Kasey Michaels (9 page)

He stopped for a moment at the bottom of the stairs and glared down at her. He was really quite good at glaring, as if he’d had considerable practice. And there were those interesting lines around the outside corners of his eyes, crinkles as it were, as if he’d spent a lot of time squinting into the sun. Hadn’t Uncle Cesse said something about his only son trying to disgrace him by going off to the Royal Navy? Yes, that was it. Bramwell Seaton had spent years looking out over the ocean, his eyes on distant horizons. Strange how he couldn’t see clearly now.

Sophie deliberately teased him again as they turned toward the back of the house, pouting as best she could as she skipped along beside him. “You’re really quite angry, aren’t you?” she asked, knowing she was only pointing out the obvious. “But it’s not to worry. I doubt Miss Waverley has the slightest idea that yours was only a hastily made-up fib meant to get me alone with you. And I find it all quite flattering, if unnecessary. After all, we’re living under the same roof. Getting me alone, day or night—anytime at all—could hardly be more convenient, yes?”

He put his hand at the small of her back and all but pushed her into the study ahead of him before closing the door on the hallway and the interested footmen milling about in the foyer. “I did not want to get you
alone
, as you term it, for any romantic notion you might have taken into your head.”

Sophie spied out a decanter of brandy warming on a small table near the fire and went straight to it, pouring His Grace a snifter and returning to hand it to him. “Why, did I say anything about
romantic
notions, Your Grace?” she asked, smiling up at him as she insinuated herself between Bramwell and the desk. “No, I’m quite sure I didn’t. I’d rather assumed you’d brought me down here to read my incorrigible self a stern lecture, yes?”

He took the drink from her without so much as a word of thanks, brought it almost to his lips, then leaned forward and slammed the snifter down on the desk, its contents untouched. “Oh, no, you don’t! You’re not going to do that again.”

“Do what again, Your Grace?” Sophie asked, bracing her palms against the desktop and gracefully lifting herself onto the surface so that her slippered feet swung freely, only the faintest glimpse of well-turned ankle visible below her hemline. “I’m sure I haven’t the faintest notion what you’re talking about.” She turned her head, inspecting the wide, clean expanse of desk, then looked up at him again, her expression one of absolute innocence and confused inquiry. “I don’t seem to see my letter here.”

Bramwell made a growling sound low in his throat as he ran a hand through his warm brown locks, effecting great inroads on its sleekly combed style and making himself look much younger, much more approachable. Not, she was sure, that he knew it or, if he did, that he would ever do such a thing again. She couldn’t remember when last she’d seen such an unhappy man—or a man so woefully unaware of his unhappiness.

“You’re enough to drive a man out of his mind,” he said at last. “You do know that, don’t you? Hell and damnation—why am I even asking? Of course you know that. You do it on purpose. You do
everything
on purpose. You don’t make a single move, a single gesture, without a purpose. You wheedled yourself into my aunt’s good graces with woebegone expressions, some lip rouge, and promises of lurid gossip. And then you turned yourself around and played the eager, feather-headed ninny so that my fiancée sees you as no more dangerous than a lump of clay that she, in her goodness, will mold into her own image—as if
that
were possible.”

“You’re absolutely right, Your Grace. Of course I did—I do! And you’ve seen through it all. Even the lip rouge.” Sophie sighed and shook her head. “But, all that being said, I don’t see why you’re flying so into the treetops, Your Grace. It isn’t as if I didn’t warn you, yes? I was raised to please, raised to see a need, then accommodate it—until it has become second nature for me. I simply can’t help myself. I warned you of that as well. Besides, it’s much nicer all round when people like you, yes? You’re happier, the people around you are happier.” She spread her arms wide. “The whole
world
is happier.”

He raised his own arms from his sides, then brought his hands close together in front of him, as if trying to hold on to something he could not quite see, found impossible to completely grasp. “But—but that isn’t
honest
!”

