“As a matter of fact,” Eden said, “I sat out a hand and talked to the lady. She did everything except come right out with a bald invitation for me to take her home to bed. But alas, she made it clear that she had in mind an arrangement to last until she embarks on a planned tour of the Continent later in the summer. I was sorely tempted, I tell you, since there would be a definite period to the liaison and the lady’s charms are enticing, to say the very least. But I am not in the mood to take any risks. Besides, there is a new girl at Harriet’s I mean to try.”
“I believe, Nat,” Rex said, “the lady rejected him.”
“I hate to admit it, Rex,” Nathaniel said, “but I do believe you are right.”
“The devil!” Eden said, hot with indignation. “What I am trying to say, if a fellow could but get a hearing, is that I put in a good word for you, Nat. I talked about you and about how so much of your time is given to shepherding your sister and your cousin about that you have almost none left during which to look to your own interests. There is nothing more calculated to win female sympathy.”
“This sounds interesting,” Kenneth said. “I do believe Eden has been as good as his word and has been matchmaking for you, Nat—though not with matrimony in mind, of course.”
“She remembers you, Nat,” Eden said. “When I started to talk about you, she set a hand on my sleeve and said, ‘Lord Pelham, is he the one with the eyes?’ ”
They all roared with laughter, Nathaniel included. Eden had done a fair imitation of a husky contralto voice.
“ ‘And is he the one with the—lovely smile?’ ” Eden continued. “Note that pause, Nat, my lad. It was not simply ‘Is he the one with the lovely smile?’ It was ‘Is he the one with the—lovely smile?’ And her voice dropped an octave during that pregnant pause. Did I make that clear?”
“Well, there you have it, Nat,” Kenneth said after they had all laughed heartily again. “A mistress just waiting to be engaged for the rest of the Season. And a shapely armful to boot. Not to mention one capable of pregnant pauses.”
“And you can have the best of both worlds, Nat,” Rex said. “She could be had only with a wedding ring and a vast fortune three or four years ago. Now she can be had on a temporary lease at the price of eyes and a—lovely smile. Dash it, that was only half an octave. I am not as good as Eden.”
“She is going to be at Mrs. Leblanc’s soiree this evening, Nat,” Eden said triumphantly. “I happened to mention that you would be there too.”
“With Georgina and Lavinia,” Nathaniel said dryly. “Not to mention Margaret and Ken and Rex’s wives and—and Sophie.”
“If you cannot court a mistress discreetly under the very noses of the ton, Nat,” Eden said, “then the past two years must have changed you sadly. You should be able to woo her and bed her and keep her without even the three of us knowing if you so choose.”
“Is it going to make up its mind to rain in earnest?” Nathaniel asked, looking upward and holding out a hand palm up. “The mention of Sophie reminds me, by the way, that there is something odd going on with Pinter.”
“Do tell me he has been pestering her again,” Kenneth said. “I would enjoy nothing better than a little conversation with the man. I regret I did not have it the night before last. I was too concerned with taking Sophie out of the way.”
“He was coming out of her house as I was going in with Lavinia yesterday afternoon,” Nathaniel said.
“That does it.” All sign of levity was gone from the group. Kenneth was clearly annoyed. “I certainly hope she turned him away with a flea in his ear.”
“She did not,” Nathaniel said. “She got decidedly frosty when I asked what he had been doing there, and downright angry when I suggested that she ought not to receive him.”
“Sophie?” Rex said with a frown. “Angry? I have never seen her really angry.”
“She was angry,” Nathaniel said. “She told me—quite rightly, of course—that I had no business telling her whom she may or may not receive in her own home.”
“What the devil?” Eden was frowning too. “She
wel
comed Pinter’s visit, Nat? She looked pale enough to faint when Ken and I went to her rescue at the Shelby ball.”
“She did not say why he was there,” Nathaniel said, “except that he had gone to pay his respects, as he has done before, and would not stay for tea.”
“What is he about?” Kenneth asked. “Trying to feed off her fame? Though that has waned somewhat this year. And Pinter is the son of an earl. He does not need her to get him entrée to
ton
events. And I do not imagine Sophie is wealthy, is she? She does not
look
wealthy. What does the bastard want with her?”
