The Secret Lover

by Julia London

  Claudia and Ann were no help, either—blast it if both of them didn’t readily agree with Honorine over luncheon the next day that Hamilton’s invitation was exactly the thing for Sophie.

  “It seems perfect. At least it will be a very small affair,” Claudia reasoned. “You’ll not be exposed to the ton, not really.”

  Oh no, they mustn’t show their tarnished spinster-sister to the upper echelons of society.

  “Hamilton has just come from the country. He’s been there all this time with his father since Elspeth died. It’s so tragic, is it not?” sighed Ann.

  “Frankly, I can’t imagine why he’d come to London now. I suppose for the sake of the boy he must think of reentering society, at least in some small way,” Claudia added, and she and Ann nodded in perfect unison.

  “How very unpleasant that man has presented himself as Lord Hamilton’s son,” Claudia added, frowning.

  “Pardon?” asked Honorine, perking up.

  “It’s shocking, really,” Ann said, inching forward, eager to tell. “There have been rumors floating about for years now that the viscount had illegitimate issue. A Frenchwoman, they say,” she said, nodding authoritatively. “Of course no one had ever seen this child, but suddenly a man has appeared, claiming to be the son of Lord Hamilton!”

  Sophie felt a faint lurch of her belly.

  “It’s despicable,” Claudia muttered. “How can people be so vile?”

  “Victor says he is one of those who claims to be involved in the railroad,” Ann sniffed disdainfully, and she and Claudia both shook their heads, as if there were something inherently evil about that.

  “What is wrong with the railroad?” Sophie asked innocently, and received twin looks of exasperation.

  “Because, darling,” said Claudia, “they build this railroad through the countryside and divide up lands that have been owned by some families for centuries. It mars the landscape and makes a horrible noise. It will never succeed; you may trust me on that. I suspect this chap has lost every last farthing on the railroad and has come up with this despicable scheme to extort money from Lord Hamilton.”

  “This man, what is the name of this man?” Honorine asked, ignoring the talk of railroads.

  Sophie caught a breath in her throat as she waited for Ann’s answer.

  “His name? Hamilton, of course. Caleb Hamilton,” Ann said as she speared a strawberry on her fork.

  Caleb? Her Caleb? She looked at Ann, hoping that perhaps she had not heard correctly. There could be hundreds of Hamiltons, couldn’t there be? “Who?” she asked.

  “Caleb Hamilton,” Ann responded, looking at her curiously.

  As the blood drained from her face, Sophie quickly looked down at her plate. Oh God, not the foreman, her beautiful secret foreman!

  “He’s quite the man about town, if you catch my meaning,” Ann added, and plopped the strawberry into her mouth.

  “Oh my yes,” Claudia agreed with a roll of her eyes. “I have heard that he does indeed appreciate the company of a woman or two.”

  “Or three or four,” Ann added. “Victor has it on good authority that he is a frequent caller to Madame Farantino’s,” she said, exchanging a look of disdain with Claudia. “I do feel rather sorry for Mr. Trevor Hamilton. His troubles have been so great, and now this.”

  Sophie sat, frozen with disappointment. She should have known it was too good to be true. She should have understood that a man with the fine looks of Caleb Hamilton could only be toying with her. “Why doesn’t Lord Hamilton simply say whether or not he is his son?” she asked petulantly.

  “Lord Hamilton has been ill,” Claudia informed her. “Trevor has been seeing to his care. First Elspeth, now his father.”

  “He is very pleased with Sofia,” Honorine offered nonchalantly from her daybed on the far end of the room. “This, it is very plain. He wants this supper for Sofia.”

  Both Claudia’s and Ann’s forks froze midway to their mouths and their heads swiveled in perfect unison toward Honorine at that pronouncement. “Really?” Ann gushed, and flashed a beaming smile to Sophie. “Trevor Hamilton, Sophie!” she whispered excitedly. “Do you think that perhaps—”

  “No!” Sophie exclaimed, feeling suddenly unwell. “Honestly, Ann! You mustn’t think for a moment that—”

  “Le monsieur, he finds Sofia pretty to him,” Honorine blithely continued.