Now Sophie did roll her eyes, beginning to feel the first flush of what Desiree had once called her “fire-flash” of anger. She took a deep breath, letting it out slowly, hoping to remain calm, in control—thus retaining the upper hand over this man, this unexpected and unexpectedly attractive adversary. “Honest? What isn’t honest, Your Grace? I very
honestly
enjoy both the ladies who are sitting upstairs in the drawing room, planning ways to make me a success. Truly I do. Lady Gwendolyn is happy to have a companion, someone to laugh with, to make her feel young again. Miss Waverley is happy to have found a project that will elevate her already fine opinion of herself and further ingratiate her into your affections. In their own way, they’re both quite delicious. I do no harm, Your Grace. I just see what is needed, and I do it; find a lack, and fill it. Which makes it easier for
me
to be happy, for
my
life to be easier. Does sincerity—or honesty, as you call it—matter all that much, when everyone is happy? And that’s why we’re here, isn’t it, Your Grace? To be happy? Certainly we aren’t here to be sad.”

He opened his mouth to speak, raised his hands as if to gesture once more—and ended by saying nothing, doing nothing. He just stood there, staring at her for a very long time, his expression growing increasingly solemn. “You don’t like your fellow creatures very much, do you, Miss Winstead,” he pronounced at last.

“What nonsense!” Sophie hopped down from her perch, avoiding the duke’s eyes. “It’s a good thing you didn’t drink that brandy, Your Grace. You’re already two parts drunk for you to think such a thing of me. Now we’d best go back to the drawing room, or else they’ll send someone after us,” she said, trying to brush past him and out the door before she exploded in rage and ruined everything she and Desiree had planned for so long.

But he grabbed her arm just above the elbow and almost roughly turned her around to face him. She felt the tips of her breasts brush against the fabric of his coat, could feel his warm breath on her cheek. Confusion covered her anger, then the anger fought through once more. She attempted to move away, to protect herself from an enemy she could not recognize, because the enemy seemed to be inside her, a just-discovered part of her that was in danger of betraying her in some unknown way.

“Now where have all your smiles so suddenly disappeared to, do you suppose? Your playful winks, your practiced shrugs? Your impossible-to-control wiles meant to drive a man out of his mind? What’s the matter, Miss Sophie Winstead? Have I stumbled onto the truth all that easily? Is it true? Do you really hate us, hate all of us men in particular?”

Sophie took another moment to compose herself, to remember who she was, how she was raised, what she had observed, the lessons she had learned. And she decided to be honest with His Grace—just this one more time—so that she wouldn’t have to be honest again. She refused to listen to the small, niggling voice that whispered that she had not really
chosen
to do anything, that she had no choice, that the duke had left her no other choice.

But he’d pay for what he’d done to her, the truth he was drawing from her. He’d pay dearly.

Deliberately lifting a hand to Bramwell’s smooth cheek, then drawing her fingers lightly down to his chin, Sophie summoned her most winning smile, and said, “Since I’ve already warned you against me, out of my affection for Uncle Cesse, I suppose I owe you all of the truth, yes? Very well. You’re wrong, and you’re right. I
am
very fond of my fellow creatures, Your Grace. In my own way.”

“In your own way? I dread thinking what
that
might mean, Miss Winstead,” Bramwell interrupted, and Sophie gave out a soft gurgle of laughter. He disapproved of her. That was obvious. But he did not step away from her, or ask her to remove her hand from his face. Of course he didn’t. She hadn’t expected him to. He was a man, wasn’t he? Her touch didn’t repel him. It fired something base and entirely male within him, as Desiree had explained, robbing him of everything but his own wants, his own needs. In fact, he stepped even closer to her now, their bodies touching even more intimately.

He disgusted her. Her reaction to him disgusted her.

“I find other women quite genuinely likable,” Sophie said, beginning her explanation. “But,” she continued quickly, sensing that he was in her power now, “I am fond of gentlemen most of all, because they are heartless little boys and can’t be hurt—not really. I’m also fond of laughter, of gaiety, of lighthearted days and exciting nights. I fully intend, Your Grace, to dance and laugh and enjoy myself to the top of my bent for as long as I live. Without any regrets, without any sorrows. Without,” she ended, dropping her hand to her side, “any real attachments to anyone save the children I hope to have one day. Uncle Cesse would have left my mother in the end, you know. They all leave, they all left. But I won’t care when anyone leaves me, because I will be happy when they are near, happy when they go—happy all by myself. No one, you see, will ever make
me
cry.”

