The Secret Lover (28 page)

"And you mustn't think Mr. Hamilton will have a wife," Sophie returned smartly.

That effectively chased the smile from their lips. Both women looked at her as if she had lost her mind. Sophie shrugged, tore a piece of boiled chicken from the carcass, and stuffed it into her mouth.

"You could not possibly mean what you imply," Ann said incredulously.

"I could and I do."

"But why on earth would you refuse his offer?" Claudia asked, confused.

"What offer? He has made none to me. I heard of his desire just like everyone else—in the main salon with dozens looking on," Sophie flatly informed them, and went about the business of spreading jam on a slice of bread.

Ann and Claudia exchanged a wary look. "Naturally, he should have spoken to you first," Claudia said carefully. "But what harm is there really?

He meant well, I am certain. Perhaps he was carried away with the excitement of the moment."

"And perhaps he had simply lost his mind!" Sophie exclaimed, waving her bread and jam in the air to emphasize her emphatic belief of that.

"But it hardly matters, for it will be his own shame to bear. I had no say in it a'tall."

"But what if he were to give you a say in it?" Ann asked, pushing the jam bowl away from the edge of the table. "You would most certainly accept his offer, would you not?"

Sophie shook her head, munched on a bite of bread and jam.

Ann made a sound of exasperation and muttered something unintelligible under her breath. Claudia sank onto a stool, propped her chin on her fist, and studied Sophie thoughtfully for a moment before asking, "Why would you not accept? His credentials are impeccable."

"His credentials?" Sophie exclaimed incredulously, and tossed down the bread and jam. "Is there nothing else than that? A man's pedigree is all that should recommend him to me?"

"I didn't say—"

"Why should I not hope for more? Why should I not expect to admire and esteem the man I would marry?" she demanded.

"You do not admire and esteem Trevor Hamilton?" Ann asked, looking very perplexed. "But why on earth
not
?"

"He is quite tedious and boring!" Sophie all but shouted, and yanked another piece of meat from the chicken carcass. "He speaks of nothing but the weather! And that child of his despises me!"

"But he is only a boy, and Trevor is an upstanding citizen—"

"I don't care!" she interrupted Claudia.

"And someone who would care for you well, Sophie, you mustn't overlook that. Your inheritance after all…"

"I shouldn't worry about that if I were you. Honorine compensates my companionship quite nicely, thank you."

Ann snorted at that; she yanked a piece of chicken from the bird and popped it into her mouth, chewing fiercely as she glared at her younger sister. "That may be, Sophie Elise, but you'd be a fool to refuse an offer because you think him a bore!"

"Why would you ask me to marry someone whom I could not make happy? Why should you want me to marry for anything less than love?
You
did!"

Ann moaned, shook her head. "Of
course
I didn't marry for love! I have come to love Victor over time, but I married him because he was a good man, a good provider—"

"And met the expectations of society," Sophie said, mimicking her sister.

"Sophie!" Claudia exclaimed disapprovingly. "Ann is right! You must think of your future. You must realize that you likely will not have an opportunity like this again!"

That, in a nutshell, was the sum of it for them—she was nothing if not married to someone of suitable stature. She was a burden, an embarrassment, an old spinster who would need to be looked after all her days. She carefully put aside the knife she was holding and looked Claudia in the eye. "What you must think of me, Claudia. How pathetic I must appear to you—do you think I will perish an old spinster? That I shall have no opportunity to experience love? Am I as hopeless as that?"

The color drained from Claudia's face. "Of
course
I don't believe that! I just know society—"

"I have had opportunity," Sophie continued, ignoring Claudia's attempts to explain herself. "Honorine has shown me a world of opportunity, actually, and I need not settle for a tiresome country gentleman."

"I should have known Madame Fortier was behind all this," Ann muttered as she picked at the sliced bread.

