Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

“ I don’t recall saying something humorous, Lord Lynwood.” Thomas turned his steely gaze on the snickering man. Sophia saw his fraying patience in a tiny twitch at the corner of his mouth.

“You don’t find it hilarious that we spill the smallest bit of your blood, and you panic so much that you offer marriage to my niece?” Frederick paused to take a sip of his brandy. “It is the greatest joke I have ever witnessed, to see a Pratt running scared at last.”

“Excuse me?” said Thomas.

Clasping her hands together in silent prayer, Sophia wondered if she ought to yell that she would do it, that she would marry Thomas if they would just back down.

Frederick sneered. “You appear to be confused often, boy. I was referring, of course, to your late father, who was brave enough to vanquish so many of his enemies in honorable combat. Never lost a duel! Isn’t that right? I’m sure he must have shown his sons how to fight properly. It was probably a fluke that your brother lost the duel to my nephew. Yet, here you are, waving a white flag.”

The Dowager Duchess gasped at that, the hiss of her disgust fading into a full five seconds where one could hear a pin drop.

“ What? ” One could hear Thomas’s teeth grinding through his clamped lips. He looked like a balloon ready to burst.

Frederick sniffed. “You heard me well, boy.”

“You called us in here just to insult my late father and my dear mother in front of me, Lord Lynwood?” Thomas’s voice rolled like thunder in the back of his throat—an animalistic growl to echo the look in his eyes. “Need I remind you of your position? I won’t have mud thrown at me by an earl and a marquess who should know better.”

Oh no.

Sophia surged to her feet as if she could do anything to stop the men. Her mother’s hand closed around her wrist, pulling her back down into the chair.

“Do not involve yourself, and do not repeat what you have already said,” Lydia whispered.

But how could Sophia not? Whether the men in her family acknowledged it or not, she was at the center of this.

Frederick crossed the invisible lines that had been drawn, stepping into the space between them. “Oh, you can go and wave your titles somewhere else, Your Grace ,” he spat. “Your father may have been an intimidator and a bully, but we will not tolerate that behavior in this house. If you did not want your mother to hear the truth, you should not have brought her with you. It would have meant one less scrub of the floors.”

Oh goodness, no, no, please.

“How dare you, you uncivilized pig!” responded the Dowager Duchess, her voice heard for perhaps the first time that afternoon.

Charles puffed out his chest. “I shall not tolerate that sort of thing in this house! You ought to watch your tongue, Madam.”

“Everyone, please! This is unacceptable!” James interjected, trying to defuse the situation.

“And they have the gall to call us barbarians!” agreed Lydia, also throwing her voice in the ring.

“Not you too, Mother!” added poor James.

“Yes, behold the great lineage of the Kendalls,” Thomas said mockingly. “You offer them a hand in peace, and they spit in your face. You both need to watch your words, My Lords, and especially how you speak to my mother. Unlike you, we do not silence the women in our household.”

Sophia blinked, an odd feeling cutting through the liquid swirl of panic in her chest. Her gaze flicked to the Dowager Duchess, who had stepped closer to her son, weaving her arm through his. Like she knew that she would be safe there.

“Or what, you whelp of a duke?” Charles barked. “I will not tolerate threats and insults in my own house!”

Thomas quirked an eyebrow. “But I must? I doubt you can even hear how ridiculous you sound through your own hypocrisy.”

Oh goodness, no.

This was getting out of hand. For her father to explode so passionately and even her mother to cry out meant they were all inside a powder keg, the fuse fizzing closer and closer to detonation. Sophia looked at Frederick, who was smiling wide, his teeth showing.

He wanted this. He wanted this to happen.

The atmosphere was a cacophony soon enough. There was no more potential for civilized discussion with shouts, screams, and insults flying everywhere. Her eyes even caught James, who was trying to get involved and calm down their parents, but it was to no avail.

This isn’t going to end well.

Her mind raced to find a way, any way, to stop this.

“ENOUGH!” Thomas boomed, immediately demanding attention and dispersing the discord.

Sophia didn’t want to admit that she was slightly impressed—his authority was quite something to behold.

