Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 03] (14 page)

Sophie smiled ruefully. “Thank you, but I’m certain it was the other way around.”

He waved his hand. “You’ll learn, my sweet. There is a vast difference between a woman wearing a gown and it wearing her.” Then he leaned forward to regard her with his head tilted slightly. “Miss Blake, whomsoever you choose, do make sure he’s ardent about you.”

Sophie stared at him with a slight crease in her brow, her chewing slowed.

He continued, his voice entirely serious. “A man will do astonishing things for a woman he is ardent about.”

Sophie swallowed, but before she could question him on his meaning he stood and bowed. “I shall let myself out,” he announced. “And you will eat a proper breakfast. Your maid will bring you eggs. Then, you will entertain callers this afternoon for precisely fifteen minutes and no longer. You are not to linger, or engage anyone in conversation for more than a few moments.”

He tsked again. “At least you had the sense to leave immediately after dancing the waltz. It added quite the air of mystery, I must say.”

Sophie was nodding, for she felt too raw from the previous night’s adventure to be ready for prolonged entertaining.

“Then you must prepare to attend Lady Peabody’s musicale this evening. I’ll instruct Patricia on what you must wear.”

Sophie’s brows rose pleadingly. “May I stay for only fifteen minutes?” Lady Peabody only held musicales so that she could show off the dubious talents of her two tone-deaf daughters. “I’ll not be able to hide the fact that I have no chaperone.”

Lementeur’s eyes snapped. “Mutiny! Sedition! Disrespect!” Then he grinned, his eyes bright once more. “She always has her daughters perform first. Time your arrival a bit late. All the better to command a stunning entrance.
As for chaperonage, I’ll have a word with Lady Peabody. She’ll jump at an opportunity for a discount.”

Then he was gone and Patricia arrived with eggs and more tea on a tray. Sophie ate slowly, trying to ignore the one thought circling in her mind.

Would Graham be there tonight?

Her lips twitching in mischievous intent, she rang the cord hanging on the wall. Fortescue would know.

IT WAS AFTERNOON
before Graham’s valet, Peabody, bothered to bring tea to his bedchamber. Graham knew that Peabody disapproved of the fact that Graham had yet to move into the duke’s grand suite, but the thought of waltzing into that stifling domain—where lurked even more defenseless trophies!—and tossing out all his father’s things and treasures . . .

No thank you.

If he had a butler like Fortescue, he could request it done for him and know that when he strode through the door the rooms would be a marvel of perfection. Unfortunately, Nichols was not proving to be so amenable to the change of order.

He couldn’t keep the man, yet he could hardly fire him, not after so many years of service. What would Calder, Marquis of Brookhaven do with a butler like Nichols?

Graham could almost hear Sophie’s tart tone if he were to ask her. “He’d send him off to Edencourt with a skeleton staff to start putting that house in order!”

Laughing softly, Graham rubbed the weariness from
his eyes and found the wherewithal to put his feet on the chilly floor. Coal was at a premium at the moment and Graham meant to save every penny he could. If that meant he had to tolerate a cold floor and extra blankets, then he would. Sophie would approve.

Where had she gotten that luxurious gown?
It had obviously been created just for her, for there were few women in England who could have pulled it off so elegantly. A gift from her new cousin, Brookhaven?

Probably, and it was none of Graham’s business anyway. Deirdre was just the impulsively generous sort to give Sophie an impossible gift like that.

Impossible? Seemed rather possible last night, didn’t it?

Which was odd, really. After all, this was
Sophie
. Sophie was the sort of friend one laughed with and talked to and played cards with—but not the waltz-until-the-world-fell-away sort, not at all!

Yet there you were, as smitten as all the rest
.

Uncomfortable with that knowledge, he banished it thoroughly. That lasted until Peabody finished shaving him. He wiped his face with a steaming towel and then—

“Such marvelous sketches of you and Miss Blake in the gossip sheets this morning, Your Grace,” Peabody commented as he cleared away the shaving implements. “It was very kind of you to help her make such a splash. She’s sure to find a good match now.”

Match? As in,
husband?
Graham felt his jaw drop, then shut it hurriedly. “Do you think she’s angling to get married?”

Peabody gazed at Graham as if he weren’t very
bright in the mornings. “Of course, Your Grace. Ladies do like to get married. Why else go to all the trouble of making such a display of themselves?”

