To Marry The Duke (28 page)

“Can I do anything to assist?”

“No, truly, I’m fine.”

He glanced back at Pierre’s door. “I noticed you coming out of Monsieur Billaud’s bedchamber just now. He is finding his visit satisfactory, I hope.”

The beating of her heart resonated to a full cacophony. “Yes. I was just checking the ink jars in all the rooms, to make sure they were full.”

“And were they?”

Her eyebrows flew up. “Yes.”

He gazed at her for a long time. She did her best to smile and appear relaxed, for she did not wish him to know that she was keeping anything from him. That would put them back at square one.

He kissed her on the cheek again. “You’re busy. I won’t keep you, but I will look forward to a quiet dinner this evening. It will be nice to have the house to ourselves again.” Then with an appealing glint in his eye, he turned and walked in the other direction down the hall.

Sophia continued on, immediately worrying over what she had just done. Maybe she should have confided in James. If only she could have had a moment to think about it, instead of staring up at him and being forced to reply to an accusation (and she wasn’t even sure if it was an accusation) that she did not wish to acknowledge just yet.

Soon, she promised herself. Soon he would know everything, and with luck, they would all work together to bring an end to this disturbing problem.

* * *

Ten minutes later, James was gazing pensively out his study window. Had Sophia truly been checking ink jars?

What was it that made him suspect otherwise? The color in her cheeks? The tone in her voice?

He sat down in the chair in front of the unlit fireplace, rubbing his chin with his thumb. It didn’t matter what it was. He had known there was something wrong, and he was sure he was not being irrational or excessively suspicious. His wife had just lied to him, and he had known.

The fact was, something about Billaud rubbed James the wrong way, ever since the first moment he’d laid eyes on him. He didn’t trust the man, and that circumstance had nothing to do with Sophia.

But why was she skulking around in Billaud’s room while the man was out walking in the garden? Was there something going on between them?

Bloody hell.

James rose from his chair and returned to the window. He hated that he could even entertain such a thought.

God!

This would
not
be the beginning of a slow descent into hell…

No, no.

No! He would not jump to ridiculous, melodramatic conclusions about something he had no good reason to suspect. Sophia had been nothing but caring and dutiful since the first moment she’d agreed to be his wife, even when she was faced with the cruel, shocking reality of the temperament he had hidden from her. To suspect her of anything surreptitious would be absurd.

James tipped his head back against the window frame. Perhaps he should go to Pierre’s room and end this curiosity. He could check the jars for himself.

A moment later, he was letting himself into the blue guest chamber and perusing the room with an alert, searching gaze. He glanced at Pierre’s empty carpetbag and looked all around at everything, then at the ink jar. It was empty.

Sophia had said it was full.

He gaze fell to the bed, where a note lay on the pillow with a single red rose upon it. He immediately picked it up. It was written on the ducal stationery.

“My Darling Pierre,” the author wrote in an elegant script that looked very much like his wife’s. “I enjoyed our walk in the garden together, and only wish we could have stolen a few more moments alone. Please don’t leave for London yet. Stay here at the castle a few more days, for I am not yet ready to say good-bye.”

James sat down upon the edge of the bed and read the note again. He did not want to believe what he was seeing, nor did he wish to feel the ice-cold chill that was moving slowly and painfully through his veins.

Perhaps Pierre had begun a
tendre
with one of the guests, whose writing bore a resemblance to Sophia’s, he thought with a desperate, fleeting hope.

But no, the note was asking Pierre to stay at the castle. Everyone else was leaving.

A servant, perhaps?

Anger, deep and unbidden, began to simmer. This was the ducal stationery. A servant would never use it.

James squeezed his forehead between his thumb and forefinger. This was insane. He would not believe it. He would not.

What, then, would he do?

James did the only thing he could possibly do to prevent himself from losing his mind. He went all over the house, searching for Sophia, and when he found her in the dining room, checking the place settings at the luncheon table, he confronted her.

“May I have a word with you, my dear?”

“Certainly.” She kept her eyes upon the settings as she continued to move down the long table.

His shoulders rose and fell with a deep intake of breath. “In my study, if you please.”

Chapter 23

Sophia followed James into his private study. He sat down at his huge, mahogany desk and gestured for her to take the seat on the other side.

