Harlequin Historical May 2020--Box Set 1 of 2

by Sophia James

  Slowly, as if frightened that to move would break the spell of the idea glittering before her, Sophia swung her legs down from the bed and reached for her cloak. The instinct to dress before leaving the room muttered to her, but she ignored it, terrified any delay would make her lose her nerve. Unless she acted now, forced herself into motion that very moment, she might hesitate and think the better of her ludicrous plan and then she might never voice the tentative suggestion growing louder and louder inside her head.

  He won’t accept. Of course he won’t. But if I don’t ask I might never know for sure…and I can think of no other way to escape the reach of Mother or the threat of a new name thrust upon me that I never sought or wanted.

  If Fell had been any other man, she would never have dared dream he might even hear her without laughing, she thought as she staggered through the darkened cottage towards the back door on legs weak with apprehension. A gentleman of her own class would turn up his nose at once, surely rejecting Sophia’s pauper proposal without a second thought—but Fell was no gentleman, instead a fatherless blacksmith with almost as much to gain from the match as Sophia. If he had any other offers she wouldn’t have stood a chance among them; she could only hope, as she pushed open the door and stepped out into the moonlit yard, that Fell was as desperate to escape the path laid out for him as Sophia wished to turn from her own.

  Steeped in silver, the forge waited silently for her approach, neither encouraging nor discouraging her from limping heavily up to the door and taking hold of the wrought-iron handle. Not a sound came from within, only the lightest hiss of a breeze through the trees and the occasional melancholy call of an owl suggesting Sophia wasn’t entirely alone in the warm night. It would have been so easy to stand for hours feeling the air gently sift through her hair to cool her heated skin, but that wouldn’t take her any closer to the outcome she both hoped for and feared, the only chance of salvation she could think of.

  With her heart racing so fiercely she was surprised she couldn’t hear it Sophia quietly opened the door and peeped inside. For a half-second she couldn’t see Fell anywhere in the room scented with charcoal and ash, still stifling from the now-doused fire and heat of the day—until pale moonlight flooding in from one unshuttered window lit his sleeping form stretched out beneath a workbench, his eyes closed and bare chest rising and falling with calm, even breaths.

  The sight wrapped a hand around Sophia’s throat and squeezed tightly, for a brief moment distracting her from the chaos already running riot inside her. The forbidden glimpse she had caught of Fell’s impressive chest on the day she’d stumbled upon him at the pump had hinted at what lay beneath his shirt, but to be confronted with it so starkly was something else entirely. Any genteel lady would be shocked by such a vulgar sight, yet Sophia found herself quite powerless to tear herself away, almost relieved when Lash uncurled himself at his master’s side and sat up, the movement waking Fell and forcing Sophia to avert her eyes. Even with her gaze fixed firmly on the rough floor, however, she couldn’t shake her awareness of the uncovered breadth of his shoulders, or the torso scattered with hair that surely should have shocked rather than intrigued.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw him shift on his thin mattress—then sit up sharply, his hand flying out for an enormous hammer lying close to where he slept.

  ‘It’s me!’ Sophia stepped backwards in swift alarm, arms held up in front of her face. ‘It’s Sophia!’

  She heard him exhale sharply, then a heavy thud as the hammer was replaced on the ground.

  ‘What the devil are you doing in here?’ His voice was still thick with sleep, but the next moment quick concern rushed in to replace his bemusement. ‘Is something the matter? Have your mother’s men returned?’

  A little braver now he was unarmed, Sophia shook her head in the dim light. ‘No, no. Nothing like that.’ She hesitated, steeling herself to continue. ‘I… I wanted to speak with you.’

  Fell peered up at her in blank, bleary-eyed bafflement. ‘Now? You want to speak with me now?’

  At her shy nod his incredulity increased, furrowing his already crinkled brow. ‘It couldn’t wait until the morning? What time is it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t yet slept.’

