by Kim Bowman
He turned toward her and interrupted, “Oh, so I’m not Old Man Montegue?” He leaned his head back. “Hallelujah.”
Sophia bumped his shoulder and smiled. Their familiar teasing dynamic had returned, but the subject she needed to address sobered her again. “I know I agreed to accompany you socially, but this is a foolish gamble.”
“So now do I finally hear your mysterious tale of woe?”
“No. But if my identity is compromised, I must leave. I would appreciate discretion.”
He shook his head but made no comment. Wilhelm ducked and kissed her temple, but apparently changed his mind, because then he deliberately dragged his lips across her cheek. She caught her breath at the contact and nuzzled into his neck to avoid returning his kiss tenfold.
The energy expressed itself elsewhere; she spread her fingers in his hand to twine with his. The gesture should have been innocent, but sliding her fingers between his, nestling her soft flesh against his strong grip, seemed the most naughty innuendo. And she knew he felt it too when his pulse kicked in his neck and wrist, but Wilhelm stared at the fountain, fixating on the patterns of glittering water spilling over the giant dish.
They seldom discussed the obvious matter of the maddening attraction between them, disguised as playacting for her role as mistress. It went beyond that, and they both knew it. Sophia had thought when she finally felt that way for a man, she would be thrilled and happy, but what she actually felt was far from simple.
Chapter Twelve
A Tale of Empty Wine Bottles
After they returned to Rougemont, Sophia let the dogs outside to patrol then wandered the moonlit halls for a time, too tightly strung to contemplate going to bed. As she passed the music room, it seemed to call to her, so she went inside and sat on the sofa behind the piano. She kicked off her slippers and pulled the pins out of her hair, which relieved a nagging headache. With her feet propped on the sofa, she laid her head back and dangled a glass of Lord Devon’s pomegranate wine in her hand.
The doors opened, and candlelight flooded the room. Wilhelm jumped when he saw her. He hesitated in the doorway, seeming to wait for either her invitation or dismissal.
She shot him a lazy smile, and he set the candle on the piano. “I was just taking a drink. Join me, Wil?”
His eyes sparked, probably because she’d used his nickname — it had just come out. He watched her as he drank straight from the bottle then passed it to her; it was some sort of dare. She set her glass down. Knocking her head back, she swallowed, then wiped her hand across her mouth. He flashed his breathtaking pirate half-smile, and she knew she had earned his approval.
Wilhelm sat on the piano bench and dragged the box of music to rest between them. He rifled through the sheet music, provoking a scholarly discussion, which made her feel every bit the bluestocking. Composers, music theory, piano technique… what an insufferable pair of professors they were. Still the bottle of wine passed back and forth between them, and an hour later, she couldn’t care less if she was unfashionably academic. Wilhelm behaved just as badly. Worse, judging by his spirited argument in defense of Franz Liszt. Who else on earth would care?
He produced Rossini’s Cat Duet and placed it on top of the previously discussed Mozart aria. Sophia laughed out loud and shook her head, recognizing she was half-drunk when she tried to sit on the bench but missed. Wilhelm pulled her by the waist to sit next to him then began tapping the staccato chords of the introduction. He was really going to do it; she quickly set the bottle down and swallowed her mouthful before her laughter erupted at his first operatic “meee-ow.”
The entire piece had one lyric, meow, and mocked the suspenseful recitative style that gave Italian opera its substance. Wilhelm made a fine rendition of a mooning tomcat, and she had no choice but to answer with the coy meowing of the reluctant tabby. After a few more lines, they howled with laughter, unable to continue.
Wilhelm knocked over the empty bottle as he wiped tears from his eyes, and Sophia tried to catch her breath. He pulled out his necktie and loosened his collar, then opened a new bottle and deferred the bench to her. Handing over a Schubert sonata, he gestured for her to play it. He sat reclined on the sofa behind the piano and chuckled when she played both parts with one hand, undisturbed, while the other hand lifted the bottle for a sip.