Sophie suddenly lost her appetite. Honorine, with a heart the size of the moon, was not tolerated because of her unique person, not even by her own family. And that same attitude, that same closed-mindedness, had caused Sophie to send Caleb away last night, out of her life and out of her heart. The clarity was almost blinding—at last, at long last, she understood. Having been part of the society that would, among other things, condemn a man for the uncontrollable circumstance of his birth, having been a prisoner of that society, then cast out of it, only to be miraculously welcomed into their fold once again for the sheer novelty of it…

Sophie finally understood.

And she did not want to be a member of that society, not now, not ever.

Caleb, oh Caleb
. Her head was pounding… or was that her heart? She began walking for the door.

"Wait… where are you going?" Claudia called after her.

An excellent question—she felt adrift, no sense of direction, not certain of who she had become overnight. "I couldn't really say," she said truthfully, and walked out of the kitchen, leaving her family and the
ton
behind.

Sophie found herself at the house on Upper Moreland Street that afternoon.

It was that or propel herself into complete insanity. As the day had worn on, she had grown more ashamed by what she had done, particularly since her actions were exactly what she despised about the
ton
. It had been a rote reaction; she had been thinking the way she was supposed to think, behaving the way she was expected to behave.

The hypocrisy between her thoughts and deeds had forced her to take a hard look at herself today, and what she saw made her, impossibly, even more miserable.

She had toyed with the idea of going to Regent's Park, if only to catch a glimpse of him. That was the only place she knew to go, for in all her brilliant maneuvering in her affair with Caleb, she had never asked him where he lived, knew only that it was generally in the area of Cheapside.

Knowing the exact direction would have been too concrete for her carefully constructed fantasy, wouldn't it?

But she could not go to Regent's Park, at least not yet. She simply didn't have the courage to see the look of disappointment—or disgust—on his handsome face.

She had instead come to Upper Moreland Street, the one place she felt free of scrutiny. And Nancy knew the entire story of the two brothers—she was the one person Sophie had trusted with the truth. Well, at least half of it. When she told Nancy the events of Honorine's ball, she had left out any mention of cleaving Caleb in two.

She sat in the tiny parlor, slumped in an old and worn overstuffed armchair, watching morosely as Nancy made small repairs to the batch of gowns she would sell the following morning at Covent Garden. In its first day, the little booth Caleb had built met with astounding success—six of the seven gowns Nancy had taken had sold to women for more than she had hoped, and all of the hats and slippers had been snatched up before midday.

Nancy was quite pleased with the success of Sophie's idea, but made it clear they were no longer in need of her help. "We'll manage on our own, thank you," she had said when Sophie had offered to accompany her to the booth the next morning. "We've scarcely room for Bette and myself, in truth. And you've undoubtedly more important matters than this."

"Hardly," snorted Sophie, and idly picked at the bit of stuffing that was peeking out of a hole on the arm of her chair. "Other than, I suppose, determining how one goes about refusing an offer of marriage made to a room full of society's most favored people."

"Why, you say to the bloke, 'No thank you, milord, for my heart belongs to another, ' " Nancy offered, clasping her hands dramatically over her heart, then laughed at her own jest.

Sophie frowned.

"Oh there now, luv, you mustn't look so sad. The bloke will pick himself up by his bootstraps, you'll see."

"I really don't know how he will accept it, but I rather think my family will never forgive me…"—she winced, glanced at Nancy from the corner of her eye—"or Caleb."

That caught Nancy's attention. "Caleb?" She put down her sewing and looked curiously at Sophie. "
Our
Mr. Hamilton? But he should be very pleased indeed!"

Sophie shook her head, picked even more intently at the stuffing. "He isn't very pleased with me a'tall. Actually, I will be quite surprised if he should ever speak to me again."

Nancy's brow wrinkled in confusion. "Why ever should he not?"

She did not want to say it aloud, did not want to hear her betrayal again. "Because I refused him, too," she muttered.

That was met with stunned silence from Nancy. She peered hard at Sophie, as if she were trying to see what was in her mind, and a distinct look of aversion crossed her features as she slowly leaned back in her chair. "Mr. Hamilton, he loves you. You
know
that, do you not?"

