The furnishings were coming home. The rent money was coming home. Dubust was going to spend many years in Newgate, rotting. Mrs. Smithers cackled endlessly with that news. All would be well. Ryder felt profoundly lucky. He’d been stupid and irresponsible and he’d been saved despite it all. The wondrous Sherbrooke luck was with him still.
All the tenant farmers made their appearance and it was quite a surprise to Ryder that he actually enjoyed spending time with each of them speaking of their needs, their profits, their willingness to set everything to rights again.
He realized with something of a start that he was a happy man, despite the havoc he himself had brought about because he’d been an absent land-lord. He was setting everything to rights. He wrote his brother, detailing all that had happened, and Sophie’s first encounter with Melissande, who was, truth be told, developing into a quite acceptable female. She had even offered to oversee the polishing of some new silverware that Tony had presented to them from Mr. Millsom’s warehouse in Liverpool.
It was a Tuesday afternoon, the sky overcast, the air chill. The gently rolling hills were serene and so lovely that Sophie wished she had more time simply to ride about and look. As it was, she had to ride into Lower Slaughter to the draperers. There was so much still to do and she loved it. She was humming to herself, thinking about Jeremy and wondering when he could come to live with them.
There, in the middle of the road, she came face to face with Lord David Lochridge. They stared at each other.
“Good God,” he said. “It is you, Sophia Stanton-Greville. No, no, you married that Sherbrooke fellow, didn’t you?”
Sophie felt sick to her stomach. She could only nod at him.
Lord David’s eyes narrowed. “You did marry him, didn’t you?Or are you his current mistress?”
“No,” she said.
He laughed, and it was a nasty sound. “Would you like to know something else, my dear Sophia? Charles Grammond lives very near to Upper Slaughter. He’d gone to the colonies, to Virginia, I was told, but he hated it and moved here. He has a great-aunt who helps support him and that prune-faced wife of his and those four wretched children who are of no account at all. He’s very much on the straight and narrow now, else the great-aunt will cut him out of her will. Isn’t that a pleasant surprise for you? Two of your former lovers here, your neighbors.”
“I must go,” Sophie said, tightening her fists on Opal’s reins.
“But not too far. We have much to discuss, don’t we, Sophie? I will, of course, speak to Charles. I do wonder what he’ll have to say. You see, I’m engaged to marry a local girl who’s so rich it will take even me a good ten years to go through her fortune. Ah, yes, we must talk and make decisions. I do expect you to keep your mouth shut in the meanwhile, my girl, else you will be very sorry, both you and that husband of yours.”
It was in that instant that Sophie remembered what the ghost had said—not really said, but told her so clearly in her mind—something about when they came it would be all right. Was this what the ghost meant? If so, how could it be all right? Nothing could ever again be all right.
She’d left the West Indies and come to a new life, a new life that had such promise until now.
She silently watched David Lochridge ride away from her. She did her errands. The draperer, Mr. Mulligan, shook his head when she left his shop. Poor Mr. Sherbrooke had wed himself to a half-witted female. It was a pity.
When she returned to Chadwyck House, she went upstairs to the master bedchamber that she and Ryder had changed completely. The walls were painted a soft pale yellow. There was a lovely pale cream and blue Aubusson carpet on the floor. She went to the now sparkling-clean window and stared out over the newly scythed east lawn. So beautiful. It looked like a Garden of Eden. It was her home. But not for much longer. Slowly, very slowly, she eased down to her knees. She bent over, her face in her hands, and she sobbed.
Mrs. Chivers, the newly installed housekeeper, saw her, managed to keep her mouth shut, and searched out the master. Ryder, not knowing what to expect, and firmly believing that Mrs. Chivers had misinterpreted Sophie’s actions, still came to her immediately. He stopped cold in the doorway, staring at his wife. He felt a coursing of sheer fear.
He strode to her, nearly yelling, “Sophie, what the hell is wrong with you?”
She whipped about, staring at him. Oh God, what to tell him? That everything was over now? That the Sherbrooke name was on the verge of being ruined and that she was responsible? Oh God, Ryder had temporarily lost his furniture but she had brought utter devastation on his family.
