Wicked Company (68 page)

James Boswell, his Corsican chief’s outfit streaked with dirt, stood over them. Sophie’s forgotten cloak was draped over his arm. Peering up at him, Sophie began to laugh hysterically. Hunter struggled to his feet, extending both hands and assisted her in rising from the mire.

Boswell’s gaze drank in the sight of Sophie’s disarray, including her near-naked state. She snatched her cloak from Jamie’s arm and tossed it around her shoulders, pulling the woolen edges across her chest. She could feel herself flushing scarlet in the gray light of dawn. Overhead, the skies loomed dark and menacing as the extraordinary rain continued to pour from the sky.

“Well…” said Boswell with an envious glance in Hunter’s direction, “I bid you two good night…or rather, good morning.”

***

“Shed those clothes while I light the fire,” Hunter ordered as they made for Sophie’s small chamber through the deluge pelting the stable yard at the White Lion Inn.

“The flint’s by the hearth,” Sophie replied, hanging her drenched cloak on a peg. She shivered as she attempted to peel off her skimpy garments.

The soaked costume landed in a sodden pile at her feet. She snatched the counterpane off the bed and, just as quickly, held the clean white bedspread at arm’s length.

“What shall I do?” she wailed. “I’m freezing… but I’m filthy!”

The fire was sputtering to life as Hunter rose from his haunches and began to divest himself of his waterlogged garments.

“There’s only one thing for it!” he laughed, throwing his velvet doublet on the floor and pushing his silk hose toward his knees. “Outside with the both of us… the rain shall wash us clean!”

“But what if people see—”

“’Tis so murky abroad, no one shall spy you but me,” he laughed, taking her hand and heading for the door. “And that’s just what I was counting on,” he added with a grin.

Giggling at the sight of each other’s nakedness, they tiptoed out the door that led to the stable yard, gasping as the chilly air pimpled their skin with gooseflesh. Hunter stretched his arms in the shape of a human cross while torrents of rain cascaded down his six-foot frame.

“‘Now would I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren ground!’” Hunter bellowed, quoting from
The Tempest.

Sophie cast a furtive eye in the direction of several coaches parked in the courtyard. She was certain they contained visitors slumbering the night away. It was almost morning, and she prayed they would stay asleep until she and Hunter finished bathing.

Sophie closed her eyes and lifted her face to the heavens, letting the sheets of water shower down on her. What a wonderful evening it had been, she thought, smiling into the raindrops that grazed her lips. She had giggled and laughed and had felt as carefree as a child. And now, as the relentless storm washed the mud off her body, it almost seemed as if the torrential downpour was cleansing her of years of sorrow… her father’s death, the horror of her aunt’s demise. The one remaining sadness locked inside her heart was the loss of little Danielle.

Sophie closed her eyes more tightly, willing the pangs of guilt to leave her undisturbed for once, praying not to be forced to confront, on this perfect rain-soaked night, the bitterness that Hunter must surely still harbor towards her.

“There’s not a speck of dirt left on this lovely body of yours,” he said softly, his lips licking moisture off her neck. “I know, because I gave you a thorough inspection while you weren’t looking.”

Sophie’s eyes flew open and she took a step back. Her gaze drifted from Hunter’s face, with his blond hair slicked against the handsome shape of his head, down the broad expanse of his chest to his tapering waist, down…

“No fair sizing up the condition of your opponent,” he chided gently, reaching for her hand and pulling her body close to his.

“Are we adversaries?” she asked softly, staring at the rain drops clinging to his lashes.

“No. We are not,” he replied gravely. “Come back to your chamber and I’ll prove it to you, my winsome water sprite.”

***

The closer Sophie and Hunter drew to the top of the stairs to her chamber, the more convinced she became she couldn’t merely fling herself into Hunter’s arms as if their three-year separation was merely a bad dream, or that he’d never written the note he left on Danielle’s grave.

“How came you to Stratford for the Jubilee?” she asked softly, covering her nakedness with the counterpane once again and staring into the low-burning fire. “I never sent you the invitation that went out to the players.”

“Garrick. He bade me come to London,” Hunter replied, “to talk about the new season and to hear what part I was to play in this fiasco at Stratford.”

“It hasn’t
all
been a fiasco,” Sophie said defensively.

“No… Garrick’s delivery of his
Ode to Shakespeare
shall be talked of and written about for a hundred years or more… but much of this was flummery, Sophie darling. Amusing, but flummery nevertheless.”

“I suppose so…” she replied moodily. “If only those stuffy scholars had cooperated.”

“Garrick wishes to engage the public, to make Shakespeare come alive for them,” Hunter said gently, gazing down at her while wrapping a lock of her auburn hair around his finger. “Literary folk who revel in the exclusiveness of what
they
know cannot abide that fact about him. He pleases the masses, which pleases not the scholars!”

“And you?” Sophie asked,

“I’m like Garrick… a mere fool upon the stage, and one day, a full-fledged manager, I hope, though never as brilliant as your Great Garrick,” he smiled.

“You like him, then?” Sophie said, brightening. “You see there’s more to him than the vain little man many judge him to be?”

“Oh… yes, indeed,” he replied with a grin. “After all, perhaps his greatest role has been that of Matchmaker.”

Sophie shifted away from him slightly. No amount of matchmaking could quell the revulsion she had seen in Hunter’s eyes the day he stormed from her chambers after finding her drunken husband in her bed.

Hunter poked a finger lightly under her chin, forcing her to meet his gaze.

“Garrick was quite skillful, you know,” he continued, “bringing our conversation quickly around to his hardworking assistant—you.”

“And what did he say?” Sophie asked cautiously.

“That he was gravely worried about you.”

“Worried?” she said, puzzled.

