Chapter 7

CHAPTER 7

I f Sophia had possessed an ounce of the balance and grace of her peers or had raised her leg a few moments earlier at a simpler part of the dance, then she would have successfully stomped on Thomas’s right foot and caused the kind of riotous spectacle that would have been talked about for weeks, perhaps months.

He might have howled, might have embarrassed himself, might have taken himself down a peg or two, shattering the false image of the gallant and admired Duke, leaving her to bask in his humiliation.

Instead, she was the one who screamed as her foot slipped across a spillage on the floor, flying up while her other foot was raised in preparation for the ultimate attack. Her entire upper body lurched backward, her arms flailing wildly with nothing to grab onto. She was going down, and the entirety of the ballroom was there to witness her humiliation.

“Help…” was all she managed to squeeze out as she fell, praying the impact would be hard enough to knock her out. She did not want to hear the laughter that would undoubtedly follow.

A strong arm wound itself around her waist and halted her fall. Powerful muscles held her entire weight with ease, the grip so tight she could not breathe as she hung there, strangely suspended. The sudden movement made her dizzy, but eventually, her eyesight centered back, and she realized what had happened.

It was Thomas. He had caught her. Without an ounce of hesitation.

“If I did not know any better, I would say you did that on purpose,” he purred as he lifted her back up in a breathtaking rush that crushed her briefly to his broad chest. “Are you so desperate for my touch that you would risk your pretty neck?”

She met his wolfish gaze. “I would rather drink poison than beg for your touch.”

Grappling with the fading desire to keep up appearances, she gave his chest a light shove, but he did not budge. She was the one pushed backward as she struck that slab of granite, his athletic physique not merely for show.

“Temper, temper,” he tutted. “No gratitude, as ever.”

“Gratitude?” she wheezed, struggling to hold herself together. “Is that how you prefer your women? Grateful?”

He moved closer, his hand raised. She did her best not to flinch, knowing that he would not strike her, but she had not expected him to brush back the locks that had fallen from her bun. His fingertips skimmed her cheek, tucking the locks behind her ear.

“Do not embarrass yourself further,” he warned in a whisper. “People are watching.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw what he meant. A terrifying sight—around three dozen people had turned and were looking at her and Thomas, not including the other dancers who had stopped to see if she was all right.

“Keep pretending that you cannot get enough of me,” he told her, his eyes like two crystalline pools that could drown her if she stared into them for too long. “Pretend that my touch doesn’t repulse you. Pretend you crave it.”

She blinked slowly, in a daze. “I would crave rotten sardines on weeks-old toast first.”

“How vivid your tongue is,” he replied with a thin smile as he took her hand and kissed it. He held it there, close to his lips, long after he should have let go. “I imagine our marriage will be filled with colorful language.”

She sniffed. “Oh, you have no idea.”

“You forget how well acquainted I am with your family, Lady Sophia. I have every idea of what I have resigned myself to.” He discreetly glanced over her shoulder, no doubt assessing the situation.

As he did, freeing her from the pull of his wolf-like eyes, she realized a few things in sequence about the whole ordeal.

One. She was this close to humiliating him in front of everyone. That would have been disastrous and would have quite possibly plunged the wedding into failure, but it would have been briefly gratifying.

Two. The crowd seemed to believe them if their charmed expressions and animated whispers were anything to go by. Out of a spout of random good luck and Thomas’s reflexes, they might actually walk out of there with everyone thinking they loved each other.

But worst of all was the third one. For a good second there, while she was in his arms and he had asked if she was so desperate for his touch, she had felt her traitorous heart flutter. And she hated the betrayal with all her might.

It was the shock of the fall, nothing more.

She breathed fast and heavy, hand over her heart.

Outrage, not a fluttering. Yes, that is right. How… how dare he touch me like that? He should have… let me fall.

“Lady Sophia.” His voice brought her back to reality. “Are you well?”

He sounded… genuinely concerned?

Of course, he does. He would do and say anything to keep up appearances.

“Sophia?” he repeated, shocking her for the second time with the lack of honorifics.

Had her name always sounded like that on his lips—not sour but sweet? She pressed the heel of her hand harder against her chest as if to beat away such ridiculous thoughts. Evidently, something had happened to her head when he stopped her fall, mimicking a hefty smack to her skull.