  “Well of course she is!” Claudia said, perhaps a little too emphatically, and put her fork down to better stare at her sister-in-law. “Dear me, I had not really thought of it, but he comes here to make his personal request of you…oh Sophie! This could be just the—”

  “Ooh, this is marvelous!” Ann eagerly interjected, coming quickly to the same conclusion as Claudia. “How I’ve worried for you! Oh my, we must find you something suitable to wear!”

  “By my word, you cannot give credence to anything Honorine says, I—”

  “My modiste showed me four gowns not two days ago, all canceled orders. Sophie is so trim, I should think any alterations would be minimal!” Claudia exclaimed.

  “What of her hair?” Ann demanded in response. “We must do something with her hair! It is too fine for ringlets—I know, we shall put it up with velvet ribbons!”

  “Here now, one moment, if you please,” Sophie tried desperately, holding both hands up. “I’ve no need of gowns and ribbons and—”

  “Your gowns, chérie, they are too ordinaires,” Honorine opined with a yawn.

  Sophie shot her a fierce look of exasperation. “How very kind of you to say so, Honorine. Nonetheless—”

  “She is right, darling. You really should add a touch of color to your wardrobe,” said Ann.

  Oh, wasn’t this just bloody grand! Now she was receiving a critique of her wardrobe, too—well, God help them all if they listened to Honorine’s advice on that front. And what did it matter, anyway? She was not going to that supper party. Not. There was nothing they could say to convince her she should subject herself to the scrutiny of the ton.

  “As I have no intention of attending this supper party, I cannot imagine what difference the color of my clothing could possibly make.”

  That declaration was met with small, simultaneous gasps from Claudia and Ann.

  “Not going?” With a snort of incredulity, Claudia exchanged a look with Ann. “Of course you are going! You cannot decline Mr. Hamilton’s invitation!”

  “Yes I can. I’ll think of something! An ague, perhaps—”

  “An ague! What a ruckus you will cause if you turn down his invitation! How unseemly it would be to reject his gracious hospitality after…Everyone will talk!” said Ann, her voice rising. “Trevor Hamilton, Sophie!” she said, jabbing the tip of her finger against the tabletop as if Sophie had not realized who had invited her. “Have you lost your foolish mind?”

  “I have not lost my mind! I am not going.”

  “Yes,” countered Ann and Claudia at almost exactly the same moment and in almost exactly the same cross tone of voice.

  And across the room, a very self-satisfied Honorine merely chuckled as she sampled one of Lucie Cowplain’s delectable crème puffs.

  Ann and Claudia meant what they said, apparently, judging by the modistes and milliners that arrived, en masse, that afternoon. Sophie escaped that, as well as the argument that had begun between them over a particular pair of slippers, by asking Ann’s driver to deliver her to Upper Moreland Street.

  As the carriage rolled past Regent’s Park, a well of disappointment bubbled up in her. She had found Caleb Hamilton so very appealing, more appealing than any man she had met in the last dozen years. He had seemed kind, far too kind, to be the man she had heard about yesterday. Part of her refused to believe the rumor.

  Nancy was delighted to have her return and proudly showed her about the house, sharing what she knew about the current residents and reluctantly relating the troubles she was having with the bookkeeping. “Never had a mind for numbers,” she admitted dolefully. S
ophie offered to look them over, and with only a cursory review, could see that Nancy was struggling with the upkeep for the house.

  “I don’t understand,” she remarked as she looked through the ledger. “I had understood Lady Kettering sought donations for the upkeep.”

  “Aye, that she does,” Nancy readily agreed. “But the Whitney-Dane school takes a good amount of her time, and nowadays, most of the donations come in the form of hard goods, not coin.” She laughed, shaking her head. “Honestly, we’ve more gowns than would clothe an entire village!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Some of them are used. But most are much too fine for the gels here. They’ve no need of a ball gown, not with their lot in life.”

  “Ball gown?” Sophie asked, confused.

