Seducing Mr. Heywood (9 page)

Lady Sophia wanted to tell him that she would rather he mounted her than his horse but she refrained from expressing herself so crudely. Two weeks ago she would probably have blurted it out, but she had begun to regain control of her turbulent emotions and disavow coarse language. Two weeks ago, she would probably have boxed his ears, also, but though he deserved a rebuke for this summary dismissal, she would not lose her temper, much as she was tempted.

Charles was thwarting her, nay, rejecting her, and it was painful.

She extricated her hands from his. Though she would not express what she really felt, a demon inside her could not resist a parting salvo. The vicar exasperated and frustrated her; she wanted him. His kiss had awakened desire and more, much more. And she knew he wanted her. How could she not be aware of that?

“Are you a man, Charles Heywood, or a eunuch?” she challenged him boldly, the gauntlet thrown.

Charles flushed. He wanted to defend his raging masculinity, something she would have discovered for herself if her forward explorations of his person had taken her any farther and passed over his trouser flap. Yes, he was a man, a man who responded physically to her touch, to her overwhelmingly desirable presence. She was the epitome of desirable femininity. It was amazing he had even an iota of control left right now.

“I am no eunuch, my lady,” he replied, the muscles in his face stiff. “But this is not proper, and you know it. Your children are in the house, your servants are aware that we are out here—”

Lady Sophia Rowley swept him a contemptuous gaze, dismissing him on the spot. “You lobcock,” she spat, “you fool.”

Swatting him on the shoulder, she strode angrily toward the house. Charles thought her departing back
was the most beautiful sight he had ever seen. Her square shoulders, her long legs…The feel of her silken skin had been exquisite. He sighed. He
was
a fool, a pious idiot. He had insulted her, making himself out to be her moral superior. He was simply more aware than she of the impropriety of the situation, not only for himself, but for her. It was not a time to give in to their baser instincts.

Though Lady Sophia was an honest woman, she was behaving improperly. What was right for the
beau monde
was not necessarily right for others. If he were more forthright, he would have told her exactly how he felt and why he could not so casually bed her. But he would rather that she saw for herself why it was not proper, why what was
de rigueur
in looser London society was not acceptable here at her late husband’s home.

He wanted her, yes, that was the truth of it, for he was a man infatuated with this lady, but he could not take her so casually. Perhaps more than halfway in love with her and in danger of falling further under her spell as he saw her on a daily basis and began to admire her spirit, he still had to reject her advances. She was a remarkable woman, and he no doubt seemed a hypocrite and a fool to her.

Charles could not blame her. Perhaps he
was
a fool and lobcock, as she’d stated he was, but he could not so easily throw over his moral precepts, not even for such a tempting goddess as Sophia Rowley.

How his friend Lewis would laugh at his dilemma!

The Earl of Dunhaven stared at the portrait of his daughter Sophia. He and his companion, Lord Brent, had been ushered into the drawing room by the butler who’d poured them drinks per Lady Sophia’s instruction. Sophia surveyed her father coldly, as if she wished him at Jericho, her eyes shards of blue ice.

A soft chuckle escaped Dunhaven’s lips. It turned into a low laugh, then a deeper one. Finally, he could restrain his guffaws no longer. He threw back his head and laughed so loudly that tears formed in his eyes.

“This…is…priceless,” he exclaimed, barely able to utter the words. “Was this Romney a fool or a prankster, my dear?” He turned to his stiff-backed daughter, standing silent by the side of the mantel. “You, of all women! The virginal huntress! Oh, this is a rare one!”

He took a gulp of his wine. “You, London’s foremost Lady Lightskirt, the goddess Diana!”

Eliot’s companion, Lord Brent, looked astounded. The coarseness! This was the man’s daughter, his flesh and blood. He felt disgusted.

Lady Sophia turned to the openmouthed butler, noting with no pleasure the breach of his famous iron composure. “Bromley,” she said, for the first time addressing her retainer by his proper name, “please see that these
gentlemen are served their dinner. I will take mine in my room.”

As she turned to leave, her sire’s raw laughter still ricocheting off the papered walls, she whirled suddenly and flung the contents of her sherry glass into Dunhaven’s face, freezing the last raucous bray in his throat.