She tried to get a hold of herself. He dropped to his haunches beside her and she felt his hands close over her upper arms. Slowly and very gently, he turned her to face him. Her face was without color, her eyes swollen from crying.
“No, no, don’t cry,” he said and pressed her cheek against his shoulder. “There is one very good thing about marriage, Sophie. You’re not alone. There’s another person to help you, no matter what the problem, no matter what the hurt. Talk to me, sweetheart, please.”
She shook her head against his chest.
Ryder frowned over her head. It was she who had kept his spirits buoyed since they’d arrived here. It was she who’d directed the servants, who had overseen the meals, who had herself swept and cleaned and dusted and smiled through it all. She’d been happy, dammit. He knew it. What the hell had happened?
Her crying stopped. She hiccuped. He felt the soft movement of her breasts against his chest and felt instant and overwhelming lust. Her monthly flow had ended several days before but she’d been so tired, so utterly exhausted at the end of each day, that he’d simply held her at night.
But now, he wanted her. Very much.
“Talk to me, Sophie,” he said again.
She straightened and leaned back, still held in the loose circle of his arms. “My knees hurt.”
“We have a bed. Come, let’s sit down.”
She eyed that bed, knew that he wanted her, she wasn’t blind. His sex was swelled against his trousers. She saw Lord David naked and stroking his sex, she felt again how he’d kissed her, stabbing his tongue into her mouth before she’d managed to distract him, and how he always stripped off his clothes at the cottage and showed her his body and his sex and how big he was and how he was going to take her.
And Charles Grammond, middle-aged, his belly sagging, not a bad man really, pathetically grateful when she’d first told him she would take him as her lover, and then how he’d changed, catching her in the middle of the day to force her against a tree and she’d had to hit him with her riding crop and he’d only laughed and pulled his sex from his britches and told her he wanted his sex in her mouth and she could do it now. And, dear God, she’d helped to ruin him even as she’d told him what a wonderful lover he was. And he pranced about, so pleased with himself, bragging about his virility—didn’t he have four living children to prove it?
Now both of them were here. Both of them believed her a whore. Both of them would take great delight in ruining her. She clearly remembered the looks both men would give her whenever they saw her, and what they said to her in their lewd whispers, how they spoke about the nights they’d spent with her and what they’d done to her and she’d done to them....
She jerked away from Ryder. He stared at her, his head cocked to one side in question.
She bounded to her feet, turned, grabbed up her skirts, and ran from the bedchamber.
He stared after her. He’d seen the blankness on her face when she’d looked at the bed, followed by the myriad facial expressions he knew were from her damned memories of Jamaica, and all when she’d seen his sex swelled against his britches.
He had hoped, prayed, that she was coming around to trusting him. His jaw tightened. He wouldn’t let this continue, he couldn’t.
He bided his time for the remainder of the day. There was always so much to be done that there wasn’t any particular discomfort between them, even during dinner when they were alone. That night, at ten o’clock, Ryder stepped into their bedchamber, and saw that Sophie wasn’t in bed. She was seated in a wing chair in front of the fireplace, her legs tucked beneath her, a book in her lap.
“I finished my work,” he said.
The book, a collection of essays by John Locke, slipped off her lap. She made no move to retrieve it.
Ryder leaned down and picked it up. “Where the devil did you find this?”
“Your Mr. Dubust left it.”
“I don’t blame him. Listen to this: ‘Latin I look upon as absolutely necessary to a gentleman.’ What an appalling notion. I imagine that my youngest brother, Tysen—the future cleric—is now quite fluent in Latin. He says that his congregation will glean his meaning from his intonation, that the words aren’t important, that God didn’t mean for common folk to really understand in any case, only to gain the holy essence—whatever that may be—which will come from him, naturally.”
“Your brother really said that?”
“He tried, but he hasn’t the facility to be as fluent as I am.”
“Nor has he your modesty, I doubt.”
“Good,” Ryder said, tossing the book back into her lap, “a bit of vinegar. Now, Sophie, it’s time for you to come with me over to that bed. I know you had a bath earlier so that excuse went out with the bathwater.”
“I don’t want to, Ryder.”