He straightened his tailcoat before continuing. “This doesn’t befit either of us. It’s beneath us— all of us. We need to solve this like gentlemen, not curs scrapping over a bone.”

“Then we should not have let the mongrels in,” Charles retorted, his blood still up, showing in the bright purple of his cheeks and the haughty expression on his face. “Your marriage proposal is not fit to wipe my horse’s hooves.”

Thomas laughed tightly, striding across the drawing room as if he meant to come to blows with Charles.

Sophia’s father lost his nerve, cowering and spluttering as Thomas came close… But the Duke passed him by, walking right up to the table where Sophia sat as if they were at a ball and he was about to introduce himself.

His fierce gray eyes, no longer devoid of emotion, stared down at her. Anger burned like stars in the black of his pupils.

“Your Grace,” Lydia began to say, but he put up his hand to shush her, masterful in his command of the room.

No one moved. Not even Frederick.

Thomas grasped Sophia’s hand and bowed at the waist to press his lips to it. She had forgotten to put her gloves back on after luncheon, realizing only as his warm lips grazed her bare skin. Her breath hitched in shock, sounding a lot like a gasp.

A… savage. Uncivilized, presumptuous, outlandish savage.

Her stomach fluttered as if the luncheon had not agreed with her—or at least that was what she told herself.

He lifted his gaze slightly, his lips still pressed to her skin. A strange emotion crossed his face, but she could not decipher it. It looked a lot like disgust or pain or confusion, but none of those words seemed to fit.

“I will not make you suffer the indignity of seeing me put a hole in your father’s chest today. Or your uncle’s,” Thomas said in a rumbling growl. “But nor will I seek peace again when it has been so unceremoniously thrown back in my face. I am sorry for the losses to come, for you and me.”

He gave her hand the lightest squeeze and let it go so unexpectedly that she almost sent the teacups on the table flying.

“I would have heard your voice on the matter,” he added, “but your family seems to be too fond of their own.”

With that, he fetched his mother and brother, ushering them out of the room ahead of him. They did not wait to be escorted out; their departure was quickly followed by the thud of the front door closing.

“You ought to wash that hand in lye, Sister,” Samuel said with a scowl.

Frederick grunted in agreement, storming out of the drawing room. For a second, Sophia feared he was going to chase Thomas down, but the heavy thumps on the staircase suggested otherwise.

At that moment, Charles finally seemed to remember that his daughter was in the room. “Well, I am sure you will be glad of that .”

Sophia could not reply. She was not glad at all, her heart sore with the knowledge that the feud would only get worse. The duel had nudged the hornet’s nest, but her father and uncle had just kicked it savagely. And as she looked from Samuel’s hand to James’s pale face, hearing Thomas’s parting words in her head, she knew what she had to do.

You will not listen to me, but you will not be able to ignore this.

James had called her a dove, not realizing that she had talons.

“Your Grace, there is someone at the door,” the butler said through the bedchamber door, interrupting what had been a very soothing bath to wash away the grime of the unpleasant day.

“Tell them I am in the bath!” Thomas replied with a groan.

Was he to have no peace, even at such a late hour? It was just past midnight, not an appropriate time for callers.

The butler sounded like he was choking. “I don’t think I should, Your Grace. Apologies, but they will not leave, and I… can’t chase them off.”

Assuming it was a friend in need of a companion at the gentlemen’s club, Thomas reluctantly heaved himself out of the bath, threw on his housecoat over his wet body, and headed downstairs. The less dressed he was, the less chance he had of being coerced into late-night merriment.

However, he regretted his decision as he opened the front door and found the last person he had expected standing there.

Sophia Kendall’s eyes widened, her mouth falling open as she looked at his state of undress, her gaze trailing to places it should not. The more she stared, the more relaxed he became, a smirk curving his lips.

“You’ll send the scandal sheets into a frenzy if you are seen staring at me like that,” he said coolly, since she had not spoken.

She balked, her freckled cheeks dusted with the prettiest pink. “I was not staring,” she remarked. “I was… shocked. Who would not be when a supposed gentleman answers the door in… well… in not much at all?”

“Maybe I knew you were coming.”

It had been a long day; he deserved to be allowed to toy with a Kendall a little bit.

