Chapter 7

7

Sophie took up her duties properly the next day. The Dowager Lady Wyverne would not permit her grandson to be present when Sophie read to her, and for this she could only be grateful. She did not know if hearing her read such matter aloud would affect Lord Drake in any way, but she feared that it might seriously disturb her. That moment, when their eyes had met…

She might as well admit privately that she was powerfully attracted to him, despite the many excellent reasons why she should not be. It was almost laughable. He was the son of the man she hated most in the world, the man she was determined to destroy. If she succeeded, his family would suffer – him included, not just the rest of them. Should he discover what she was about before she did it, he’d have her thrown out of the house, if not locked in jail or beaten. If he found out afterwards, her situation would be even more desperate – he’d see her hanged, and no doubt think it exactly what she deserved. And quite apart from any of that, she could set herself up as no moral arbiter – she was a thief, after all – but the man was rutting with his father’s wife and all the world knew it. If she was a sinner, surely he was much worse. And he was suspicious of her already, after just one meeting. It seemed it didn’t matter. She felt a strong pull towards him, but she need not give in to it. After all, she wouldn’t be here long. He could be nothing to her.

Sophie was, as he’d said, a woman of a certain amount of experience – though she wasn’t sure that he’d meant it as any kind of compliment. She’d had a lover, a man she’d chosen when she saw the desire in his eyes and felt the response in her own body. They’d pleased each other for a good while, until the trajectories of their lives had pulled them apart. She knew, then, the power of animal physical attraction, not to mention the even more insidious appeal of making a connection, however fleeting it might prove to be, with another person. But she also knew, as anyone with eyes to see must, the trouble all this uncontrolled desire could cause in anyone’s life, let alone hers, here and now, with a man she should run a mile from because of who he was, who his father was, and who she was. This was no time for self-indulgence.

She could only be wary at all times, and on her guard in particular when Lord Drake was near.

Perhaps fortunately, she saw little of the Viscount over the next few days, and less luckily she made no progress with her obsession – her reason, her only reason, for being at Wyverne Hall. The matter of the jewels.

Well, that was not entirely true, for in her free time, in the afternoons when the Dowager was sleeping, she explored the enormous building. It was necessary that she know her way about the place; not only must she locate what she had come to take, but she might need to flee as quickly as possible once she had taken it, or even, if things really went awry, to hide herself for a time if she was being pursued.

It was a labyrinth. The palace, for that in sober truth was what it was, had replaced an earlier and much more modest building, she knew from her research and Nate’s, some hundred and fifty years ago, and from the outside it presented an appearance of classical regularity, with its two great pillared facades, like vast Grecian temples. One side, the side that faced the largest in a series of lakes, was more or less flat in aspect, though the central part was higher than the wings; the other frontage, no less grand, curved forward symmetrically at each side in a huge colonnade and sheltered a carriage entrance below ground level. But inside… Perhaps some traces of the older house remained within the newer one, and besides it must have been added to more than once over the centuries, modified according to the changing whims of its aristocratic owners. To attempt to count the hundreds of rooms would have been a Herculean task. It was difficult enough even to begin to get it all straight in her head.

The main public spaces were impressive, even awe-inspiring, arranged in long interconnecting series that ran out on either side from the vast domed marble atrium: ballroom, formal salons, a library, dining rooms of varying sizes. But she wasted little time on them. She was interested in the family’s private rooms, and even more in the back stairs, the little closets, the forgotten corridors, the unused, dusty chambers where it seemed no one ever went.

She imagined trying to search this great beast of a house in any methodical way. You couldn’t; it would be quite impossible. And if you’d been robbed, if there was a window open or a door apparently forced, you’d assume the thieves had fled, and taken their booty with them. Wouldn’t you? A thief would be very stupid, or very cool and daring, to commit such a crime and then stay here, along with what he’d stolen. What she’d stolen.

It was going to be somewhat bulky, her loot. A fair weight to it – all those jewels, all that gold – but manageable. If the Wyverne woman could wear it, Sophie could carry it. It would be enough to fill a small portmanteau, perhaps, or a cloak bag. And she was looking for somewhere safe and clever to hide it. Because she wasn’t going to take it and run; she was going to stay and enjoy the chaos she had created, enjoy the dawning panic on their faces when they realised what they’d lost. That was the whole point. She’d had such an experience herself, had known such a devastating loss and all that had led from it – she was never likely to forget that terrible night – and now they would endure it too. Lord Wyverne, chiefly, but all of them. They’d suffer what she’d suffered. And how she’d love it.

