Romancing the Rogue (18 page)

~~~~

Wilhelm was up
to something. He’d been acting suspiciously since they’d arrived in Cornwall — had it really been a month? Always riding out to St. Agnes to check the post and send wires. Sophia wanted to get her hands on one of those pesky yellow papers to see what the big mystery was all about.

Of course she appreciated the demands on the Earl of Devon, managing his vast estate and all that, but he acted too forthcoming when she pried. If he’d behaved impatiently with her droll, nosy questions, she would have believed him.

That, and he had been subtly interrogating her about her father.

“
So Lord Chauncey oversaw the withdrawal of the East India Trading Company? In his capacity as a military officer, or for private interests?”

“Did you ever notice so-and-so visiting at Eastleigh?”

What newlywed man had that on his mind? Definitely suspicious.

Sophia sat on the lawn, reading Dostoyevsky, while Aunt Louisa napped upstairs and Wilhelm rode to St. Agnes for the fourth time that week. The girls had taken Fritz out exploring, promising to stay inside the property gates. Occasionally she heard Fritz barking from afar, probably at a rabbit.

Her brain struggled to comprehend life in a Siberian prison camp, since every other paragraph her thoughts wandered to Wilhelm, and what went on between them behind closed doors. Or more accurately, what
didn’t
go on between them in private.

He defied every known trope regarding male behavior. Just her luck, to finally want a man who seemed all too capable of keeping his hands off her. He believed the consummation of their marriage a failure, which he felt keenly, and refused to try again. Oh,
she
had tried. Joining him in the bathtub? Tossing her dressing gown and shift over his head, climbing into his lap? All met with a controlled kiss and cool geniality. Or he wanted to
talk.
He looked, but he wouldn’t touch.

For her to want him in the first place felt like a victory. She hadn’t panicked until the end, when his rather inspiring enthusiasm bordered on just this side of roughness. He’d pinned her down, blocking her in with his shoulders and thrusting with a force that shook the whole bed. For a while it had been deliciously masculine. Then it had hurt a little, and the pain had hurled her into a mindless panic.

She hadn’t been able to control it, even though her subconscious had shouted,
It’s only Wilhelm. You are ruining the experience.
Alas, she had been conditioned to fight, like a Pavlovian dog. It conjured those horrible memories, tactile with an artificial sense of danger. He hadn’t even noticed, not until she was half-crazed with irrational fear. Considering it was his first time, too, she figured he could be forgiven.

But her father had intruded in the bedroom
—
come between them as husband and wife, and that had made it personal for Wilhelm. He could not let go of his anger; he burned with hatred in a destroying angel sort of way. Almost as much as she hated Lord Chauncey herself.

She suspected only time would heal her, with Wilhelm’s help. Now if only she could convince him practice makes perfect… So he loved to read? Perhaps she should give him an illustrated copy of the Kama Sutra. She had an idea about how to stave off her panic, but she wanted Wilhelm to think it was his idea.

Oh, bother.
Would Fritz quit barking already?
Sophia rested the book face down on the grass and listened. Like mothers know a baby’s cry, she knew barking, and she didn’t like the menacing, deep-toned volley from Fritz. It should mean a warning, a show of dominance. No hint of playfulness in the sound.

On instinct she decided it was an emergency. She ran to the stable, remembering she had only the old mare since Wilhelm had taken the gelding. Sophia climbed atop the gate to mount the horse bareback and rode directly from the stable, ducking under the door. The horse spooked at the gate; Sophia grasped the mane and held tightly with her legs as she calmed the horse. After a moment of wrestling with the mare, she seemed to understand she wanted to follow the sound of the dog’s barking.

Branches whipped her face and arms as they pushed through the woods, and Sophia was sorry there had been no time for a saddle when the horse jumped over a ditch. Pitiful, the stodgy gait the old horse ground out, but Sophia quelled her impatience and resisted tapping the nag’s flanks despite being almost giddy with dread.

At last she spied Elise and Mary huddled at the fence ahead, standing before the south gate of the property with Madeline nearby. Sophia heaved a sigh of relief to see them all well and standing. Fritz danced irate circles at the gate, jumping up on his hind legs and barking through the iron bars. The girls turned and waved their arms when they heard the horse approaching, their faces panicked and tear-stained.

