My Seductive Innocent (26 page)

Sophia stared at the creation in wonder. “How do you know it’s a day gown?”

“Well, His Grace sent it up with instructions for you to wear it today, so I just assumed.”

Sophia nodded. That made perfect sense to her. It was hard to stay too mad at Nathan when he had ordered her such a wonderful gown. The fact that he had thought specifically to do so touched her deeply. She motioned to Mary Margaret. “Help me into it?”

After a few moments of struggling to get Sophia into all the appropriate undergarments, Mary Margaret slipped the bodice and skirts on Sophia. They were actually two separate pieces, attached ingeniously by tapes that suspended over her shoulders. Each piece fastened with mother-of-pearl buttons, and around the bottom of the skirts were two rows of fur. Once she was properly hooked, she turned around and glanced into the looking glass. Her mouth parted.

The dress was exquisite. If only her looks matched. She ran a hand down her waist, which looked quite small cinched in so by the gown. “What do you call this?” Sophia asked, pointing to the intricate creation across her breasts.

“That’s an antique stomacher. It’s embroidered with robing. His Grace surely paid a fortune to have this gown created in such a short time. He surely knows how to make amends for misjudging you,” Mary Margaret said on a dreamy sigh.

He certainly did, but it bothered her just a little that he thought he needed to make amends with an expensive gift. An apology would have done just as nicely. Not that she was going to offer to give the dress back. She grinned and smoothed a hand down the lush velvet. She loved it so much she wanted to sleep in it!

“Fetch my slippers,” she instructed, eager to see Nathan and thank him.

Mary Margaret rushed to the wardrobe and came back carrying another package. “Look! This was hidden in your wardrobe!”

Sophia grinned at Mary Margaret, who was grinning back at her. Giggling, she grabbed the package from her maid and ripped into it, gasping at the stunning green half boots. Also inside the box was a pair of the softest doeskin gloves she had ever felt in her life. She immediately put on the gloves with a sigh. She’d never owned a pair. Once Mary Margaret helped her don her boots, Sophia raced out the door and down the stairs to find Nathan.

The sight that greeted her in the main hall stole her breath and filled her heart with joy. Mistletoe, holly, and evergreen boughs decorated the space. Someone had decorated for Christmastide, just as she had always wanted to do, and an entire week before the customary day of Christmas Eve! She squeezed her eyes shut and sent a silent prayer to God for her blessings, and when she opened her eyes, Nathan was coming around the corner from the portrait gallery with a package in his hands and Harry fast on his heels.

He was looking down and fiddling with the package, but when he looked up, he stopped immediately and a smile lit his face. Her heart gave a gigantic lurch at his beauty.

“You look very fetching in you new gown, Sophia.” His low, rumbling voice made her blood sing with remembrance of how the hot breath of his words had tickled her ear when he had lavished kisses against her bare skin and then whispered in her ear.

Clearing her throat, she said, “However did Madame Lexington manage to make this so quickly?”

“I do believe my money might have convinced her to borrow some creations she had started for another customer and make them into creations specifically for you.”

“You did that for me? To surprise me?” Her voice shook.

His eyebrows arched high and a smile graced his lips. “That is only the beginning of what I will do for you, Sophia.”

The statement was so unlike anything he had ever said to her that tears clogged her throat. Was he finally letting down his guard?

Clapping his hands together as if he sensed she was on the verge of crying and wanted to ward if off, he said in a cheerful voice, “You finished dressing quicker than we expected. Hasn’t she, Harry?”

Her brother popped out from behind Nathan and ran to her. He squeezed her tightly. “We were going to hide another present for you outside.”

Sophia blinked at her brother, who wore a fine shirt and trousers and a very warm-looking overcoat. “Where did you get those clothes?”

Harry hitched his thumb over his shoulder. “His Grace―”

“Nathan,” Nathan corrected as he strode up to them.

“Nathan,” Harry corrected, “bought them for me. Madame Lexington had made this outfit for another boy my size, but Nathan bought it from her. And more, too. I’ll get the rest of my clothes in a few days.”

Sophia swallowed the giant lump in her throat. She absolutely refused to cry. Instead, she moved close to Nathan and hugged him, breaking, she was quite sure, a thousand rules of etiquette. Yet, she found it impossible to care. She pressed her lips near Nathan’s ear. “Thank you.”

He squeezed her waist before pulling back to look at her with his dark, penetrating eyes. “No, thank
you
. I’ve not celebrated Christmas since I was a boy, and I’d forgotten how much fun it was to decorate and buy gifts for someone.”

Sophia blinked at him, feeling a bit dazed. “You decorated? Not the servants?”

Nathan stepped back and tousled Harry’s hair. “We decorated the hall together. Didn’t we?”

Harry nodded. “I told Nathan how you always gave me one gift a day before Christmas and how last year you wanted to give me a coat but Frank took the money, and Nathan came up with the idea that we should continue your custom.”

“But you gave me three gifts,” Sophia remarked.

“Well, we are going ice skating,” Nathan replied matter-of-factly, “and I couldn’t very well expect you to skate outdoors in a gown that wasn’t warm enough. And you had to have gloves to keep your hands warm, and proper shoes to walk down to the lake. And this.” Nathan picked up the package he’d set at his feet and handed the box to her.

“What is it?” she asked, feeling quite like an excited child.

“Open it,” he and Harry urged at once.

She quickly obeyed, and when she removed the tissue and saw the velvet, fur-lined green-and-gold cape, her eyes immediately flooded with tears. No matter what Nathan said, or didn’t say yet―such as I love you―her husband had an enormous heart and a capacity to love that he simply was reluctant to expose to the world, or perhaps most particularly her. She could wait, though. For she knew someday when this man gave her all his love, it would be worth it.

