Celeste Bradley - [Heiress Brides 03] (17 page)

Apparently, some little part of her—likely the part that believed those fairy stories—had actually thought he might.

Fortescue entered with a footman. The room was cleared in an instant, polished and perfect in only a few moments more. Sophie stayed where she was, quite
oddly comfortable with her misery. If she’d ever needed a clearer picture of her place on earth, she’d just been handed it—bound in silver paper with a ribbon on top.

Yet, apparently even “poor, plain” girls received mail. Fortescue brought her a thick ivory-colored envelope on a silver tray. “My lady has sent you a letter, miss.”

Deirdre’s handwriting was quick and careless, much like Deirdre herself. “Lementeur wrote me that you’d moved into Brook House,” she’d written. “Bravo. Phoebe says to tell you to tell Fortescue to have all the locks changed against Tessa. I told her I already have.”

Sophie blinked. She’d not thought to write to Deirdre to gain official permission to use the house. That was thoughtful of Lementeur . . . and a little managing, as well. Sophie smiled wearily at the thought.

The letter went on. The recovering duke had taken another turn for the worse.

“It looks as though I might be a duchess soon after all—so very sad, for we’ve all become very fond of His Grace. He’s a kind old gentleman, and looks just like Calder and Rafe will in fifty years—I shall have to work hard to be so well-preserved myself, if only in order to match.

“All my love, and we cannot wait to see you in your new gowns. Tell Tessa to go take a dip in the Thames.

“And kiss my Meggie for me. And the kitten. Has she named it yet?

“D.”

Sophie felt a flash of guilt then, for she’d quite ignored Meggie today. There was a bit of time before she must dress for tonight’s musicale.

Rousing at last from her gloom, she turned her back on the scene of her great social triumph and headed up the stairs to give, and hopefully get, a kiss and a hug from Lady Margaret.

And the kitten.

At the top of the stairs, she glanced casually to her left before turning right, then went very still.

Some slight distance down the hall she saw Fortescue and pretty Patricia, standing much, much too close. Even as she watched, the stern and impassive butler broke into a blindingly handsome smile, matched only by the stunning one from Patricia herself. As they leaned closer still, Sophie closed her eyes against their joy, though a soft laugh, vibrant with affection, danced down the hall to her ears.

Everyone had love, it seemed. Everyone but poor, plain Sophie Blake.

Damn Sophie Blake, anyhow!

FORTESCUE WASN’T SURE
how it happened. One moment, he was standing with Patricia in the upstairs hall discussing the possibility of finding a suitable playmate for Lady Margaret, who seemed rather lonely in the great house with no one but her kitten, and the next, his hand accidentally brushed hers . . . and their fingers caught . . .

The moment stretched on. He could scarcely
breathe as Patricia’s slender freckled fingers slid between his. He gazed helplessly down at the top of her head, her maid’s mobcap as always losing the fight to contain her masses of fiery hair. She seemed unable to take her gaze off their entwined fingers, yet she made no move to pull her hand away. Then, astonishingly, she slowly allowed their hands to clasp fully.

Only then did she look up, her green eyes brilliant with a mixture of wary confusion and desperate longing. Fortescue closed his hand on hers and tugged, very gently, never taking his gaze from hers.

She stepped forward slowly, tilting her head back, her pride and her yearning evident in the very curve of her long neck. “What is it you demand of me, sir?”

He shook his head and let out his breath slowly. “Demand?”
Oh, my beauty . . . so prickly, so proud
. . . “I have no right to demand anything.” He reached his other hand to stroke an ever-wayward strand of flaming hair away from the soft curve of her cheek. “I can only request . . .”

Her eyes softened then, warming as the wariness receded. A smile tugged at the corners of those astonishing lips. She moved a step closer. “What is it you request, then?”

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t speak. He only shook his head, helpless in the face of what he most desired in the world.
Could you ever love me?

She laughed then, soft and fond and teasing. “You’re a great actor, sir. A man of granite and ice, they say belowstairs . . . what if they could see you now?”

He looked down at their hands, still clasped. She
had not released him, even as he had not released her. Lifting his gaze to hers, he let himself fall at last into those green Irish dreams, danger be damned. “Marry me, Patricia.”