There was an area of the house that she found particularly promising. She discovered a servants’ staircase in a small vestibule behind the state dining room. Perhaps it had once gone all the way down to the kitchens in the semi-basement, perhaps it had once bustled with activity, but the kitchens had been moved, she thought, and its descent ended in a blank wall now. It led up still, though, and on the first floor emerged behind a panel at the end of a corridor that led to guest bedrooms. They weren’t currently in use, and there were grander ones in another wing – Sophie believed these ones would only be opened up if the house hosted a full-scale ball with dozens of noble visitors staying overnight. Since the current Lady Wyverne was not received into polite society, and probably never would be, she thought that was most unlikely to happen.

There was nothing particularly secret about these neglected rooms. But the staircase climbed higher still, up towards the attics. These were not the attic chambers the maids and menservants inhabited – those were far away on the other side of the house. There was a maze of unused rooms up here, and it was hard to see what their purpose had ever been; now, some of them were empty, hung with cobwebs, and some full of lumber and sad, discarded furniture. They’d been fine once, and several of them were large and hung with beautiful, costly old wallpaper. The paper concealed secret doors, which led to short corridors and yet more chambers. A virtual maze. In one, though, there was nothing but a single piece of furniture: a huge, decaying four-poster bed; old, probably valuable once, and far too big to move unless it were disassembled, presumably with enormous trouble that no one had ever been inclined to take. Some impulse propelled Sophie to look under the frame of it, and there she saw the outline of something, a change in the floorboards – a trapdoor, almost obscured by the dust of decades. She wriggled under the high bed-frame, glad she’d thought to change into her oldest gown.

A while later, she emerged, breathless and triumphant. She’d found it: exactly what she needed. Between the floor of this room and the ceiling of the next was a windowless space, forgotten somehow and left behind in the deranged way this house had been changed and changed again. It was tall enough to stand in, a sturdy ladder led down into it, and it was full of rubbish and nameless broken things.

She would bring up a broom and sweep away all evidence of her footsteps in the dust. She could cease looking now; she was one step closer to being ready. She made her way back through the maze, and into the largest room, the one with the lovely, faded old wallpaper in soft blues, greens and yellows. This chamber had a tall sash window that looked out sideways across the roof, towards the central section of the great house. She must be near the back of the mansion, away from the carriage entrance; this part of the building was higher that the section it adjoined, and so she could, if she wished, dare to open the window and climb without any difficulty down onto the roof. She did wish – she’d be up above everybody for once, exulting in her secrets and their ignorance.

The window’s sash mechanism was stiff with disuse, and for a while she thought it would not budge, but at last it gave to her insistent pressure, and she was able to push it up. It creaked on its ropes but moved, creating an opening that was easily big enough to allow her to duck agilely under and climb out onto the leads.

There was a decorative stone parapet, more than waist-high, and she stood with her hands upon it, taking in great lungfuls of air and looking out and down. It was another beautiful day of fast-moving cloud, and the intense new green and fertile brown of rural England in spring spread out below her – the shining string of lakes, the park with its tall specimen trees and stone follies, and then a patchwork of fields, trackways, hedges and small stands of timber rising to more heavily wooded heights in the distance. From here it seemed unreal, a toy landscape scattered with tiny toy buildings and tinier toy people, and this was correct in a fashion, because all of it belonged to Lord Wyverne, to handle as he wished, as if he were some overgrown, irresponsible toddler. He had been given so much from his earliest years, she thought, an idyllic little kingdom to possess, and still he could not be content with all he had, but must steal from others who owned almost nothing. She knew that her own family had also – through no merit of their own, but just because their ancestors were strong, ruthless brutes with swords, horses and knights – become inheritors of a great deal, and no doubt had taken it for granted and thought it their just deserts while others struggled to live, to feed their children. In the last eight years she’d been hungry and frightened, had seen starving children and other terrible sights that had shaken all she’d once believed without question. She could not deny the painful truth of what she now knew: her happy childhood had always been built on the most unstable of foundations and on the sweated labour of others. But those days of ignorance were gone, and her family had paid the highest price for their transgressions and those of their forebears. They’d been left in the end with very little, and what little they’d had Wyverne had taken from them. They had all suffered cruelly and were now dead – her mother, her father and her sweet little brother Louis – and Wyverne still lived in luxury. He hadn’t killed them, not directly, but he might as well have done. He was a wicked, wicked man, that she knew for certain; nothing she had ever done came close to his enormous crimes. Well, she was just one woman and she couldn’t take all he had away from him – but she could take a great deal.

‘Mademoiselle Delavallois!’

Once again Wyverne’s heir had surprised her. And of course it had to be him – who else? She looked along the parapet – it ran for thirty feet or so and led, she now saw, to another window mirroring the one she’d climbed out of. It was open, and standing by it, in the right-angle between the building and the edging wall, was Lord Drake, leaning at his ease against the golden stone. He was in shadow – she told herself that that was why she hadn’t seen him immediately – but as she looked at him he stepped out of the shade and crossed the leads to her side. Too perilously near for her peace of mind.