There was nothing sweet about him. To believe otherwise was to be utterly idiotic.

“Yes. Yes, I’m fine. I am… quite all right,” she replied sharply, batting him away as discreetly as she could. “Just feeling a bit faint. I think you pulled me up too fast with your… beastly arms, which I have no doubt was deliberate.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I deliberately jostled you after deigning to catch you, when you slipped on your clumsy oaf feet without a warning? Yes, clearly I planned it all.” He rolled his eyes. “Goodness, you really are the most ungrateful?—”

“Careful,” she hissed. “People are watching, remember?”

He grabbed her hand and put it on his. “Well then, we had best get you seated before you keel over. I would not want anyone thinking I had poisoned you the night before our wedding.”

“Chance would be a fine thing,” she muttered, allowing herself to be led away from the dance floor.

Under the pretense of fetching his ‘beloved’ some refreshments after her ungainly tumble, assuring those who pestered him on his way out of the ballroom that she was quite well, Thomas had retreated to the terrace. The cool evening air had never felt so wonderful, soothing away the stress and the improper thoughts that had warmed his flesh.

That waist.

He closed his eyes, his arms remembering.

As narrow as an hourglass. The feel of her body against mine…

“Pratt!”

Thomas’s eyes flew open, his head whipping around as if he had been caught with a mouthful of cake intended for one of his mother’s tea parties.

The familiar voice belonged to Robert Skinner, the Viscount Redcliffe and Thomas’s best friend and confidant. Thomas hadn’t expected anyone to bother him on the terrace, but Robert had an unnatural ability to know where to find him.

“Didn’t expect to see you here. Thought you—” Thomas’s strained words were interrupted by a hug from his dearest friend “Thought you were still busy with all that business in Birmingham.”

“Nonsense. When I heard the news, I left at once,” Robert said with a wide smile. “I wasn’t going to miss the happiest day of my best friend’s life.”

“Right. Of course not.” Thomas had the barest inkling of a smile, turning his gaze to the shadowed shrubs in the near distance.

Robert looked worried. “Trouble in marital paradise already?”

“That… is a long conversation, friend.”

“We have time and a tipple,” he said, whipping out a hip flask that was sure to contain the finest brandy. Robert also had an uncanny ability to find the best liquor.

“Then I suppose you ought to brace yourself.”

The two men sat down on the low wall that bordered the terrace, the muted music of the ball providing the orchestral accompaniment as they spent the next few minutes sharing the flask between them and talking.

Thomas regaled his friend with the story of how his idiot brother fell for the oldest trick in the book and got taunted into a duel by the younger Kendall brother, and how Sophia had come to try and salvage the truce he had offered. He added a refresher on their families’ hatred for one another for good measure, though it was a timeworn tale at that juncture.

Robert remained mostly silent, drinking and nodding here and there, only interrupting at the mention of Sophia.

“Well, what does she look like?”

Thomas took the flask and sipped from it. “See for yourself.”

“What? She’s here?”

Thomas nodded back towards the ballroom, where he last saw Sophia. He had left her at a table halfway down the far side of the room, just visible from where the two men sat. She was still there, all alone. The other guests did not know her as they knew him, so it appeared they were not inclined to approach her and ask about her welfare.

“Which one is she?” Robert asked, stealing the flask back.

“The one devouring the tart with the tact of a capuchin monkey.”

Sophia was indeed chomping on a scrumptious-looking apple tart, crumbs and sticky fruit clinging to her lips. Thomas rolled his tongue over his lips as if he could taste it.

She will need lessons in dining etiquette too, he told himself quickly, averting his gaze.

Meanwhile, Robert gasped and elbowed him so hard in the ribs that he nearly fell off the wall. “What on… Thomas, she is exquisite!”

“I’m sure she is in some circles,” Thomas rasped, holding his bruised side.

“In some circles? Are you blind, man? She is as beauteous a rare bird as any I have seen, in any circle.” Robert turned back to observe his friend. “What’s wrong? Is there something I am missing here, Thomas?”

“She’s a Kendall. That’s what’s wrong with her.”

And she is uncouth and uncivilized, and I cannot stop thinking about the way she felt in my arms. How I wanted to hold her there and ? —

Thomas swiped the flask back and took a long, long sip.

Robert squinted. “Forgive me for being as dense as an ingot, but I thought that was the entire point of the wedding?”

