Behind the Courtesan

by Bronwyn Stuart

  Her chest heaved with the effort to breathe. Her hands clenched until her nails bit into the palms of her hands, leaving crescent moons in their wake. She should take back her words. She should never have spoken them to start with, yet there they were, out in the open, like a ravenous wolf, who wants only to eat the hearts of the pained and lonely for his breakfast. Tears burned her eyes, but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing them fall.

  “I understand.”

  Sophie slowly calmed, as if his answering words had popped the bubble of her anger. Blake’s shoulders slumped and for a moment she had to bite her lip against an apology. What had started out as a pleasant evening of companionship and passion had ended in pistols at dawn after all. She wondered who had won.

  “If it means anything to you, I am sorry.”

  God, why did he have to punish her so? And why did she have to believe he meant what he said? “You should go.” Before he specified if he was sorry for the hurtful words, or sorry that he’d crawled into her bed.

  But before Blake could take one step, there was a frantic knocking at the bedroom door. She met his gaze with a little shake of her head, willed him not to answer, not to make a move or a sound.

  “Who is it?” she called, panic filling the pit of desolation.

  “It’s Dominic, miss. There’s a problem downstairs and I can’t seem to find Blake.”

  Sophie shuffled to the door, careful to keep the blanket around her still naked body. “What’s the problem, Dominic?”

  “The Duke of St. Ives has just arrived and there’s no breakfast and no one in the dining room to tend him. I have to take care of His Grace’s flesh and I can’t do it all by myself.”

  “I’ll be down in a moment. Keep looking for Blake.”

  “Thank you, miss. Thank you.”

  Sophie held her breath until long after his thumping footsteps had receded. She turned, her head fell forward until her chin almost rested on her chest, a single tear fell down her cheek. “What have I done?”

  “There’s no need to tell him.” Blake actually sounded concerned but when she looked up and met his gaze once again, she saw only fury.

  “I wasn’t going to tell him,” she said. “Nothing happened. Nothing more than a bad mistake.”

  “So that’s what it was? A mistake?”

  “What else could it have been? You said it yourself, you are no duke and I’m nothing but a gold-chasing whore.”

  “Sophie—”

  She held up one hand. “No. I asked you to leave and I meant it. Get out.”

  “I can’t go out there now. What if St. Ives is standing in the hall?”

  “I don’t care. I’ll tell him you were fixing a chair or stoking the fire or something.”

  “While you are undressed?”

  Her cheeks burned. He made her feel hot and cold at the same time despite treating her worse than a free tumble at the docks. She should have slapped him then and there. She certainly shouldn’t have opened her heart or her body to him. Why had she ever thought that he’d changed? That he was different? That in his mind there might be some small place that didn’t think her useless or dirty or tainted. Mistake was an understatement.

  He may not be his father, but like his sire, he used her, hurt her, made sure she had no idea which way was up and which was down. At least this time the damage was on the inside—invisible but no less intense—rather than bruises and broken bones.

  She had to watch while Blake pulled his shoes on, the same clothes he’d worn the night before when they’d danced and laughed and enjoyed each other’s company. When he opened the window and stretched a leg over the sill with all the grace of a panther, all signs of his previous injury gone, she turned to face the wall. She couldn’t bear to watch him leave like this. She wished she could go back and wake up with a smile, not bring up the subject of his heritage, just ask for breakfast. If only.

  When she turned back again, words on the edge of her tongue that would take the sting out of the morning’s insults, he was gone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Everywhere Blake turned, he saw red. Was he angry with her or himself? Both if he had to be honest. He’d wanted to sleep with her. Hell, he’d wanted anything she would offer like a pup waiting for a crumb, anything the duchess would throw his way and then when he had her, he had to go and ruin it all. The story of his life lately.

  Why couldn’t he wake her up with his hands, his lips, his mouth? Why hadn’t he stayed in her bed, her curves all snuggled into his side and done the right thing? Instead he’d woken, realized he’d taken advantage of a drunken friend and then dressed hoping to slink out and not say a word about the night. Pretend it never happened so he wouldn’t be tempted to do it again.

  But then she sighed and shuffled as she rose from a deep sleep to awareness and he’d wanted to look into her eyes. He’d wanted to hear what her first words for the morning would be, see her tousled hair on his pillows in the bed that was his before he’d given it up for her. He craved that kind of domestic bliss with her, but then he’d opened his mouth and ruined it all. Again. Damn her! Damn him!

  When his feet hit the ground after climbing down the side of the wall outside the kitchens, he didn’t stop. He stomped right to the barn and threw the doors open. What did make him pause was the realization that he couldn’t saddle his barrel of a horse and ride out his frustration in the cool country air.