‘I must confess,’ he said, ‘I am surprised to find you here – to find anyone here. I generally have the place to myself.’ He had taken off his coat and his highly polished riding boots, standing in shirtsleeves, waistcoat, buckskin breeches and stockinged feet, and the breeze had disordered his dark hair. Somehow all of this combined to make him appear younger, and less formidable, more like the boy she’d danced with in another life, though no less powerfully attractive. She fancied she could see his warm skin, the dark hair on his muscled arms, through the fine fabric of his shirt. Sheer folly.

She shivered, though the day was not cold, and then, conscious that she still had not answered him, she said, ‘I am sorry, my lord. You are quite right, I have no business being here, and I will go immediately. Will you excuse me?’

Why must he stand so close? She could even smell him, she noticed for the first time, or the first time with conscious awareness. He smelled of fresh linen and spices, leather, and clean man. He said, ‘No. No, I won’t excuse you, in fact. My room is just there.’ He nodded in the direction from which he had come. ‘But your room is over that way, quite on the other side of the house, up in the attics, and gives no access to the roof. I think it not unreasonable of me to ask what precisely you are doing here.’

This was very dangerous. She must not panic, though, and so as was her habit she went on the attack. ‘I confess I was curious, my lord, and looked to find a way of coming out onto the roof. I like high places, the open views they give. The solitude. You cannot say that I am neglecting your grandmother, if that is what you were thinking – she is asleep this afternoon and set me at liberty. But I will go now, so that I do not trouble you any more. I did not realise that this was a place servants were not permitted to be.’

‘But you do.’ She looked up at him questioningly. ‘You do trouble me. When you are present, and when you are not.’ She thought his cheeks had flushed slightly when she’d reminded him of her lowly status but he showed no other signs of being abashed that she could see. It was frustrating, but there was an odd exhilaration, too, in sparring with him. He was a worthy opponent.

‘Still you distrust me,’ she said steadily.

‘No – well, yes, perhaps. As I think I said before, my trust is not easily given. But that’s not why the thought of you preys upon my mind. I must admit, after our last meeting I find myself thinking about you a great deal.’ His voice was so deep, so seductive, with an undeniable strength underlying it, like the softest velvet and silk sliding over hard muscle and hot skin.

Sophie was very aware suddenly of how alone they were up here, and it did not help, to know that the attraction, the compulsion that she felt, however she chose to name it, was a mutual thing. She had thought it must be. A woman knew what the light in a man’s eyes meant, the spark of interest, when they lingered on her, and she was no longer a na?ve girl.

She was about to make some light answer, to turn his words aside if she could, when his hand came out to brush her cheek, a soft touch that lasted only a fraction of a second, and yet still seemed to linger and to burn. ‘You had a cobweb there,’ he explained. ‘Another, in your hair. You really have been exploring, have you not? Let me…’ His gentle fingers caressed the side of her head, above her ear, for a moment, and then with a sort of inevitability his head lowered and his lips found hers. Claimed them. It was not an urgent kiss, or deep, it was not passionate or demanding, but Sophie found that she closed her eyes against the sheer sweet rightness of it. She sighed against his mouth and felt herself sway towards the warmth of his big body, so tantalisingly close and so very tempting. To hold, to touch, to be held and touched; no longer to be alone for a precious little while… But as she leaned towards him, his lips found her ear and he whispered very low, his breath tickling her sensitive flesh and making her shiver, ‘I know I’ve met you before. I am positive of it. And one day soon, mademoiselle, I will remember, and then – why, then I will know exactly who you are, and what you are doing here. For you are not who you claim to be, or what you claim to be. And you are quite right – of course I do not trust you!’

Her eyes sprang open in shock, but before she could patch together any sort of answer he was gone, moving fast and sure as a great cat across the walkway and stepping quickly through the window into the shadowed room behind.

Sophie turned and walked slowly away in the opposite direction, prey to a multitude of roiling emotions in which anxiety, anger – at herself as well as him – and thwarted desire warred for prominence. Eight years ago, she’d have been shaking if anything remotely similar had happened to her: the kiss, with all its false, seductive sweetness, and then the challenge. But not now. She’d faced down worse men than Drake in the intervening years, and been in greater danger, and escaped. Or survived, anyway. Prospered, in a fashion; grown hard and made a plan.

It was easy to tell herself all this, and another thing to believe it entirely. She could not be certain if he were watching her or not as she left him, not really, but she thought he must be; she felt his stormy dark eyes boring through the fabric of her gown and all the layers of garments beneath it, right through to her bare skin and her naked self.