Chapter 10

10

Rafe had not sat down to break bread with his father for a long time. Generally he left Wyverne Hall before the dinner hour, though sometimes he dined early and alone with his grandmother in her rooms. She ate little these days, but she liked to see him make a good dinner, as if he were a pale, grief-stricken child again, in need of any comfort she could give him, even the most basic one of a meal. She was, in every way that mattered, his mother – his own had died when he was small, and he struggled to remember much about her, beyond the tears she’d tried to conceal from him and her pervasive unhappiness. He thought he recalled a gentle voice, a soft, warm embrace, a feeling of safety when he’d been in her company – but he might be deluding himself. There had been his first stepmother, who had done her timid best in the short time she’d had, but there had always been Delphine, who he could not doubt loved him fiercely in her own fashion.

After his mother’s death in childbirth, his father had troubled little about him and rarely seen him unless to dress him down severely for some small error. It had hurt him when he’d been a lonely boy desperate for his approval and love, before he’d known what the man was and realised he could never get either of those things, but now he must think it a blessing. His influence could only have been malign. Wyverne had no interest in children, no scrap of parental feeling, and now his oldest son was glad of it. This lack of normal human emotion had meant that after his stepmother had also died, the Marquess had raised no objections when her uncle and aunt had descended and swept her two young children, Rafe’s half-brother and -sister Charles and Amelia, up into their care. They’d never lived with their father again, and Drake meant to ensure that they never did. They were his charges now, in daily reality though not in legal fact, and he made sure that they were kept as far from their indifferent parent as could possibly be contrived. The Marquess could at any moment choose, as was his right, to take them away, to uproot their lives on the lightest whim, and Drake would have little chance of stopping him. His only weapon, if he chose to go that far, was the fact that he didn’t imagine any court in the land would consider Rosanna fit to have charge of an innocent girl of seventeen, or – he shuddered at the thought – a boy, another stepson. He’d been such a boy once – who could know better than he how unsuitable she was as any sort of maternal influence?

As ever, his father’s thought processes remained a mystery to him, but perhaps even Wyverne, who appeared to be so utterly indifferent to the good opinion of others, might just hesitate to do anything that would provoke his heir to stand up in open court or any other public place and say in plain words and from his own experience precisely why Lord and Lady Wyverne should never be allowed to have Charles and Amelia living under their roof. He’d do it, if he must, and he thought his father knew that, even though the family had seen more than enough notoriety already, and Rafe hoped it would never come to that.

They circled each other warily, the two of them, in a sort of armed standoff, neither of them ever letting down his guard for an instant. They were icily civil – or to be accurate he was; his father usually seemed to be lazily amused – on the rare occasions that they encountered each other, as tonight, and it was many years since there had been open, blazing hostility between them.

Rafe, then, didn’t usually attend these dinners, when his grandmother was sometimes, not often, forced to come down and join a most disreputable party for his father’s cruel amusement. He wanted to protect her, conscious of her frailty, but she’d told him a thousand times that she could take care of herself, and that his hovering over her couldn’t help and might only make things worse. It wasn’t as if he feared that anyone would do her violence, and he didn’t claim fully to understand the nature of her damaged relationship with her son; his thoughts about it were little more than guesses. But she’d raised no objections to his staying tonight.

He knew why he was here, and he must assume that his clever grandmother knew too, though she had so far said nothing, for which he was grateful. It was Sophie.

He still didn’t know who she was, though she wasn’t Sophie Delavallois, he was sure of that. He no longer had the least suspicion that she had any intention of harming the Dowager – he’d observed that affection was growing daily between them and he could see their bond as he sat here now across the table – but still she had some ulterior motive for being at Wyverne, he was certain. He could tell himself that that was why he was present now, to learn more of what she was about, but it wouldn’t be true. He just couldn’t keep away, that was the bare fact of it.

This overheated room was full of women who’d undoubtedly be delighted to take him to their beds. Some of them were prostitutes and some of them weren’t, but without vanity he knew it made little difference. He really wasn’t flattering himself; it was nothing to do with him, Rafe, the person. There was no need to entertain such a ridiculous notion. After all, he was a viscount already. He was rich enough in his own right, and he was Wyverne’s heir besides, due to inherit all this magnificence and the more exalted title of Marquess one day. Wyverne was nigh on seventy and lived a highly irregular life, so that day surely couldn’t be terribly far distant. Some of them would want him, Drake, for the money and status they thought they might get from him, some for the novelty, some didn’t really need a reason, and Rosanna – well, she had her own twisted motives. But he didn’t desire any of them. He’d realised that, despite himself, despite his mistrust of her, he wanted Sophie.

He’d been watching her across the room as the raddled popinjay beside her made his advances to her. The fellow hadn’t even tried to court her before he propositioned her, hadn’t taken five minutes to try to charm her, and Drake had known the moment he’d crossed the line of decency by the way her mouth twisted in a sort of weary disgust and her eyes flashed in anger. And then he put his filthy hand on her. His grandmother saw too, and only her brisk head-shake and emphatic gesture of denial had prevented him from thrusting back his chair and seizing the revolting creature by the throat as he so richly deserved. But he saw the cur’s face redden, then grow pale, as Sophie uttered some low, emphatic words. And he released her, turned away from her with unmistakeable emphasis. She had defended herself with ease – she didn’t need him to save her.

