Romancing the Rogue (13 page)

“First, your name. Anne-Sophronia is a mouthful I cannot manage, and I have lacked any desire to address you properly for months now. Tell me, what does a man whisper in your ear at night?”

She couldn’t resist the chance to tease him. “I could hardly say. When they shout in delirious ecstasy, however, the word is Sophia. Incidentally my friends, few as they are, use the same.” His bewildered expression, and the resulting flash of what might have been jealousy, was worth letting him assume scandalous behavior of her.

“Sophia,” he echoed, lifting her hand to his lips. Now that he’d recovered himself, she couldn’t read his expression at all, unless she allowed the comparison of a wolf.

“I don’t care for that look, Wilhelm. Perhaps you had better tell me what you want from me, in exchange for your protection.”

“A simple matter, really.” He paused to kiss her hand again, slowly, his gaze burning her with icy fire. “Marry me.”

In Which History Repeats Itself

“I declined, of
course.” Sophia hid her mouth behind the wine glass and nodded in concert with the circle of drawing room guests. Lord Devon’s neighbors, again. She wore a blankly pleasant expression while her heart groaned — she had injured Wilhelm the previous day with her refusal. Her being the single most ineligible woman on earth hadn’t seemed to daunt him. It mattered to
her
a great deal.

Aunt Louisa rustled, reminding Sophia of a dragon flexing its scales. “I cannot say which is worse: your living in sin for all the world to see, or you — a
Duncombe —
as Lady Devon.”

Sophia muttered
sotto voce
to Aunt Louisa, “Do keep your smelling salts near, ma’am, but I must tell you the Duncombe family has held its title since Cromwell. So, I believe, has the Montegue family.”

“It is not your family’s
title
I object to. Merely your family.”

“On that front I must agree. But as I did have the nerve to be born into my family, I must reserve the right to insult it, if you don’t mind. Furthermore, if you insist on comparing dreadful reputations, it is possible Lord Devon’s trumps mine.”

“Falsehoods!” Aunt Louisa hissed. “All of them! Born of jealousy and spite.”

Sophia whispered, “Then you understand the burden of an undeserved reputation.”

Aunt Louisa scoffed too loudly, and a few guests turned to see what was the matter. She ignored their glances and spoke behind her handkerchief, “I knew who you were nearly the moment I laid eyes on you, girl.”

“Ah, so you are Lord Devon’s
resource.
”

“You look so like your mother, at first I imagined it was she.” Sophia noted Aunt Louisa’s disdainful choice of words:
your mother
instead of
Lady Chauncey.

Wilhelm caught her gaze and shot her an expression meaning,
Do you mind?

Oh. Her argument with Aunt Louisa had grown conspicuous. Sophia looked sideways at Aunt Louisa and widened her eyes in exasperation.
Your aunt started it.

Sir Vorlay’s cold stare was aimed at her again. He sat next to Lord Devon, watery-eyed with a sallow complexion under his riot of bristly whiskers. He looked like he belonged in a seedy East London pub. She remembered him leering at her the last time he’d visited.

“Why is that man tolerated here? I thought he was on the outs with Lord Devon?”

Aunt Louisa clucked. “I detest him as well. Blame Wilhelm’s dratted sentiment for his old battalion mates. Any member is welcome at Rougemont, so he says, and some take advantage.”

“I don’t like the look of him.”

“If he spills whiskey on the sofa once more, I might box his ears myself.”

Sir Vorlay glared at Sophia again, and she pointedly turned her gaze to Lord Devon. She watched him take a gulp from his snifter, of something too clear and too amber to be claret. He drained the glass, his throat working as he swallowed, then kept his eyes closed, supposedly while the burn washed over him. Definitely not the sherry she’d set out in the social rooms in an effort to aid his temperance.

“Oh, no,” Aunt Louisa groused. “He is drinking again. ’Tis your fault, Miss Duncombe. He must be taking the rejection badly, fool that he is.”

Sophia had the same thought. “So you would rather I married him?”

“Perhaps you should, after all.”

Sophia coughed, hiding behind her linen. “Just like that? Now you think I should marry him?”