Sophie then shut her mouth quickly, calling herself ten times the fool, for she had said too much, gone on a sentence or two too long. The veiled insult about men being heartless little boys was to have been enough. Why had she said so much? Perhaps it was because the ninth duke so resembled his father? It had always been so easy to talk to Uncle Cesse, confide all her girlish secrets in him. Uncle Cesse had promised her a Season, promised to dance with her at her very own ball, promised to be the father she’d always longed for and never had. And then he’d died, and her mother along with him, and Sophie had been left alone, to mourn.

“Well, that’s that, isn’t it?” she said brightly, putting her hand on Bramwell’s as he stood staring down at her, silently hinting that he release her arm, end this suffocating closeness that had so muddled her mind. “Shall we rejoin the ladies?”

“My father made you cry, didn’t he?” Bramwell asked quietly, still holding tight to her arm, keeping her where she did not want to be. “All those men who came into and out of your life—all your
uncles
who played with you as a child, gave you gifts, and petted you, and then left you. They all made you cry. So I’m at least partly right, as you said, at least when it comes to men. For all your charms, all your smiles, all your protestations that you only want to live a life of happiness, you’re out to hurt as many of us as you can, without ever letting your own heart be touched in any way.”

Sophie wanted to hit him, he was that infuriating. How could he think so poorly of her? Because she couldn’t hurt anyone—not ever. She knew, all too well, how much the pain of rejection hurt. Didn’t he understand anything? “You dolt!” she cried out, spinning out of his arms and picking up the brandy snifter, sending it to shatter against the wall, somewhere depressingly left of the fireplace. “Now look what you made me do! You thick, stupid, infuriating,
dolt
! I would never put it before myself to hurt anybody—
never
. I couldn’t!”

Bramwell looked to the rapidly spreading stain on the wall, then to Sophie, who couldn’t believe she had been so foolish, so revealing of the one thing Desiree had most admonished she hide. Her abominable temper.

“Well, now, Miss Winstead,” the duke said silkily, wiping one hand against the other as if he’d just done something wonderful. “Perhaps you’re not so perfect after all. Although I must say, I somehow find this side of you more than passing
dazzling
, in its own odd way.”

He stepped closer as her feet refused to move. Her body betrayed her by leaning forward slightly, making it easier for him to capture her in his arms. She watched, all wonder and confusion, as he lowered his smiling mouth, sealing his warm lips over hers as his arms came around her back, pressing her against him.

She felt the shock down to her toes. Her first kiss. Begun in amusement and, as he pulled away from her, ended in much the same way. “Why—why did you do that?” she asked, her head spinning.

“Why, Miss Winstead?” he asked in return, a frown now marring his smooth forehead. “Why not?”

She shot a look at him, deliberately wiping the back of her hand across her mouth. “Just as I’ve always suspected, already known in my heart. You’re a fickle lot, the whole of you men. With a fiancée upstairs while you paw another woman all but under her nose. Lustful, rutting, unfaithful dogs. That’s what you are, to a man. But not, Your Grace, to
me
. Not now, not ever.”

“Oh, God, Miss Winstead, I’m sorry,” Bramwell said, taking hold of her arm, trying to guide her to a chair. “The smiles, the hand to the cheek, the knowing glances. You play the game so well. You seem to know the steps, each deliberate move. I thought you had been offering to have me join you in the game. Obviously I was wrong. You were only practicing, weren’t you? It’s just as you’d warned me. I’m off-limits, was never meant to be one of the players. Forgive me.”

Did she have any choice? Not if she were to remain under his roof, go into Society, have the Season her mama had craved for her, the Season she craved for herself. She had to forgive this man, this typical man, this lustful, taking, rutting boar of a man who was like every other man in creation. Much as she realized, with a pain that tore straight through her, that she’d hoped Uncle Cesse’s son might be different.

“We won’t mention this again, Your Grace,” she said at last, lifting her chin and smiling her most practiced, natural smile. “We’ve both learned a lesson that will stand us in good stead over the next weeks. I won’t dazzle you again, and you won’t kiss me again. For neither action serves any good purpose, yes?”

He bowed over her hand, pressing his lips against her skin. “You’re too kind.”