She glanced up to thank him as tears of happiness rolled down her cheeks.

A dark look crossed his face, and abruptly, he turned to Harry. “Would you go to the kitchen and retrieve the picnic from the cook?”

Harry nodded and quickly departed.

Nathan faced her once again, but now his brow was creased. “What’s the matter? How did I displease you?”

“What?” Sophia blinked. “You haven’t displeased me. Whyever would you think so?”

“You’re crying.”

Sophia swiped at her eyes. “These are tears of happiness. Haven’t you ever seen a woman cry because she was happy?”

“No.” He was giving her a dubious look.

She instantly thought of the bits and pieces she’d heard about his mother and of something he had said moments ago. “Nathan, why haven’t you celebrated Christmas since you were a young boy?”

“Ah. Well, that would be because Christmas holds nothing but bad memories for me.”

“What sort of bad memories?”

“The sort filled with screaming and disappointment. Now, why don’t you let me help you into your cape, and then we can find Harry and make our way to the carriage and ride down to the lake. Our plan was to have a picnic on the grotto and then ice skate.”

Sophia narrowed her eyes at him. “Do you always avoid personal conversations?”

“Certainly. I find it the best way to guard the secrets I want to keep.” He gave her a wink and offered his elbow to her. “Shall we?”

Sophia hesitated. She could continue to allow Nathan to hide his pain from her or she could attempt to draw him out little by little. She suspected it would be hard, indeed, but if she could show him that he could trust her without her withdrawing her love, she was hopeful that he would eventually offer her his love, not simply his elbow, and really accept hers in return. With this in mind, she shook her head at him. “The only way I’ll go with you is if you tell me why you didn’t take up celebrating Christmas again.”

He frowned as he stared down at her. “Because my mother decreed we would not.”

Sophia hated his mother, but she’d never reveal it. “And did your father agree?”

Nathan sighed. “What does it matter?”

“It matters to me. We are married, and I wish to really know you.”

“Careful what you wish for, Sophia. You might get it and not like what you find.”

“I will love all of you, Nathan.”

He brushed his hand down her cheek. “You are a dreamer, my dear. You dreamed of a better life when you were trapped in a terrible one, and now you are fantasizing that I am some perfect gentleman. I’m not.”

She shook her head. He’d utterly misunderstood her. She’d meant that no matter what she found out about him, she would continue to love him because of who he was on the inside. But before she could speak, he continued.

“I’m a realist, Sophia. London is a bitter, cynical world, and I fit in it perfectly.”

“Then I will help you not fit there so perfectly.”

“Ah, Sophia. If only it were that simple. Enough of this, though. Harry will be waiting.”

“As I am for you to answer one of my questions.” She tapped her foot for emphasis.

“Stubborn wench,” he said with a chuckle. “My father’s specialty was avoiding confrontations with my mother. On the rare Christmases my father was with us, I never asked him if he agreed that we should not celebrate and he never offered an opinion. I did not take up celebrating Christmas again because I am not a liar, and in order for one to celebrate something one must be happy. I simply decided I would not pretend to be happy. Are you satisfied?”

She nodded and bit down hard on her cheek to keep from grinning.

Without him realizing it, Nathan had just revealed that he was happy enough to celebrate Christmas with her. He could lavish her with a thousand new gowns encrusted with diamonds and pearls, but no present would ever match the one he’d just unknowingly given her. He wasn’t as cold and cynical as he thought. He was warming and softening, and he was going to love her. She had dozens more questions she wanted to ask him, such as why he was rarely with his father at Christmas, but she suspected it was more of his father avoiding Nathan’s mother, as Mary Margaret had mentioned and Nathan had just confirmed.

Getting Nathan to open up needed to be slow and gentle, lest he get scared and hide behind his walls again.

L
ater that night, after a wonderful day of picnicking marred only by Nathan informing Sophia that she might have been poisoned and urging her to be cautious, he went to her bedchamber door and was about to knock, when her humming reached his ears. The way his heart jerked filled him with dread. He cared for her. More deeply than he was willing to admit yet.

She was like a beacon of light, hope, and warmth. If he held her long enough and tight enough would he eventually feel warmth again? Would he eventually have a use for the emotion that had made him weak and caused him pain? He thought he might, and it scared the hell out of him. Because if he allowed himself to love her and then she snatched it away, he’d never come back from the darkness again. Yet, it was impossible to stand here and imagine that open, honest, guileless woman doing such a thing to him.

Her humming turned into a bawdy ditty about a sailor and his ladylove then, and Sophia sang it with the gusto only she could muster. Suddenly, he wanted to see the world as Sophia did―full of hope, wonder, and the promise of love and there was no better time to start than now.

Forgoing knocking, he opened the door and stepped into her bedchamber. She stood

swathed in moonlight, wearing a very sensible white cotton night rail that started just below her chin and went all the way to the tips of her toes.

She had her hands clasped in front of her as she shifted from foot to foot. He closed the door behind him and eyed his nervous bride. Technically, he supposed this was their wedding night since she had been sick the night they had married. “Where is the frothy creation I found you in night before last?”

“I stuffed it in my drawer. I don’t have the right figure for that gown.”

Nathan raised an eyebrow. Most ladies would never admit they had any flaws, but Sophia was not most ladies. Not that he considered her slight figure flawed. True, she lacked the abundant feminine curves he had previously cared for, but he had grown to appreciate her figure in the last several days. She was slender and graceful, but it was obvious by the night rail she wore, which was more suited for a nun than a duchess, that she did not feel very womanly.

The right words and many well-placed caresses would make Sophia confident in her charms. He quirked his finger and was pleased when she didn’t hesitate to come to him. She stopped directly in front of him and wrapped her arms around his waist. “Nathan, I hope I don’t disappoint you.”