Movement on the north hill where the road split for Rosecrest caught her eye. Tearing down the road at a flat gallop rode Wilhelm, crouched low as he pushed the gelding to its top speed. He didn’t see her, in fact he seemed to aim for the east side of the property. And — could that be Philip? Riding hell for leather in the opposite direction, on course to intercept Wilhelm, came a man who looked like Philip as far as she could tell, though he was supposedly watching over Rougemont in Devonshire.

Utterly confused, Sophia decided to attend to Wilhelm’s nieces. She dismounted and ran to them. Elise and Mary met her halfway, crashing into her with clinging embraces. She squeezed them back and set them aside to look at Madeline, who writhed on her tiptoes and whimpered. Caramel ringlets seemed to float above her head. Upon closer inspection, Sophia saw Madeline’s hair supremely tangled in the iron filigree covering the gate, and her efforts to work free had turned her hair into a tangled mess resembling a fisherman’s net.

“What happened here?” Sophia tried to ask Elise. She barely heard herself over Fritz’s racket, and Elise stood shaking as though she’d been haunted by a ghost.

Mary swallowed and finally answered. “A m-man! A despicable, horrible man…” She fluttered a hand over her heart. “Appeared out of n-n-nowhere! And Fritz, he…”

Sophia’s heart sank.
Oh, no.
“Who was it, Mary?”

“I don’t know, but he asked about
you
. He said he would k-k…” Mary burst into loud sobs, competing with the din from Fritz.

Kill us all, no doubt. Not if I get him first.
“Shh, Mary. Hush now, I will ask for the tale later.” A jolt of panic threatened her calm, making her want to either cry like a baby with the girls or bark at the gate like a lunatic with Fritz. Her father had tracked her here, or at least one of his thugs had. And threatening the girls? She shouldn’t be surprised by the depravity, but it did stoke her anger.

Sophia shouted at Fritz to desist. He obeyed but paced and jumped about, complaining with doggish grunts. Madeline shifted and whined, reminding Sophia of the first priority. She tried to work a section of twisted hair over the loop, but Madeline yelped in pain, so she let go. Elise and Mary cried out in response.

“Elise, Mary, stop that this instant. You’re frightening her.” Sophia leaned in close and whispered, “If I have to cut it, I want no dramatics from you. Please.”

Madeline’s head blocked access to the hair caught on the gate, so Sophia used the horse to reach the top and climbed over. Her dress snagged on an iron finial, tearing it noisily from hem to waist. Brilliant. She swallowed a curse and asked instead, “How on earth did you get your hair stuck in the gate?” All three girls started blubbering at once, so Sophia decided to wait awhile for the explanation.

On her way down, her foot landed on the handle and it turned, opening the gate door. Not locked. Who had unlocked it? Only Wilhelm and the few Rosecrest staff should have the key.

Sophia knelt and studied the tangled mess of Madeline’s hair. She threaded some of the strands off the iron loops, but what to do about the long strands snagged from root to tip? She had no scissors, not even a knife. But in her pocket she did have her bookmark, a metal dagger-shaped piece truthfully meant to be a letter opener. It was only marginally sharp, but it would have to do.

“Did I ever tell you about Lady Rosalind DeFarier?” Sophia used a breezy voice to distract the girls, ignoring Madeline’s yelping over her pulled hair. “Undisputed authority on modern Grecian fashion. Tight short curls with a band of flowers across the head, mimicking a laurel wreath. Only weeks after she went out with her new coif, I saw no less than fifty heads so styled at the opera, both in Paris and London.”

Sophia glared at Elise and Mary, warning them to silence as she sawed through the worst of the knots, holding Madeline still with a hand on her shoulder. Poor girl; she would debut before it all grew back.

Oblivious to the diplomacy at hand, Elise blurted, “I agree short hair can be considered comely on a girl with a long-shaped face, but I also heard that a woman’s hair is her crowning glory.”

Madeline gasped. “How short?”

Elise indicated seven inches between her fingers, and Madeline began to cry again.

Mary knelt in front of Madeline. “We shall all cut our hair short. Won’t we, Elise?”

Elise’s eyes went wide, and she opened her mouth to argue.

