Irresistible (32 page)

Alarming things were happening to him, he decided, catching the direction of his daydreams. Perhaps most alarming of all, though, was the fact that he was not alarmed.

The day continued busy, with a picnic to attend during the afternoon. There were letters on the desk in his study, his butler told him when he arrived home with Lavinia, but it was not a day for business. The reports from Bowood and anything else could wait. Georgina would have sifted out the invitations that arrived in considerable number every day and taken them upstairs.

The afternoon was perfect for a picnic, and the rural setting of Richmond Park could not have been better chosen. Perhaps it was a setting particularly conducive to romance, or perhaps what happened during the afternoon was inevitable anyway. Georgina strolled along one of the grassy, oak-lined avenues with Lewis Armitage for an hour before tea, and for half an hour after tea.

They were being a little indiscreet, Nathaniel thought, and wondered if he should do something to part them. But he did nothing. They were not so unwise as to step out of sight even for a moment and they looked comfortable together—and perhaps a little more than comfortable.

It was an impression that was borne out by Georgina’s reaction when they arrived home later to being asked how she had enjoyed the picnic. They were alone, she and Nathaniel, Lavinia having gone straight upstairs to change her clothes. Georgina flung her arms about his neck—the second young lady to do so in one day. No, the third—there had been Sophie early in the morning.

“Oh, Nathaniel,” Georgina said, tears of what was obviously sheer joy shining in her eyes, “I
am so
happy.”

“Are you, Georgie?” he asked, hugging her. He felt a little uneasy. He would hate to see her hurt. “Lewis Armitage is the cause, I gather. Has he said anything?”

She colored up prettily. “How can he have,” she said, “when he has not spoken to you yet?”

“Quite so,” he agreed, and found himself exchanging a grin with his sister. She and Armitage had an understanding, then?

“Lord Perry has asked to call upon Lord Houghton tomorrow morning,” she said. “I daresay he is going to ask for Sarah’s hand. Lewis—Mr. Armitage, that is—says that his mother and father should be given a day or two to recover from that.”

“I see,” he said.

“But I am so
happy
,” she said.

“Then I am happy too,” he told her, kissing her forehead. “I will expect a call within the next week or so.”

She smiled brightly and turned to run up the stairs.

How many hours until midnight? Gazing after her, he drew his watch from his pocket. Five o‘clock—seven hours. An eternity. Seven hours less seven minutes. He had been that early last night and she had not minded. She would not mind tonight.

It was still an eternity.

This was the evening when he was to have dined with Lady Gullis and then attended the theater with her small party, Nathaniel remembered. Fortunately she had written to him the day before to beg to be excused as she had been invited to a house party in the country for a few days. Perhaps some other time?

Nathaniel guessed that his reluctance to enter into an affair with her had become an annoyance to her and she was putting an end to the acquaintance in an amiable manner.

He could have gone to a concert that Georgina and Lavinia were to attend with Margaret and John, but he was glad of a free evening for a change. He was going to sit with his feet up in the library, he decided, with a book. He might even close his eyes and have a sleep. Even if the night ahead was not going to be quite as sleepless or as energetic as last night, there would still be
some
expenditure of energy, he did not doubt, and some wakeful hours.

He remembered after seeing his family members on their way after dinner, of course, and after settling to his quiet evening that there were letters on the desk in his study. He would read them in the morning, he decided. But in the morning he was going to call upon Pinter with his friends—Eden had found out the man’s address and Kenneth had already delivered Nathaniel’s copy of the statement against Pinter. Ken should be a full-time politician, Nathaniel had decided after reading it. He certainly knew how to make dirt appear filthy indeed.

He would read his letters in the afternoon, then, he decided, finding his page in his book. But tomorrow afternoon he had promised to take Lavinia and Georgina to the Tower of London, weather permitting. Lavinia wanted to the see the armory while Georgie wanted to see the crown jewels. Besides, tomorrow would bring its own pile of letters.

He sighed and got to his feet. If he was fortunate, he thought as he made his way to the study, there would be nothing from Bowood today, or at least nothing that needed much time and attention. He yawned noisily. He might not have felt tired earlier in the day, but he was deuced sleepy now.

There was nothing from Bowood. He took the few letters there were back to the library with him and settled thankfully into his chair.

There were a couple of bills Georgina and Lavinia had incurred during the past week—both modest. There was a letter from Edwina at the Bowood rectory, doubtless written in her small cramped hand and crossed so that the words would be next to impossible to read. And when he made the effort to read them anyway, he would find the letter as dull as one of her husband’s sermons. He felt guilty. At least she had made the effort to write. He forced himself to spend fifteen whole minutes proving that he had been right in the first place.

There was another letter. He opened it and read it. And dropped it to his lap while he set his head back and closed his eyes.

Was this too, he wondered, because she feared Pinter?

She had not feared him last night. And Pinter could not know about last night unless he kept a constant surveillance on her house—an absurd idea even for him, surely.

Why then? If not because of fear, why?

Because she did not want him?

She had wanted him last night.

She might as well have slapped his face. Was that what last night had been all about? Had she been thanking him for returning her ring and her pearls?

Oh, Sophie. The letter sounded so very like her—calm, practical, cheerful. Somehow the image he had of her in his mind now was of the old Sophie, plain, rather dowdy, slightly disheveled—Walter’s wife.

