The Charmer (14 page)

“The duchess is more generous than prudent,” Adrian said. “We would not want to affect her position, especially since she is so recently returned, would we, gentlemen?”

“I cannot countenance having my friends stay in some inn with flea-bitten beds.” Sophia was getting that formidable, determined, the-world-be-damned look about her.

The last thing Adrian wanted was the Ensemble living with her again. “May my aunt offer you both accommodations? Dincaster's town house is on the same square as Everdon's.”

“Yes,” Dorothy said. “You must both stay with us.”

The earl absorbed that his hospitality had just been extended to these two foreign persons. “I say . . .” he blustered, but Attila moved in with a flow of gratitude that submerged his objections. Overwhelmed, the earl inched away, mumbled about an engagement, and headed down the path.

Jacques eased next to Adrian and tilted his head conspiratorially. “
Pardon,
but am I correct in surmising that you do not live at this Everdon House and that the marriage is still a secret here?” he muttered.

“Yes.”

“But why? Surely now . . .”

“Politics.”

Jacques' expression cleared. “Ahhh,
bien.
Politics. Of course.” He nodded knowingly.

“We will go to my house and send for your things at once,” Sophia announced. She let Jacques hand her up into the curricle before he settled in and retook the reins. Attila climbed onto a footboard in the rear and bent to pour an enthusiastic description of their crossing into her ear.

“I will send a carriage in the afternoon to collect you,” Dorothy called after them.

“I love England already. What warm and wonderful people,” Attila effused as the wheels rolled. “See, Jacques? We should have come sooner.”

“Thank you, Dot,” Adrian said after they had driven off.

She raised her eyebrows. “Who are they?”

“Artist friends. Try to keep them away from the earl, will you?”

“I suspect he will take his dinners at his clubs while they are in residence.”

“That will not be necessary. She will probably insist that they dine with her.”

Dot looked to the shrinking curricle. “You did not want them staying with her, and I do not think it was only concern about the harpies' gossip.”

“Not entirely.”

“Am I correct in assuming that you will not join us at the house to help me entertain them, but remain at your private chambers?”

“The earl would prefer that, don't you think?”

“How much do you want me to divert them so that you can be alone with her?”

He smiled at Dorothy's perception. “That remains to be seen.”

She slipped her arm in his and they continued their walk. “I do not think she is as sophisticated as her Parisian
savoir faire
suggests. Having witnessed you work your charm before, I daresay she does not stand a chance if you are determined. I would admonish you to be discreet, but I know that is not necessary.”

“No, that is not necessary.”

She narrowed her eyes on the tiny, disappearing speck that was Sophia's bonnet. “I trust that you will be kind too. For all her brave front, she is very frightened. Of you?”

“Partly.”

“Then perhaps you should retreat. After all, she must marry and you may only make it harder for her.”

Perhaps he should retreat. Sophia obviously had, with determination. But he would not. He had spent years sensibly doing that. He had spent a lifetime being the discreet, as-invisible-as-possible third son of the Earl of Dincaster, but this was different.

He wanted Sophia Raughley. He wanted her in his arms and in his bed. He wanted to slay the ghosts and soothe her quiet sadness and protect and take care of her for as long as their world would let him.

Mostly, however, he wanted what she was afraid of. Unfortunately, he suspected that she would never again trust any man enough for that.

“When she decides to marry, I will retreat, Dot. I will not make it harder on her.”

chapter
15

T
he house slept and he moved in silence. He made his way to the servants' stairs and got to work.

Sophia was proving more resilient than he had expected. She was not acting like the little mouse he remembered.

She knew he was watching and what he was demanding. He had made that very clear. Even if she had not realized he had been in Haford, her protector surely had. She was not reacting the way he wanted, however. He kept waiting for a sign that he had won, that she had broken, but she remained ambiguous about the vote and everything else.

Perhaps she thought he was bluffing. Well, she would learn differently tonight.

He pulled some of his broadsheets from his coat, crushed them in his fist, and piled them on the bottom step. He slipped to the kitchen hearth and lifted some glowing coals on a small shovel. Toting them through the dark, he mounted the stairs again, and slid them into the bed of paper.

Lines of hot orange slowly formed around the coals.

Charles opened the door just enough for Adrian to slip in out of the night. With a finger to his lips and a criminal's glance over his shoulder, the butler gestured for Adrian to follow. They stole their way through the sleeping house to Charles' chambers off the silver pantry.

His sitting room was tiny but comfortably appointed. Adrian settled into a chair and held out his hand expectantly.

Charles hesitated. “Still doesn't seem right, sir. Telling you what she's been doing doesn't seem as much a betrayal, since she isn't doing much at all. This is different, and I'm of two minds, I am.”