She was twisting her hands. It was amazing, his strong Sophie, the woman who had directed a score of servants during the past week, humming while she worked, was wringing her hands like a helpless twit.
“Nor do you want to tell me why you were crying this afternoon?”
“No. It isn’t important, truly. It was just that... I lost some silverware.”
Ryder only shook his head at her. He stripped off his clothes then came back to stand in front of the drowsing fire, naked, to gaze down at the orange embers.
She stared at him, she couldn’t help it. He stretched out his hand to her. “Come along now, sweetheart. I’m going to try my damnedest to give you some pleasure tonight. And if I fail you tonight, why then, there will be tomorrow night and the night after that.”
She shook her head even as he was jerking her to her feet. He picked her up in his arms, carried her to the bed, and gently laid her on her back. He quickly unfastened the sash on her dressing gown.
He ignored the stiffness of her body, the pallor of her face, the damned wariness he saw in her eyes. He stripped off her nightgown, then straightened and stared down at her.
“No, don’t cover yourself.”
She turned her face away from him, and fisted her hands at her sides.
“You’re beautiful, Sophie, not a dream princess like Melissande, certainly, but as she pointed out, you’re pretty nonetheless. I’ll keep you. Now I’m going to ... no, let me just show you.”
He came down beside her, lying on his side, and very gently he stroked his fingertips over her jaw, her lips, her nose, then smoothed her eyebrows. He simply looked at her and touched her face.
She looked up at him then.
“Ryder,” she said, “I know that you want to take me. You don’t have to play about with me as you’re doing now. Please, just get it over with. I won’t fight you. I know that it will do no good. I’m tired and want it over with.”
He laughed.
“Ah, all those other damned men. ‘Take you’... what a wonderful way to say ‘making love.’ Well, let me tell you something, Mrs. Sherbrooke, you’re my wife. I want to play with you until you’re yelling with pleasure. I want you to enjoy yourself. I want you to laugh and kiss me back and play with me. No, you can’t begin to understand that, can you? But you will come to understand.”
He leaned down and kissed her mouth, very gently, his own mouth light as moth’s wings. He continued kissing her until he finally felt her ease beneath him. “Do you know how wonderful you taste to me? How much I enjoying kissing you?”
“It isn’t bad,” she admitted, sounding a bit worried. Even as she parted her lips to speak, he gently slipped his tongue inside her mouth and touched hers.
She started, becoming stiff as a bed slat.
Ryder was again in firm control of himself, just as he’d been before. Everything in him was focused on her, on her reactions, her shifts of expressions, the lightness or darkness of her gray eyes. All that he wanted was for her to become one with him, to replace all her memories with him—his laughter, his sheer joy in life, his pleasure in her.
He simply continued what he was doing. There was all the time in the world. The night was long. He figured she didn’t have a chance.
He talked to her, distracting her from the memories he knew crept into her mind whilst he touched her. He told her how much he admired her breasts, that they were as white as fresh snow and as round as her belly would be when she was carrying his child. Ah, and her belly, he spanned his fingers to her pelvic bones and told her she should easily carry their children, as many as she wished to bear, and then he began to caress her, his fingers light and caressing her warm belly. When his fingers lightly touched her woman’s soft flesh, she lurched up in bed and scrambled away from him.
He was so startled that she escaped him. He watched her blankly dash naked across the bare floor to the windows on the eastern side of the bedchamber. She stood there, her back to him, her head bowed.
He went to her, frowning, but said nothing, merely placed his hands on her shoulders and pulled her gently back against him.
“Now, what is all this about?”
“I feel so dirty.”
Good Lord, he thought, staring at the back of her head, the dam had finally burst. About time too. He said slowly, “Finally you tell me the truth. It’s about time, Sophie. Now we will deal with it.”
She was silent.
“Somehow I don’t believe it was my fingers between your thighs that brought this on, but it helped, didn’t it? It made you remember—did you see one of the men doing that to Dahlia? Did one of the men force himself on you in that way?” He waited, but she said nothing. “All right then. You’re not built as I am, Sophie. For you to reach a woman’s pleasure, you must know caresses there between your thighs. There is no reason for you to feel dirty or ashamed or anything else except excitement and anticipation.”