“A thought occurred to me just now. If it took Wilhelm thirty-and-five years to choose a woman, I can scarcely wait another thirty-and-five for him to find another. Philip is a nincompoop, bless his heart — he shan’t have Rougemont. Wilhelm is the last of the Montegue family line. And I want grandbabies.”

Sophia hardly knew what to say. She finally answered, “I fear I would prove a disappointment on all counts.”

Wilhelm caught her eye as he shifted in his chair, quite obviously bored by his guests.
Do something, or I will,
his expression warned.

Sophia rose and went for the service tray on the buffet. She placed her own half-full wine glass on the tray then lowered it as she approached Lord Devon so he could discard his empty snifter. That detestable Sir Vorlay leaned over and placed his snifter on the tray too, a few swallows of odorous whiskey left swirling on the bottom. Sophia dug the toe of her slipper into the rug and staged losing her balance. Wilhelm grabbed her arm to steady her, which sent Vorlay’s whiskey down the front of her dress while the tray toppled into Lord Devon’s lap, spilling her wine right on target.

Wilhelm shot out of his chair, drawing the eyes of every guest to his soaked groin.

“Lord Devon! Forgive me, I am so clumsy!” Sophia pressed a hand to her throat, making an effort to appear aghast while remembering her false French accent for the benefit of the company.

“The fault is mine, my lady. Alas, I have ruined your lovely dress.”
Allow me to remove it for you,
his eyes said. He turned to his guests, taking Sophia’s arm. “Do excuse us.”

Us? Us!
Her cheeks heated with embarrassment. Certain everyone imagined precisely what Lord Devon implied, she left the room on his arm, silently cursing him with every name she could conjure.

“Thank you.” He kissed her temple.

“I am sorry about your trousers.”

“It was worth it.” He unlocked the door to his apartments and led Sophia inside as though it was perfectly normal to do so. “Does this gown have one of those automatic fasteners?”

“Don’t even think of it, Wilhelm.”

“That whiskey has the finish of a rotting corpse. You may change your mind out of necessity, darling.”

“I can manage, thank you,” she said through a clenched jaw.
If I have to cut it off myself with a rusty saw.
If she let Wilhelm open the back of her dress, she knew what would come next.

“At least unfasten my buttons for me. Martin is busy with the drawing room guests.” In turn he dropped his tie, vest, and jacket onto the floor.

“You want me to undress you?”

“Blasted contrary motion.” His expression betrayed no sinister intentions, and he did need help with his clothing, she supposed.

The six steps she took to close the space between them felt like walking the pirate’s plank. Sophia returned Wilhelm’s challenging look, opening his collar then tugging the shirttails from his trousers to expose the row of buttons. The hair on his chest narrowed from the fan across his blocky muscles into a trail to his waistband, and her knuckles brushed it all the way down as she opened the buttons.

He stood still, the sound of his even breath loud in the silent, cavernous room. She pushed his shirt over his shoulders, down his arms, and stifled a gasp as she saw his torso bared in the lamplight.

Disfigured,
his gossiping neighbors had called him. A gross exaggeration, but something dreadful had happened to him. Many somethings. Wilhelm stood frozen, allowing her to study him, gape at him. Most noticeable? The jagged red line around one shoulder disappearing down his back and a circular scar high on the other shoulder. A bullet wound? Reflecting pale silver in the light were thin knife cuts and burn marks scattered over the whole of his torso, and other marks she couldn’t identify. She remembered noticing a few on his face and neck before, but she’d never imagined that
kind of abuse.

Her voice emerged as a croak, “What happened to you, Wilhelm?” She lifted her hand to touch a semi-circular burn scar marring the ridged pattern of muscle across his ribs. He flinched then allowed the contact.

“Quarrel with a feisty woman?”

“Wilhelm…”

“Would it please you if I answered hot knives, whips, needles, and hooks, and devices with no name on this side of the world?”

She glanced up to find his eyes flinty; he was a thousand miles away.

The large scars looked brutal enough, but the smaller marks, symmetrical, in long tracks, made her heart sink with dread. She wanted to know, yet doubted she could bear it if she did. Her throat felt swollen as she swallowed.

“How did you bear it?” She moved her hands to his shoulders where star-shaped scars like Sadie’s dotted over his collar.