There was a small satisfaction, even in the midst of his whirling panic and glee, in seeing those green eyes widen in shock.

“
YOU, CINDERELLA!” THE
stepmother said. “You’re all dusty and dirty, and yet you want to go? How can you go dancing when you’ve got no clothes or shoes?”

Sophie swallowed, took a breath, then continued to read the story aloud.

He’s going to marry Lilah
.

Yes, he was. And if she had an ounce of sense, she would turn around and find someone of her own.

“Go on, Sophie!” Meggie jiggled with impatience. “What happened then?”

Catching herself on the winding trail of self-pity yet again, Sophie found a smile for the little girl. “Sorry.” She went on, reading the story she knew so well she could shout it from the rooftop blindfolded.

Before Sophie had encountered little Lady Margaret, she’d never spared much thought toward children. Other women had them—women with husbands—but Sophie hadn’t actually known any since she was a child herself.

Now, with Meggie snuggled up close beside her, bony elbows in Sophie’s ribs, pointy knees pressing to
her side, silky head tucked to her shoulder, the kitten a sleepily purring ball between them, Sophie experienced a longing so deep it took her breath away. For the first time in her life, she allowed herself to dream a child of her own into her vague, foggy future. All it required was to find a man she thought worthy of duplicating into the world.

How strange that not so long ago she might have taken any man who asked and thought herself fortunate, yet now she found it difficult to accept the attentions of more men than she’d actually been able to count yet.

That’s Graham’s doing
.

Absolutely. All she needed to solve this little dilemma was to find a man more intelligent, more charming, more handsome and at least as tall as the new Duke of Edencourt.

Is that all? Why not pick something hard?

Sighing, she bent her head to kiss the top of Meggie’s shining crown. “Nutmeg, you’re fading. Go on to bed now.” She untwined Meggie, then stood. The skinny little thing didn’t weigh more than a pail of water, so she simply lifted her and carried her to her bedchamber. Once there, it was off with the shoes and stockings and dress and into bed. Sophie did a quick, lopsided braid to keep the girl’s hair from tangling—with a silent promise to do better in the morning—and sent her off to sleep with one kiss for the girl and one for the kitten, snuggled on Meggie’s pillow like a fuzzy, black-and-white hat.

Sophie pinched out the candle with a quick motion and left with only one lingering glance back as she closed the door. Deirdre would be a good mother to the poor child, Sophie knew. There was no reason to want to steal her away, just so she herself would never be without someone to love.

Go get your own
.

Her own child, her own home, her own man. If she could, she would take the home and the child and skip the man. . . .

Oh, really?

Standing in the hall, her back pressed to Meggie’s door, the silent house enveloping her, she knew there was no point in carrying on the lie, not in her own heart.

She wanted what she wanted, God help her. She wanted, out of some madness, to win Graham for her own. Lilah be damned, status be damned, secrets be damned. What was the point of this life, this breathing in and out, this beating of the heart, if it wasn’t to matter to someone, to belong to someone, to live and breathe and beat heart to heart with someone else? If she couldn’t have Graham, then her going on would have all the purpose and point of a machine, rumbling along, soulless and blank.

So go get him
.

She would if she could—

Have you actually tried?

She stopped, her fingertips going to her lips in surprise. She
hadn’t
tried, had she? Here she was, all dressed up and waiting for her prince to notice, instead
of slapping him a good one and dragging him down for a kiss that would make him forget every other woman he’d ever known!

If she wasn’t so giddy and thrilled by the thought, she’d have taken a moment to feel very, very stupid.

John Herbert Fortescue was a man in love. And, unlikely as it might be, the girl he loved seemed inclined to love him back!

Patricia had one hand to her cheek, stunned at his proposal. He’d kept the other one tight in his. “Marry you? But—” She blinked and fought for a real breath. “I—”

For a moment, he found hope in the growing joy in her face. She was going to say yes!

Then a shadow fell over her gaze, like a cloud over the Emerald Isle itself. She took a step back, shaking her head, blinking away the joy. “No . . . no, I cannot! I cannot stay here, in this cold gray place, far from my family—” She swallowed and straightened. His gut twisted at the bleak certainty in her eyes. “I’m sorry, sir. I could never wed an Englishman.”