  Sophia watched him run a hand over his tired face, still confused but with a gleam of concern that gave her the smallest glimmer of hope. He didn’t seem annoyed she’d disturbed him, more puzzled, and puzzled was better than she might have expected. Without irritation he might be more receptive to hearing her plan in its entirety, maybe even willing to consider it despite all odds.

  ‘You haven’t yet slept. On account of what happened this afternoon? Or because of what you wish to speak to me about?’

  ‘Both. They walk hand in hand with each other.’

  Fell scrubbed at his strange eyes with the heels of his hands, evidently bewildered by his night-time visitor’s cryptic murmur. ‘I’m a working man, Miss Somerlock, and I need rest. Perhaps you might stop talking in riddles so I can go back to sleep.’

  ‘Very well.’

  With her legs still shaking Sophia stepped fully inside the forge and closed the door behind her, folding unsteadily on to a tall stool set at the side of Fell’s bench. He rose from the floor to sit across from her, wearing only a pair of old breeches and a suddenly wary expression that with a dart of that something she saw enhanced the sharp line of his jaw. Her chest felt clenched in a vice and her stomach full of snakes that coiled uncomfortably, the slight nausea of nervousness circling in her gut, but there was no going back now—no other choice but to set her proposal free to face Fell’s judgement, either the making or breaking of a future free from fear.

  One deep breath didn’t help her find her tongue, so she took another and another until the vice beneath her breastbone loosened just enough to allow her to speak.

  ‘I have an idea to put to you. One I think might suit us both.’

  Fell crossed his sculpted arms across his chest and waited, head held slightly to one side, for her to continue. The wariness hadn’t left his look, but even in the moonlight Sophia could see it was tempered with a cautious curiosity that gave her courage to go on.

  ‘You suggested I take a husband to save me from my mother’s scheming and the match she would make for me. I… I would like that husband to be you.’

  * * *

  Fell didn’t move a single muscle, sitting as still and as quiet opposite Sophia as a statue carved from stone.

  She would smile in a moment.

  Any second now.

  She would break into a laugh at her jest and he might join her with a huff of his own, the butt of the joke, but at least breaking this uncomfortable beat of tension that made the very air in the forge feel as though it were suffocating him with each breath. Of course she wasn’t in earnest, playing some ill-advised prank he didn’t understand, yet she gazed at him so hesitantly it was almost as though—

  ‘I know I have few charms to tempt you, but I’d hoped you might at least consider it.’

  Sophia’s fingers twisted in the hem of her cloak and she looked away quickly, flustered and embarrassed, yet risking a glance back to read what she could in the blank amazement of his face.

  Hellfire. I think she’s in earnest.

  He stared back with the parted lips and wide eyes of someone struck smartly over the head with a heavy object—which was exactly how he felt, as the gears in his mind began to slowly turn again and the enormity of Sophia’s declaration hit him like a kick in the ribs.

  ‘You want to marry me? Why?’

  Looking pale and strained in the moonlight, Sophia swallowed hard as if with great difficulty. ‘It occurred to me a union between us might fulfil both our desires. I would gain a husband to keep me from a forced marriage, a husband who has already shown me such courtesy and concern for my wellbeing I would never receive from anyone of Mother
’s circle. In return you would have a wife to give you the legitimate children you long for, but thought would never be born to you. That would be the understanding: my safety in exchange for a family of your own.’

  She broke off, chest heaving now with barely contained anxiety Fell found it uncomfortable to see. He wanted to reach out and touch her, a gentle brush of his fingers against her skin to calm her as he had only hours before, but all the strength seemed to have left him and he could only sit in stunned silence as Sophia pressed the back of one hand to her doubtless flushed cheek.

  For some stretch of time neither of them spoke, Fell’s mind too full to find any words and Sophia apparently waiting with wordless dread for his reply. Only Lash seemed in any way unmoved by the bizarre conversation taking place above him that Fell might have thought was a dream if not for the growing ache in his head, a pain as though the rapid flit of his thoughts were pinging around inside his skull.

