My Seductive Innocent (18 page)

Mary Margaret seemed confused. “Do you mean His Grace?”

Sophia nodded.

“I’m sorry. No one ever calls him by his Christian name, so it gave me pause, but goodness no. His Grace has never been married. Truth be told, below stairs we had a running wager whether he ever would get married.”

“Oh really?” Sophia said as casually as she could and took her seat. “Why was that? Because he had so very many ladies, I suppose.”

Mary Margaret shrugged. “I’ve already said too much. My mother would be livid if she knew I was gossiping about His Grace, and so would he.”

“I’ll not tell him or your mother,” Sophia promised. “You are to be my lady’s maid even after I’m married, I take it?”

Mary Margaret nodded. “If I please you.”

Sophia picked up a silver-gilded brush and had to remember not to gape at the expensive thing. She knew so little about Nathan, and perhaps the best way to fill in the missing gaps was to get the information from Mary Margaret. “I’ve never had a maid, but I would like to think that we will be very good friends.” Sophia felt a flash of guilt because gaining a new friend had not really been at the front of her mind, but if she gained Mary Margaret as a friend and learned something about Nathan in the process that would be wonderful.

“Friends?” Mary Margaret’s eyebrows had risen with surprise.

“Yes. I realize it’s probably not customary, but it’s what I wish. And as friends, we will tell each other secrets.”

“All right,” the woman hedged.

“I’ll tell you one now,” Sophia offered, praying it would inspire the woman to reveal some information about Nathan’s past. “My father is a drunkard.”

Mary Margaret’s eyes went wide. “My cousin’s father is, too.”

Sophia let out a relieved breath that Mary Margaret seemed willing to share. “I don’t know His Grace very well, but I very much want to, since we are to be married. Would you help me?”

Mary Margaret glanced over her shoulder, then back at Sophia. “May I close the door?”

Sophia nodded, biting back a gleeful smile.

When Mary Margaret returned to the dressing table, she pulled open another drawer and removed a pair of scissors. “My mother is the head housemaid and she’s always got her ear out.”

“Then it’s a good thing you thought to close the door,” Sophia said.

Mary Margret grinned. “I’ve been working in the kitchen with my mother since I was eight and I’m twenty now, so tell me what it is you wish to know. If I didn’t personally see it, I’d wager my mother did and has spoken about it. She chides me for all my gabbing, but I get it from her.”

“Did your mother ever say what His Grace’s childhood was like? Was his mother kind? And his father?”

A dark cloud settled over Mary Margaret’s face. “His father was kind enough when he was around, which was scarce little. But his mother...” Mary Margaret pursed her lips. “She was a different story altogether. Wicked mean and unpredictable, that one. The servant children, including myself”―Mary Margaret blushed―“used to hide when we knew she was coming because we feared one of her mood swings or scoldings.”

Mary Margaret had been snipping Sophia’s hair as she talked, and she paused now. “Look to your lap, please.”

Sophia obeyed instantly. “Was she at least kind to Nathan?”

Mary Margaret snorted. “No. She was worse to him than to anyone. Always putting him down and yelling at him. Mother says it got even worse the more her husband stayed away. But goodness, he stayed away because she was such a mean harpy! Terrible predicament, that. Especially for your future husband. A cruel mother and an almost totally absent father.” Mary Margaret tsked.

Tears burned Sophia’s eyes but she blinked them back. “Nathan must have wanted her love so badly,” she whispered.

“No doubt,” Mary Margaret agreed. “But that was a useless desire.”

Sophia thought about Frank. She understood how painful it was to feel unloved. She understood how much the want throbbed in you and ate at you not to have a parent’s affection, until you were sure the longing would kill you unless you could just let it go. And she had with Frank. One morning, when she was around twelve or so, she had woken up and had simply stopped hoping Frank would love her. Nathan, it seemed, had taken it a step further than she had. Had he woken up one day and simply stopped hoping to ever be loved at all, or had it not even been a decision he was aware of? She understood now, or she thought she did: he didn’t desire love because, in the past, wishing for love had never been successful and it had hurt him deeply.

What she had just learned made her more determined than ever to give Nathan her love and help him see that she would not snatch her love away, nor was it something he had to earn.

“I’m done, Miss Vane. And if I may be so bold, your hair looks lovely, though I do think you should grow it a bit. You never did say if you were sick or not.”

Sophia blinked, a trifle irritated that her mind still felt foggy. “I wasn’t sick. My father, the toad, cut it for money.” Sophia glanced into the looking glass and gasped at her reflection. Mary Margaret had a way with scissors. The choppiness of the crude haircut that Frank had given her, that she herself had tried and failed to make look better, now curled softly around the nape of her neck instead of spiking out in jagged edges. She jumped up and hugged a stunned Mary Margaret. “You are a miracle worker!”

Mary Margaret grinned. “Thank you, Miss Vane.”

“Call me Sophia.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t. You’ll be the duchess in a few days, and it wouldn’t be proper.”

“As you wish,” Sophia relented, knowing she had to learn the rules of etiquette and try to follow them. “Rest assured I’m going to let my hair grow, but thank you for making me look decent again.”

“I cannot wait to see what Madame Lexington does with you.”

“Who?”

“Madame Lexington. His Grace sent a note into the village for her to be here at noon to fit you for an entire new wardrobe. She used to be the duchess’s dressmaker. She was transported straight over from France to please the duchess. She’s waiting below to be sent up to you.”

“Do you mean to tell me it’s noon?” Sophia asked in surprise.

“’Twas noon when I came to wake you. Madame Lexington has been here a half hour already.”

