from the rain, the shoulders of his shirt sticking and transparent. “In the pantry,” he muttered.

“Oh.” She was already walking toward it, when he set off in the same direction, moving rapidly. “I'll get it,” Sophie exclaimed irritably. “I can get it for myself.”

“But I know where it is. You'll never reach it.”

He was too close behind her. She couldn't turn and go back to the safety of her chair, and his forward momentum was unyielding, the breadth of his shoulders once again startling when close. Her courage in both hands, she tripped down into the pantry, and he followed.

***

He watched her as she stood with her back to him and he let her speak first.

“I see you fixed the gap in the orchard wall.”

The pantry had one small window with old, diamond-shaped panes, through which the dull, weary day spilled in a quilt pattern. Rain spattered lazily against the crooked glass, and silver splinters of reflected light shimmered through her hair.

He stared at the nape of her slender neck. “Tuck told me the local children steal fruit,” he managed to say. He wondered if she stole it too, and let the door shut behind him.

“The orchard produces a great deal of fruit,” she murmured. “You should make jam so it's not wasted. Do you…do you know how to make jam?”

“No.” He stood so close now his thighs brushed her skirt.

“You could ask one of the village women to help you.”

He placed his hands on her waist. “Like Miss Osborne?”

“No. She makes the worst jam. Everyone knows it. Her jam leaves a sour taste on the tongue.”

“But you,” he whispered as he lowered his lips to her neck, “you leave a sweet taste in my mouth.”

She spun around, her back to the shelf, and he moved closer until there was no space between her body and his. He needed the feel of her, the taste of her, the scent of her. Every day when he woke, she was the first thing on his mind. Sometimes he could barely get through the day until their lessons in the evening.

“Why are you still riding about with that popinjay in the silk cravat?”

“He's an old friend.”

“What am I, then?” It choked out of him, because he hadn't realized, until that moment, how angry he was with her for still seeing James Hartley.

“You're a new friend. Or I thought you were. I'm beginning to doubt it when you continually seek to cause me problems with your outrageously forward behavior.”

“Why? Because unlike the rest of you I don't hide my feelings?”

“I wish you would,” she exclaimed under her breath. “You're doing no one any favors by being so transparent. Not me, and especially not yourself. James Hartley is not a good enemy to make.”

“As if I care what he thinks.”

“Well, you should, for heaven's sake!”

“As your friend Miss Vyne would say, what's he going to do to me? Blind me with the gleam of his boots?”

She groaned, eyes shining with frustration, her cheeks pink. “Do you take nothing seriously, foolish man?”

“I take you seriously.”

“Indeed, you do not, or you wouldn't act this way in front of others.” She put her hands to her face. “Good God, I wish I'd never started this with you. It can only end badly. I don't know what I was thinking to encourage you!”

He dragged her hands from her face and held her wrists tightly so she could not pull them away. “I like you in a temper,” he breathed.

“You also like challenging the rules and causing trouble.”

“No more than you.”

“Nonsense,” she protested.

“Why did you bring him into my house, then? You must be bored again, like you were when you wrote that advertisement.”

“
You
caused his wheel to break,” she whispered frantically. “I don't know how, but you did it.”

“He drives like an imbecile. Perhaps in future he'll learn caution, before someone gets hurt.”

“
I
could have been hurt!”

“No. I knew what I was doing. I always do, don't I? Haven't you learned to trust me yet?” His lips brushed hers very gently and felt her shiver, the pulse in her wrists throbbing too fast. “What is it you wanted in here again, Miss Valentine? Best remind me, because I'm already distracted by other thoughts.”

Sophie's eyelashes fluttered against her cheeks. “My apron.”

“You suddenly had need of it?” He looked down at her pouting lips.

“I just remembered,” she replied tautly.

With his left hand, he reached up behind her, onto the shelf, where he'd left it folded neatly. The motion brushed the muscle of his chest up against her right breast and forced her farther back, trapped between the shelf and his body. His other hand went to her waist, fingers splayed, and greedily followed the deep curve under that thin bit of linen and petticoat. He wondered if she wore her lacy drawers today. He hoped not, since she hadn't expected to meet him.

Through the closed pantry door, he could hear James Hartley complaining, while Tuck gruffly told him to sit still and rest his ankle before it swelled up any further.

For a moment they were still, listening. He was so hot for her he might have taken her there and then, right where she stood, leaning against his pantry shelves and cursing him under her breath again. But Lazarus had promised himself he'd make Sophie marry him before he gave her everything she wanted.

Suddenly, she rose up on tiptoe, her lips seeking his even as the last curse died away on her tongue. The conflicted woman touched his face, drew him down to her, and those soft lips timidly explored his. Then he felt the damp tip of her tongue drawn along his lower lip, seeking a way in, unsure of itself. His mouth opened on hers, and his hand swept upward from her waist, following her ribs until it rested just below the weight of her bosom. He paused, but she kissed him now with unladylike fervor. So he cupped his hand around her breast, and immediately the grinding need multiplied. She wore no corset today, and he felt her pert nipple against his palm. He squeezed her breast and groaned deeply into her mouth.

She pulled back, looking down at his hand where he was fondling her. “I can't,” she muttered, breathing hard so her breast thrust itself into his hand, telling him what she wanted even as her words tried to deny it. “Not now…like this…with James…”

“Still can't decide between us?” He ducked his head. His lips closed around the small peak through her gown, and she gasped. Her hands gripped the edge of the shelf against which he held her. It was almost too much for him—not being able to taste her fully through the material. He could enjoy only the teasing feel of that hardened nipple swelling and ripening under his hungry suckling. He could feel the passion galloping wildly through her, and his own desire was raw, explosive. He stopped, grabbed her right hand, and led it to his groin, where she could touch his arousal, feel it growing hard and hot against the front of his breeches.