Romancing the Rogue (6 page)

“Then it seems you and I are not at odds, after all.” Sophia turned to Wilhelm. “Do you have anything to add, my lord?”

He ignored her, still staring at the rug.

“Already you see what I mean,” Aunt Louisa muttered resignedly. “He is far away at the moment, Mrs. Cooper. Wait long enough and he will emerge from the catatonia with a litany on… oh, Fibonacci ratios in the woven pattern. Or if you are lucky, he will return with music. Wilhelm is a brilliant composer.”

Sophia might have taken the “Old Dragon” to task but saw devotion and worry behind the façade of disdain. “Very well then, I shall wait.”

Aunt Louisa huffed and drew herself out of the chair. She thumped her cane on the floorboards and whispered indignantly, “He is not mad!”

“Of course not.” Sophia studied his dramatic profile, his furrowed brows and his intense gaze leveled at the floor. “And he is a benevolent, kind man.”

“On a good day.” Aunt Louisa muttered a terse goodnight and left the music room.

Sophia leaned back and tucked herself against Wilhelm’s side, content to sit and think. He had done this earlier today when he’d watched out the window. She guessed ten minutes, maybe a quarter hour had passed with Lord Devon behaving like a statue.

When he finally blinked and sighed, she was rewarded with a companionable squeeze across her shoulders. She didn’t know the evening air had chilled until he stood and crossed to the piano bench, leaving her right side bereft of his warmth.

He bent his head over the keys, plunked out an unusual chord progression, then before she could be disappointed, a lovely serenade came from the piano. No, more like a nocturne: sentimental, romantic, and lyrical. The melody pealed like a soprano voice, but the dark minor key stole its joy. She listened, enraptured, as Wilhelm spun elegant phrases too complex to truly remind her of the poetic Chopin, but she supposed he drew his inspiration there. And not a note out of place, every chord logical, the harmony inventive — artistry and technique married.

She waited a few minutes after he finished before asking, “Is this one new?”

“Yes.”

A simple answer for the astounding revelation that he composed music in his head then played it without flaw. “It’s beautiful, Wilhelm. Will you transcribe it for me?”

He smiled weakly, but she saw amusement — or was it pleasure — dancing in his eyes. “If you wish.”

She waited while he gathered manuscript paper and a pen then watched as his script flowed, as lovely as his music. A revelation: Aunt Louisa had been wrong. Wilhelm’s hands moved in contrary motion when he played the piano. Yet he couldn’t fasten a button?

He titled the work:
Her Voice, In Anger and Affection
.

Unless she flattered herself, she guessed Wilhelm had given song to Sophia’s side of the argument with Aunt Louisa. If he’d listened to her tone of voice and ignored her words, he would’ve heard just that in her inflection, anger and affection. His generous rendition of her voice would seem like a romantic gesture, if she didn’t know better.

Sophia had been absolutely correct to guess long ago that she would find Lord Devon
interesting.
That was the least of it.

In Which Virtue Is Wielded As Punishment

The young misses
Elise, Mary, and Madeline boasted one of the most illustrious surnames in all England: Cavendish. A shame they behaved like barmaids. Lord Devon escorted Sophia into the drawing room to meet his three porcelain-faced nieces, all decked from head to toe in ostentatious Parisian fashion. Within minutes Sophia knew they had mortified even their liberally minded uncle. Aunt Louisa appeared to have need of smelling salts.

The youngest, Madeline, had dropped the gold chain locket swinging on her finger and cursed,
“Merde!”
as she doubled over to pick it up, like a cabaret girl. The effect was less scandalous on a girl of nine but unseemly nonetheless.

Mary, dark and plump with unruly chestnut curls arranged in a gravity-defying coif, had desperate need of a dictionary. Sophia doubted the melodramatic girl understood the definition of “impertinent” versus “impotent,” and accused a footman of being the latter, to Lord Devon’s amusement.

Elise, the eldest, had answered, “Why, yes, I know!” when Aunt Louisa commented that she had grown into a bewitching, elegantly developed young woman.

As pretty as peacocks, the three of them, with manners to match. And Wilhelm wanted Sophia to turn them into diamonds of the first water? She knew they’d been raised without a mother the past nine years, but how had matters come to this?

“Make them presentable at court, and I will petition your sainthood,” Wilhelm muttered in her ear as he passed behind her.

“I might find them penniless husbands for their fortunes, Wilhelm, but do you know many deaf bachelors?” she breathed, knowing he could hear as he paced behind her.

