Chapter 4

4

Sophie had not known that anyone else was in the room, and she suppressed a start when the Dowager Lady Wyverne addressed another person, and that deep, lazy voice responded. The maid Marchand had curtsied and left after presenting her, and she had been deeply absorbed in the old lady’s words, her sheer presence, and in the unwelcome recollections all of it had called up. She had in recent years prided herself on her excellent reflexes and her constant vigilance, but they had betrayed her here. She flushed with mortification, and was aware she did so. She must be more careful.

Lady Wyverne’s frail voice was amused. ‘Ah – this is my grandson, Lord Drake, Miss Delavallois. It is apparent that the young lady is not greatly enamoured of the idea of reading to you, Rafael. And why should she be? It is most improper. If you wish to be read to – and I would be the last person to judge you for it – you must find another woman who is prepared to do so along with her other… duties. One imagines such creatures must exist.’

‘Improper, Grand-mère? Really?’ There was clearly an excellent understanding between the pair; he too was amused, and his tone was warm, fond and intimate. It was a seductive voice, there was no denying that, but Sophie was not in danger of being seduced by anyone in this house.

Delphine laughed, and then winced with pain, and let out some most unladylike words that made Sophie blink in surprise. ‘I see I have shocked you, child,’ she said. ‘I dare say you will become accustomed to it, however. I assure you, old age is the very devil.’

‘It is better than the alternative, ma mie ,’ her grandson said.

‘I suppose so. But it is no small thing, to outlive all one’s friends, one’s lovers, and most of one’s family. It can be so melancholy… But there is no point repining. I will sleep now, I think. Leave me, both of you, and send my woman to me, Rafael.’

Sophie rose, and stepped away, curtsying, as Lord Drake approached his grandmother’s side and leant down to kiss her wrinkled cheek.

‘I will see you later,’ he said, ‘if you find yourself a little better. I suppose I would be wasting my time to suggest that you might be more comfortable and rest more easily in your bed?’

‘I am not an invalid, my dear, only devilish old,’ the Dowager said. ‘Now go!’

He held the door so that Sophie could precede him through it. After he had closed it behind him, she presumed herself to be dismissed and turned to leave.

His voice arrested her. ‘Mademoiselle!’

She could not pretend she had not heard him, though she wished to, and looked back at him, keeping her face impassive with a studied effort. What could a man of his standing possibly have to say to her, a mere servant, his grandmother’s paid companion?

He did not recognise her, of course. There was no reason why he should. The girl she used to be, the one he’d met so many years ago, had been a debutante, descendant of a noble French house, and of royalty. There had not been much money after her parents’ flight from France, but still she’d been delicately nurtured, loved, and sheltered as far as possible from the harsh realities of life. At eighteen, though, when she’d danced with him just once, she was not destined to be sheltered for much longer. A matter of days only, to remain pathetically na?ve and happy.

Sophie looked back on her younger self with a sort of fond exasperation – if she met that innocent girl now, she’d want to shake her out of her complacency, to shout at her and tell her to be careful. But what difference would it have made, after all? Disaster had been coming for her, and she couldn’t have stopped it, no matter what she’d done. She’d had no weapons, no armour. Now she had both.

His unwelcome voice broke into her reverie. ‘I am curious to know a little more about you, since you will be spending so much time with my grandmother and she is important to me. Would you care to walk a little in the grounds? It is a fine day, and not cold.’

She hesitated. It would be absurd to fear recognition, but his scrutiny must be most unwelcome. And so she had absolutely no desire to share her confected story with him, or to spend another moment in his company, but she could see that she had little choice. She felt her effort at resistance to be feeble even as she murmured, ‘It is not appropriate, for you to spend time with me, my lord. You must surely see that this is so. I have been especially warned in no uncertain terms against fraternising with the family.’

He laughed. ‘You echo my grandmother, with her talk of impropriety. I assure you, far more inappropriate things occur in this house every day. And night, of course.’ I’ll wager they do, she thought, and you an enthusiastic participant in them. ‘If you are concerned about your reputation, I assure you that you have nothing to fear from me. We will stroll a little, where anybody might see us.’

‘That’s what concerns me,’ she said drily.

His dark eyes sparked with some emotion she could not hope to interpret. ‘You would prefer to be alone with me where no one can see, in one of the secluded temples or grottoes, perhaps? No!’ He held up his hand to forestall her rushing into speech. ‘I am teasing you, and I should not. I know a woman in your situation must be cautious, though one might point out that a truly cautious lady would never have come to Wyverne Hall in the first place. Walk with me for half an hour by the lake. If anyone asks me, or even if they do not, I shall say that I was quizzing you as to your suitability to be my grandmother’s companion.’