Charles' unease pricked at Adrian's own. He was unaccustomed to using such subterfuge in England. “It is different and it isn't right and under any other circumstance I would never ask it. However, I did not lie when I said she might be in danger. If she is being threatened, I want to know.”

Charles debated, then extracted two papers from his Bible and handed them over. “She'll release me if she finds out.”

“You can return them shortly to her desk.”

Adrian held the sheets near a brace of candles. Like the first letter from Captain Brutus, these were neatly printed in anonymous block letters. However, they contained much less restraint than the other, and bore an accusatory, demanding tone.

The first called on her to support the most radical of the proposed reform plans. It ended with a reminder of their “intimacy” years ago, and a demand that she not display the weakness again that she had so ignobly shown during that episode.

The most recent one was more explicit. “You have the chance to expiate your betrayals and crimes, Your Grace. What you did to me is nothing compared to the blow you struck at the hopes of the people, the hopes that I embodied. My own life is nothing in this. Nor is yours. History calls, and it is time for you to rectify what occurred. I must call in the debt, and you must pay it. One way or the other.”

That the next paragraph read like a lover's appeal, remembering her “soft warmth” and “kind heart” and “generous affection,” did not dilute the implied threat. Adrian reread those endearments more often than he needed to.

Why hadn't she shown him, or anyone else, these letters? Were the overtures of affection touching her more than the warnings were frightening her?

“Do you have any reason to think that she has met with him?” he asked Charles. “Have any men visited, whom you wondered about?”

“None that I saw. But she does go out, doesn't she? On those walks alone. And last night she went to that political meeting.”

“It was a meeting of reform supporters, but not of Captain Brutus' ilk. The Viscount Laclere does not associate with revolutionaries.”

He quizzed Charles more specifically on the callers, but only learned that they were all well-known members of society. The park was busy enough in the mornings that he doubted she would arrange an assignation there.

He read again the most recent letter. The mind that wrote it couldn't decide if it wanted Sophia for revenge, for love, or for political advantage.

He rose. He would have to have a firm talk with the duchess.

Charles ducked around to open the sitting room door. He escorted Adrian through the silver pantry and out into the corridor.

Almost immediately they both stopped short.

Charles cocked his head. Adrian sniffed.

“Sir, do you? . . .” Charles began warily.

The sting in Adrian's eyes told him for sure. He ran to the stairwell. Puffs of smoke billowed up from the lower level. “Rouse the footmen to fight it, then go and raise the cry in the neighborhood,” he ordered.

Already the smoke was thickening. Turning on his heel, Adrian headed for the chambers above.

He ran right into Gerald Stidolph, who was exiting the library.

“What the hell are you doing here, Stidolph?”

“
My
presence is not at all irregular. I visited with Sophia and paused for a glass of port after she retired.”

“Making yourself at home prematurely, aren't you?”

“I do not care for your impertinence.”

Adrian brushed past him and started up the stairs at a run. “No time for this, Stidolph. Follow me. There is a fire below.”

“A fire! My God, Sophia . . .” Gerald was at his heels in an instant.

“Go above and alert the servants,” Adrian ordered.

Gerald pulled at Adrian's arm. “The hell I will. You go up. I will save Sophia, not you.” He slammed Adrian against the wall, almost making him topple.

Cursing Stidolph's determination to be heroic, Adrian followed to the third level and saw him aim for Sophia's chambers. Flying now, because acrid smoke already wafted through the house, Adrian continued up to the attic chambers.

Sophia stared around her dark chamber. This house still felt foreign to her, and the shadows' shapes unsettled her. She reached down beside her bed and let her fingers drift along Camilla's fur and pretended that she was back in Paris.

Near the hearth Yuri and his brothers snorted in their dreams, and she could make out Prinny snoozing in his wooden cage near the settee. The presence of her animal friends provided some comfort of the familiar, just as the arrival of Attila and Jacques today had created a welcome distraction from the silent turmoil that she carried inside her.

Her emotions were at war about many things, including Captain Brutus and the elections and Gerald and so much else. However, all of those pressures had become secondary to the battle that her heart waged over Adrian Burchard. Her loneliness so badly desired the comfort that he offered that yearning perpetually stung like a new burn.

She wanted desperately to lie to herself and embrace the closeness for whatever it was worth. But that night at Staverly had proven that she could not control things with him the way that she needed in order to be safe from scathing disappointment, so she had been hiding from the intimacy entirely.

Which only left her more alone at a time when she could use his friendship and advice very badly.

She drowsily considered the last weeks of false smiles and critical eyes and threatening letters. Everyone was waiting for her to make choices she did not want to face. Wellington had called and obliquely broached the issue of her marriage, letting her know he did not believe the story of the husband. It would not be long before he and others ceased being subtle.