He could not associate this letter with last night’s vibrant, passionate lover.

Had she merely wanted a night to remember? Had she known even this morning before he left that she would write this letter? Had she used him—as he had used countless women years ago?

There would be some justice in such a thing, he was forced to admit.

But not Sophie. Not
Sophie.

They had decided, he and his friends, that they would not let her know of their visit to Pinter tomorrow. She would discover she was free, but she would not know that they—that
he
—had had any hand in it. There would be no excuse to call on her.

He would never see her again, then, unless he ran into her by accident.

He would see to it that that did not happen, he thought. If Georgina became officially betrothed within the next while, she would perhaps wish to return to the country to prepare for her wedding there. Perhaps they could all return to Bowood. He did not believe Lavinia would object to being deprived of the rest of the Season.

Or if Georgina preferred, then perhaps she could stay in town with Margaret and he and Lavinia could return to Bowood and begin the process of setting her up on her own somewhere reasonably close. She would surely be eager now that he had mentioned the possibility to her.

He was desperate to leave town. To be back in the tranquil security of Bowood.

Sophie,
he thought, realizing suddenly that he did not need to rest now as there was nothing and no one to rest himself for.
Ah, Sophie. It was such a pleasant dream, my love. I thought perhaps you were dreaming it too. How foolish of me!

But he stayed where he was, his eyes still closed. There was nothing else to do.

BORIS PINTER HAD HIS lodgings on the second floor of a house on Bury Street, behind St. James’s Street. Sophia arrived in the middle of the morning, alone and on foot. Those facts did not endear her either to the servant who answered her knock or to the woman who came out of a downstairs room to examine her appearance—presumably the landlady. But Sophia had dressed with care and wore the voluminous cloak she had always worn in the Peninsula—it had a somewhat military look, she thought. And she introduced herself with cool confidence as Mrs. Sophia Armitage, wife of Major Walter Armitage, come to call upon Lieutenant Boris Pinter.

Somehow, Sophia thought with what might have been amusement under other circumstances, she awed both of them into submission. The landlady even preceded her up the two flights of stairs to the second floor, just as if she were a servant herself. She knocked on the door that presumably opened into Mr. Pinter’s rooms and waited until his man answered her knock.

Mrs. Armitage, the valet informed the landlady, was expected. He opened the door wider, and Sophia stepped inside. Her heart, which had been thumping for some time, threatened now to rob her of all breath. She declined to allow the valet to take her cloak. She would not be staying long, she told him. He showed her into a salon, a large square room with heavy furnishings and dark draperies. She was left alone there for a while.

She was standing a little to one side of the door when it opened again. She had been tempted to cross the room to take up her stand before the window or the fireplace. She could not bear the thought of being anywhere close to him. But she did not want him between her and the door either.

“Ah, Sophie, my dear,” he said, closing the door behind him, “what a pleasant surprise it was to know that you were coming here—and sooner than you might have. But you have come alone without even a maid?”

He looked rather handsome, she thought dispassionately, dressed in well-tailored clothes, his dark hair freshly brushed, his face smiling. A new acquaintance might consider him a charming young man.

“You have no answer,” he remarked. “Will you have a seat?” He gestured toward a sofa.

“No, thank you,” she said. “Where is the letter?”

“Here,” he said, patting the right side of his chest. “But you do not want to read it, do you, Sophie? Have you not put yourself through enough of such torture? You may see it, of course, if you do not trust me and wish to verify its authenticity. One hates to be vulgar, but do you have the money?”

He had crossed the room as he spoke and sat down in a low chair close to the window, though she had not sat herself. A deliberate discourtesy, of course.

“No,” she said.

He raised his eyebrows, crossed one leg over the other, and swung his booted foot. “Oh?” he said softly. “No money, Sophie? But you have come for the letter? And what, pray, do you have to offer in exchange for it? Your less-than-delectable person? I am afraid that would be worth less to me than one comer torn from one letter.” He smiled his most charming, white-toothed smile at her.

She understood something then, something that explained everything, something that she should have realized far sooner—the reason Walter had blocked his promotion, the reason for his intense hatred of Walter and all who had been close to him, the reason for his determination to use these letters in any way he could for their destruction.

Most villains, she supposed, were not just blackhearted incarnations of evil. Most of them had some justification for what they did, however misguided. She understood his justification.

“I want all the remaining letters,” she said. “Every one of them. For a simple price. I will take them in exchange for your life.”

His foot stilled and his smile became immobile. “My dear Sophie,” he said, sounding amused, “where is your gun?”

“Here.” She drew Walter’s gleaming pistol from one of the large pockets inside her cloak, holding it steady with both hands and pointing it at the center of his chest, both arms extended.

There was one big problem, she realized. He had only one letter inside his coat. The others would be in another room. She was going to have to go with him, the pistol trained on him the whole way, to get them. And there was that large valet in the rooms somewhere. But she had thought of all that ahead of time and had been unable to think of any way to simplify matters.

She must simply be firm. She must not lose her resolve by one single iota.

His boot had resumed its swinging. His smile had broadened. “By Jove,” he said, “I can almost admire you, Sophie. You had better put it away, though, before I come over there and take it from you. I might feel constrained to send you home with a few bruises to remind you not to so waste my time in future.”