My Seductive Innocent (11 page)

“I don’t suppose I can say for certain. She’s a strong-willed chit.”

“Take your best guess,” Nathan snapped, his irritation and the pain getting the better of his tongue.

“In town at the Beckford General Store, then likely to the chimney sweep, Mr. Exington’s, headquarters.”

“Excellent. I’ll need directions,” Nathan ordered as he withdrew a full coin purse. “I’ll see that the money we agreed upon is here within a fortnight. For now, take this as representative of my word.”

“This money extra?” Vane asked as he took the coin purse and juggled it back and forth between his grubby hands.

“It is, but I highly suggest you use some of it to buy your daughter a new cape. One made for the winter.”

“’Course I will,” Vane replied, not meeting Nathan’s eye. The man was lying, which didn’t sit well. More disturbing than that, though, was that Vane clearly didn’t give a damn about Sophia. It reminded Nathan of his own mother, and he didn’t care for the reminder one bit. So much so that after retrieving his pistol and securing his coach, he departed without a backward glance.

S
ophia stomped along the road as she walked toward Mr. Exington’s, her mother’s letter rubbing against the inside of her right ankle. She was afraid to part with it now that Frank had taken the money, even though she didn’t plan to go back to Frank’s. She’d taken the only thing she could not live without before she was to make her escape with her brother. She still couldn’t believe that Frank had sold Harry. When she’d gone downstairs to leave to get the bread, Mary Ellen had told her it had been done.

She sniffed loudly and paused long enough to kick a rock she passed, imagining that it was Frank’s head. He was a despicable lout. She had no money, but somehow, someway she would leave Mr. Exington’s today with Harry in tow.

As she passed the Beckford General Store, Mrs. Dalton stepped out with a sack clutched in her hands and glared at her. Normally, Sophia would ignore the wretched woman, but this morning she didn’t have it in her to be the bigger person. She glared in return, and Mrs. Dalton descended the steps into the street and pointed at Sophia. “Turn your eyes, ladies,” she crowed. “Sophia Vane is a fallen woman. She is not pure!”

Sophia’s steps faltered as several women standing around Mrs. Dalton gawked at Sophia.

“How do you know?” one of them asked.

Mrs. Dalton puffed up. “I saw her with a naked man with my own eyes. And not a trifle embarrassed was she.”

“That’s not true!” Sophia seethed. “I was helping him. He was shot.”

Mrs. Dalton didn’t acknowledge her words. “She demanded I leave, so she could be alone in the bedroom with the man.”

“Sinner,” an older lady with silver hair hissed.

Sophia curled her fists at her side. “We are all sinners, you old bag.”

The plump woman standing by Mrs. Dalton pointed her fat finger at Sophia. “You should hang your head in shame.”

Sophia notched her chin higher, though angry tears clogged her throat. “I’ve nothing to be ashamed of.”

Mrs. Dalton reached into the sack she was holding and stepping toward Sophia, threw a handful of flour at her before she could back away. Sophia gasped in outrage as Mrs. Dalton shouted, “You’re not welcome in this store.”

That was it! She refused to take any more. She strode toward Mrs. Dalton and yanked the sack out of the woman’s hands then tipped the entire thing over Mrs. Dalton’s head. “I wouldn’t visit your store ever again even if you paid me. I’m going to London, where the possibilities are endless!” With that, she turned on her heel and stomped off toward Mr. Exington’s.

Sinner indeed,
she fumed as she passed the shoe shop, tears blurring her eyes and flour still tickling her nose. She’d never even kissed a man, but the town wouldn’t care. Mrs. Dalton had seen to that. They’d condemned her as a whore based on a rumor that Frank had set in motion. Truthfully, they’d condemned her the day she was born.

On top of it all, Frank deserved to be skinned for selling his own flesh and blood. She’d anxiously been watching Nathan, waiting for a sign that his mind was clearing from the laudanum. When it had, she’d been on the verge of begging Nathan for money so she could flee with Harry, but Frank had appeared at the door and now here she was. Stuck again.

Up ahead, she could see Mr. Exington’s office. She squared her shoulders, took a deep breath, and charged on.

N
athan muttered to himself as he maneuvered his curricle down the narrow, crowded street and studied the businesses he passed, looking for the chimney sweep’s shop. He’d already stopped at the general store and been told in a shrill, hysterical voice by a woman covered in flour that Sophia had been there and had left after pouring a bag of flour on the woman. Nathan could well imagine what had led to Sophia’s actions, if the harridan had called Sophia a lightskirt. Grimness settled over him. His conscience over Sophia’s clearly destroyed reputation was screaming at him and wouldn’t stop.

He clenched his jaw as he continued at a slow, annoying pace down High Street. Why the devil were the streets so busy today? As he drove his curricle, he viewed the buildings, large and small, new and old, crammed together in solid, soldier-like rows on both sides of the street. He drove past the Black Bull Inn, the White Horse Café, a cock yard, and the Crown Inn while sweeping his gaze up and down the street for a glistening, cropped-haired, dark-headed whisper of a woman.