“Yes… that he feared you had never quite recovered from the death of your daughter because he knew that a great and good friend wrongly believed you had been neglectful of the child.”

Sophie felt a familiar despondency settle over her, and she blinked back tears. Hunter looked suddenly serious at the memory of his meeting with her employer.

“Garrick gave me one of his famous
looks,
” he disclosed, “and then he told me what every gossip in Covent Garden had told
him.”

“And what was that?” Sophie whispered.

“That Mary Ann Skene was responsible for Peter’s being in your flat and that you had only left your child in her care for an hour because you were fulfilling your obligation to Garrick himself… that the money you earned from Drury Lane went for food and much-needed medicinals.”

Hunter paused, waiting for her to respond.

“Aye. When you walked into my chambers, ’twas Mary Ann who had just risen from Peter’s bed,” Sophie said in a tight voice. “I found them together after I ran from you in Half Moon Passage. She’d been hiding in the trunk when you were there with Peter. ’Twas she who had banished my ailing bairn to the printing room.”

Hunter shook his head morosely.

“I was a great, bloody, conceited, idiotic fool,” he acknowledged in a low voice. “I miscast you as the villainess. Please forgive me, Sophie. I despise myself for having added to your grief over your loss of Danielle.”

She stared at him for a long moment. Then, deep, wracking sobs began to escape from her chest as she flung her arms around his broad shoulders, fiercely drawing him to her. She buried her tousled head beneath his chin and cried until she could hardly breathe. She sobbed out her anguish over the death of her daughter and the misery and guilt engendered by Hunter’s condemnation.

“Those violets!” she cried brokenly. “Even now, I can’t bear the sight of violets…”

When her storm of weeping finally abated, she clung to him, attempting to recover her composure. Much to her astonishment, she felt Hunter’s shoulders begin to heave against her own.

“Darling?” she asked. “What is it? Shhh…’tis all right now…”

“No… ’tis
not
all right…” he answered, his voice choked with emotion. “’Tis
never
been right with me… sometimes I truly think I’m
cracked!”

Sophie drew away from him, seizing the corner of the counterpane to wipe her eyes. She seized his hand and pulled him down with her to sit cross-legged in bed and then leaned forward to daub his moist cheeks.

“Look at us,” she chided weakly. “We’re producing nearly as much water as the storm outside.” She stroked his temple tenderly and then pulled his head gently against her breast. “Why, pray, do you think you’re cracked, my love? Most times you seem a sensible sort to me.”

“When Garrick—and now you—relate to me the facts… I’m bloody
ashamed…
ashamed how I jumped to false conclusions.” He raised his head from her chest and shifted his weight to his elbow, staring somberly into her eyes. “Since I was a wee lad, I’ve
always
concluded the worst… especially about women… especially about Jean and what she did…”

Sophie felt her breath catch. Rarely, in all the years she had known Hunter, had he spoken more than a few curt words about his mother, and never had he elaborated on his unhappy relationship with her.

“And what did you conclude about Jean Hunter Robertson?” she asked quietly.

“That she had as good as murdered my sister, Meg!”

Sophie felt her heart begin to pound. A terrible fear that threatened all the hard-won understanding between them nearly strangled her. Instinctively she realized that whatever had happened in Hunter’s family so long ago was part and parcel of their three-year estrangement.

“‘Long mayst thy live to wail thy children’s death?’” she whispered. “You cursed us both in the same breath, didn’t you?”

“Oh, God, Sophie! How dare I accuse you of what I always judged my mother to have done.”

“Killed wee Meg?” Sophie said, horrified.

“As good as…”

“How?”
she asked, wondering if she really wished to know.

A faraway look invaded Hunter’s eyes and she knew his thoughts had slipped back years to his childhood.

“’Twas the Starving… a year or so after the Rebellion of ’45, the disastrous Battle of Culloden Moor. My father was dead. The
Bonnie
Prince had fled back to France,” he said with bitter emphasis, “all was lost for Clan Robertson… or at least for my family. I was about five and Meg, barely two. There was no food.
No food!”
he cried, anguished. “My mother took us far up into the hills above Inverness… she found a deserted bothy with most of its thatched roof intact and, miraculously, my grandfather stumbled through the door one day with a bag of barley he’d stolen from a farm. She used a little of the grain to make a broth and fed a bit to her father-in-law—he’d saved us, after all. She took a mite for herself and gave the rest to me.” Hunter stared out the window heedless of the muddy stable yard or the arch that led to the Birmingham Road. “She did that each day… made a little broth and fed it to the three of us. She gave none to Meg.”

“Jesu…
” whispered Sophie. “But could Meg not have still been fed at the breast?”

“Jean’s milk had dried up. She had to make a choice, you see…” Hunter continued tonelessly. “There were such limited rations to last us through the winter. I was the son and heir and she chose me. She did what she supposed my father would have wanted. She chose me to live… and Meg to die.” Hunter shut his eyes tight as if to obliterate the memory. “I watched my wee sister perish by
inches…
and I hated my mother.” His eyes flew open. “I expect I hated her to avoid hating myself for consuming that bit of barley broth each and every day. ’Twas why I believe I treated you so harshly, Sophie. I couldn’t bear to think of my mother’s deliberate neglect of Meg… to remember it all again. ’Twas less onerous to cast blame.”

Sophie clasped Hunter’s face between her hands, heedless of the tears dampening her face. She kissed him gently on both eyelids.

“Sometimes… ’tis as difficult to be the favored child as the spurned one, Hunter,” she said softly, suddenly thinking of Lord Darnly, the Earl of Llewelyn’s second son whose entire life had been tainted by being born a mere two minutes after the heir.

“But Meg
died…
surely that was worse!” he exclaimed.