  Is she truly offering me the chance of a future? To finally have children to love and a family I might belong to with no secrets or shame?

  It was all he’d ever wanted, the most cherished wish of his lonely heart—yet good sense and bitterness stopped him in his tracks before he could be carried too far by ridiculous fancy.

  When he had pictured himself with a wife it had been Charity he’d imagined, sweet-voiced and bonny, but certainly no lady. Even she had been too good for him in the end and the knowledge that Sophia sought his hand under duress only emphasised the truth he had known since Charity had vanished from his life, leaving behind only the sting of rejection.

  He wasn’t worthy of a wife and most definitely not one like Sophia. She only wanted him out of desperation, bartering for her life like a farmer at market, but with herself as the livestock for sale. It would be shameful for him to accept, akin to buying an unhappy woman with no other choices left to her, and that he would not do. Of course she didn’t have tender feelings for him—he would never have expected her or anyone to stoop so low—and he wouldn’t doom her to a life at his side, to be snubbed and cast down because of his own selfish desires.

  ‘It can’t be. You’ve done me a great honour by asking, but I think you know that can’t be done.’

  He saw Sophia’s face fall and immediately regretted how the faint gleam of hope was extinguished from her countenance. She truly seemed as though she had wanted a different answer, inexplicable as the notion was, and the knowledge he’d disappointed her was decidedly unpleasant.

  Fell leaned across the narrow bench to catch Sophia’s downcast eye, his voice unwittingly gentle in his undeniable desire to spare her distress.

  ‘Think what you’re suggesting—really think. You truly believe you could stand to be a wife to me, living in a cottage and bearing my children? Despite the differences between us and how far above me you are in every respect? It would be a mistake for you to take me as your man. You wouldn’t be able to endure it.’

  Sophia cast him a swift sideways glance, lifting her chin a fraction so her head no longer drooped on her slender neck.

  ‘I have considered my actions carefully. You have never shown me anything except kindness and I believe if we were to marry we might find some accord between us.’

  ‘Accord…aye. Perhaps. But that won’t stop you being a lady and me a Roma bastard, begging your pardon, and say what you will I can’t see a lady deigning to stoop so low as to share my bed.’ The picture those last three words conjured was one Fell set aside at once, the prospect so suddenly tempting it alarmed him. Pretty, dainty Sophia Somerlock in his bed was surely something any man might want, himself included—but that was not an image he had any reason to entertain. ‘The very idea must disgust you.’

  Even in the dim light he saw Sophia’s cheeks colour with well-bred embarrassment, but to his surprise she met his eye, still shy but now with an underlying hint of determination that was absurdly attractive.

  ‘Is it that you doubt my word? You think I offer those terms to trap you without intending to honour them?’

  Fell shook his head, caught a little off guard by the faintest streak of challenge he had never suspected Sophia possessed. It flared into life and died again in the blink of an eye, but it was enough to make him wonder if there might be more to the anxious, self-doubting woman than he had thought—a question more intriguing than he liked. ‘No. I believe that you believe you’re sincere. I don’t doubt your intentions, but I think on our wedding night you would realise how distasteful it was to as much as kiss a blacksmith hardly worthy of looking at you and you would curse yourself for your mistake.’

  For a moment Sophia merely sat, straight-backed and elegant as any high-born lady taught good posture since she could walk; but then she answered, so quietly Fell barely heard her even in the silence of the night.

  ‘You don’t know I would find it distasteful.’

  ‘No? You think otherwise, do you?’

  He leaned forward a fraction more, readying himself to dismiss Sophia’s objections with the frank truth. They were from different worlds and possessed such strikingly unequal value a match between them was laughable, something Sophia must surely realise. He didn’t even know his father’s name, courtesy of Ma’s damned silence that had raised his hackles more times than he could count. She was too good for him even if she thought otherwise, and nothing she could say would convince him—

  The last glimpse of Sophia Fell caught before she closed the narrow gap between them was the surprising determination in her eye. It was the look of a woman fighting for her life, so resolved despite her fears he felt a surge of respect well up inside him she more than deserved—and then her lips settled over his and his mind emptied of anything other than raw shock and the wonder of feeling soft warmth where he had never thought to feel anything ever again.

