Kane, Samantha - Brothers In Arms 4 (19 page)

“I will never send you back, Sophie, or send you anywhere you don’t want to go for that matter. Nothing you’ve ever done or may do in the future will make me send you away. You are my wife, and I’m glad. I want you with me. Will you stay?” He resisted the urge to reach out to her, understanding she wasn’t ready for that.

Sophie closed her eyes and bit her lower lip. “You don’t understand. I’m not a

virgin, Ian. I know that’s what every man wants. Harold told me so. He told me you wouldn’t want me if you found out.”

Ian stopped resisting and gently wrapped his hands around Sophie’s shoulders. She shuddered but didn’t pull away. “Harold was wrong, and so are you, Sophie. Rape doesn’t make you experienced. It merely makes you a victim.” Another thought

occurred to Ian. “Have you been with a man voluntarily, Sophie?” He hastened to reassure her. “Not that it matters. Whatever happened is in the past. But have you been with someone since you were attacked?”

Sophie shook her head violently. “Never! Why would I? It was horrid. Why would

anyone want to do that?” She started crying harder. “I’m sorry, Ian. You deserve someone who doesn’t hate the idea of being with you, who isn’t afraid to let you do that to her. I can’t be like that. I know how awful it is, I know.”

Ian tried to pull Sophie into his arms, but she stiffened and pulled back sharply. He let her. Instead he sat on the floor next to her, his legs stretched out and his back leaning against the window seat. He didn’t look at her.

“It doesn’t have to be awful, Sophie. It can be quite wonderful actually.” He rubbed his chin with a forefinger. “Tell me what happened, Sophie. Who was it?”

She was silent and he glanced at her to see her shaking her head again.

“Why won’t you tell me?” He kept his voice soft so he merely sounded curious.

Inside he was a seething mass of rage. He would find out, and if the man wasn’t dead yet, he would be.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t tell you who it was. He’ll…” She stopped to lick her lips nervously. “He’ll kill me. I know he will.”

Ian fisted his right hand at his side where Sophie couldn’t see it. “No one will touch you now, Sophie. You’re mine, and I protect what’s mine.”

“Please, Ian,” she pleaded.

Ian sighed. “All right, for now. But can you tell me what happened? When it

happened?”

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Sophie lay her head back down on her arms. “The first time was when I was

sixteen.”

Ian’s heart stuttered in his chest. The first time. Good God, how many times had there been?

“The year I left for the war.” He didn’t realize he’d spoken out loud until Sophie answered.

“Was it? I didn’t know.”

Ian turned sharply to her. “Didn’t you get my letter? I sent one, telling you I’d bought a commission.”

Sophie raised her head slightly and looked at him. “No, I never received it. I just assumed you were too busy to bother with me. We weren’t to be married for another two years, after all.”

“You must have been shocked then to receive my letters from the Peninsula. Why

did you never write back? I would have helped if I could.” Ian hadn’t realized until that moment that her failure to reply to his letters had hurt him. While he’d been callous about her feelings when he went to war, he’d wanted someone to care that he was there.

Sophie straightened further, her eyes wide. “I never received any letters, Ian.”

Ian looked at her in dismay. “Not one? I must have written a dozen, every time I moved to a new camp. I can understand one or two going missing, but all of them?”

Sophie just shook her head.

“What about the letter I wrote two years ago, informing you I had returned?”

Sophie squeezed her eyes shut. “You’ve been back for two years?” she whispered.

Ian hated himself at that moment. He hated the selfishness and self-absorption that had made him cavalierly dismiss Sophie’s long wait as irrelevant compared to his own war sickness and happy obsession with Derek. “I thought you knew.” He cleared his throat, not wanting Sophie to know how upset he was.

Sophie shook her head. “No.” She opened her eyes but refused to look at him,

instead laying her forehead on her arms. “I assumed you only returned right before you sent for me.”

Ian ran his hand roughly through his hair. “God, Sophie, I’m so sorry.” He let his hand fall to his lap and asked the question he really didn’t want to know the answer to.

“Has it happened again, since I’ve been back?” He didn’t need to explain what he meant.

“Yes,” Sophie said softly, confirming his worst fears.