The image of Gerald entering this house this evening, of him sitting in the drawing room as if it were his own, and loitering in the library later, too comfortable by far, began intruding.

Her mind took refuge by drifting off to sleep. A mild commotion from below barely penetrated. She became drowsily aware of her chamber door opening.

It was Prinny's squeal that snapped her alert. And Yuri's growl. And the sudden rise of Camilla's back under her fingers.

A tall presence loomed beside her bed.

“Gerald? How
dare
you.”

“Wake up, Sophia. You must leave at once. There is a fire.”

“A fire!”

With one hand he hauled her out of bed. With the other he grabbed her dressing robe off a nearby chair. She heard running footsteps on the boards above her head, and shouts from below.

“Do not worry, my dear. I will save you.” He pushed her toward the door.

“The dogs . . .”

“There is no time.”

“Prinny . . .”

He pressed a hand on her back and shoved. “Move quickly, down to the front door.”

She could hear servants pouring down from the upper levels with shouts and screams. Frightened and agitated, the dogs howled and Prinny squealed. “I cannot leave them.”

“The fire is in the lower stairwell and if it isn't contained it will shoot right up to the attic.”

“Just let me go and—”

“No!” Gripping her arm, he dragged her to the door.

She dug in her heels and yanked free. “Go, if you must. I will be right behind you.” Currents of smoke stung her eyes shut. She bumped into the dogs' cages and bent to open them. She groped her way back toward Prinny.

Gerald opened the door and smoke billowed in. “Sophia, there is no time!”

She felt for the cage's latch.

“Sophia!” His shadow took one step toward her, but the sound of wood crashing below stopped him. His head turned to the chaotic sounds of a terrified household and the obscuring smoke, then back to her.

He ran, swallowed by the darkness.

She frantically reached for the monkey, but he lunged past her, over to the window. Calling to him, she felt for the dogs' leads. Yuri and his brothers paced in the dim light by the windows, barking at the danger they sensed all too well.

Her chest burned. The upper levels of the house grew quiet but the street below her window had filled with noise. She began to panic. She grabbed for Prinny but he jumped away.

Suddenly the door closed. The air cleared a little. She startled as an arm encircled her waist.

“Burchard.” Relief swept her. “The animals . . . they will not obey and come.”

“That is because you indulge them too much, as I do you.” Releasing her, he called sharply for the dogs and Camilla. Silenced, they all filed forward.

He brought them to the door. “Out. Run,” he commanded, opening it. The dark line lunged with a fast patter of paws. He slammed the door after them.

He took Sophia's arm and guided her to the window. “They are fast and will be in the street within moments. You, however, cannot go that way now. The smoke is too thick.”

She had already guessed that. Despite the closed door, she could smell it. Feel it. Her chest began constricting again, both from smoke and from fear. She stuck her face to the fresh air and gazed into the torch-lit street.

The fire had drawn the whole neighborhood and men of all classes worked the water line. She made out the forms of the dogs and ocelot pouring out the building, into the arms of Attila and Jacques.

Dincaster's house was also on St. James Square and the news of the fire had brought the whole household. The Burchard family craned inspecting gazes up at the building. Colin noticed her and Adrian at the window, and tore toward the entrance.

Adrian bent out and yelled for his brother to stop, then ducked back in. He grabbed a heavy chair. “Stand back,” he ordered. He shouted the same command to the people below and then crashed the chair into the window. Glass and wood splintered and flew. He battered the remnants away until a large hole gaped.

“You expect to go out this way? If we jump it will kill us.”

He strode over to her bed and began tearing it apart. “I will climb down and you will hold on.” He began tying the bed cloths together.

“This is not going to work.”

“Of course it is. I've done it before.”

He sounded so confident. Her terror retreated a little, and she helped him shove the heavy bed over near the window and tie the escape line to its base.

“Up on the chair. Arms around my neck and legs around my waist.”

“You are sure that you know what you are doing?” she asked, assuming the embarrassing position.

“Absolutely. Hold tight now.”

He threw down the line of sheets. A cry went up from the onlookers.

“At least we will give London some entertainment tonight.” He backed her out of the window and climbed out legs first.

Night air sucked at her and suddenly she was clinging to his dangling body forty feet above the street. A squeal tore her attention from her precarious hold to a desperate little face peering out above her.

“Prinny! Adrian . . .”

“God forbid we should leave His Majesty behind.” Twisting one arm in the sheets, he plucked the monkey and threw him onto her head. Prinny screamed and grabbed her, much as Sophia clutched Burchard.

They began to descend. Very slowly.

“You are sure that you have done this before?” she whispered.

“Well, the last time there was no woman and no monkey. And it was a rope, not sheets.”

“No woman . . . you do not know for sure that this will work, do you?”