Before Sophia could react, Fritz erupted into barking and leapt at the gate. Elise and Mary startled, shoving Madeline sideways, and the force jostled Sophia’s arm just as she pressed down the little dagger to cut a knot of hair. The bump to her elbow sliced the blade right across her left forearm. She grasped the gate to keep from toppling over, righted Madeline on her feet, and shouted at everyone to calm.

It took a few seconds to clear the chaos, and moments longer until Sophia noticed the stream of blood running down to her hand onto her dress. The source was a long dark gash; it looked like she’d smashed blackberries on her arm. Odd that the dull blade had cut so deeply, but wasn’t that just her luck?

The girls gasped and panicked again. Sophia yelled something unladylike, silencing them.
With the gate unlocked, at least she didn’t have to climb back over. Her arm throbbed now that the shock had worn off.
“Madeline, are you hurt?”

She rubbed her scalp ruefully. “No. Not really.”

Sophia clamped a hand over her arm, and the girls stared wide-eyed at the blood seeping between her fingers. Elise moaned, on the verge of tears again.

“Elise, I think I loosened enough of the knots to slide the rest of her hair off the loops. Can you manage it?”

Elise nodded, completing the task with shaky hands.

The rumble of hooves and shouting male voices drifted from the east hill. Hopefully it meant Wilhelm had just caught the man who had frightened the girls. They shouldn’t linger in case not.

“Let us go home. If we see a bogeyman, I will let Fritz eat him.” She turned and scowled at the blasted dog.
“Folge und verteidige.”
Follow and protect.
Without another word, she pulled herself onto the horse and let it walk back toward the house. She covered her bleeding arm with her ruined skirt. It soaked through before she was halfway there.

In Which Somebody Gets Roaring Drunk, And It’s Not Wilhelm

Wilhelm returned to
a silent house, anxious for a reason he couldn’t explain. When he came through the front door, he saw Fritz sprawled on the rug, gnawing on a cut of meat probably stolen from the kitchen.

Before he could ask, he found Sophia sitting on the floor with her head propped on a chair cushion, one hand grasping her opposite arm. Her disheveled hair sported leaves and twigs. Blood smeared her face and coated her hands and arms.

“What in hell
happened?” He took in the dark crimson splotches on her tattered dress.

She opened her eyes and raised her head, searing him with a defiant glare.
He knelt at her side and she swatted him away.
“Why don’t
you
tell
me
what in hell happened.” She dropped her head back and closed her eyes again, as though she could shut him out.

Dread warred with the distraction of hearing her throw his curse back at him. “Is that your blood?”
Of course it’s her blood, lackwit.
“How badly are you injured?” He tried to pry her hand away to look at her arm, but she resisted. “
Damnation.
Sophia! What happened to you?”

“Amputation proved unnecessary.” She finally graced him with a marginal look from one slitted eye. “Wilhelm, I saw you. Riding eastward from the north hill.”

What?
Hopefully she missed his jolt of alarm. She’d been outdoors, exposed and vulnerable? Frantically he reviewed the events of the past hour, wondering if he had unwittingly put her in danger.

“And was that Philip running the opposite corner of your trap? I hope you two caught the bastard, because he gave your nieces quite a fright.” Her voice sounded like low boiling, threatening to erupt.

“Are the girls here?”

“Upstairs with your Aunt Louisa. Safe and sound if not rattled, and short one crowning glory. Apparently I am not pleasant company at the moment.”

“I cannot fathom that,” he joked, running a nervous hand through his hair and feeling completely run over. He would go out of his mind later, but now he didn’t like the pallor of her skin. And if all the blood soaked into her dress had come from her injury alone, it was far too much.

“So did you catch him? Or would you prefer to start at the beginning?”

“That is a long tale I should save for later.” He touched his fingers to the underside of her jaw. Weak rapid pulse, cool damp skin.

“I’m not going anywhere. I know you have been keeping important matters secret from me, Wilhelm
. In fact, the next time you hide away with one of those miserable little yellow papers, I swear I will
—
”

“Sophia, move your hand and let me look at your arm.” Her condition read serious, and all she cared about was berating him? Impossible woman.

He forced her fingers aside and hissed an oath as he saw the deep gash running diagonally across the inside of her forearm. He couldn’t be sure how deep because it still bled. She’d cut a vein. He let her put her hand back over it.