Ian could hardly breathe through the guilt constricting his chest. “Sophie…” He was alarmed at the roughness of his voice. He closed his eyes against the burn of tears.

“What was it like?” Sophie asked, her voice almost normal.

“What?” Ian couldn’t follow the question.

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“The war. What was it like?” Sophie clearly wanted to change the topic, and Ian, coward that he was, let her.

“It was bloody awful.” Just saying the words freed Ian in a way he hadn’t been for a long time. Most of his acquaintances did not wish to discuss the war except in terms of who won what battle. Even Derek tended to avoid talking about their experiences at war, not including the development of their relationship. But then Derek had

nightmares that made him wake shaking and sweating. “I hated every god-awful,

stinking moment of it.”

Sophie raised her head and looked him in sympathy. “Did you? I thought men

liked war.”

Ian laughed, but not with humor. “What’s not to like? The blood, the guts, the

screams of men and horses. Smelling like the gutter because you haven’t been able to have a bath for weeks on end. The fear of losing friends and lovers in a well-placed French artillery attack, or on the end of a French saber. Or, oh yes, the endless, boring days of sitting and sitting with nothing to do but dread the next call to arms. Yes, war is certainly entertaining, isn’t it?” He winced at the bitterness he heard in his voice.

Sophie turned and sat with her back against the window seat and her legs out,

imitating Ian’s position. “Who did you lose?”

Her tone was as sympathetic as her look had been, and it was Ian’s undoing. He

laid his head back on the bench behind them and closed his eyes too late to stop the tear that ran down his temple into his hair.

“I lost more than one.”

He was shocked to feel Sophie’s hand tentatively touch his, and then her fingers loosely entwined with his own. He forced himself to relax and not frighten her away.

“Tell me,” she told him, and he did. The words poured out of him, about friends lost to death, others to life-altering injury. And he told her about Dolores, holding nothing back. Her hold on his hand got tighter and tighter as he spoke.

“Oh, Ian,” she sighed when he finally stopped talking, “I’m sorry, so sorry. I didn’t know. You loved her, both you and Derek.” Her voice was so sad, as if she’d seen all the misery in the world and none of it surprised her anymore.

“No, I didn’t love her. I don’t think Derek did either. But she was a dear friend.” He was looking at their entwined hands, and he risked tentatively running one finger of his free hand over the strong tendons on the back of hers. When she didn’t protest, he ran it around her knuckles and gently in between her fingers. She was silent so long that she startled him when she did speak.

“Just because you weren’t in love with her doesn’t mean you didn’t love her. You can love a friend deeply and their loss can leave as big a hole in you as any.” Ian could tell she spoke from experience.

“Who did you lose?”

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Her hand squeezed his almost painfully at his question. “I lost the only friend I ever had. A servant, actually—a maid. She was kind to me when I’d forgotten what kindness was. She tried to protect me, and she paid for her kindness with dismissal and

degradation.”

“Sophie.” Ian turned to look directly at her but didn’t let go of her hand. “Is she dead?”

Sophie shook her head. “No, at least, I don’t think so. But she was from an

impoverished family and going back to them was not an option, particularly after being let go without a reference.” She was looking out into space. “According to Harold she had no choice but to become a whore at the local tavern until one day she left and never returned.”

“Sophie, look at me.” She did and her expression was bleak. “Tell me about your life, Sophie. All this time I’ve thought of you as a child, even the last two weeks when I can see perfectly well you are not. You have grown into a woman who fascinates me. I must know, Sophie. I must know all about you.”

She blushed and looked down and jerked slightly, almost as if just realizing they were holding hands. She tried to pull away, but Ian wouldn’t let her.

“No, Sophie, please,” he pleaded, “don’t pull away. Tell me, tell me something, anything, whatever you like. I won’t pry, I swear.” She still seemed unsure. “What is your favorite color? I think it’s blue. Am I right? Have you ever had a puppy? Would you like one? I can’t spell very well. Can you?” Sophie was starting to smile, her lips curving up on one side self-consciously. “I hate tripe, and soup, but I love beef and ale.