She retired when she tipped the bottle over, nearly splashing Wilhelm’s piano — he snatched the bottle with reflexes that did not belong to a tipsy or weary man. In fact, he seemed completely unaffected by the wine as he browsed a text on Bach’s musical riddles. She joined him on the sofa, half primed for debate and half ready to drop asleep.
Astounding, the way music theory sounded so provoking coming from his lips. He kept saying, “Inversion, tonic, modality.” Words that posed his lips in a very kissable manner. His arm draped across her shoulders while his fingers toyed with her hair, altering her academic state of mind. She kept watching his throat move as he talked. In the weak candlelight, she made out a brutal-looking scar bisecting his neck, as though he had narrowly escaped a hanging or a slit throat.
She followed the shadows where his opened shirt revealed his chest. Her fogged mind failed to register the alarming detail, opened shirt, and the fact that she must have been the one to unfasten the buttons.
He radiated warmth. Heat from his body toasted all along her side, separate from the heat stirring low in her loins and making her corset unbearably tight. She disentangled one hand and tugged clumsily at the laces, then hummed in relief when the pressure abated. She listened to the pleasant vibrations of Wilhelm’s lowered voice as she kicked off her starched petticoat. She pushed it under the sofa, finally comfortable, then tucked her head beneath his jaw.
Her hazy brain registered dialogue about canon perpetuus. Was he not going out of his mind as she was? He said, “Modulating spiral,” brushing his lips on her temple, and she could stand it no longer. She turned and silenced his academic mouth with her own. Spicy, smooth, berry-wine flavored. The more she tasted, the more it stoked her appetite, so she framed his face with her hands to hold him captive and indulged.
~~~~
The sound of footsteps and voices in the hallway woke Sophia with a start. The room was shrouded in darkness, but it felt like morning. She huffed, “Oh!” and Wilhelm startled awake. She raised herself up off his chest — wait, she had been lying on his chest? Her skin tingled with the shock of cool air after the burning warm contact of his skin.
She flushed with mortification as she attempted to right her dress. They sat upright on the sofa and exchanged looks of confusion. The empty bottles on the piano, the mess of strewn music and clothing; she wondered wordlessly what had happened.
Wilhelm looked swashbuckling in the shadows and delectably rumpled. His tousled hair draped rakishly over his brow. His wrinkled shirt hanging from his shoulders might slide onto the floor at any moment.
“I don’t remember…” Sophia trailed, confirming the truth with her fingertips pressed to her swollen lips. When her eyes darted to examine the state of her skirt, her head spun in protest with a dull ache.
“Oh!” she gasped as she finally registered the meaning of their scattered clothing on the floor: stockings, petticoat, garters! “Oh, no! We did not—”
“No,” he interrupted, “of course not. I am a gentleman.” He looked away, likely too polite to mention what they had done since she’d obviously not been ladylike. “I don’t remember falling asleep either, or else I would have taken you up to your room. I apologize.”
Wilhelm rose and pulled his shirt over his shoulders. “Besides,” he added in a low husky voice, scowling down at her from under his eyebrows, “if I had not been a gentleman last night, you would have no trouble recalling it.”
She watched him gather her things and offer them to her. With a bow he left the room, and Sophia found herself heaving deep breaths that did little to calm her angry pulse. She could only run her fingertips over her lips and regret she couldn’t remem
ber kissing Wilhelm, then despise herself for wanting to call him back and refresh her memory.
~~~~
At breakfast, Martin came with the morning post, including a telegram for Wilhelm. Sophia watched him from across the table. His mouth pulled into a grim line, he crumpled the paper and stood, excusing himself from the room.
Aunt Louisa watched after him with a frown and turned the page of the newspaper. She gasped. “Oh, by all that is holy!” She stood and tossed the paper to Sophia, who took one look and felt the blood drain from her face.
It was bad; she’d been caught. Or had she?
Apparently she and Wilhelm warranted an entire quarter-page of the society column, and that was only the cartoon. Sophia scanned the article, searching for the words, Duncombe or Chauncey. None. She’d been dubbed Mysterious Mistress — that she could abide. The journalist primarily concerned herself with the dubious Lord Devon’s previous aversion to women.