For a second or two he said nothing while Sophia sat with her back poker-straight, squeezing her hands in her lap and feeling as if she’d just been called into the schoolmaster’s office after being caught cheating on an examination. This was strange. Surreal. She did not feel like she was looking at the husband she had come to know in the past week.

Finally, after what seemed like an interminable silence, James reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a letter. He rose from his chair to hand it across the desk to Sophia.

“I wish to know the meaning of this,” he said coolly.

Sophia read it. Her blood began to wash noisily from her toes to her head, until her temples were throbbing. “Where did you get this?”

“On Pierre Billaud’s pillow.”

“When?”

“Just now.”

She swallowed nervously. “Why, may I ask, do you expect me to know the meaning of it?”

“It looks like your penmanship, does it not?”

What had a moment ago been anxiousness, exploded into outright fury, but she kept her voice calm. “You think I wrote this?”

“You did not?”

“No! I would never write a letter like this to another man!”

He raised an eyebrow. “How can I be sure of that? We have not known each other very long. We still know each other very little, to be honest.”

This was too familiar. It was just like that horrid night when James had brutally yanked his heart out of her grasp, before fleeing to London. He had been cold and unfeeling then, just as he was cold and unfeeling now. He had the same look in his eyes—the look that told her he did not care whether she loved or hated him.

“If you do not know me well enough to be certain that I would not write something like this, then I am gravely disappointed.” She stood up to leave.

“Stop right there,” he said, rising also. “This discussion is not over.”

She would have liked to walk out despite his order to stay, but when Sophia heard the dark, commanding tone in his voice, she halted.

After all the progress she and James had made the past few weeks, the fact that she felt afraid at this moment was heartbreaking.

“Sit down,” he said.

Sophia returned to her chair. James waited for her to be seated before he sat down as well.

“What were you doing in his room? And don’t tell me you were checking the ink jar, because you lied about that and told me it was full when it was not.”

“You went in there to check up on me?”

“When we met in the hall, it was clear that you were not completely honest with me. I merely intended to ease my mind. Unfortunately, that was not how it turned out.”

Sophia picked up the note and read it again. “I assure you, I did not write this. It wasn’t on the pillow when
I
was in the room, or I would have noticed it.”

“You have neglected, Sophia, to explain what you were doing in Monsieur Billaud’s room in the first place.”

Panic descended upon her with frightening speed. What was she to say? She had promised Marion that she could be trusted, and if she told James now, he would go to his mother posthaste in all his fury, and meet her head to head. It could not end that way. Any hopes that the family could be eased into leaning upon each other would be shattered.

Sophia bowed her head. “James, I truly do not know who wrote this letter. It could have been anyone. Yes, the penmanship resembles my own, but it was not done by my hand. I can only ask that you believe me.”

“Fine, I believe you. Now you can tell me what you were doing in Pierre’s room.” His voice was as sharp as steel, and it sent a shiver down Sophia’s spine.

Tears pooled in her eyes, not because he was forcing her to say what she did not want to say, but because he was speaking to her with such coarse, heartless reserve. How was it possible a man could bury his feelings so easily? Did he even possess feelings? Perhaps that was it. He did not even care the least bit for her. He only enjoyed using her body to find his own shallow, short-lived pleasure, and he had spoken the truth that night, when he’d told her that he never intended to love her. She should have listened. Oh, how she wished she had.

Salty tears spilled from her eyes and ran down her cheeks. She wiped them away, despising herself for this weakness in front of a man who despised emotion. She swallowed hard, but could not keep her voice from shaking when she spoke. “You’re right. I lied about the ink jar.”

She felt him stiffen, even though she was staring at her hands.

Sophia forced herself to continue. “But that’s not the worst of it. There is more. I admit that I am keeping something from you. Someone has trusted me with a secret, but I cannot tell you what it is and betray that trust. I can only promise you that I will endeavor to do the right thing and find a way to tell you as soon as I can.”

He rose from his chair and walked to the fireplace, leaning a hand upon the mantel. He kept his back to her as he spoke. “The person with the secret… is this
her
letter?”

She shrugged. “I honestly don’t know.” She couldn’t imagine that it was.