  Nancy nodded. “Come on then, have a look.”

  She took Sophie to a small room on the third floor that was almost bursting at the seams with gowns, hats, slippers, and reticules, all made of the finest fabrics. Some of the garments were finer than anything Sophie had seen in any corner of the world. She wondered aloud why ladies of the ton would part with such fine clothing, to which Nancy chuckled.

  “I rather imagine they can’t fasten a single button any longer.” She laughed, picked up a pink silk gown. “Some of them come to us actually torn at the seams.”

  Enthralled by the sheer number of gowns, Sophie picked up a pale yellow walking dress and held it up to her. It looked an almost perfect fit and was much more becoming than the gray one she was wearing. Gray. Why on earth had she commissioned such a drab gown?

  She glanced at Nancy from the corner of her eye; Nancy smiled knowingly. “Well then, go on with you. Try it if you’d like—so have we all.”

  As Sophie discarded her clothing and donned the yellow gown—oh, it was lovely, truly lovely—an idea came to her. The women of Upper Moreland Street might not have practical use for these gowns, but she would wager there was a class of women in London who would. While only members of the Quality could afford garments as fine as these, there was a whole class of moderately wealthy families in London who aspired to the ranks of the Quality. She had seen a dress shop or two on High Street and absently wondered if perhaps she and Nancy might sell the gowns to those proprietors, who in turn could sell them, secondhand, to their clientele. Or perhaps hire a bit of space at Covent Garden for the purpose. Whatever the gowns might earn could be put in the coffers for the upkeep of the house.

  When Sophie finally bid Nancy a good afternoon—wearing the yellow walking dress—the idea had firmly taken root.

  She walked to the corner of Essex Street, intent on finding a hack to return her to Bedford Square, but the image of Caleb Hamilton danced in her mind’s eye, just as it had all day. She tried to shake it off; it was ridiculous to pursue this little fantasy. Of course she had no intention of taking him up on his offer to see the house he was building, not now, not after what she had heard. It was impossible to think to meet him again, even if she did imagine him pacing impatiently at the pond, waiting for her…But had she not heard from her sister’s own mouth the man’s reputation with ladies, not to mention the possibility that he was a bona fide scoundrel? Had she not demeaned her family name once before consorting in a similar manner?

  It was a preposterous, disastrous notion.

  She shifted her weight to one hip, tapped her foot impatiently.

  After all, Caleb Hamilton was most certainly an imposter of some sort—everyone said so.

  The hack appeared around the bend in the road, and Sophie raised her arm to catch the driver’s attention.

  And he could very well be a diabolic fiend.

  The hack coasted to a stop alongside her. “Where to, mu’um?” the driver asked.

  He was undoubtedly a scoundrel of the first order, Sophie thought, and dug in her reticule for a crown. “Regent’s Park, please!” she said as she handed him the coin, and promptly marveled at how those words could spring from her lips without any conscious thought at all. But there they were, hanging between her and the driver. Too late to take them back now, wasn’t it? With a defiant shrug, Sophie climbed into the hack.

  The men were working on the house across the pond, but there was no sign of Mr. Hamilton. Of course not. He had only been toying with her, so what did she care if he was working or not? Sophie sat stiffly on her wrought iron bench, her reticule on her lap. She looked down at the watch pinned to her breast for what must have been the hundredth time only to discover that a mere quarter of an hour had passed since she had reached the pond.

  Then again, perhaps something had detained him—he had said he would come round. Just because a man was a known swindler didn’t mean he wouldn’t keep his word, did it? Perhaps he had forgotten. Perhaps he never meant to come at all, had merely invited her to see his house for want of something better to say. After all, she had brought it up. Surely he didn’t mean—

  “Aha! I hoped you would come!”

  His voice instantly sent a wave of delight through her. Sophie turned so quickly that her bonnet slipped, but she hardly realized it, because Caleb Hamilton had snatched the very breath from her lungs.

  Oh, but he was magnificent. He was wearing a navy riding coat, tight buckskin trousers, and an irrepressible smile, and Sophie could scarcely take her eyes from him. All of him.