Unpalatable, but she had to study the cartoon. How accurately had the artist captured her face? Fairly, but not particularly well. The rendition of her gown looked a sort of ancient stola with a scandalous décolletage. That was bad enough, but the hands in the picture, exploiting the closed dance position, looked worse. Her left hand groped his tightly-clad rear and grasped at an open bag stuffed with money in his pocket. Her right hand holding shears to the locks of hair at the nape of Wilhelm’s neck made it clear she was being portrayed as the biblical Delilah. Clever, really.
Lord Devon had been drawn in a monk’s robe with gentleman’s trousers, puckering exaggerated lips for a kiss and leaning to ogle her larger-than-life bosom. which she certainly didn’t own one-fourth the mass of in reality. His left hand grasped a giant bottle of splashing liquor. Most offensive: the officer’s rapier swinging from Wilhelm’s belt, captured mid-motion in a conspicuously phallic position. Oh, mercy.
“Has he seen this?” Sophia whispered to Aunt Louisa.
“I assume so; he had the paper first.” Aunt Louisa fanned herself, scowling a death sentence at Sophia.
Sophia excused herself to go look for Wilhelm and tried not to run. She found him in his office, hunched over his desk, writing a mile a minute while Martin scurried around the room. She knocked on the half-open door and both men startled, glancing at her with stricken, guilty expressions.
“A word, my lord?” she cued when they both stared, at a loss.
“One moment.” He scribbled a few more lines then handed the paper to Martin, who rushed out of the room with only a slight nod in her direction. Wilhelm tucked other papers into the desk then rose to meet her. Suspicious — what was going on?
“I want to apologize, Wilhelm, but I hardly know what to say.”
“Apologize for what?”
Good heavens. Did he mean to force it out of her? She simply wasn’t in the mood. “Can you just accept a general apology, and I shall be on my way?”
His brow raised and one corner of his mouth pulled down in a half-frown. “Where do you think you are going?”
“That lovely article in the paper is not only embarrassing; it puts both you and me in danger.” She took a step back, resisting the urge to rest her hands on his arm and lean against his side. Too natural — she’d nearly done it without thinking. “Do be so kind as to lend me the use of a carriage, just to the Torquay station. Oh, and if anyone inquires, I went to France. Better yet, say you don’t know—”
He silenced her with a kiss, his mouth covering hers in gentle strokes. She was too startled to protest, then too overcome with the instant shot of pleasure to break away. Fire! A rush of desire stole her breath. Made her toes curl. Marble-smooth, wicked lips teased her with a fervor that savored of violence yet held a shocking intimacy and skill she had not expected.
Sophia dropped her head back and gasped, wishing she could assemble a coherent thought. She should be resisting. Instead, she was overwhelmed with his unspoken implications. He wrestled to catch her mouth with his and she imagined his arms locked around her as he rolled her over his bed. A slow slide against her bottom lip and a languid brush with the tip of his tongue, and she saw moonless nights outdoors under a fountain. He delved deeply as though he was dying of thirst, and she imagined precisely what she ought not, and in the music room on that sofa behind the piano, of all places!
Wilhelm caged her in with his shoulders and pushed her back to the door. One arm slid around her waist to pull her against him, and his other hand gripped behind her neck, the better to hold her in place while he ravished her mouth.
The most bizarre argument of her life took place, she trying to squirm away in an effort to voice her objections, and he trumping them all with his patient, sensual kissing. How had she ever believed him an amateur? He stole her breath, melted her urgency, and she fell into a pattern with him that felt like dancing, and she guessed they had developed an understanding the previous night on the music room sofa. No other explanation existed for the perfect harmony, the blissful lazy-jubilant exchange that made her feel as though they were longtime lovers.