‘You have made a habit of this, perhaps?’ she said with great cordiality, distrusting him with every fibre of her being. What had happened to her family hadn’t been his fault, but he wasn’t an innocent either, and she was not likely to forget it.

‘I have not, so far,’ he admitted. ‘Your predecessors – your many predecessors – were all of them older.’ She said nothing, merely looked at him, and he went on, an edge of what she thought was frustration entering his deep voice, roughening it. ‘I’m not helping my case, am I, Mademoiselle Delavallois? I assure you once again that, despite my maladroitness, I have no other intentions than to walk with you and converse with you a little. It was very evident how those other poor creatures came to be here, how little choice they had in the matter; with you, it is not so, or does not appear so to me.’

This hardly improved matters; the last thing Sophie needed was any member of this household taking it into their head the idea that she was somehow different, or interesting. She was supposed to be a person of no consequence whatsoever. She wasn’t meant to be having conversations outside the course of her work, least of all with him, the Marquess’s eldest son and heir to Wyverne and all its ill-gotten treasures. If his intent regard, the sheer relentless focus that he brought to bear on her, sparked an unexpected and treacherous little flame of interest and excitement deep within her, she knew she must ignore it. She would not be distracted from her purpose by any man, least of all this one. If he was attractive, and he was, she had no business admitting it even to herself. No Wyverne man could possibly be trusted. But she had little choice in the face of his insistence, and so she said, ‘Very well, my lord, I will walk with you, if you insist. I must get my bonnet and my shawl.’

He bowed. ‘Thank you. I will wait for you outside the main entrance to the Marble Saloon in ten minutes.’ He saw her uneasy reaction to his words and interpreted it correctly, saying firmly, ‘Yes, there. There is nothing clandestine about our meeting. That really would be dangerous – you must know that I am right. We are perfectly at liberty to take a short stroll together.’

She climbed the many stairs to her attic room and picked up her things, running lightly down to meet him at the top of the grand steps that led down to the lawn and the lake – one of the lakes. A marquess couldn’t be expected to make do with just one lake, after all. One of the expressionless liveried footmen – James, she thought – held open the great door for her and she walked through it, assuming an air of calm composure that she did not feel. The servants would know she had met with Rafael – with Lord Drake – and by arrangement; they’d been wary enough of her before, and this would only make things worse. She was in an anomalous position, neither one thing nor the other, and she didn’t want or need their friendship, but she hoped to avoid their overt hostility.

He did not seem to hear her coming, lost in a brown study, and she examined him while he was unaware of her presence. Obviously he hadn’t changed as much as she had in eight years, living in ease while she had not, but he’d been little more than a boy then, and he was a man now. He was perhaps five years or so older than she was, she thought, in his early thirties. She knew he wasn’t married. He was highly eligible, apart of course from the scandalous entanglement with his stepmother that all London whispered avidly about. Presumably that reduced his marital prospects somewhat, even in the moral swamp that was the haut ton. Unless you were truly desperate for a title and a fortune, you’d not want to be brought here as a bride, or sit down to dinner with your husband’s mistress, the notorious former actress, and be obliged to call her Mama. That was without even considering the atrocious reputation of your bridegroom’s dear papa, many of whose exploits were too shocking even to be alluded to. Rumour had him capable of anything, and Sophie was in a position to know that in this instance rumour did not lie. Lord Wyverne, this man’s father, was, if anything, even more wicked than he was painted.

So perhaps the harpies and the matchmaking mothers of the London Season were wary of Lord Drake, despite all his many natural advantages, which went far beyond those of fortune and noble birth. For it would be idle to deny that he was very, very handsome. Sophie’s head still barely topped his shoulder – his broad shoulder. He was quite plainly an athlete, one of the Corinthian set rather than a tulip of the ton, and his muscular form seemed to owe nothing to padding or to clever tailoring, his buckskin breeches and coat fitting him to perfection and admitting no concealment. His hair was dark and shining, arranged with studied carelessness, and his strong features were finely sculpted, and supremely masculine. But with all these attractions he could not be described as approachable; his habitual expression – except when he had been with his grandmother, Sophie had observed – appeared to be withdrawn, aloof, closed off and somewhat cynical. His eyes were dark and enigmatic, somewhere between stormy grey and indigo blue, and as he turned now and saw her watching him Sophie flushed with mortification that he’d caught her out. That was all it was; she was no green girl, blushing because a gentleman laid his eyes on her. She moved closer – not too close – and said, ‘Let us go, my lord. I fear the weather is changing.’