Kasey Michaels (17 page)

“Never say that! The duke made a wager; he must pay the forfeit. He is already committed to another week at Almack’s. Don’t tell me you’re going to allow him to squirm out of it, Sophie. Don’t be your
maman
, and let your soft heart rule your hard head.”

Sophie took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “Desiree,” she said earnestly, walking over to the bed the woman had turned down for her, “I will tell you the truth now, yes? For you’ll get it out of me one way or the other. Almack’s is not for me. I must be more discreet, less visible now that I have made my so brilliant entrance as we both wished.”

“Who hurt you?” Desiree asked coldly, looking ready to do murder. “Who dared to hurt my baby?”

Sophie climbed onto the high bed, unsurprised that her good friend had seen straight to the heart of the matter, without need for a long explanation. “I’m not hurt, Desiree. Not really. But there were whispers, you understand. I tried to ignore them, but they were there. Gentlemen—ha! are there any gentlemen?—making some sort of sly references to
Maman
. Bramwell knew, but he tried to protect me, shield me from the truth with some farradiddle about balconies being the perfect spot for marriage proposals. It was a gentle fib, I suppose, as I’d already pretty much decided that balconies are more for liaisons, yes?”

Then she smiled. “But I’m too harsh, Desiree. For there were very many nice gentlemen as well. Sir Wallace, Baron Lorimar, and several others. And Bram, of course. He was kindest of all.”

“
Mon Dieu
! Bramwell, is it?
Bram
? Not the duke; not his grace? And
balconies
?” Desiree began energetically tucking the covers around her charge, clucking over Sophie like a hen with her only chick. “
Bâtards
! How cruel the English are! I do not like the sound of this, of any of this. This is my fault, all of it! I am stupid,
stupid
! I hadn’t thought! All I could see was your beauty,
chérie
, your great heart. I only wanted what was best for you; a safe man, a reasonable marriage, some babies for us both to love. Perhaps we should go home now,
oui
? Or, better yet, to Paris! They will adore you in Paris, my sweet child. In Paris, no one is cruel.”

Sophie reached up to hug her friend, dislodging the neatly tucked-in covers. “No, no, Desiree! You’re wrong. I
adore
London. I couldn’t leave now. I just couldn’t.”

“You couldn’t leave London,
chérie
?” Desiree asked quietly. “Or the duke? The very much disapproving if polite duke. The duke we tricked into presenting you. The
betrothed
duke.”

Sophie subsided against the pillows, eyeing the Frenchwoman anxiously, glad once more that she’d not told Desiree of Bramwell’s kiss that first night. Of her longing, ever since, to have him kiss her again, of her strange excitement each time she watched him walk into a room. “You’re talking about how besotted
Maman
became over all the uncles, yes? How she fell so top over heels for Uncle Cesse—and how much the duke is like him. But I’m not my mother, Desiree. I am not so foolhardy as to give my heart to
any
man, pretending, if only for a moment, that there really is such a thing as love.”

Desiree looked at her penetratingly. “Love, no. You don’t believe in that nonsense. But we probably should soon speak more of desire,
oui
? For that is all love is,
chérie
, desire in masquerade. Lust, dressed up in lace and ribbons, but none the less base for all its fine outward trappings. The fluttering pulse, the flushed cheek, the wish to melt softness against strength, plumb the unknown. All this, and more, were your
maman
’s downfall.”

“Oh, stop, Desiree! I’m a long way from desire, eons from even beginning to think of doing what
Maman
did. I’m even farther than that from believing that such a loss of one’s own senses could be worth the delights
Maman
wrote about so glowingly. I simply believe that Bramwell is a very nice gentleman, that’s all. I’m not just another silly romantic racing headlong into disaster, Desiree. I promise you that.” She bit her full bottom lip, refusing to acknowledge the tears that had begun to sting at her eyes as she thought of the whispers she’d heard at Almack’s, remembered how protective Bramwell was of her, how kind. “Am I?”

Johnson: Well, we had a good talk.