What a pity you are one.

Her piercing green eyes were uncommonly beautiful. She was uncommonly beautiful, going against all of the fashions of the day. She wore her glossy dark hair looser than most, wavy locks escaping to frame her face, shorter pieces fanning out across her brow. She had freckles and a complexion that suggested she was not afraid of the sun, an angular face that some might have deemed too sharp, and the poutiest lips he had ever seen.

“I doubt that,” she muttered, glancing furtively over her shoulder. “I will not trouble you for long, Your Grace, but… I came to tell you that I do not want this feud to continue. I do not want to see anyone else hurt, knowing I could have stopped it.”

He leaned against the doorjamb. “How noble of you. I trust your family doesn’t know you are here?”

“No, but they will.” She straightened her posture, drawing his gaze to the swell of her breasts, which were heaving with the effort of her conviction. “I mean to convince them to accept the truce you offered, but I thought I ought to inform you first.”

He took a half step towards her. “Inform me of what, exactly?”

“What do you mean?” She frowned, breathing harder.

“No, Lady Sophia. What do you mean?”

She blinked, resting her hands on her hips, highlighting the curve of her waist as the fabric of her dress tightened with her touch. “You are being obtuse.”

“I am asking for clarification,” he corrected. “It is of vital importance in matters of business, so there can be no misunderstanding.”

She cast another anxious look over her shoulder, drawing his eyes to the slender curve of her neck. “Obviously, I mean that I will marry you.” She looked back at him, her eyes bright. “I accept the proposal. My family will, too.”

Thomas noticed that a small white feather had fallen onto the velvet of her spencer and moved closer to remove it. “Say please,” he replied, plucking off the downy feather.

“What?” She seemed taken aback, staring at the feather, which was now pinched between his fingertips.

“You are asking me for a favor. You should say please.”

“A favor?” she choked out. “ You made the proposal!”

He shrugged. “And did I, or did I not, tell you that I would not seek peace again? Asking me to reconsider is asking me for a favor, Lady Sophia.”

He was not normally so loquacious with Sophia, preferring to say very little during their previous, brief encounters. But as she had mustered the courage to come to him in the dead of night, against her family’s wishes, he figured he ought to be more obliging.

You certainly have more courage than the rest of them.

She dropped her chin to her chest, huffing out a steadying breath. “Please…”

No word had ever sounded more satisfying, the breathy whisper of it having a peculiar effect on him, a man who prided himself on his steadfast rationality, his ‘reasonableness’. It was like a spell or curse being woven, unleashing something inside him that he did not know he possessed. A part of him that wanted her to beg forgiveness for her earlier insolence.

“Please what?” he said, his voice a quiet rumble.

Her eyes flickered up, her throat bobbing. “Please reconsider.” That breathy sound again, prompting him to drag his teeth across his lower lip. “Please say you will proceed with this, helping me save us all.”

He closed the gap between them, half expecting her to flee down the porch steps. To his partial satisfaction, she held her ground, breathing hard as he bent his head and whispered close to her ear, “But are you ready to become my wife, Lady Sophia?”

The scent of her skin struck him like a punch, infiltrating his senses with its honey sweetness, a note of spicy warmth, a hint of citrus, and the earthy floral of lavender. Intoxicating.

He could not resist it, his lips barely skimming that maddening curve of her neck where the delicious scent was strongest, inviting him to take a bite.

She shivered, her breath catching in her throat as she murmured, “I am. I have to be.”

The sound of her panting those words loosened the restraints that held back the darker side of him. He nipped the sweet flesh of her neck, just enough for there to be pressure but no pain.

“Very well,” he purred, stepping back. “Now, run along before you are missed.”

She stayed frozen there for a moment, eyes wide, mouth open, breathing raggedly, her hand sliding slowly up to her chest and coming to rest over her heart. Was it racing? Was she intrigued or terrified? Did she truly know what she was getting herself into?

“I will… write soon,” she gasped before she turned tail and ran.

Thomas watched her go, brushing his thumb over his lips as if he expected to feel a trace of her on them. If his bite left a mark, all the better. The Kendalls would see it and know to whom she belonged now.