“It is, but… it is only now dawning on me that I am going to be shackled to that crumb-mouthed, wrong-footed, spiteful creature for the rest of my life.” Thomas huffed out a breath. “I am lamenting my circumstances, and, as my friend, it is your obligation to let me wallow.”

“If you are so averse, then why are you going forward with it?”

“Because duty is above all. It is above my wants and needs, and it is above hers too. That is the one thing we have in common, and that is where our commonalities end.”

Robert swung his legs, shaking his head. “I’m sure you are exaggerating, Thomas. She can’t be that bad. From over here, she looks like a ray of sunshine.”

“A ray of sunshine concentrated through a magnifying glass, ready to scorch me like an ant, that doesn’t care where it’s pointing and what it’s harming. She is a Kendall—did you miss that part?” Thomas paused and took another long sip of the brandy, feeling the burn of it in his stomach.

“My entire life, my father did his best, educating me every single day, preparing me to be a worthy heir to ensure the Dukedom of Heathcote flourished,” he continued haltingly. “He taught me the importance of rules and propriety, all while the Kendalls raised their children to not give the slightest care about the exact same things. We couldn’t be more different… Do you understand now?”

“You are water, she is oil. Is that it?”

Thomas nodded quietly in response.

“That is an interesting idiom.” Robert grinned. “You know what else is a common phrase? Opposites attract.”

Thomas sighed in response, staring into the darkness, wondering if it might swallow him up until the day after tomorrow.

“You may not like it, but it’s true,” Robert urged. “I have seen it with my very own eyes. Take Lord Alencourt. When he married that woman… Uh, what’s her name?”

“Katherine.”

“Yes, Katherine. Of course.” Robert nodded. “When they married, they absolutely despised each other. Could barely bear to stand at the altar together, as it meant being in the same room for more than two minutes. And now, look at them.”

Thomas scoffed.

“No, seriously. Look at them, they are right there.” Robert gestured back towards the ballroom, that impish grin still playing on his lips.

Thomas turned in surprise and curiosity to see what his friend was pointing at.

At the east side of the ballroom, he could see a couple sitting together, sharing a table, glasses of punch in their hands as they whispered things to each other, leaning close, smiles on their faces. They looked happy. More than happy, they looked in absolute bliss, as if the rest of the world didn’t exist around them.

“Are we sure that isn’t a mistress?” Thomas asked drily.

Robert snorted, waving his hand for the flask. “Thomas, please. Would a nobleman ever bring a mistress to such an event? No, those are for secret town apartments and meetings in private rooms where no eyes can watch. That is his wife. The one that almost slapped him at their wedding.”

Thomas looked at the couple a bit longer, his mind wandering.

What was the point of it all? Marriage, even the lovely kind, was pointless, in his eyes.

At best, one of you ends up dead first and the other is left to wait until they can join the other.

As he finished that thought, Katherine threw her head back and laughed heartily at something her husband had said.

He blinked, shaking himself out of his trance. “Doesn’t mean we will have the same fate, Robert. I am not even attracted to her, and she isn’t attracted to me.”

It was fortunate that his friend could not see inside his head, where visions to the contrary played out in titillating scenes, his hands still itching to feel the curves of her waist again.

“Thomas… a man would have to be dead and buried not to be attracted to her. Look at her. ” Robert gestured towards Sophia, who was licking the crumbs from her lips with such enthusiasm that Thomas’s mind could not help but wander afresh, to places it should not.

Her dark hair, always fashioned in a loose chignon that showed little regard for societal standards, had been silky to the touch. Her eyes had shone fleetingly with something that wasn’t hatred when he had held her, and up close, he had noted the freckles that dotted her nose and cheeks. Not unseemly, as some in Society thought, but… oddly tempting, like they were inviting him to stop and count the constellations.

“Well, tomorrow, I will be the marital equivalent of dead and buried, in a lifeless marriage with a lifeless marriage bed. So, my point remains.”

Thomas sipped the brandy again, avoiding looking at Robert, knowing he would be frowning at the remark.

Indeed, I doubt we shall have a wedding night at all. I might as well ride straight from the church to a monastery.

He cast one last glance at his future wife, watching as she licked the last of the apple tart off her fingers.

Despite himself, he could not help thinking, What a pity.