  Frantically he searched for something else, something else that could take the weight of his anger but there was nothing here. He would have to chop wood. Lots of wood. When he turned to leave, a shadow fell over the ground before him.

  “Matthew? What are you doing here?”

  “I told Sophie I would chop the firewood for the day. What is going on?”

  “You shouldn’t be here right now. I’m not...myself at all.”

  “What happened? Did you fight with Sophie again? Please tell me you didn’t.”

  “It’s none of your business. What happened is between Sophie and me and that is how it will stay.”

  “Fine, I will go and ask her what happened.”

  “Don’t go anywhere near her.”

  Matthew stepped toward him, his face grim. Blake stepped back.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. A mistake.” He used her words and it cut him to the bone. A mistake was when you added salt to your custard instead of sugar. Or when you didn’t saddle your horse right and fell off because of it. Sleeping with her hadn’t been a mistake. He’d wanted to. Hell he still wanted to. He groaned.

  “Is she all right?” her brother asked, his fists clenched.

  Blake wanted to tell him the truth. Then Matthew could swing the first punch and Blake could let his frustrations go, but his friend didn’t deserve that. As much as Blake wanted to hit someone or something, it would not be Matthew Martin.

  He turned away from his old friend, unable to look him in the eye and say nothing happened, that Sophie was fine, that everything was fine. The red-hot fury faded to a kind of numb desolation. Damn.

  “I’m serious, Blake, if you don’t tell me what happened, I’ll ask her and she’ll tell me and then I’ll come back and...” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.

  “I slept with her.” He still had his back to Matthew; he couldn’t bear it.

  “Did she consent?”

  He didn’t have to look around. He heard Matthew’s teeth grind while he waited for an answer. “She started it.”

  “Are you blaming her?” Another shuffling step.

  Blake finally faced his friend, the man who knew him better than any other. “We were drunk and our clothing wet. I would have walked away, I swear, but she... She was very persuasive. I couldn’t say no.”

  “That’s my sister you’re talking about, Blake. Be very, very careful.”

  “I’m so sorry, Matthew.”

  “Do you think I’m the one you should apologize to? From the look on your face when I
came in, you should be saying sorry to Sophie for whatever it was you did.”

  “You don’t understand.” He borrowed her words again, the meaning finally beginning to sink in to his thick head. “I really began to admire her.”

  “You say that as if it’s a bad thing. She’s an admirable woman.”

  Blake shook his head. “If only I’d seen that sooner.”

  “Are you going to tell me what’s got you looking as if you lost your best friend?”

  “I think I just did lose my best friend.” He slumped down the side of a stall to the dusty ground and put his head on his knees. He hoped it wasn’t true. God, he hoped he hadn’t ruined everything. He’d loved once; he still did in a way.

  “Why don’t you go and tell her that? Why don’t you go and throw yourself at her feet and beg for her mercy? She’s not the woman you thought her to be when she first arrived. She will forgive you.”

  Blake was saved any reply when Dominic walked a majestic black horse into his barn. It was possibly one of the finest horses he’d ever seen, other than Blakiston’s own steeds. “Is that St. Ives’?” he asked the young man.

  “It is. He came up for Blakiston’s auction. He asked to see you when you’re free.”

  “So it’s true?” Matthew breathed once the lad had gone into another stall.

  “It must be. But surely Blakiston doesn’t need the money? He’s bleeding us all dry already. What could he possibly need more for? Unless he’s thinking about adding to that damned house out there.” Blakiston Manor was huge and imposing and didn’t need to be upgraded. Well, not since Blake had last seen it as a teen.

  “I had better see what St. Ives wants.”

  “Are you going to talk to Sophie?” Matthew asked, brushing dirt and hay from his dark trousers.

  “If she will let me anywhere near her. If St. Ives will let me anywhere near her. If he finds out what happened, it may be the end of us both.”

  “Don’t let him find out.”

  As they walked through the double barn doors and into the yard, Blake looked up to her window, the same window he’d fled only hours earlier. The couple he saw silhouetted stopped him in his tracks. “That’d be easier said than done,” Blake muttered with a curse and a gesture toward the inn’s second floor.

  * * *

  Sophie sighed into St. Ives’ familiar warmth and breathed his scent. He was spicy and sweet while remaining masculine and forbidding. How she loved to hug the man. With her emotions crumbling around her she needed to hug him, to know he was there for her.

  Over his shoulder, she saw Blake enter the yard with Matthew. Even with the distance, it was impossible to mistake the hard lines of his face, the tension in his shoulders and the disapproval in his eyes. He must certainly now think her lower than a whore. Not that she cared. He’d done nothing but belittle her since she arrived. To think that their truce could have survived intimacy had been a mistake on her part. One of many to add to the still growing list. She wondered if he would have acted differently had he known she’d cut her ties with St. Ives before traveling to Blakiston.