  It was a chaste kiss, a little hesitant and clearly unpractised, yet something in its innocence touched Fell somewhere in his chest to make his unsuspecting heart rail against his ribs. He felt Sophia’s breath coming quickly and knew her pulse must be bounding as hard as his own—or even more so, obviously unused to the sensation of pressing her mouth to another’s and feeling her blood begin to heat beneath skin suddenly alive in every nerve. Naked amazement gripped Fell and wouldn’t let go as the urge to sweep the bench aside and draw Sophia into an embrace washed over him, a powerful instinct shouting to be heard above the roaring in his ears. She was so close and yet so untouchable, forbidden and yet waking desires inside him he had never thought to feel again… Even the scent of her was exquisite torture, soap and rosewater drifting from the flaming hair he wanted nothing more than to sink his hands in and rake with fingers unsteady with longing.

  Her uncertainty was delightful, so vulnerable in its naivety it was as though a bolt was wrenched loose from Fell’s usual cynicism to unleash the weakness kept so firmly inside. Not since Charity had swayed in his arms had he felt anything even close to what coursed through him as Sophia’s lips gently ghosted his own, leaving stars in their wake and a whole heap of awkward questions he had no wish to answer. She drew him out, delving deeper to expose the weakness within like a diamond surrounded by rock, stirring the hidden yearning he had banished to the shadows for fear of the hurt it could bring.

  She drew away before Fell wanted her to—although when he would have had the strength to break the kiss he didn’t know. It could only have lasted a moment, a few seconds of contact at the most, but it might as well have been several years for all the head-spinning fog through which he now stared, mute with confusion, at Sophia’s scarlet face. He wanted to say something, anything, but his ability to speak had been stolen by Sophia’s unexpected decision.

  ‘Is…is that proof enough that I will be able to keep my promise?’

  If her voice had been any more stilted Fell wouldn’t have been able to understand what she’d said. Her mouth barely moved, apparently half-frozen with disbelief at her
actions and her hand when she reached to press it against the bodice of her nightgown shook so hard Fell caught the movement even in the gloom.

  Still reeling, he lifted his own hand to his lips, feeling the place Sophia had touched and changed everything between them in a matter of seconds. The arguments against her proposition hadn’t changed, yet for the life of him Fell suddenly couldn’t quite grasp why they had been so important.

  Don’t be a fool. One kiss won’t change the fact I’ll ruin her life if I marry her.

  The stern mutter in the back of his mind spoke up to make its feelings undeniably plain and Fell steeled himself against a flash of disappointment so intense it took him by surprise. Of course the little voice was right. Despite her protestations Sophia couldn’t possibly know the fate she was inviting for herself; he would have to guard them both against it, even if the pull to surrender to her will tugged ever more strongly.

  Unfortunately for his good intentions Sophia chose that precise moment to fix him with huge, imploring eyes that swept aside all reasoning like a tower of cards.

  ‘You would be saving me. Please don’t let me fall to those who would cause me nothing but harm.’

  He sat back in his seat, suddenly robbed of all certainty by the desperation in her face. If he refused Sophia, he would be abandoning her to the future she longed to outrun, even if his reasons were noble. Her life with him might be difficult, but surely it was for her to decide whether that was preferable to whatever waited for her back at Fenwick Manor and the fiancé she had left behind.

  Imagine what would have become of Ma if she’d been left to face the world alone. I of all people should know how much of a difference the kindness of a stranger can make to a life.

  The thought made him shudder. If Rector Frost hadn’t taken Essea in, giving her sanctuary from the darkness that snapped at her heels… Sophia would always be more than he deserved, the kind of wife a low-born creature like himself could only dream of, but that seemed to matter less and less the more he reflected on the consequences of turning her away.