“Whatever it is,” Rex said, “he is not going to be wanting it for much longer. We all noticed the effect the sight of him had on her the night before last, and we were not even all sitting together. She certainly does not like him—for which fact one can only applaud her good taste. When shall we pay the former Lieutenant Pinter a visit? Can it be squeezed in today? I would hate to waste a single moment.”
“I am with you, Rex,” Eden said grimly. “It is time the bounder discovered that Sophie has loyal friends.”
No,“ Nathaniel said. ”It cannot be done. Not that way, much as I wish it could. Sophie told me to mind my own business. Pinter did not do anything openly outrageous at the Shelby ball. He was received at Sloan Terrace yesterday just as Lavinia and I were—he did not force his way in. And Sophie did not complain of his visit. We have no right to act on her behalf by calling on Pinter and warning him away from her.“
“Actually, Nat,” Eden said, “I would be acting on my behalf as much as on Sophie’s.”
“She would never forgive us,” Nathaniel said. “We have no right to interfere in her life.”
“Damn,” Rex said.
“Why did you bring up the subject, then, Nat?” Kenneth asked.
Nathaniel frowned and thought back to that scene in her bedchamber earlier in the morning. He had seen her annoyed before. She was human, after all, and no one could be unfailingly cheerful. But he had never seen her angry. But she had been angry this morning—quite furiously angry even though she had not raised her voice or used those fists that had been clenched at her sides. Far angrier than the provocation seemed to have called for. Merely because he had shown concern for her? Merely because he had unwisely couched advice in the form of a command? He had been wrong, of course—he had realized it as soon as she spoke. His apology had been quite genuine.
But she had not been simply indignant. She had been
furious.
Sophie? Furious?
He shook his head. “There was something wrong,” he said. “She was—frightened? Was she? Is that what was behind her anger? I do not know what was wrong, but something certainly was.”
Or perhaps her anger had been occasioned simply by the fact that his timing had been rotten. He had started to give orders to her immediately after having spent the night bedding her. As though he thought he owned her. He had not meant it that way, but he could see how his behavior might have been interpreted thus.
“Damn,” Rex said again. “Is this worth pursuing? Sophie is an independent woman, after all. We have not known her for three years and have only just become reac quainted with her. She has her life; we have ours. She told Nat to mind his own business. Perhaps we all ought to do just that. After all, Pinter was only ever a sleazy nuisance, was he not? If Sophie is prepared to tolerate him, who are we to object?”
“There was the night before last, though, Rex,” Kenneth said. “She did not just have a pale face, you know. She leaned so heavily on my arm when Moira and I led her out of the supper room that I was bearing almost her whole weight. Only that indomitable willpower we were all once well acquainted with held her upright.”
“Damn!” That was Rex again.
“What makes a woman like Sophie faint?” Eden asked, frowning in thought.
“Fear,” Nathaniel said.
“Devil take it, Nat,” Eden said, “she would have been unconscious the length and breadth of the Peninsula, then.”
“A different type of fear,” Nathaniel said. “Not a physical fear.”
“Any suggestions?” Kenneth asked.
“No.” Nathaniel shook his head. “He called her ‘Sophie’ and made references to her lovely and charming self. This was out on the steps when he was leaving and I was arriving—fortunately I had left Lavinia in the carriage until I was sure Sophie was receiving. Did Pinter ever call her Sophie in the Peninsula?”
“A lieutenant call a major’s wife by her first name?” Rex said. “Never.”
“Why would she receive him the very day after the sight of him made her nearly faint?” Nathaniel asked. “And then become downright angry when I offered our services in her defense?”
“An independent spirit?” Kenneth said. But he answered his own question. “No. Not Sophie. She was always accepting our help in the Peninsula as we were always accepting hers. We all knew that the motive was friendship, not condescension or the conviction that she was weaker than we and could not cope with life without our male assistance. There is something going on, then, you think, Nat?”
“But not something we can solve in the obvious and most satisfactory manner,” Rex added. “I would dearly love to thrash Pinter. How dare he even raise his eyes to Sophie?”