Lord Brent could not believe what had just occurred. He turned to the white-faced butler who seemed ready to faint. Brent put out a hand but the servant had recovered his composure. Lady Sophia, her blond head held high, exited without a backward glance. The drawing room doors yawned behind her as if openmouthed in wonder.

Sophia rose an hour after dawn the next morning, much to the consternation of her abigail Joan, who noted unhappily that her mistress was rising earlier and earlier these country days. She donned a new riding habit of royal blue and strode briskly to the stables, there to rouse the stable lads and mount her spirited black mare, Jezebel. She rode at a gallop, breaking stride when she came to the upper meadow. There she stopped, surveying the rolling landscape with a brooding look, lost in grim, dark thoughts. Her life was falling apart.

The sudden appearance of her father at Rowley Hall was the final straw in a week that had included Charles Heywood’s rebuff in the garden. She had fooled herself into thinking she could easily seduce him. She was losing her powers of attraction. First Isaac, now Charles. No one desired her. No one loved her. She should simply end it all and cease suffering. Who would care if she did away with herself? Her life was pointless.

Hoofbeats alerted her to a horseman drawing near. Lord Brent, her father’s friend, was behind her.

“Lady Rowley,” he called, a bit out of breath.

She turned her steed. The atmosphere surrounding her person seemed to drop several degrees, so cold and wintry was the stare she fixed on him.

“My lady, excuse me for intruding on your morning ride. I beg your pardon, but I…I wanted to say that
I am very sorry for what transpired last night.” He fixed a sincere expression on his face, his brown eyes conveying concern. “I have long desired to make your acquaintance, my lady, but in better circumstances than—”

Sophia interrupted his pretty speech; her cutting laugh contained no mirth. “No one knows me, Lord Brent,” she replied, her lips compressed. “No one.”

She spurred her mare and galloped away, leaving her pursuer in a spray of dust.

“Least of all do I know myself,” she murmured, her grim fancy a dark and monstrous creature sitting squarely on her shoulders. Reining in her thoughts and her horse sharply, she narrowly missed a fallen bough in her path. Jezebel did not deserve a broken leg because of her bout of the dismals, Sophia thought, struggling to calm her roiling emotions. She was feeling sorry for herself again and she despised weakness, in herself more than in others.

Soothing Jezebel, patting her smooth, warm black neck, Sophia sat tall in her saddle and cast aside the monster whispering in her ear. It fell to the earth with a loud splat as she laughed and continued her morning ride. It was a beautiful day.

Charles recognized the smug expression on Mrs. Chipcheese’s narrow face as she served him breakfast. Obviously, she had news. News she was eager to impart to him. No matter that he had attempted to lecture her gently on the evils of gossip, rumor, and the spreading of unsubstantiated tales, she clucked her tongue and brandished it like a sharp, cutting saber, oblivious to his concerns. He sighed.

“Well, Vicar, some news from the Hall!” she flashed a gap-toothed grin at him.

“Do tell.” She would, anyway.

Mrs. Chipcheese placed the sliced cottage loaf on the table alongside the dish of freshly churned sweet butter and the remaining crock of loganberry preserves she’d put up last summer. “Seems as the Widow had a surprise visitor last night. Two visitors, as a matter o’ fact.” His
housekeeper always referred to Lady Rowley as the Widow, purposely disrespectful. Charles’s efforts to stem this rude usage were to no effect either.

News indeed traveled fast from the Hall to the vicarage, he acknowledged. It was scarcely seven o’clock. Did the news arrive by sparrow express or on rabbit feet? He almost laughed, thinking of those diminutive creatures garbed as postboys, making their break-of-dawn rounds at Mrs. C.’s doorstep.

“Indeed, Mrs. Chipcheese?” Charles’s lips quirked as he reached for the jug of fresh milk and added a good splash to his cup of strong black tea.

The housekeeper nodded her head vigorously, threatening to undo her tightly wound topknot of coarse gray hair. “The Widow’s father and a male travelin’ companion turned up, just like that”—she snapped her fingers with a loud click—“without so much as a by-your-leave, the servants said. Unexpected. No message sent ahead.”