He saw conflicting emotions chasing each other across her face, the remains of disgust warring with triumph and even amusement, and their eyes met. Scarcely knowing what he was doing, he raised his glass to her. She was so fierce, so brave, no matter what else she might be that he didn’t know yet. Rosanna, entirely disregarded at his side, put her hand on his arm when she saw, and the gesture was so utterly unwelcome that he barely managed to restrain himself from shaking it off. That would be unwise.

Sophie turned to speak to his grandmother. A short while later they were laughing together. She couldn’t be too deeply affected by what had just occurred, and he studied the pure line of her throat with a kind of hungry urgency, hoping this didn’t make him as bad as the creature she’d just repulsed. Distrust fought desire and made him a stranger to himself. The impulse that had driven him to seek out her company the very first time he’d encountered her had not left him, had only grown stronger as he’d seen more of her, as he’d given in to overmastering impulse and kissed her. It was madness, and yet he wanted more of it.

The other women here had managed the seemingly difficult trick of being simultaneously underdressed and overdressed, but she was cool in simple black muslin with a touch of silver, her shoulders covered and her neck unadorned. Her dark hair was piled up on her head, with a few ringlets falling in seeming casualness about her ears. Her lips – he’d tasted them, too briefly – were full and sensual, rose-pink, and he wanted to feast on them again, properly this time. He wanted to kiss his way down her throat and along the neckline of her gown, where the slightest tantalising glimpse of the swell of her upper breasts appeared. He’d barely touched her, just that swiftest of kisses and a moment’s caress of her hair, her cheek. He desperately wanted to. It was a powerful, irresistible compulsion rising up in him, despite himself, despite his wariness of her. He had no time for such distractions, but God, he’d never felt such need, such burning passion in every inch of him. Was this what his father had felt? Was this what had impelled Lord Wyverne to possess Rosanna despite all the many excellent arguments against it? He didn’t want to think so. The last thing he wanted was to be anything like him. He refused to be.

Rosanna stood abruptly then, in defiance of all proper etiquette, and led the women from the room; his grandmother and Sophie would have more to endure at her hands, though he knew it wouldn’t be long before his father would signal that his male guests should follow them. There would be gaming tables set up; Wyverne wouldn’t want to miss that. And then, Drake hoped, his father’s attention would turn to gambling and the other dubious delights his party offered him, and he’d let the two women, the outsiders, leave.

So it proved. It was scarcely fifteen minutes later that Rafe was able to escort them away – he could hardly flatter himself that he had rescued them. He’d done nothing; he had so little power here while his father lived. But he dismissed the footman and carried his tiny grandmother upstairs himself, smiling wryly as she reproved him, as he’d known she would, for denying her the pleasure of another few moments in William’s strong arms. She was like a chicken, or a very fluffy cat – she appeared substantial in her finery, but weighed almost nothing. Less, he thought, than she had when last he’d done her this service. His heart clenched at the thought that it surely could not be long now before he lost her forever.

Sophie opened the door for him, and they gave the Dowager over to Marchand’s tender care, and were shooed firmly away a moment later, left standing together once more outside the closed door of her chamber, Sophie holding a bedroom candlestick in one hand.

‘Your first evening of pleasure at Wyverne House, mademoiselle,’ he said drily. ‘I shall not ask you if you enjoyed it. Was the time you spent with the, er, ladies of the party very bad?’

‘Well,’ she said judiciously, ‘for the most part they ignored us. They did not speak to us, at any rate, though they made great play of staring and giggling behind their hands. But your grandmother kept me entertained with a very frank assessment of their dress and deportment, and their charms in general. I learned several new French words, which are bound to come in useful one day.’

He laughed. ‘I hate to think what they might be.’ And then he said abruptly, ‘How do you generally spend your evenings?’

‘I eat early with your grandmother in her room,’ she replied tranquilly, ‘and then sometimes we play cards, for vast imaginary sums in the old French money. I owe her a king’s ransom – I suspect she cheats! And then I go to bed. She does not sleep well, as I am sure you know, and often wakes early and calls for me.’

‘It’s not much of a life for you. You must be lonely.’

She shrugged. ‘It is no hardship. I am fond of her.’

‘I can see that.’ And then he said, ‘I doubt she will rise early tomorrow – tonight will have tired her, and Marchand will insist she stays in bed and rests. Come up on the roof with me. It’s a moonlit night, so it will be beautiful up there, and the air is fresh and clean, as it was not downstairs.’

‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘So much perfume, so much… flesh.’ She seemed to hesitate, he thought she was about to refuse him, then she said suddenly, as if surrendering to an impulse that she might easily have chosen to resist, ‘Very well. I will come.’

‘In that case…’ Scarcely knowing what he was doing, refusing to consider where all this might lead, he put out his hand, and she took it, following him along the corridor and up the nearest stair, her candle casting flickering shadows as they headed up into the darkness.