What was happening to her? Her control dissolved, knowing she had not lost it but deliberately buried it. Wilhelm didn’t play by the rules; a man should not kiss like that, as though he could read her mind. As though he meant to express permanent, meaningful devotion. She was utterly lost. A small voice warned she would be sorry if she surrendered to a man, but it was weak, and his mouth on hers burned hot, made her feel as though she was soaring.
Once she’d been subdued like a boneless swooning drunkard, panting most unladylike for breath, he pulled back and ordered, “Stay. Please. Trust me to take care of you.”
“No. Wilhelm, I can’t.”
“Wait one week. If you still fear for your safety, I will take you to the railway station myself.” He kissed her cheek then her temple. “Say, ‘Yes, Wilhelm. Whatever you judge best.’” He mocked her soprano voice and her slight Italian-influenced accent, and she had to smile. “Don’t run away. Not today.”
Shameful, but he’d thoroughly seduced her, and she knew the show of passion was more a calculated manipulation than heartfelt. That alone posed a serious danger.
But why not wait? If no threat came, then she could linger awhile. No denying she wanted to stay. Even though she would never have allowed such a risk before, she found herself saying, “Very well, Wilhelm.”
She returned to her room to find a small mountain of telegrams — no, only three, but all from Mr. Cox. She tore them open, scanning the lines for the news she dreaded. He merely sent his reprimands, along the lines of, Whatever could you have been thinking. Stop. Suggest you go to your mother in Versailles. Stop. Heaven help you both. Perhaps she had caused her undoing in one fell swoop.
Sophia sat atop her traveling case long into the night, warring with the decision either to pack it or let it remain a fixture.
She could ask Mr. Cox to monitor the movement of the bounty hunters before deciding to flee Rougemont. She would never have taken such a risk before. That she even considered staying proved what a dangerous hold Wilhelm had on her.
Chapter Thirteen
Why Sophia’s Unmentionables Go Missing
Silent screams, rolling eyes, swollen purple lips. Some convulsed, others simply dropped limp. A few wore an odd expression of relief. For most, a tragic sense of surprise. No man truly believes he is mortal until his last breath, as he stares death in the face. Wilhelm knew the face of each ghost. He could not forget. For them, he was the face of death.
This time they wouldn’t die, spraying fountains of black blood even after he slew them again and again. The repetition became its own torture, over and over, until he became the cold, soulless creature he loathed.
But then he ripped his knife across the throat of his enemy — it revealed its face as her. The scream tearing from his throat crossed every realm between heaven and hell. Her eyes stared wide with shocked betrayal, her body spasmed, she gasped futilely as her throat poured opaque red, real blood. He scrambled
in vain to hold the wound on her neck shut, willing it all to be a dream, damning himself to the darkest pit of hell—
“Wilhelm,” her strained voice sounded inside his ear. “Let go. You’re hurting me.”
He blinked, twice, and there was no sticky blood coating his arms, no ear-splitting screams from impaled horses or smoke burning his nose. He smelled peaches and cloves and fresh cotton. Not his imagination. Sophia was here, outlined in weak lamplight and leaning over him in bed, her unbound hair falling over her shoulders onto his chest.
At once he came to his senses and dropped his hands as though her skin had scorched him. All the air sucked out of the room, and an unwelcome messenger in the back of his mind announced ominously, You hurt her. You bastard.
Moments later the sound of her coughing was music to his ears. He lay frozen, unwilling to spook her by moving his hands, despising himself too much to try comforting her.
Then she astounded him. She dropped her head onto his chest and reached her arms around his neck. “I am so sorry, Wil.”
Sorry?
He still waited for her to shrink in terror. Surely he’d just conjured her own demons, with his hands cruelly grasping her neck? He could not fathom how easily he might have killed her. It required little effort to crush a windpipe even one-handed, and he’d snapped many far stockier necks than hers before the victim made a sound.
“I will be fine, Wilhelm. Only a little faint. It will pass.” He was trembling, nearly hysterical; it probably frightened her, but no chance could he control it until his heart quit hammering against his ribs.
“I damn near killed you.” His voice held all the charm of a rusty hinge.
“You let go when I asked.”