Oh yes, she knew it. Knew it by heart.

"And you love him, it is plain to see."

Of course she did. With all her heart. But—

"What a wonderful man he is, your Mr. Hamilton. Really, I thought you were different than the rest of that lot," Nancy uttered irritably as she picked up her sewing. "I thought you understood that there is more to this world than the fancy parlors of high society, and their titles and servants—

"

"But I
do
understand it!" she protested, knowing how empty that sounded. "That is why this is so very hard, because I
do
understand it, and all too well!"

"Apparently not as hard as doing the right thing by a body, it would seem."

The truth of that stung. Sophie abruptly shoved to her feet and moved restlessly to the bay window. All rational thought scattered into oblivion as she sought a justification for her actions that Nancy would understand.

But there was nothing, no excuse, no reason for her to turn Caleb away.

She loved him; he loved her. Theirs was a meeting of the minds, a joining of spirits. How could something as simple as the manner of his birth change that?

And, lest she forget, there was plenty about
her
Caleb could find objectionable. Yet the ugly taint of her past actions had never deterred him, had never seemed to even enter his thoughts. He genuinely loved her for who she was, and she had returned that respect by refusing him. She had been too afraid to stand up to her upbringing, to make her own decisions. Too uncertain of herself to believe she could.

Sophie had never in her entire life felt so low as she did at that very moment.

She glanced over her shoulder at Nancy. She was busy with her work, the needle flying angrily in and out of the fabric.

"If there is nothing more for me to do here, there is something I really must attend," she said.

Nancy did not look at her; she merely shook her head.

"Well then. I'll come again in a day or two."

"As you wish," Nancy said, and glanced up. Her disappointment was clearly evident, and it sliced across Sophie like a knife.

She could not escape that house or her shame quickly enough.

At Essex Street, she waited impatiently for a hack to take her to Regent's Park. By the time a hack arrived, she knew it was too late; the sun was already beginning to slide into the western horizon. But when they reached the park, she nonetheless hurried to the little pond, hoping that by some small miracle, he would be there.

He was not.

His house stood as a silent behemoth, dark and empty. Cold.

How long she stood there, she had no idea, but she had no right to go inside without him. Yet she did, compelled by an overwhelming need to be near him—or at least, the essence of him. She found the key he always left for her beneath a flagstone and stepped carefully in the dim afternoon light, wandering from one unfinished room to the next, feeling her heart constrict with every step.

Every moment they had spent in this house came rushing back to her.

She remembered each place they had picnicked—in the foyer, the ballroom, and the library. She remembered their gay conversations, where they had pored over plans and tried to imagine what the finished rooms would look like.

In the ballroom where the muslin sheets still covered the floor, they had lain on their backs and looked at the newly finished ceiling, studying the elaborate frieze like so many puffy white clouds. In the master suite, they had succumbed to their mutual desire, and he had made tender love to her there, taking his time to bring her to fulfillment, then just as tenderly taking his own… a memory that made Sophie shiver.

But it was the morning room that undid her. When she stepped into the room, she gasped lightly and stood, her mouth agape, staring at the west wall. He had planned to hang a portrait on that wall, let the light come in from the east. But the north wall looked out over the little pond, and Sophie had jokingly suggested that he put a small window there so that he might watch for her.

Caleb had chuckled at her idea, idly mentioning the expense of adding another window.

But there it was. Her window. Caleb had put it in for her.

Sophie walked slowly to the window and peered out at the little pond, felt the tear sliding from her eye down her cheek. What a mess she had made of everything!

Caleb, Caleb!

Sophie sank down on her knees in the empty morning room and covered her face with her hands, sobbing. What would she do without him? How could she live?

It was an hour or later that she finally emerged from the dark and empty house, replaced the key, and slowly made her way home, feeling the weight of her life on her shoulders. She climbed wearily up the steps and into the foyer of
Maison de Fortier
, pausing to deposit her bonnet.