LeRoy and his henchmen hadn’t come near the house; Wilhelm had made sure of that. Yet after the chase, he’d sent Philip on to St. Agnes and ridden home to Rosecrest, simply because he’d felt he should. His instincts had always been so sharp, but that he had somehow known Sophia needed him prickled the back of his neck.

“When did this happen?”

“About a quarter hour ago.”

His eyebrows went up, but he betrayed none of his dismay. Fifteen minutes of steady bleeding? “That needs to be sewn. Or seared
—
but I doubt you would appreciate the scar.”

She wished him to the devil with her expression, and he comprehended his poor choice of words.

“Right. Well, should I send for a doctor, or do you trust me with a needle?”

“Are you sober?”

“Unfortunately so.”

“Have you done this before?”

“Dozens, perhaps hundreds of times,” he lied. He’d
seen
it done as many times, on other soldiers. Now was not the time to confess that he despised the sight, the smell, especially the texture of blood.

“Capital. Why don’t I get roaring drunk while you don’t, and then we shall get on with it?” Ah. And there shone the Sophia he adored.

“Hold tighter, try to stop the flow,” he replied, fighting a smile despite himself, and Sophia shot him a murderous glare. “I will get the supplies.”

He returned with a bottle of whiskey and cloths from the kitchen. “I stole this from the housekeeper. She had quite a stash.” He knelt by Sophia again, scooping her knees and shoulders in his arms to lower her onto the floor. A seat cushion served as a pillow under her head, then he spread a cloth beneath her arm.

“If you think I will take even one swallow of that nasty single malt, you are sadly mistaken.”

He dumped some of the alcohol on his hands and rubbed it in. “This is for your injury, actually. A field medic I knew in Crimea prevented septic shock by doing this.” He poured the whiskey over her cut, gently prying the folds open with his thumb and forefinger. She swallowed a gasp of pain and writhed, nearly sliding under the chair. Gently he pulled her back.

“Stings, I know. Apologies, darling.” He ducked to kiss her temple before he could stop himself. It came so naturally. “I ordered brandy brought down. You shall find yourself in a drunken stupor shortly. Won’t take much, considering your blood loss.” He bit down on his tongue as soon as he’d said it.
Smooth, Wil. Calm the patient.

Sophia muttered an oath, her eyes squinting and her breath shallow. He chuckled to cover his discomfort as he threaded the needle, willing his hands to remain steady so as to fool her into feeling confident in his patchy skill as a surgeon.

Finally the housekeeper came with a bottle of brandy and a glass, creeping gingerly as though Wilhelm tended a rabid animal instead of the Countess of Devon. With a quelling look for the housekeeper, he left the glass and took the bottle, handing it to Sophia. She grabbed it by the neck and gulped greedily, reminding him of a sailor with one day’s shore leave.

If not for the danger, he would wait until she was thoroughly drunk before sewing, but at the rate she bled, she would be dead by then.

“So, Philip and I were off chasing LeRoy. You caught me. What else do you want to know?” Anything to distract her. She probably didn’t realize he had to sew two layers, the flayed flesh inside the cut and another to close the skin. Not to mention he couldn’t tie the thread in a simple knot — damned contrary motion. No, he had to cross the threads then roll them between his fingers to make a knot.

She said through clenched teeth, “The telegrams, night and day. What is going on?”

He decided to tell her, as simply as he could. “Three separate matters. Philip and Colonel O’Grady — do you remember him?” She nodded, likely recalling the ginger-haired portly man who came with the Crimean officers’ club. “They are helping me track Vincent LeRoy and his mob of bounty hunters. Someone seems to be feeding them information, which explains how they tracked us here. I am also communicating with Lord Chauncey’s creditors in Bombay. I’m in the process of purchasing his promissory notes.”

Her breath caught as he made another stitch
—
vicariously he felt the sickening resistance of the needle sympathetically in his own arm, then the ghostly sensation of it scraping across his chest by sheer force of memory. He knew the methodical nerve-drilling sensation well and it conjured too easily, far too clearly. He shoved the thought away, afraid of falling into a defensive trace.

Instead of commenting on the significance of her husband becoming her father’s creditor, she bit her lip then asked, “I counted two matters. What is the third?”