  The sudden and abrupt image of a woman on each of his arms popped into her mind’s eye. Scoundrel, she reminded herself in an attempt to cool the heat that was beginning to build, and straightened her bonnet.

  “A jolly good day, Miss Dane. How pleased I am that you could come.”

  “G-good day, Mr. Hamilton,” she replied tightly, and swallowed hard. Oh really, do try not to act the ninny for once, will you?

  “You’ve not been here long, have you? I was detained longer than customary.”

  “Ah, no. No, I only just arrived.”

  “Splendid,” he said, and cheerfully plopped himself down beside her on the bench.

  Sophie shifted an inch away from him.

  “Might I say you look quite fetching, Miss Dane. What a lovely color is your gown—its suits you very well.”

  That caught her off guard—no one ever complimented her clothing. And the fact that she had practically filched it from a poorhouse only made her that much more self-conscious. She was already sitting so rigidly that the small of her back was beginning to ache. “Thank you, sir.”

  “I give you my word I’ll not take your reticule if you’d like to set it aside.”

  She looked at him curiously.

  He nodded to her lap. “You seem to be holding on to it for dear life.”

  Sophie immediately set the thing aside, but then did not know what to do with her hands. After a moment of awkwardness, she folded them primly in her lap.

  “Miss Dane, if you would rather I leave you—”

  “No!” Marvelous. Why don’t you go ahead and fling yourself at his feet, then? Sophie forced a laugh, and the amused sparkle in his green eyes set off another sweet wave of pure longing through her.

  Bloody hell. Her attempts at feigning disinterest were ridiculously inept. If anything, what she had heard about him had only made her that much more curious. He just did not seem the sort to stoop to swindle.

  She sighed. “You must forgive me, Mr. Hamilton. I am not in the habit of meeting people I’ve only just met—in the park I mean—and I find that I am rather…well, there isn’t a word for it really, but I would like to see your house, as it seems to be a very fine house, and I am rather fascinated with it, so I thought, there is really little harm, is there? No, don’t answer…I am just…oh my, I think I am rambling on a bit…”

  Mr. Hamilton placed his hand on top of the two she held in a death grip and squeezed kindly. “I do believe I understand, Miss Dane. Perhaps if we go on about the business of seeing it, we’ll both feel a bit more at ease, do you think?”

  “Oh yes, I think,” she said and sighed with relief, unnoticing of his smile of a
musement.

  He stood up, gallantly offered his arm. They walked slowly, in silence, to the main path that led around the pond and to the construction site. Sophie was acutely aware of his body next to hers—he was at least a full head taller, perhaps as much as an inch or two over six feet. His legs were quite long and muscular, and his hands looked as if they could hold the world in their rough palms.

  These things she noticed from the corner of her eye, in the midst of a heat whorling inside her. She desperately thought of something to say, she hoped something clever and witty, and realizing that she had no such thing to say, blurted, “Might I ask your occupation, Mr. Hamilton?”

  She instantly regretted her choice.

  “I am in the business of building railroads. Have you seen one?”

  What she knew of railroads and the controversy around them could be summarized in a single word: Nothing. “Ah, no…but I saw a locomotive once.” At least she thought it was a locomotive.

  “Indeed?” he asked, brightening noticeably. “And where might that have been? Leeds?”

  “Brussels.”

  “Brussels, truly? How interesting. What did you think of it?”

  “What did I think of it?”

  “The locomotive,” he said, and paused in his walking to hear her answer.

  What did she think of it? It was big, it was black. “It was b—…There appears to be an awful lot of dissatisfaction with the railroad, doesn’t there?” she asked, wincing inwardly at the boldness of her question.

  He blinked. Then he laughed. “Indeed there does, Miss Dane. And what do you make of it all?”

  Well here she was then, the proverbial fish out of water. Did she have an opinion? “I…I really don’t know enough to have formed an opinion, Mr. Hamilton. I have heard complaint that it will mar the countryside.”

  He nodded thoughtfully.