Irresistible (10 page)

“Are you sure, Sophie?” He was searching her eyes.

Foolishly, she realized as soon as he asked the question, she had been hoping against all reason that perhaps he had asked because he had
wanted
to ask. Very foolishly.

“Of course I am sure.” She laughed. “I am the last woman in the world you would wish to be marrying, Nathaniel. And I have no wish to marry anyone. I have Walter to remember and I have this house and my pension and my circle of friends. I am perfectly happy.”

“I have never known anyone as serene and cheerful as you, Sophie,” he said, tipping his head to one side as he continued to regard her closely. “You really are contented as you are, are you not?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “Of course.”

The color was visibly returning to his face. He was not good at dissembling. His sense of relief was patently obvious.

“I will not press my addresses on you, then,” he said. “But what happened will not affect our friendship, Sophie? I would hate to find next time we meet that there is an awkwardness between us.”

“Why should there be?” she asked him. “What we did we each did freely. We are adults, Nathaniel. There is no law that says a man and woman may no longer be friends once they have been to bed together. How would any marriage survive if that were so?”

He smiled for the first time. His slow, wonderful smile that had enslaved countless women.

“If you put it like that,” he said. He looked beyond her to her bonnet and gloves. “May I offer my escort to wherever it is you are going?”

She hesitated. She wanted desperately to be alone, but if she refused, then she would be setting up the very awkwardness she had just assured him would not exist between them.

“Thank you,” she said. “I am walking to the home of a friend just two streets away. I shall be grateful for your escort.”

She put her bonnet and gloves on again, her back to him as she tied the ribbons. And suddenly it seemed unbearable that it was all over almost before it had begun—her wonderful fling with a man around whom she had weaved painful dreams for years. All over.

One night—one glorious night—was more than she could ever have expected.

But it was not enough. If she had convinced herself that one night would be enough, she had been foolish indeed.

One night was far worse than none at all.

She turned to him with her usual smile and took his offered arm. “I am ready,” she told him.

THERE WAS SOME
AWK
WARDNESS between them after all as they walked, a certain difficulty in fixing on a topic of conversation. He commented on the weather—cloudy, a little chillier than it had been, though dry at least and with almost no wind—but there was very little she could say in response to his detailed report.

She really was small. Her head reached barely to his shoulder. He could not see her face beneath the brim of her plain, serviceable bonnet. He was very aware of her—physically aware. It felt strange to look down and see his friend Sophie, to remember the cheerful, placid, sensible way she had received him this morning. And yet to feel an awareness of the woman in whose bed he had spent several hours of the night before. It was strangely disorienting to know that the two women were one and the same.

He had realized almost as soon as he had left her last night, of course—or perhaps even before he had left—that he must come back and do the honorable thing this morning. He had enjoyed the night with her more than he could remember enjoying a night with any other woman, and he certainly liked her more than he had ever liked any other woman. But the thought of marriage with her had frozen his heart. And the prospect of having to force marriage on her had made him heavy with guilt. But he had no choice.

Trust Sophie to have treated the whole situation with her usual cheerful good sense. It had been very pleasant, she had said. Dear Sophie—he might have felt offended if he had not been so enormously relieved.
Very pleasant.
She had admitted that she had never before done such a thing, and he believed her. But she had found it only
very pleasant?

“You have changed,” she said now.

“Have I?” He bent his head closer to hers. He wondered in what way she saw him differently.

“You have grown up,” she said. “So have Rex and Kenneth, I believe. Eden has not. Not yet.”

“Because I have become a staid country squire, Sophie?” he asked. “Because I have taken it upon myself to escort my sister and my cousin about town?”

“Because you are no longer comfortable with paying women for their favors,” she said.

The devil! Trust Sophie to come right out and remind him of that embarrassing moment at Rex’s. “I should have slapped a glove in Ede’s face,” he said. “In the Peninsula it was a different matter, Sophie. But in a genteel drawing room it was unpardonable of him to say what he said in your hearing.”

“But you are not ready for marriage, are you?” she said.

He grimaced. “I would readily—” he began.

“Oh yes, I know,” she said. “You are a man of honor, Nathaniel. Of course you would readily have married me once you had—oh,
dishonored
me, I suppose you would call it. But you are not ready for matrimony yet, are you?”

Did she wish him to persuade her? He did not believe so. He tried to see her face, but she kept her head down.

“You do not wish to marry,” she continued, “and yet you can no longer bring yourself to take the alternative.”

He stopped walking and drew her to a halt beside him. “Where is this leading, Sophie?” he asked.

When she looked up at him, she looked so much her usual self that he thought perhaps he was still sleeping and in the middle of one of those utterly bizarre dreams.

“I am not beautiful,” she said, “and I am not particularly attractive, though I do not believe I am exactly an antidote. Certainly you did not find me so last night. You enjoyed the experience as I did. Did you not?” For the first time she flushed.

He could not pretend to misunderstand her. “Sophie.” He dipped his head closer to hers. “Are you offering to be my mistress?”

“No,” she said calmly. “A mistress is a kept woman. I am my own mistress, Nathaniel. But I found it pleasant, I believe you did, and ...”

“And?” He raised his eyebrows. Thank heaven, a part of his mind thought, they were standing on a deserted street.