“I think we should watch them both as much as we possibly can without interfering with Sophie’s independence,” Nathaniel said. “We need to find out why she is frightened of him yet will not confide in us. If she
is
frightened, that is.”
“Oh, she is, Nat, surely,” Kenneth assured him. “It takes a great deal to rattle Sophie, but she was rattled two nights ago. And yet she let him into her house yesterday?”
“She is to be at Mrs. Leblanc’s tonight?” Eden asked of no one in particular. “I wonder if Pinter will be there too. I will stay close to her. Rex and Ken, you have your wives to think of, and Nat is going to be busy courting the widow under your very noses without seeming to do so—not to mention squiring his young relatives about. Leave Sophie to me, then. I’ll maybe take her about with me in the coming days and weeks too. It will be no hardship after all, will it? One cannot imagine more congenial company than Sophie‘s, even if she is not the world’s most ravishing beauty.”
Nathaniel found himself wishing it were appropriate to pop his friend a good one to the nose, but it was not and so he held his peace.
He was not at all sure he had done the right thing this morning. He felt almost as if he had betrayed Sophie. What she did in her own home was, after all, no one’s concern except hers. But Ken was right. Her reaction to Pinter at the Shelby ball had not been one of simple dislike. And her anger last night—or this morning—had not been simple indignation. There was definitely something wrong. And it seemed the natural thing to turn to his friends with the problem. They were her friends too, after all. And this was something that concerned their friendship. It had nothing to do with Sophie’s being his lover.
Except, he admitted, that that fact made him more protective of her than ever. And more worried. If she would not confide in a lover, then there must be something indeed. And of course, there was that other fact he had been unable to tell his friends without revealing that he had been twice to her house yesterday. At his first call she had pretended that Pinter’s visit had not even taken place. She had not wanted him to know at all.
“White‘s, Nat?” Eden was saying. “Breakfast?”
“Not today,” Nathaniel said. “I have been informed that I am to escort Lavinia to Sophie’s this morning—they are to visit the library together. And I have been asked to take Georgina to Rawleigh House. It seems she is to call upon a certain Master Peter Adams.”
“Ah yes,” Rex said. “My son will be delighted to acquire yet another female admirer. He has altogether too many of them in town. His nose is going to be severely out of joint when a brother or sister joins him in the nursery in a few months’ time.”
The conversation moved on into other channels, but Nathaniel was satisfied—and also a little uneasy—that he had allies in his determination to protect Sophie from whatever it was that was upsetting her usual placid cheerfulness.
Sophia almost did not go to Mrs. Leblanc’s soiree. It had never been her way, even at the feverish height of her fame and popularity, to attend more than a select few of the Season’s entertainments. And though she had realized that this year would be different because of Edwin and Beatrice’s presence in town and Sarah’s come-out, she had not intended to go everywhere with them. Perhaps she would accept one invitation a week, she had thought, and even that seemed somewhat excessive. The soiree was only two evenings after Lady Shelby’s ball.
But she succumbed to the lure of friendship—and of something else too. First Lavinia, during their morning visit to the library, begged her to be sure to attend. What would she do for sensible conversation if Sophie were not there? she asked.
It felt good to be wanted—not just as a sister-in-law or as an aunt or chaperon, but as a friend. Their reading tastes were remarkably similar, they discovered. Both of them liked to read books of history and travel and art. Both of them liked novels in moderation but shunned the more spectacular Gothic romances that pleased so many ladies of their acquaintance. Both liked poetry, though Sophia loved Blake and Wordsworth and Byron, while Lavinia preferred Pope and Milton. It was a wonderful morning with a great deal of conversation—and of laughter too.
And then during the afternoon Moira and Catherine, who had come to bear Sophia off to the shops, expressed their disappointment over the fact that she was not quite certain she would attend the soiree. She simply must reconsider, they both told her. They were determined to know her better now that they had discovered her.
There was that other lure, of course. Nathaniel would be there. It was the very fact that should keep her away. They had spent two of the last three nights together; she had danced with him at the ball; she had received him, however briefly, in her sitting room yesterday afternoon. She must be very careful not to presume upon their relationship. She must be even more careful not to arouse even the smallest suspicion in any of their friends and acquaintances—or in any other member of the ton for that matter.