Oh, is that all?

Volcanic elation rose within him, hot and fierce. He laughed aloud, shocking her once more. “But you see, my darling Patricia, I
am
an Irishman!”

She shook her head, confused. “I fear that having a
bit o’ the blood won’t do, s—John.” She looked down at the hand he still held. “I have no hatred of the English like many do,” she said quietly, “but I wouldn’t know what to say to a man who didn’t ache for the very cliffs and sea the way I ache.”

He leaned close, overjoyed to finally know the reason for her objection. “An’ which cliffs would that be, lover? For meself, I pine for the Cliffs of Moher.”

She froze at his lilting tones and he drew back, smiling. He nearly didn’t recognize his own voice, so long had it been. “Ye didn’t think I set my sights on ye for your face alone, did you, darlin’?”

Then she raised her gaze to his. The hard fury in her eyes drained his joy, filling him with alarm.

She stepped back, away from him, shaking off his touch as though it were slimy. “You’re
hiding
your birth?” Her lips drew back in disgust. “Like a man
ashamed?
”

His empty hands dropped to his sides. “But . . . I had to! There’s no work in service for us if we’ve still the mud of the potato fields on our boots—” No, wait. That was a slur, an English phrase he’d not ever uttered before. Had he been in this gray, grimy city for so long that he’d begun to believe such things himself?

The girl before him, the lovely creature born of home and dreams and everything he’d forced himself to forget, drew herself up tall, her expression steeped in disdain.

“I’d rather an honorable man, though English, than a shabby Irish traitor. I’ve no use for you at all, John Fortescue . . . you or your house of lies.” She turned
crisply and strode away, her rigid spine a testament to how useless any pursuit would be on his part.

Out of a decade of habit, Fortescue steeled his own posture and smoothed his face into an expressionless mask. Regaining his cool exterior did nothing to soothe the burn in his soul and his aching, desperate heart, but he would not chase down the halls of Brook House, howling her name like a madman—much as he might long to.

He’d made an honest, honorable offer. She’d refused him for reasons neither reasonable nor righteous. She didn’t love him. There was nothing to be done about it.

His passion would fade in time. His pride would make sure of it.

GRAHAM TOSSED HIS
hat and scarf to the footmen waiting outside Lady Peabody’s and strolled into the house with a sigh. The last thing he wanted at the moment was to hear a flock of warbling virgins, all trotted out in identical muslin gowns with flowers in their hair and miserable obedience in their eyes.

Welcome to the auction block, my dears
.

Why was he here? He ought to be at Lilah’s, pleading his troth, making a case for her consideration, promising her the world as his duchess, etc. Instead, he was here, hoping for an opportunity to apologize to Sophie, unable to think of anything else but the pain in her gray eyes at his words.

I took pity on a poor, plain girl from the country! There’s nothing to be jealous of!

Wincing at the memory, he paused at the top of the steps. He was an idiot. He knew that. He also knew that he was careless and thoughtless and wasteful. He’d never realized he could also be cruel.

Lusting after Sophie was his own difficulty. He shouldn’t have taken his surprise and dismay out on her. The loss of her support and friendship would be . . .

He couldn’t bear to think on it. He was already at a loss. He’d always avoided his family, for they drove him mad, but now he was beginning to realize what it meant to be entirely alone in the world.

Now his only family in the world was his cousin Tessa.

Lucky me
.

Of course, there was always Nichols, his loyal manservant. Graham sighed. What was he to do with the man? The butler’s frenzied answer to Graham’s immolation of the trophies had been to collect more from all over the house and place them in a sort of balding, desiccated assembly in the study, a fresh—so to speak—audience to Graham’s betrayal of his father.

All the better to watch him suffer, he supposed.

The dunning notices had begun to arrive in earnest. Everyone wanted to get a piece of what he’d given his first creditor, it seemed.

There were only so many items of value left in Eden House. His family tended to collect death, not art. For the moment, Graham’s method was to make piles of the bills, sorted by severity of the thinly veiled threats contained within. After that, there was nothing much he could do but continue in his plan to marry Lilah.