Boswell: Yes, Sir; you tossed and gored several persons.

– James Boswell, Life of Johnson

Chapter Seven

“T
ell me again, Bram—why was it I just got to watch you beat Geoffrey Farnsworthy into a jelly?”

Bramwell rubbed at the rather satisfying soreness of his knuckles as he and his friend descended the stairs from Gentleman Jackson’s Boxing Saloon. “And I’ll tell you again, Lorrie. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Farnsworthy wanted an opponent. I merely obliged him.”

“Wrong. Allow me to correct you, if I may. You
merely
haunted every place in Mayfair you could haunt for the past few days, hunting for him, then found him here—and immediately
merely
half killed him,” Baron Lorimar countered as they dodged raindrops and quickly climbed into Bramwell’s coach. They were on their way to their club, and an arranged meeting with Sir Wallace Merritt, who had been conspicuous by his absence these past three days. “Toyed with him first, of course, teased with him, let him know you could take him out of the game at any time you chose, and then—wham!—you annihilated him. I think the poor fool was almost relieved to feel himself going down that last time. What a wisty castor, a fine punch! I’ve always known you to be handy with your fives, Bram, but that was a brilliant display of cross-and-jostle work. Simply brilliant.”

Lorrie lounged back against the velvet squabs, looking at his friend levelly as the coach moved off into the street. “And I’m sure Farnsworthy deserved every punch, Bram, and then some.”

“You nag worse than an old woman, Lorrie, you know that?” Bram wiped raindrops from the top of his curly-brimmed beaver before sitting it on the cushion beside him, then sighed. “You’re more clever about it, more subtle, but you’re not going to let this go until I tell you everything, are you?”

“You know me so well,” the Baron purred, rubbing at his chin as he stretched his neck, still looking at his friend, a hint of danger in his usually laughing gray eyes. “As we’ll be at the club in less than ten minutes, the only question that remains would be whether or not you want Wally to hear the whole of it as well.”

“God, no,” Bramwell said, groaning. “He’s already so besotted he’d want to call Farnsworthy out, for all the mess that would make of everything.”

“Ah-ha! Then it is about Miss Winstead,” the Baron said, nodding as if in agreement with his own thoughts. “I’ve thought our dearest Sophie to be a bit downpin these past days, although she does her best to be sunny, the dear little thing, as she entertains half the men of the
ton
in your drawing room. Can’t take more than two steps in any direction without tumbling over some fool clutching posies to his breast. What did Farnsworthy do—at Almack’s I’ll assume? Offer her
carte blanche
?”

Bramwell’s hands drew up into fists. “Use your head, if you please, Lorrie. If Farnsworthy had offered to set her up as his mistress, you’d be attending my trial for murder today, not watching while I merely rearranged the idiot’s face.”

“True enough. You are her guardian, after all, and she your ward. So, what did he say?”

“He made what he thought was a brilliant reference to my father’s death,” Bramwell explained, then stopped, realizing that he had been stung by that as well as the insult to Sophie. It hadn’t occurred to him until this very moment that he had, in part, also been avenging his father’s good name. Well, that was a singular event, wasn’t it, as he’d been spending the past three years doing his best to blank his father from both his memory and that of Society. “That is, he made a fairly snide reference to the fact that I was leading Sophie out onto the
balcony
. You can, I’m sure, imagine what he said. It doesn’t bear repeating.”

The baron remained slouched on the seat as he looked at Bramwell from beneath heavily shuttered eyes. “Have your man turn the coach, Bram, if you please,” he said quietly. “I suddenly find that I’d like a poke or two at the fellow myself.”

Bramwell shook his head. “Let it go. I’ve dealt with Farnsworthy in my own way, Lorrie. And I believe I’ve delivered a message to anyone else who might think it jolly good fun to utter veiled remarks in Sophie’s presence. But that’s not the problem. Not really.”

“Then what is? Does Sophie want a piece of, him, too? That’s no shy and retiring miss, you know. She told me one of her uncles taught her how to shoot.”