He gave a cold laugh and snorted. “They had barely begun with me, Sophia. I was rescued before they started on my teeth. And still that would have been nothing. I may appear broken to you, but I feel damned lucky.”

Sophia blinked, wondering if her mangled back could be considered fortunate by his reckoning. Yes, she decided, since she too had escaped the worst of what her tormentors had intended. The reminder made the skin across her back tingle and her muscles tense, the memory of pain in myriad flavors still too fresh in her mind. Part of her expected to relive the experience with a macabre sense of foreboding.

But no, she had improved. Weeks since she’d panicked during waking hours. Not that she had any less fear, but its power over her had waned. She would be ungrateful to deny Wilhelm credit in that.

“Have you finished gawking?”

“Sorry, Wilhelm, I was only taken aback.” Her shock made no sense, considering she’d heard so many whispers of his wartime espionage, capture, and torture… Here was proof.

She trailed her fingers down his arm, taking care to brush over the small bumps and marks as though they escaped her notice. She freed his fists from the sleeves turned inside out, keeping the simple gold cufflinks in her hand then dropping his shirt onto the pile of clothing on the floor. She placed his cufflinks in their proper compartment inside the bureau; she knew his rooms as well as her own. She’d cleaned them for months, after all.

Sophia turned and watched him tousle the slicked formal style from his hair, raking the pomade from the wavy strands so it appeared sand-colored again instead of molasses.

Mesmerizing, the smooth motion of muscle beneath supple light-golden skin. She had seen hundreds of naked men in art, but never in the flesh, and it dazzled her, the fluid movement tempered with leashed power. His form was excessively masculine yet appealing with the promise of warmth and comfort. Difficult to insist she admired him only for his intelligence and loyalty. With every passing moment she became aware of a serious longing to do something unmentionable to him, in the dark.

Maddening.
Oh, she’d said it aloud.

“What?”

“You are utterly desirable, Wilhelm. Not broken. There, I confessed it.”

His wicked pirate grin made her heart leap. “Capital. Now will you get me out of these trousers? I don’t like wine enough to wear it indefinitely.”

“Oh, no. I am
not
—
”

“Sophia, take pity on a man with sodden drawers.” He tucked his hands behind his head in a gesture of surrender, but it only made her stare at his chest. Saints, but he was magnificent. “I swear I will behave myself. And you can use the bathhouse first.”

“Again, no. I say a half hour, and you mistakenly arrive in a quarter hour?
You
first. And I am excused from the drawing room for the evening. Deal?”

“Anything you say.”

She approached him with the wariness of a hare skirting a wolf. Her bravado had fled the moment his shirt had come off. So she’d still not yet recovered from the sight. The first trouser button put up a fight, making her grasp both sides of the fabric while Wilhelm smirked. It came free with a low-pitched
pop,
and she feared she might faint
—
feverishly aware of his shoulders framing her, his heat, his breath on her neck, of her traitorous hands yanking his trousers apart, for the love of all that was holy!

By the time she freed the fourth button, Wilhelm’s hubris had vanished. The strain made his neck flex and his lips purse. The way he looked down at her with hooded eyes made her womb heat and clench.
Unbearable!

“Sordid business, this,” she complained, popping the final button.

“The bloody Russians have nothing on you, darling.”

An inappropriate jest, but she chuckled anyway, stepping aside. “You need a valet.”

“I trust only Martin. You see why, don’t you?”

She nodded, finding it unnecessary to comment. She avoided a lady’s maid for the same reason. Servants talk, and her past was her own concern.

Deciding nothing could be worse than unfastening his trousers, she presented him her back, grateful he took the cue to lower the zipping fastener. Like the pitiful coward she was, Sophia fled to the connecting door without a word. Of course Wilhelm didn’t follow. Moments later she heard him leave for the bathhouse.

The fates had been marginally kind; one of the servants had left a low fire in the grate. She shucked her gown and tossed it in. An explosion of blue flames startled a weak yelp from her, then the fire waned and consumed her whiskey-soaked dress.

Finally she heard Wilhelm return to his rooms. On her way to the bathhouse, a feeling of vulnerability, of being watched by malevolent eyes, crept over her. She held the sides of her robe shut at her neck and turned, half-expecting… Nothing. She saw nothing.