Her lips moved without producing sound. But she pulled herself together. “You will be in town for a few months,” she said. “You will be busy. So will I. But just occasionally ... Perhaps it would not be a bad idea ... I am not in search of a husband, Nathaniel, any more than you are in search of a wife. But—but I am a woman with a woman’s needs. Hungers. Sometimes. Not enough to send me endlessly in search of lovers. But ... But if you wish ... If it would solve a problem for you ...”

He understood in a sudden flash despite her seeming inability to complete a sentence. How easy it was to see Sophie’s good nature and not realize that there were deep and real feelings behind it. But he remembered asking her the night before if she was hungry as he was—hungry for passion. She had said yes. Her body had said yes.

“My dear.” He covered her hand on his arm with his own. “You miss Walter dreadfully, do you not? And we—the others and I—have made jokes of his posthumous fame. How heartless we have been. And insensitive. Do forgive me.”

She merely gazed into his eyes. “Shall we do it, then?” she asked him.

He wanted to, he realized in some surprise. It would be that affair between equals he had hoped to find and not really expected to find. He could have it with a friend, with someone he liked and respected and found attractive. It would be a relationship they would both find pleasant—he smiled inwardly. He would hope they would both find it more than just that. It would be a relationship that would hurt neither of them.

“Last night
was
good, Sophie,” he said.

“Yes.” She nodded.

“It would certainly bear repeating.” He smiled at her.

“Yes.”

He felt a sudden and unexpected amusement. He laughed and she smiled her usual cheerful smile. “Sophie, you are a bold minx,” he said. “You are bent on corrupting me. Did you
plan
this?”

“Only as the words were coming from my mouth,” she said. “Have I forced you into something you may regret? Would you like to take time to consider?”

“Would you?” he asked her.

“No.” She shook her head.

He thought of Walter’s lovely and lively widow. And he thought of the woman who had lain beneath him last night, riding to the rhythm his own body had set. Sophie—lovely and lively. It was hard to believe that this enticing woman had been there all the time in the Peninsula, but he had seen her as only a friend. Perhaps it was just as well.

“I believe, Sophie,” he said, “I would be honored to be your lover.”

For one very brief moment she closed her eyes and bit her lower lip. Then she looked about her, the old Sophie again. He noticed in the same moment that there were two people coming up behind them, still from some distance away.

“Gertrude’s house is just there,” she said, pointing a short way ahead of them.

They approached it without speaking again until he took his leave of her after knocking on the door for her and waiting for a servant to open it. He bowed over her hand and bade her a good morning.

“Thank you for your escort, Nathaniel,” she said, and disappeared inside the house.

He stood staring at the closed door for all of two minutes before moving on.

 

“Ah. You look very nice, Sophia,” Beatrice, Viscountess Houghton, said kindly. “It is the Carlton House gown, is it not?”

The Carlton House gown must be nationally famous by now, Sophia thought with wry humor. Beatrice looked extremely elegant in a new rose-red silk gown with matching turban. She was all ready for the ball. The carriage had just arrived at Portland Place, bringing Sophia—she had refused the invitation to dinner on the grounds that there would be enough excitement in the house without the added distraction of a dinner guest.

Sarah, of course, looked youthful and lovely in the obligatory white gown, which was all delicate simplicity, allowing the beauty of its wearer to speak for itself. Sophia recognized Beatrice’s guiding hand in the choice of design. Sarah danced around in a complete circle before hugging her aunt.

“What do you think, Aunt Sophie?” she asked artlessly. “Do you think I will be the loveliest lady at the ball? Papa says I will, but Lewis only snorts.”

Lewis, as blond and slender as his sister, but with an altogether more masculine effect, grinned. “If I found you the loveliest lady at the ball, Sare,” he said, “there would be something decidedly wrong with me. I did concede that you look pretty enough.”

Sarah tossed her glance ceilingward.

“Brothers,” Sophia said with a laugh, “have a way of being brutally honest. You look breathtakingly wonderful, dear. And you look very nice too, Sarah.”

Lewis roared with laughter and Sarah went off into fits of giggles and any incipient sibling quarrel was averted.

“The Carlton House gown always was elegant, Sophia,” her brother-in-law said, handing Beatrice her wrap and organizing everyone for departure. “But a new one would enable you to be in the forefront of fashion again. Bea and Sarah have spent days educating me on what is currently fashionable. Will you go with them the next time they visit the modiste? I would not notice the cost of one extra gown among all of theirs, I do assure you.”

“You would look lovely in a pale shade of blue, Sophia,” Beatrice said, “and in a lightweight fabric for summer. Oh, do come with us. It would be such
fun,
would it not, Sarah?”

Sophia smiled at them. “If we do not move toward the door soon,” she said, “Edwin is going to be bellowing at someone. I really do have all the gowns I need. And dark colors are so much more serviceable than pale. As for a lightweight fabric, Beatrice, why would I be so foolish when I live in an English climate?”

Lewis offered her his arm and she took it, noticing with approval the varying shades of dove gray and white in which he was dressed. There were going to be a dozen or more young ladies falling all over their slippers to secure an introduction to him. And Sarah’s theory was not true of her own brother. Although he was only one and twenty, there was not a single spot in evidence on his face.

“Some people,” Edwin said as he escorted his wife and daughter into the hall and nodded to the servant on duty there to open the outer door, “are as stubborn as the proverbial mule.”

“And some people,” Sophia said cheerfully as Lewis handed her into the carriage, “will be eternally grateful that they have the means with which to live independently.” She smiled at Edwin as he settled on the seat opposite to show him that she meant no offense by her words.