“I’d hoped you would miss that. I am embarrassed to confess a shortage of cash for the transactions. Lord Courtenay and his son are helping me liquidate assets to fund the, ah… project. And I am in a hurry about it.”

Lord Chauncey had gambled and lost the equivalent of half a dozen noblemen’s fortunes. It had become no small matter to appease his hawkish creditors, accounting for the accumulated interest many seemed to inflate simply because Wilhelm was rich and they knew he wanted the notes. What they didn’t know was that Wilhelm still worked to replenish his own fortune after Roderick had abjectly sunk it. Without the help of Andrew Tilmore, his good friend Lord Courtenay’s financial prodigy son, his would be a lost cause.

Sophia shook her head, and he nearly speared her in the ribs with the needle. “Hold still, love.”

“Sorry. My arm is on fire, and I can barely feel it now.” Her words slurred, from weakness or the brandy he didn’t know. She was also beginning to shake, a bad sign.

He’d seen soldiers bleed out on the battlefield, trembling violently and complaining of an icy feeling everywhere except for the burn of their injuries. He needed to finish faster and bind her arm, but his blasted fingers slid down the needle, slick with blood, and he already worked as quickly as he could to roll the string into knots.

“You can own the note on my father’s underwear if you please, but he will still come after me.”

“I know.”

“In fact, with you as his creditor, he will want me back all the more. He doesn’t know I am barren, and more than anything, he wants a grandson to break the entailment. He is counting on it. He needs the money, and he will do anything…” She gasped as though a realization had just flashed in her mind. “Oh,
no
. After the disaster with Vorlay, he will know we married. He will want to kill you for revenge, thinking he has stolen your unborn child when he abducts me.”

He breathed slowly, fighting to keep his hands steady. Sophia didn’t know it, but the talk about her father dangerously riled his temper. He had once prided himself on his ability to carry out the gruesome task of disposing of human offal with cold detachment, but he already knew when the time came for him to reconcile with Chauncey, there would be a great deal of passion about it. He feared he would enjoy it, prolong it, and that would make him irrevocably into the damned creature he’d resisted surrendering to these many years. It meant crossing the fine line an assassin walked between justice and murder.

He didn’t care, but Sophia would know. She would sense the darkness. She would feel it when he succumbed to the ghosts. They hovered near these days, kept at bay only by her presence. Without her, he was lost.

Nevertheless he sewed carefully, betraying none of his concern, listening as she spoke.

“Beyond that, it’s a matter of vengeance now, not just money. I made a fool of him. He will never forgive it.” He heard hatred and bitter resolve in her voice though the tone sounded weak. There would come a day when she would have no call for speaking in such an ugly tone. He vowed it.

“That will be his undoing.”

“Don’t underestimate him, Wil. Chauncey is a treacherous, dangerous man.”

“So am I,” he shot back with a smile, and she seemed to shudder.

“I don’t know how you got away with doing in Vorlay, but it won’t work that way with my father. What if you hang for it?” She swallowed over what sounded like emotion. A sign of affection?

“Three more stitches left,” came his answer. So much he couldn’t tell her. Even if he wanted to.

“I hate when you do that.”

He feigned ignorance. “Do what?” Before she could complain about his stonewalling their discussion, he interjected, “So now you tell me why I came home to find my wife bedraggled and bleeding to death.” His throat still tightened around the word
wife.
Put in the same sentence with Sophia, it made him a silly besotted fool.

“I let the girls go exploring with Fritz, because I was unaware you were hosting a caper on your property. When I heard him barking, I took the mare and followed
—
”

“You rode the old mare? She’s for pulling the cart. She has no saddle.”

“Did you think I stopped to look for the best Montegue livery?” She closed her eyes again, and the sight of her blue-tinged eyelids and lips in stillness frightened him. Too close to the images of death cataloged in his brain. “Are you going to let me tell it or not?”

“Proceed, by all means, my lady.” He finished the last stitch and bound her arm with linen strips, tighter than would be comfortable, but she simply could not afford to lose any more blood.

“The girls reported being accosted by a man who I now assume was one of LeRoy’s henchmen. Fritz scared him off, but Madeline caught her hair in the gate. By the way, did you know your east gate was unlocked? When I climbed over, it came right open.”