“Frankly, I don’t care who wrote it, as long as it wasn’t you.”

Sophia tried to breathe evenly, thinking that she might have found comfort in his words if his voice had not been edged with a razor-sharp warning. He was telling her that she belonged to him and no other. She was his possession, nothing more, and if she was an intelligent woman, she would never test those boundaries.

She remembered the story about the duchess who had thrown herself out her window. That woman had been in mental shackles. Was that what awaited Sophia, if she continued to displease her husband?

“I will not force you,” James said, “to betray this person who trusted you with her secret, but I will have you know that if this secret involves you or me or my family in any way, I will act quickly to put out that fire one way or the other, and I will give no heed to whether or not your
friend
feels betrayed. Do you understand?”

Oh yes, she understood. She understood that their glorious, pleasure-filled nights were at an end, and James was not going to forgive her easily when the wicked, scandalous truth awakened like the sleeping dragon that it was.

By four o’clock, all the guests were gone, including Pierre Billaud. The family dined together as usual, with the added company of Martin, who was quiet but not rudely so. In Sophia’s opinion, he was not unlike most of the young men she had known when she was that age—cool and reticent, only beginning to learn the charm that would inevitably come as they matured.

James was also quiet, but she could not dismiss his silence to such a simple origin. Yes, he had made eye contact with her since they’d sat down, and he’d made some light conversation about the success of the party, but it was all very aloof and polite. It was as if he were making sure she knew that he was not angry with her, the more relevant point being that he did not care at all.

Nevertheless, Sophia put on a bright smile as she always did and listened to Lily talk about how much she enjoyed the shooting party and especially the games in the evenings. All the while, Sophia was wound up tighter than a tin clock, lamenting over how she had handled everything since Marion had confided in her. She wished she could go back and not have pushed to know what was bothering her mother-in-law, for this knowledge that Sophia now possessed was threatening to ruin her marriage, when it was already so fragile to begin with.

Late that night, Sophia waited in bed for James, hoping he would come, but he chose to stay away. She was not surprised, given the tone and outcome of their conversation that day.

Briefly, she considered going to his room to try to patch things up, but how could she? She couldn’t tell James the truth, not yet, so how would she ever fix what was broken?

She would have to talk to Marion first. Sophia turned the key in the lamp and lay in the darkness, finally deciding that first thing in the morning, she would go and see the dowager. Somehow, Sophia would come up with a way to convince Marion to trust her son.

A number of knocks in quick succession startled Sophia awake. Heart pounding, she sat up in bed and clutched the covers to her chest. “Who is it?”

“It’s Lily!” the voice on the other side of the door whispered. “May I come in?”

Sophia climbed out of bed and opened the door. “What’s wrong? It’s the middle of the night.”

“I know, but I couldn’t sleep, and you’re the only person I can talk to.”

Sophia invited Lily in, then lit the lamp. “You’re not sick, are you?”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that.” They both climbed onto the bed. “Or perhaps it is something like that. I do not feel myself. Oh, Sophia, thank goodness you’re here. I could not possibly trust anyone else with this secret. Promise me you will keep this just between us.”

Warning bells began to go off in Sophia’s head. She’d already promised to keep one secret, and it had driven a wedge into her marriage. She couldn’t make this promise again…

“Lily, maybe I’m not the best person to—”

“You’re the only person, Sophia. I can’t live with this longing anymore. I feel like I’m going to die from it!”

As she stared in silence at her sister-in-law, a sinking feeling descended upon Sophia. “What do you mean…
longing
?”

Lily flopped backward onto the bed. “I’m in love.”

“With whom?” Sophia asked, fearing that she already knew the answer.

Lily sat up again. “With whom do you think? Pierre! Couldn’t you tell that we were mad for each other?”

The walls seemed to close in around Sophia. If what Marion had told her about Pierre was true, then Pierre was Lily’s half brother.

She tried to keep from stammering. “Are you sure? I mean, did he feel the same way? I hardly saw you speak two words to him.”

Oh, pray that this is all one of Lily’s romantic fantasies.

“He does feel it, Sophia. That’s why I am so delirious now that he’s gone. How will I ever survive being away from him?”

The letter. It had come from Lily…