“How long do we have?” Mercy. He muttered it right on the back of her neck, chasing shivers down her spine with his breath.

Sophia studied Elise, who at age nineteen should debut in only a few months’ time with the start of the London Season. A delay would cause speculation as to her eligibility — meaning the
ton
would assume she was either promiscuous or broke. “Not this year, I’m afraid. Perhaps next. How badly do you want her to make a match before twenty-and-one?”

“Eighty thousand pounds. A hundred. Double, if I must.”

Sophia wondered if Lord Devon could truly pay quadruple the fortune the few wealthiest diamonds of the first water boasted. He didn’t seem to be joking.

“That shouldn’t be necessary, my lord. If she remains silent, most men will take one look at her and profess undying devotion. What happens if any care to measure her character is out of our hands.”

Madeline startled everyone by dashing across the room and throwing herself into Wilhelm’s lap. He cradled her as she buried her face in his chest and sobbed.

“Hush, darling. Now what is the matter?” Lord Devon crooned. When Madeline didn’t answer, he ducked his head and whispered a quiet conversation with her, then she nodded and blew her nose in his handkerchief. Wilhelm wiped the tears dewing her absurdly long eyelashes then turned her sideways to rest on his shoulder. She curled small dainty hands around his thick arm, holding tightly as though she feared being ripped away.

“You shall have a pony, Madeline. A white one. And Philip is sailing from the Baltic; your brother sent me a wire just yesterday. You must be patient, my sweet.”

Revealing that the late Sir Eldrich Cavendish’s youngest daughter foremost mourned the loss of her pony. His two elder daughters, judging by the levity in their attitudes, mourned their father not at all. He had certainly neglected their educations — a crime Sophia found unforgivable, since a woman’s eligibility in the marriage market determined her well-being for life. Which was why she owed it to Wilhelm to help the Cavendish girls catch husbands who would make them happy.