Derek says I have peasant tastes.” He winced, worried that he oughtn’t to have brought up Derek’s name, but Sophie seemed unperturbed by it.

She held up a hand, stopping him. “Enough!” she cried with a little laugh. Ian

cherished that laugh. He wanted to make Sophie laugh forever. “Um, let me see. Yes, blue, and no, but I have always wanted a puppy. How did you know? And how can

you not spell? Everyone can spell. I am particularly good at unusually spelled words—

for instance, ululation. Isn’t that a wonderful word? And goodness, does anyone like tripe?” She shuddered. “But soup? I love soup. I could slurp it all day, every day. And I don’t care if you have peasant tastes. I shan’t be so embarrassed about what I like, I suppose.” She grinned shyly at Ian. “I also have a very good memory.”

Ian laughed out loud. “I will endeavor to remember that. In ten years time will you still nag me about the time I spilled wine on the drawing room rug?”

Sophie looked aghast. “I would never nag you! Never!” She looked stricken with

fear. “I didn’t mean it that way. I will never anger you by complaining about your behavior—”

Ian cut her off, cursing himself for forgetting to tread lightly around her. She still had a long way to go toward trusting him. He tried to speak lightly. “Well, that is a disappointment. What good is a wife if she doesn’t nag? How will I know how to

behave, or whether or not I’m tricked out properly if you won’t tell me? I daresay if you 96

At Love’s Command

treat me too well, people will begin to think I made a bad bargain.” He grinned wickedly. “They may even, heaven forbid, start speculating you married me because you liked me, and what would the world be coming to then, I ask you?”

Sophie looked bewildered for a moment, and then she snorted inelegantly. “Well, we can’t have that, can we? I shall reserve Monday morning at nine o’clock, before going over the week’s menus, for nagging you. That way you shall have a fresh start with improving goals for the week.”

Ian wanted to shout with joy. She had a sense of humor! His young, beautiful,

fragile wife had not been broken. He would make her strong. He would nurture her, shower her with love and affection, passion and humor, and she would never know fear or abandonment again. Very slowly he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it, and Sophie’s smile only faltered a little.

Derek quietly got up from where he’d been sitting beside the nursery door. He was stiff and sore, and realized with a start that the sun was setting. He must have been there for quite a while listening to Ian and Sophie talk. He didn’t feel guilty at all for eavesdropping. How else was he to figure out how to live with this virtual stranger?

He’d been more shocked by Ian’s conversation than Sophie’s. He’d never heard Ian talk about the war like that. Listening had been hard, so hard Derek had almost crawled away. But when Ian finished, Derek felt a lightening somewhere inside. Yes, he’d known exactly what Ian was talking about. He’d seen and felt the same things, lost the same people. He rubbed his chest absently, still feeling the ache that had gripped him when Ian had talked of Dolores’ death. Sophie had been wise when she’d said Ian and Derek had loved Dolores. Derek knew it wasn’t the kind of love he shared with Ian, but it was love just the same.

He heard the two still murmuring in the nursery, and Sophie laughed. That one

sound made him hesitate. He’d had to bite his knuckle when she’d said the first time she was raped was when she was sixteen. He’d wanted to curse and punch the wall. No young girl should have to go through that. And it would make things so hard on Ian.

That laugh meant perhaps she wasn’t completely broken, and Derek was surprised by how much that pleased him. He went down the stairs stealthily, not wanting to disturb the intimacy between them. It was hard, but Derek was trying to be what Ian needed.

And right now he needed Derek to help make his wedding night a success. As far as Derek was concerned, that meant staying the hell away.

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Very stood in the library and looked out the window into the back garden. The

room behind her was lit only by the small fire on the far wall. She could make out the little Greek folly in the far corner of the garden, a dark shape in the moonlight. She loved to sit out there on warm days and read, or chat with companions. Had Sophie ever been able to do that, to relax with friends? She’d seemed so awkward at it the last two weeks, and Very had attributed it to her hideous father. But apparently there’d been more, as Very had suspected yesterday. She went to brush a strand of hair out of her eyes and found her hand was shaking. God, she was so full of anger. She’d wanted to scream at Aunt Kate for not telling her, and then she wanted to hunt down Mr.