“You climbed the gate?”

“No, I ripped my skirt like this in hopes of attracting fast men. Anyhow, I couldn’t free Madeline’s hair. I had to cut it off, with a letter opener. Fritz startled everyone, and in the jostle, the blade slipped and I cut my arm. That is all.”

Wilhelm wet a cloth to clean the blood from her arms, face, and collar, wrestling terrible visions of his nieces and Sophia suffering at the hands of that filthy East End mongrel. At least Fritz seemed to come through when it mattered; those dogs had proven a worthy investment. He drew a deep breath of relief once he washed the last of her blood from his hands.

Her words slurred. “So, whom were you chasing?”

He had already told her. Confusion, another symptom of serious blood loss. He lifted Sophia and carried her up the stairs, remembering to grab her bottle of brandy. “LeRoy and two others. At first I thought it was the gypsies, but Philip
—
”

He saw skirt flounces as his eavesdropping nieces fled back through a bedroom doorway.

“You saw us trying to draw them against the base of the hill. We caught Grover, the man who I presume came through the gate and frightened the girls. Philip is delivering him to the constable in St. Agnes.” She looked too still; he wondered if she was fainting. “Sophia, how do you feel?”

“Strange… Weak and surreal.”

Wilhelm called for the housekeeper again and asked for salt and water, which she quickly brought. He measured and stirred the salt into a glass of water. “I am sorry, but you will need to drink this. The saline will replace some of the lost fluid.”

She obeyed and made a face. “You sure know how to charm a lady.”

He tucked the ends of the bandage under the wrappings. “Move your fingers. Do they have full sensation?”

“Yes, as normal. It is my brain that feels numb.”

He almost blurted, “
Oh, how I adore you.”
He could listen to her talk all day, always wondering what irreverent, outlandish tidbit would come out of her mouth next. “Now you must keep your arm raised awhile.”

He sat next to her on the bed and wrangled the remnants of her dress off, followed by her stays and stockings, leaving her a lovely sight in only her lacy Parisian shift. The one with the peach lace that only reached partway down her thighs. Delightfully naughty.

He mentally slapped himself awake, trying to remember what he’d meant to say next. Oh, yes. “I owe you my gratitude, Sophia, for your bravery. I once thought you were the forces of nature embodied, and I was right
—
at least about your being some sort of
force.
” That made her laugh, a bewitching sound he never got enough of. “Thank you for taking care of my girls.” He stroked her forehead, brushing away wild strands of hair. “How is the pain?”

“Clamoring for attention.”

Wilhelm left her then returned with the bottle he’d stashed at the bottom of his trunk and poured her a glass.

“Pomegranate?” she asked, heartened.

“I brought it for you, only I imagined a more pleasant circumstance for it.”

“I assure you I will feel entirely pleasant if I drink enough of it.”

After he’d refilled her glass more times than was ladylike, Sophia finally set it down and started taking the pins out of her hair. He guided her wrists to rest on the mattress. “I will get them; you rest. But don’t fall asleep, not yet.”

He gently loosened the curls and shook them out, chortling to himself at the assortment of flora and fauna he plucked from her hair, including a ladybug. Then he couldn’t stop stroking the strands and lacing them through his fingers. He leaned to reach her hairbrush and combed the mass over her pillow.
Thirty-nine inches of glossy sable curtain, fragrant like rain and soft as satin. His to touch whenever he pleased. Iridescent in blue and red, waving in graduated patterns from root to tip. It could have been minutes or hours until he next became cognizant of the passing time. Damned trances. And she seemed to take them in stride.

He feared he was coaxing them both to sleep, so he sat straighter and read to her from the book on her desk — Sir Walter Scott’s
Ivanhoe.
She could not be a romantic, his fire-breathing pragmatist? After a few hours, she had color back in her cheeks. She rested her temple against his heart, his arm draped loosely around her shoulders, and she leaned so far onto her side she was more accurately in his lap. Sweet torment.

“How do you feel?” he muttered, and she was oblivious to the strain in his voice.

“Much better,” she answered without moving her lips.

“You look much better. You may sleep now.” He kissed her hand then her forehead, testing the temperature of her skin. No fever, but she would feel weak for a few days.