Deuced miserable business.

~~~~

“Grazie al cielo,
la cavalleria è arrivata.”
Oh joy, the cavalry is here.
She gave Wilhelm a quelling look, communicating that he should cooperate or die an ignominious death.

“
Cosa
?
Qual
è
il
problema
?
”
What? What is the matter?
Lord Devon answered in Italian as he approached the library table, observing the books strewn about, Mary’s red-rimmed eyes, Madeline’s pout, and Elise’s absence. He turned to Sophia for an explanation, and the heat of her temper steaming through her calm façade must have told enough about how the girls’ lessons were going.

“Ridi come se avessi detto qualcosa di molto divertente.”
Just laugh as though I said something very amusing.

Lord Devon sank into the chair next to hers — the chair Elise had vacated moments earlier in a tantrum. He chuckled, shaking his head, then threw his head back and laughed in lusty peals. He sounded entirely sincere, as though someone tickled his ribs. Mary and Madeline watched with wide eyes, and Elise crept from her hiding place behind a bookshelf.

Lord Devon wiped a fictitious tear and sighed, then leaned in and said in a reminiscing tone,
“È sufficiente?” Was that satisfactory?

Sophia burst with a low giggle in her throat and covered her mouth with her hand, looking at him with a smirk as though he’d said something outrageous and witty.
“Si, lei ha dimostrato il mio punto. Grazie.”
Yes, you just illustrated my point. Thank you.

“What? What is so funny?” Madeline whined, looking between her Uncle Wil and her governess.

“Yes, why don’t you share what is so sodding hilarious,” Elise groused, halting behind Lord Devon’s chair as though she expected him to leap up and defer to her.

Instead he stretched and leaned back, settling in. Sophia wanted to kiss him when he lifted the Italian dictionary and dropped it into her upturned hands. “Why don’t
you
tell me what is so sodding hilarious, Elise?”

He paused to look at each of his nieces in turn, demanding their attention. “Because it sure as hell is not having the privileges of three spoiled little girls revoked until they produce passing marks in their schooling. No, that can’t be what was so
sodding hilarious.
”

Elise gasped, her brows furrowed in an expression unflattering on her innocent doe-ish face. Sophia was tempted to gape as well. Occasionally she forgot about his volatile temper and brusque manners.

Lord Devon whispered, “Is this where you apologize, Elise?”

She made a noise like an angry hen. “To the
governess
?”

“That shouldn’t be necessary,” Sophia interjected as she stood. “I thought I saw a copy of Fordyce’s Sermons over there. I suppose the Misses Cavendish would rather memorize sermons than conjugate verbs in Italian.”

She walked away to a shrill chorus of, “No, no, please!”

Sophia found both volumes and let them drop the last four inches onto the table, making an ominous thud, complete with a small billow of dust wafting from the gilt-edged pages. A testament to her less-than-illustrious career as a housemaid. That was not lost on Lord Devon, whose lips pulled in a small smile.

Mary leaned forward, reading the title, “
Sermons to Young Women,
by James Fordyce, D.D.”
The girls were obviously not acquainted with Dr. Fordyce’s pearls of wisdom, having no idea the punishment Sophia had in store for them was far worse than Lord Devon’s threat to revoke privileges. Sophia would sell her own mother into slavery to spare herself from reading even the table of contents.

“Miss Rosalie, what do you suppose will earn my nieces passage into the dining room this evening?” Wilhelm stood and walked to Sophia’s side.

She pretended to think about it. “How about reciting sermon number six, the section titled,
On Female Virtue, with Domestic and Elegant Accomplishments.
”

“And what must each recite in order to return to her regularly scheduled studies?”

“Section nine,
On Female Piety.
”

His eyebrows went up and she thought he swallowed a smile. “Very well. A shame they will be indisposed today. I came to see if you could use my assistance with dancing lessons. Do you like the new Austrian waltz popular in London last season?” The girls gasped and sighed through his comments.

“The
Lustenau
? My favorite. A bit far in the folk style, but rather romantic.”

“Perhaps we shall have to practice alone until they are prepared to join us.” He held his arm out for Sophia and led her away to the sound of whining and groaning from his nieces.

“I am surprised those volumes survived the inferno,” he quipped, referring to the philosophy books Sophia had tossed into the fire grate. She’d hated him then, supposing he believed in female subjugation, before she’d learned the truth — that he merely had an obtuse sense of humor.

“I was saving them for a particularly cold night.”

He smiled sideways, and she watched that infuriating dimple on his scruff-dusted cheek. Such rough-hewn strokes had carved his face in a cross between a Roman patrician and Norman invader, as though one wily gypsy had spiced his ancestry of aristocratic blood.

She didn’t find out if Lord Devon really meant to dance with her, because they were intercepted by a footman who announced the arrival of a telegram. Wilhelm tore it open and read it silently, but his jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed. He crumpled the yellow paper and shoved the wad in his coat pocket.

“Not bad news, I hope.”

“What else comes over the wire?” He excused himself and strode away.

Sophia watched him retreat, then decided to exploit her free afternoon. She went out the west service door, avoiding Lord Devon’s office, and walked toward the bathhouse. Fritz spotted her and came charging with the same zeal as when he chased rabbits. She scratched his ears and teased him in German, which made him so pleased she couldn’t bear to close the door to the bathhouse on his pleading whiskey-colored eyes.

“Oh, all right, you scoundrel.
Komm hier
.” At her command to come, he bolted through the doorway then slid on the marble floor. She laughed as he followed gingerly, his claws clicking on the tile.

“I cannot believe I am disrobing before a male. This is very scandalous.”

Fritz cocked his head and opened his mouth in what looked suspiciously like a cocky grin if not for the inch-long fangs. Then he rested on his haunches while she soaked in the pool. She sat in Lord Devon’s favorite spot, trying her utmost
not
to think about him.

~~~~

Lieutenant Philip Cavendish
of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy arrived a day ahead of schedule, to the delight of his sisters. Elise and Mary met him at the coach and dragged him inside the house, fawning and swooning over him in his smart uniform. Sophia heard the commotion and brought Madeline down to greet him.

He stood only a few inches taller than Elise, with a stocky build and a complexion resembling Mary’s: darker and rounder, with deeply set eyes and a dimpled chin. He removed his hat to reveal dark wavy hair, also like Mary’s. Sophia thought he looked all classic English gentleman, but impetuousness instead of stateliness marked his countenance, a trait of youth. He could not be half into his twenties.

Elise introduced them, “Miss Rosalie, may I present my brother, Lieutenant Cavendish.” Sophia curtsied. “Philip, Miss Rosalie is our governess.” She said
governess
like she would say
cold dish of sauerkraut.

Philip had already been staring at Sophia, a wide-eyed stricken look she’d seen a hundred times over on younger men who believed in adventure and romance.

Madeline saved the awkward moment. She hugged her brother’s waist, knocking his saber askew, and complained, “Philip, Miss Rosalie made me memorize
poor-eyes
sermons!”