“My goodness, really?” Sophia rushed over to one of the windows and drew the heavy silk curtains back to look at the sun in the sky, but down below she could just make out Nathan and Harry standing in the most exquisite garden imaginable, facing each other with what looked like rapiers raised in the air. Such happiness filled Sophia that she felt as if she would burst. She turned back to Mary Margaret, determined to get the business of being fitted for dresses out of the way, so she could go to the garden and thank Nathan, both for his generosity and for giving time to Harry. “Go fetch Madame Lexington, then, please.”

Mary Margaret bobbed a curtsy and returned within minutes with the seamstress in tow. Despite Sophia’s determination to hurry through the fittings, they took many hours and all she could do was stand there like an obedient dog and get poked, prodded, and tsked at. And all the while, Madame Lexington mumbled under her breath about Sophia’s lack of development. The least the woman could have done was mumble in French so Sophia wouldn’t have understood her slanders.

When Madame Lexington bustled out of the bedchamber, followed by a housemaid who had just finished cleaning up the lunch repast they’d partaken in, Sophia collapsed into the chair and marveled momentarily that her wedding dress and a few other essential garments would be ready in such a short time, and then an entire wardrobe would follow soon after.

She squeezed her eyes shut and laid her head back to listen to the creaks and groans of the giant house. She tried to picture Nathan here with his mother as a child. How lonely and sad he must have been. For a while, she rubbed her aching neck and back, then finally opened her tired eyes and dragged herself out of the chair to put on the same gown she’d worn the night before. She wanted to find Nathan and she couldn’t do so in her chemise. Before she even picked up her gown a knock came at the door.

“Enter,” she bade, assuming it was the seamstress who must have forgotten something.

The door opened with a slow creak and Nathan himself, heart-stopping in skintight pantaloons, gleaming black hessians, and another simple open-collared linen shirt, stepped into the room.

N
athan had argued with himself all the way up the stairs about whether or not to come see Sophia. But when her brother had told him how she used to take beatings from Frank so Harry would not receive them, all Nathan had wanted to do was see her. He didn’t know why exactly. It wasn’t proper to be in here, but they were to be married in two days, so what did it really matter at this point if he came into her bedchamber?

As he stepped in the room, though, his gaze fastened on the twin peaks of her hardened nipples straining against the fabric of her chemise, and white-hot lust surged through his veins. It was almost laughable, his sudden desire for this woman who looked more like a girl than a woman. Except she
was
a woman and would soon be
his
wife, and he wanted her with a need that shocked him.

He’d felt plenty of lust in his life, but he couldn’t remember ever experiencing such a craving as the one that coursed through him at this moment. It almost made him feel as if he’d go mad if he didn’t have her, and he didn’t like that one bit. Ever since last night in the library when she’d told him she loved him, he’d been unable to rid her from his thoughts. Getting up before the sun even rose this morning and practicing riding and then swordplay with her brother had not wiped her from the forefront of his mind, especially as her brother relayed stories of how she had endured many of the spankings from their father that had been meant for young Harry.

As he closed the door with the heel of his boot, it struck him that surely she was not as good as she seemed. It was almost a relief to think this. His father had thought his mother good and kind, and been proven more than wrong.

“Come here, Sophia.” His voice was more of a growl than anything. She swallowed hard but, to her credit, came across the room and stood directly in front of him. When she glanced up, he blinked at how angelic she looked with her hair curling in soft, dark ringlets around her neck.

He reached out and wrapped a silky strand around his finger. “I see your lady’s maid cut your hair.”

Sophia nodded. “Do you like it?”

He tensed at the question. His mother used to ask him such trick questions. If he answered yes, she would demand to know exactly why he felt as he did, and then proceed to scream at him that his reasons were not good enough. And if he answered no... Well, it served no good purpose to remember her raging fits on the few occasions he dared to answer in the negative to one of those questions. “It’s very becoming,” he offered.

She beamed up at him, and his heart did a sort of skip in his chest. With obvious hesitation, she placed her hand on his chest and his muscles jumped to full awareness of the heat of her palms seeping through his shirt. “I’m going to let it grow out again, and I promise I’ll look better then.”

The eagerness to please him that he saw in her eyes touched him, and softness he hadn’t thought himself able to feel any longer slammed into him like a wave. He laced one hand into her soft hair and trailed the other to the feminine curve where her buttocks and back met.
Just one kiss,
he promised himself. One kiss and he would be satisfied. He didn’t need more. He didn’t need anything from anyone. Slowly, he slid his fingers back and forth over the slight dip and rise of her body until her eyes darkened and her lids lowered to half-mast.

“I shouldn’t be in here,” he whispered in her ear before he nipped the irresistible thing with his teeth and then flicked his tongue over the sensitive flesh.

She moaned and leaned closer to him, until her lips were near his ear. “If it’s not proper, why are you here?”

He paused for a moment, struggling to put words to emotions he barely understood. “To tell you that you are the bravest woman I’ve ever met,” he said, trailing kisses across her neck all the way to her other ear, which he traced slowly with the tip of his tongue. She shivered beneath his touch, and though she clung to his arms, she leaned back and gazed up at him.

“What is that unexpected compliment for?”

“For the beatings you took to protect your brother,” he replied. “I admire you. It’s as simple as that.”

But was it?

Before he could say more, she touched her mouth to his with a sweet, urgent fumbling of a kiss. “Just one kiss,” she rasped as she pulled away to press her lips to the pulse of his neck.

“Of course,” he agreed huskily, his body responding wildly to the pressure of her lips against his neck.

“Maybe a bit more,” she moaned. “I― Well, this feels quite good.”

Their one kiss was spiraling out of control fast, but as her hands slid to his shoulders and she tugged on him, he could not have stopped his reaction if he wanted to, and he did not want to.