The sounds of bartering, bickering, chattering, and laughing filled the air, along with the solid hum of his curricle wheels against the cobblestone street and the clop of his horses’ hooves as they walked. Maneuvering between two carriages in front of him, he had to pull up sharply on the reins when a small boy with a full head of dark hair darted in front of his curricle. The boy glanced up at him with large, frightened, piercing blue eyes that seemed to glow, surrounded as they were by a soot-covered face. He was filthy, rail thin, and looked as if no one cared for him.

Anger recoiled through Nathan at the plight of unwanted and unloved children. The situation was far too familiar for him. If it hadn’t been his fortune to be born into wealth, he could well have been a chimney sweep like this boy. He didn’t doubt for a second that his mother would have gleefully sold him for the coin he would have brought her, and by the time his father came back around for one of his rare visits, Nathan probably would have been dead.

Nathan reached into his overcoat and took out several coins, never breaking eye contact with the obviously wary child. He motioned the boy to come closer. The child bent down and picked up the brush he had dropped before shuffling with stooped shoulders and a lowered head to the edge of the curricle.

Ignoring the angry shouts of the men forced to stop their carriages behind him, Nathan bent down and held out the gleaming coins to the child. The big blue eyes moved from Nathan’s face to his hand, and back again. Desire and fear swam in the depths of the child’s eyes.

“Go on,” Nathan said softly. “These are for you to buy a treat and some good food to fill your belly.”

The child licked his lips before dashing his hand out and attempting to grasp the coins. Nathan closed his hand around the small one, having been expecting such a maneuver. When the boy cried out and recoiled, Nathan gently increased his hold. “I’m not going to hurt you. I just wanted to say something before you run off with the money. I’ll let you go, but you must promise to stand here and listen.”

The boy hesitated for only a moment before nodding, and Nathan immediately released him, half expecting the child to dash off, but he stayed put, true to his word. Nathan grinned. “You need to be careful when crossing the street. If I didn’t have quicker reflexes, you’d be lying under my horses’ hooves right now and
that
would not be a pleasant place to be.”

The child swallowed audibly before speaking. “Y-y-yes, milord.”

“Your Grace,” Nathan corrected gently.

“Yes. Your G-G-Grace.”

Pity for the child welled in his breast. He’d been a stutterer as a young lad, too, and it had been made far worse by his mother’s constant berating. He hadn’t been born such, but living with a mother who was sweet one minute and fearsome the next had made him anxious, until she’d abandoned any pretense of sweetness in the privacy of their home, and he’d set about learning to control his stutter with fierce determination.

“Do you have parents?”

The boy seemed to be contemplating the question. Perhaps he didn’t know, or perhaps he knew them but wished he didn’t.

He shrugged his slender shoulders. “A f-f-father, but he’s no p-p-parent.” The last word was spit out in anger.

“I’m sorry,” Nathan said softly, shooting a glare over his shoulder at the man muttering curses at him.

The boy shrugged again. “I’ve a s-s-sister, too,” he said with a bright smile.

“Well, lucky you,” Nathan responded, sensing the boy’s love for his sister. “I bet she would tell you to hold your spine straight and your head proud.”

The boy’s mouth parted in obvious surprise. “Sh-sh-she would.”

Something about the way the boy cocked his head and quirked his mouth stirred familiarity in Nathan. He frowned, and then a bark of laughter erupted from him. “Is your sister’s name Sophia Vane, perchance?”

The boy nodded.

“Would you tell me where the chimney sweep shop is?”

He nodded his head, again, and as he did so, a screech of pure rage filled the air and floated above the rest of the racket on the street. Nathan whipped his gaze to his right and just ahead, and for a frozen moment, all he could do was stare in amazed wonder at the sight of Sophia, flung much like a sack of the flour that covered her, over the shoulder of a big, burly man. The second passed with the exhalation of Nathan’s breath. Rage filled him, propelling him off his curricle and toward the foray.

“L
et me go,” Sophia screamed as she beat at Mr. Exington’s back. “You cannot keep my brother!”

“I can keep him,” the man replied smugly.

Futile tears stung her eyes as she struggled to breathe, crushed as she was under the heavy weight of the man’s arm.

Mr. Exington dropped her onto the hard ground and loomed over her. He raised a tattered whip over his head. “If you try to thieve your brother away from me again, I’ll use this whip on you
and
him. Do you understand me?”

She stared mutinously at him and sensed the very moment his control snapped by the way he bared his teeth. Her body tensed as he growled and snapped the whip down toward her. Fear caused her to squeeze her eyes shut, as if that would somehow prevent the oncoming blow or somehow lessen the pain.

The hiss of the whip slicing through the air filled her ears but the anticipated stinging pain didn’t come. She scrambled backward as she glanced up, astonishment ceasing her backward motion and causing her breath to catch in her chest. Nathan stood behind Mr. Exington, whose arm was extended behind him and over his shoulder in an awkward position.

Not only could she not believe he was out of bed, but he was moving with surprising agility for a man who had almost died and barely had time to recover. And he looked very fine, indeed. Despite the fact that he
had
nearly died. He had on the same breeches, overcoat and boots she had first seen him in, minus the dirt and wrinkles they had acquired in his journey, thanks to her care of them.