“What the blazes is that?” Philip wrapped his arms around her and squeezed until she giggled. “You haven’t been naughty, Maddie?”

Mary plucked at the curls that fell over Madeline’s face. “It’s
four-dice,
Fordyce’s sermons? The preferred instrument of torture here.”

“Have you come to take us away, Philip?” Elise smoothed the tassels on his shoulder, Mary laid her head on his other shoulder, and Madeline burrowed her face in his chest. Sophia wondered if he liked all the attention or was on the verge of suffocation. No, she was a little jealous, in truth. All this filial felicity was making her melancholy.

“No, my lovelies. You are better off here with Uncle Wil. Behave then, will you all?”

Sophia held her breath as Lord Devon passed. Had he deliberately brushed his chest across her shoulder, or was it such a tight fit through a crowd of one?

Lt. Cavendish glanced up and shouted, “Wil!” Lord Devon answered, “Phil!” and the two men embraced like long-lost friends
—
not the starchy three-pat affair most men did. Oh,
no
.

She remembered Aunt Louisa had confided that Lord Devon entailed his title and estate to Philip Cavendish, his not-quite-nephew. Not his lover?

The crowd went to the music room, and she couldn’t get away. She watched Wilhelm and Philip sharing the piano bench to play a duet, two very pretty specimens of male beauty obviously quite fond of each other, and she warred with both disgust and jealousy.

By popular demand, Lord Devon took the piano bench. Sophia recognized the Mozart Divertimento, a short piece with busy three-part counterpoint. His nieces cheered when he flipped the page and played the music upside down — inverted. He rotated the page and played it backward, from end to beginning. His fingers danced over the keys without the slightest hesitation, his head nodding with the jaunty tempo.

Incredible.

The incomparable Lord Devon proved to be all his reputation lauded
— far superior to her own talent, which rubbed her the wrong way. Sophia was accustomed to being the finale, to having her unmatched intellect and musical prowess to hide behind. Today she’d been clearly outshined. Compelled to watch, she could not draw her eyes away from his strong, agile hands, his expression set in concentration, and his broad, powerful shoulders flexing as he played.

He finished to cheering, but raised his head and looked directly at her, perhaps for validation. The weight of his gaze raised gooseflesh on her arms and sparked a fire low in her gut. She’d liked him better when he’d been a fat old man in a portrait. She simply could not allow him such power over her. Blessedly, moments later Madeline climbed onto the bench and burrowed under his arm, breaking the spell.

When Martin came to announce dinner, she exited the music room last and was about to retreat upstairs when Philip called, “Join us for dinner, won’t you, Miss Rosalie?”

“Of course she will.” Lord
Devon offered his arm the same moment Philip offered his on her other side. Sophia shot Lord Devon a severe look, and returning an overly polite smile, he deferred to Philip. She fell into step behind Lord Devon and spent the long walk to the dining room trying not to admire his athletic gait or the provoking fit of his trousers.

“Nun! I am a nun!”
Sophia chanted silently as she tried to listen to Philip’s chatting.

Elise and Mary wanted to hear all about Philip’s adventures in the Navy, and Philip was eager to tell them. His ship had run supplies to troops in Bhutan until a few months earlier, when they’d returned to patrolling the Baltic. Only Sophia noticed Lord Devon’s marked silence as Philip told of his adventures at sea and a glorious victory over a band of pirates they’d encountered off the coast of India.

The mention of her name made her cognizant of not paying attention. Philip looked earnestly at her and prompted, “Wouldn’t you say so, Miss Rosalie?”

She couldn’t manage better than a weak smile. “I confess you’ve caught me daydreaming. What was that?”

“I was just saying that my sisters are quite grown, especially Madeline. You have done a marvelous job teaching her, Miss Rosalie.” He smiled and leaned in for a wink. Ten years ago she would’ve been stricken with his dapper charm.

Wilhelm caught her eye, and they exchanged smirks.
Marvelous
and
teaching
did not belong in the same sentence with those girls. “Your sisters are the loveliest in all of England, Lieutenant Cavendish.” The distinction seemed lost on him.

He shot her his dazzling heirloom smile again, and Sophia became certain he was flirting. Why? Beyond all else, for all he knew she was a lowly governess. She couldn’t make sense of it. Perhaps he was merely vain and sociable, or perhaps he wanted to add her to his catalog of conquests. A man of varied tastes?

The next-to-last thing she needed was an adventure. The last thing was a man.