Sophie, married to one of those sniveling idiots? Sophie running the idiot’s household? Sophie, buttering the idiot’s morning toast? Sophie, going to the idiot’s bed?

Over my dead body
.

Which was ridiculous. Of course Sophie should get married. She’d make a marvelous wife—well, if a fellow was discerning enough to desire clever conversation over deference and obedience. It would help if he was a well-read man, with educated opinions and the backbone to voice them. And there was no helping the fact that Sophie wasn’t in the least bit social, so she’d be a terrible hostess. A bloke would have to be tolerant and generous enough to compensate for that, as well.

Yet in return, the aforementioned paragon of husbandly virtues would receive a lifetime of fierce loyalty, razor wit, open warmth and, rather surprisingly still to Graham, considerable beauty.

No. That wasn’t quite right. Even with all the trappings and bits, Sophie hadn’t been beautiful last night. Not beautiful, or pretty, or any other faint praise would do.

Last night, Sophie had been quite simply . . .

Magnificent
.

Lucky idiot
.

She only danced once, they all said so. She liked you best
.

Well, that might be because he was the only one
there who could form a complete sentence without lisping or guffawing or uttering something completely banal. Sophie wasn’t very tolerant of the less-than-sharp. He smiled thinking of the way she’d flicked him away with her fan—twice!—when he’d been rude. Fatal flirtation. Death by Fanning.

Buttoning his waistcoat, he wandered to the tall window in his dressing room. He gazed unseeing outside as his mind traveled back to the way she’d looked in that gown.

Magnificent
.

Graham felt a familiar stirring within—familiar, but not something he’d ever experienced in regard to his plain, innocent friend Sophie!

Oh, really? What about when you woke her in the window? What about when you played that thrice-damned game?

No. He didn’t want Sophie.

A boy crying for a lost puppy.
Please, Papa, please go look for him!

Shut that racket! A man doesn’t weep!

A sharp backhand blow, a round of vicious jeering, but worse was the loss. Nothing was to be loved. Nothing was to be treasured, for it would surely be mocked and derided. Don’t dare care about anything because he wouldn’t get to keep it.

Nor would he get to keep Sophie. He needed an heiress. Last night was . . . simply an aberration. He’d been supportive of a friend who was making a change, helping her along socially, dancing with her to show all of London how special she was.

The way he’d felt—as if he was floating above the crowd, as if a wall of mist had lingered between them and the rest of the world, surrounding them, containing the magic—was ridiculous.

There was no such thing as magic. Only too much bad champagne.

Still, he wondered if he ought to call on her today—just to see how she was doing in her new persona. Last night the throng had been bewitched. They’d be all over her today. She’d never had a great many callers before. How was she to know who was worth her time? He’d hate to see her waste herself on those panting puppies.

Somers Boothe-Jamison, now, he was all right. Solid. Not one to be swept up in fashionable passions, only to lose interest when something brighter and shinier came down the river. A man like that might be just the ticket for Sophie.

So why did the thought make Graham’s fists clench?

The formal parlor at Brook House was
inundated
. It was horrifying, like contemplating throwing oneself into a pack of snapping hounds. Tall men, short men, thin men, fat men. Some so young that shaving was a hobby, some so old that Sophie could be sure they’d be blind to her faults.

Outside the door, Fortescue and Patricia took point, readying Sophie for the encounter. According to Lementeur’s instructions, she was to stay no longer than fifteen minutes.

“It will be a speedy maneuver, miss,” Fortescue assured her. “In, out, then I’ll show them the door.”

“Won’t they think it’s odd that Tessa isn’t here?” Sophie plucked nervously at the lace on the sleeves of her day gown. Another of Lementeur’s miracles of simplicity, the deceptively plain muslin was cut to play off Sophie’s length of limb. Layered ruching at the bodice provided a bit of feminine trickery and long, fitted sleeves gave her arms a dancer’s grace. Patricia gently took Sophie’s hands away and deftly repaired the worried threads. Then she removed Sophie’s
spectacles and tucked them into her lace sleeve.

Fortescue made a noise. No one could make noises like Fortescue. He had an entire vocabulary of “disdainful,” “contemptuous” and, for the truly reprehensible, “disgust.”