“Now how would they know that? Perhaps Lady Rowley was expecting them. The servants don’t know every—” He paused as Mrs. Chipcheese raised her bushy eyebrows. What was he thinking? Of course the servants would know. Servants knew everything. They were the ones who prepared rooms and meals for guests. Visitors meant increased work. Of course, the vails they presented to the staff when they departed could be generous and were appreciated, but Charles rather doubted that the baroness’s father was a generous tipper. From what George had told him, that gentleman’s pockets were permanently to let.

Neither Lady Sophia nor her sons had mentioned an imminent visit from the Earl of Dunhaven. Charles recollected that Sophia had never spoken her father’s name in his hearing; she’d said nothing about him.

And now he was here? Curious. Charles had promised to take the boys fishing today after their Greek lesson. He would soon find out was going on at the Hall. The boys were even bigger gossips than the staff. If he was not out of favor with Lady Sophia after what had occurred or, more truthfully, had not occurred in the garden
the other night, he would be dining with the family tonight, as he did each time he visited the Hall to tutor the boys. He looked forward to those informal suppers, just the four of them. Would Sophia’s two guests also be at table?

But Mrs. Chipcheese wasn’t through with her story. “And Mary Mathew says the Widow’s not at all pleased. Tried to send them to Roslyn town, to the Cock and Bull, instead of puttin’ them up at the Hall.”

Despite himself, Charles asked, “And they refused to go?” This
was
news!

“Mrs. Mathew said they pleaded extreme fatigue from travelin’ the past few days, and the Widow was forced to put them up, though she scowled somethin’ fierce and Lizzie Turner swears she was tossin’ furniture about in her dressin’ room later that night! And the butler, Bromley, was out o’ sorts, too. Yes, things was at sixes and sevens last night at the Hall! The Widow has a bad temper, she does.”

To himself, Charles agreed that his housekeeper was correct in her estimate of the lady’s temper. Sophia was indeed a temperamental woman, but since the boys had arrived, it seemed to Charles that she’d been working to gain control of her emotions. The surprise arrival of her father seemed to have shifted her equilibrium badly. It was plain she had not expected him and wanted him and his companion gone.

Charles had to face the fact that he might be another individual Lady Sophia did not want to have in her presence. He would not blame her. Well, it was time for him to mend fences, unless those were irrevocably destroyed. His shins ached with all the mental kicking he’d indulged in these last several days.

Robert Winton, Lord Brent, was beginning to regret returning to England. Even more, he regretted taking up with the Earl of Dunhaven. Tom Eliot was despicable. The man’s former good looks were blotted with years of dissipation; he was no longer the fresh-faced, handsome Englishman he had once been. Brent could see the resemblance
between him and his lovely daughter, but it was blurred. Dunhaven’s dissolute life style had corrupted him in body and mind. The man’s coarseness and his crude language were upsetting, suited to brothels, gaming hells, the lowest of venues, but not appropriate in his daughter’s home. Brent felt compassion for the woman, a rare emotion for him; her face, when he’d caught up with her that early morning, was bereft.

Dunhaven greeted him in the breakfast room, grunting in approval at the repast set before him. The well-trained Rowley servants had laid a feast on the grand Elizabethan oak sideboard in the morning room. Eggs, hard-boiled, scrambled, and coddled, deviled kidneys, ham, sausages, muffins and breads…There was enough to feed a slew of guests.

“Tom, we have to talk,” Brent began, filling his plate with an assortment of foodstuffs. A footman came forward to pour coffee. “Leave us,” he instructed the servant.

Dunhaven quirked an eyebrow at his companion. “Hmmn, this sounds serious, man. Dismissing the servants? Who cares what they overhear?” He heaped his plate.

“Evidently, you don’t,” Brent accused him, remembering the horrified reaction of the Rowley butler, “with your comments last night.”

“Bloody hell, Brent! No one keeps me from speaking my mind, least of all the bloody servants!” He sat down heavily at the table. He looked around. “And who’s going to pour my coffee, now that you’ve sent the footman away?”

“For God’s sake, pour it yourself, man!” Exasperated at the man’s sloth, Brent grabbed the coffeepot and performed the footman’s duty. The liquid slopped over the edges of the delicate porcelain cup as he slammed the pot on the table.

“Have a care!” Dunhaven called out. “You’d make a terrible retainer, Brent. God help you if you ever have to work for a living.” He laughed.