Bramwell chuckled deep in his throat, then sobered. “She doesn’t know, Lorrie,” he said rather sadly. “Oh, she knows that her mother was mistress to more than one man, to my father. She knows that a certain hint of scandal must surround her own entrance into Society. But she has no idea how her mother and my father died. None.”

“None?” the Baron repeated, sitting forward.

“None. She believes I resent her because of the scandal of Constance Winstead’s liaison with my father and for my sins, she’s probably fairly close to the mark on that one. But she had no conception of the depth of the scandal that rocked the family name to its very foundations.”

“And turned you into the boring pillar of society you’ve become, much to my distress, and Wally’s as well,” the Baron continued for him as Bramwell subsided into a corner of the coach, to rub at his aching head. Farnsworthy had gotten in at least one good shot before the duke had taken command. “But, now that I think on it, we should have known that, Bram. Sophie is
not
a stupid girl. She has her father’s name, and several pockets full of money, so that nobody could bar her from making her debut, making a successful match. She had your father’s written promise to lend her his power, his consequence.”

“True. That has to be how she saw the thing. A bit of gossip, a bit of giggling, but nothing she couldn’t overcome. She’s dazzling, you know,” Bram said with a ghost of a smile. “She believed herself up to winning everyone over to her. Lord knows she made short work of my aunt, even of Isadora. Not to mention you and that other looby, Wally. She saw nothing ahead of her but one success tumbling on top of another.”

“Yes, Bram. But if she had known how the late duke and her mother died? No, Sophie would still be in Wimbledon, had she known that, had she realized just how deep your humiliation would be at having to present her. And then there’s her own mother’s memory. She wouldn’t want to have her mother tarnished all over again, not to that extent. Ah, Bram, we all of us should have known. I’m thoroughly ashamed of myself. But Hell and damnation, man, it’s not enough to go about milling down idiots like Farnsworthy. There are too many of them, for one thing. You have to tell her, Bram. Tell her now, today, before somebody else does.”

“I’ll kill the man who tells her!” Bramwell bit out, glaring at his friend.

“Yes, I believe that, having just seen Farnsworthy. But it won’t work, Bram. I’m fond of her too, very fond. Just ask Bobbit, if you don’t believe me. He’ll soon be listing to one side, for all my coins now in his pocket. But we have to be commonsensical about the thing. Some day, some way, someone is going to let it slip. Or tell her on purpose. She has to know, know it all, before that happens. This is an understandably sore subject with you, as your father was involved. Do you want me to do it?”

Bramwell was tempted, sorely tempted. But he shook his head, knowing he couldn’t take the coward’s way out. Not on this one. The coach pulled to a halt at the curb in front of their club, and the two men got out, pausing on the flagway as the duke assured his friend that he would tell Sophie the truth. The whole truth. Tonight.

“Just don’t let her put her tail between her legs and run away from London, Bram,” the Baron warned as they entered the club. “She’s got to stay, got to see this through now that she’s started it. You must make her understand that. For Sophie’s sake. For you, for me, for all of us. She’d take all the sunshine with her if she left, this rainy day notwithstanding.”

“You’re in love with her?” Bramwell asked, something tightening painfully, deep in his chest.

“No, Bram. But I could have been,” the baron answered, waving to Wally, who was sitting across the room, a drink already in his hand. “Unfortunately, that’s not how I see all of this falling out. But I’m her friend, Bram. Her very good friend. And I’ll not see her hurt. Not by the
ton
, not by anyone, if you take my meaning. Now, shall we see how Wally’s doing, pimping for his mother and aunt? From that frown, I’d say it’s not going well, poor silly old sot.”

Bram followed his friend through the maze of tables and chairs. “Then you know what Wally’s been about these past few days?” he asked, hoping Lorrie didn’t also know who had put their mutual friend up to the ridiculous stunt, then realizing that the Baron had to know. Wally couldn’t keep his mouth shut if all their lives depended upon it.