“This is Brook House, miss,” he intoned grandly. “No one would dare hint at such an impropriety.”

Sophie swallowed, then nodded. “Open the door.”

She swept into the parlor, her Sofia hauteur in place. She accepted the greetings as if she was one breath away from a yawn, moved carefully around the furniture, then settled herself languidly in the chair by the fire. She’d intended to allow no one to sit at her side, but it had the added effect of serving as throne.

Quelling the always-nervous trembling in her belly, she waved an indolent hand. “I may only stay a few moments, as my chaperone is indisposed.”

Somers Boothe-Jamison, one of the only men who wasn’t completely dim, leaned forward. “Ah, how is Lady Tessa?”

Suppressing her alarm—if everyone knew Tessa, how was she to pull this off? Tessa would ruin it for her in a moment!—she turned to Boothe-Jamison. “
Indisposed
.” As if to an idiot.

Yet no sooner had she established that her chaperone was at death’s door, but Tessa herself floated in, smiling and lovely. How had she made it past the butler’s watchful eye?

Over Tessa’s shoulder Sophie could see a blurred
Fortescue, his handsome face entirely devoid of expression, although one got the distinct impression that he’d just smelled something foul. Well, he could hardly refuse her entrance. Blast it.

Somers Boothe-Jamison was delighted. “Now you may stay as long as you like, Miss Blake!”

“Oh, dread,” Sophie muttered. The gentleman who was currently boring her with tales of his sporting exploits gave her a startled look. Sophie, who had already crossed him off her list of potential husbands—she refused to spend the rest of her life listening to that idiot blathering about cricket!—merely gazed back at him with one brow raised.

Then matters worsened still. A few steps behind Tessa came Lady Lilah Christie herself. Sophie’s hackles rose at the sight of Society’s most beautiful widow. Black haired and silver eyed, rich, high-born, elegant and completely immoral, Lilah was everything that Sophie was not.

Blast it.

Tessa smiled and leaned over Sophie’s shoulder. “I hope you don’t mind, Sophie dear, but poor Lilah’s been so blue lately. Her husband died recently, you know.” Tessa’s stage whisper carried clearly through the room. Lilah obviously tried to look appropriately mournful, but she was practically slavering over the roomful of men.

As for Tessa, it seemed she had seen this morning’s newssheets as well. She was never one to pass up a chance to advance herself socially.

She was at her most adorable, her tinkling laugh chiming out over the room, drawing everyone’s eye. Sophie knew perfectly well what Tessa was doing. After all, a beauty like Tessa would hardly have to exert herself to steal Sophie’s triumph.

Lilah’s mourning garb was black, but it was more revealing than concealing. The bodice of the gown was as tight as anything Sophie had seen at the masque the night before, and Lilah had more than enough bosom to make that a riveting sight. Of course, with her hair and eyes and moon-pale skin, the black only made Lilah more striking.

Her very permissive husband had recently died as quietly as he lived. For her to be out making calls was scandalous to be sure, yet when laid against Lilah’s varied and sinful past, such a thing scarcely cast a shadow. Furthermore, Lilah seemed to feel she had a bone to pick with the great-granddaughters of Sir Hamish Pickering. It might have something to do with losing her former lover, Rafe, to Phoebe—or it might simply be that Lilah couldn’t bear to share Society’s attentions.

“But Sophie, where is Graham?” Tessa trilled. “Lilah’s so very fond of Graham. They’re old,
dear
friends.”

Old, dear lovers, she meant. Everyone knew it. Suddenly, the whispers and gazes that had been trained on her were shifted to Lilah. Sophie gritted her teeth and prayed for a sudden breakout of locusts. Tessa was most certainly not going to behave herself. Sophie’s
venture was headed for the rubbish bin, only a day after it had begun.

BROOK HOUSE WAS
one of the few grand houses in London that Wolfe had never managed to force, fool or finagle his way into, probably because the Marbrook brothers hadn’t run in the same coarse, gutter-minded circles as Wolfe and his friends.

Ah, such good times . . .

Yet now, standing on the marble steps that invited even as they intimidated, Wolfe felt an unaccustomed twinge of nerves. It was possible that he would not be allowed in, if the houseman had any inkling of his past exploits. He was counting on the fact that the staff of such a house also ran in different circles than the staff of houses he knew well.