  She pulled out of the duke’s embrace to put some air between them.

  “Sophie, it’s great to see you, but what are you doing here? I thought you were off to the seaside with your friends. You are supposed to be resting.”

  That’s the story she’d told him. She’d thought the small white lie acceptable. The truth hadn’t been. “I lied. I’m sorry.”

  “Why?”

  He didn’t seem angry and for that, the guilt deepened. “I didn’t want you to know where I was really going. What I was really doing.”

  St. Ives sat in the worn chair before the fire—the same chair Blake had sat in last night—an expectant look on his handsome face. “What are you really doing?”

  She nodded, braced herself. “I was running.”

  “From me?”

  “From everything. After I lost the baby, I just couldn’t face any of it. I’ve done it before and it’s a living nightmare.”

  “Done it before? You’re not making any sense. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  She nodded again. She could trust him with her story and should have before now. She told him about being held against her will, but not about the rape. She left out the early years in London and the past twenty or so hours as well. But the rest she told him. About leaving her family in the dead of the night, about the babies she had lost over the years she had sold her body.

  She should have known relief at the unburdening, but she was still a common liar. Even with sympathy etched all over Daemon’s face, Sophie still couldn’t tell him the whole truth.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked when she was finally done with the sordid tale.

  “I didn’t want anyone to know about my family, about my past. There had to be somewhere safe I could return to when the time came.”

  “Is that what you are doing? Are you going to stay in Blakiston?”

  She shook her head and moved to the corner of the room where the cradle was still hidden under a blanket. She ran a finger along its crimson edge, but made no move to unveil it. “My brother is to have a baby. He asked me to be here for the birth, to be her godmother if I choose. After that, I haven’t yet decided.”

  “A blessed event for your brother and his wife, to have you here.”

  “Do you know my brother?”

  “Of course I know him. I’ve been coming out here for more years than I care to recall.”

  There was a thoughtful look on his face that made Sophie fearful she’d missed something. “Why do you come out here? Are you friends with Blakiston? Why are you here now?” She had a thousand questions and as each one bounced into her mind like a child’s toy, her anxiety grew.

  “I would rather lick a chamber pot than be in the same room as the current Duke of Blakiston, but he has something I want.”

  “What is it?” Her interest was piqued. Daemon only ever got that particular look of determination when he planned to win. Nothing would stop him now, whatever it was.

  “It’s a long story and not mine to tell.” He stood and moved toward the connecting door leading to the room he would stay in for his brief visit. “I’ll see you at luncheon? Shall we dine in the private parlor?”

  “There’s something else I haven’t told you.”

  St. Ives stopped and turned back to face her. He wasn’t a man who looked capable of violence, but he also wasn’t a man to be crossed. She still was not ready to tell him everything that had transpired since her arrival, but there was one very important detail he would find out soon enough if she didn’t tell him first.

  “We may have to dine a little late.”

  “Why is that? Do you have an engagement? I can eat by myself.”

  “The thing is... I have to make the meal.”

  St. Ives stared at her for a full two minutes before he threw his head back and laughed like a man who’d lost his senses.

  “Why do you laugh at me?”

  “You’re having a joke. Why would you make the meal?”

  “It’s a very long story. Let’s just say I fell into a trap made of my own stubborn pride.”

  He began to laugh again. Not the reaction she expected.

  “When I arrived, I asked to speak to the man in charge and the boy downstairs looked at me rather strangely. He asked if I wouldn’t rather speak to the woman in charge, since the man was injured and not able to run the inn. I thought he meant Blake’s wife. Are you telling me you’re the woman in charge?”

  “Sort of. Blake was injured and I stepped in to help him, but it was my own fault and I forgot the kind of boy he was and... It’s another rather long story.” She babbled. She never babbled. Too many half truths were going to make it very hard to keep her stories straight.

  “Does he know how stubborn you get?”

  “He does now.”

  St. Ives shook his head before turning back toward his own room. His chuckles carried back t
o her along with the words, “Poor Blake.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Poor Blake was already at a loose end by the time St. Ives made it to his office. Had she told him? Should he brace for a fight or welcome an old friend and offer him a glass of something able to stand on its own two feet? He needed two glasses before he could summon the courage to open his office door. Things could not have gotten further out of hand.

  What no one, not even Sophie or Matthew knew, was that Daemon and Blake were half brothers. It was the reason they hadn’t been in the same room for years for fear that someone would recognize the similarities between the both of them and the previous duke.

  When Daemon had discovered who his real father was, he’d come to confront the man. Courageous for a twenty-one-year-old trying not to reveal his mother’s secrets. He’d also paid a visit to the tavern to meet his half brother. The sibling he hadn’t known about until their sire let the information slip. On purpose? They still weren’t sure. There was probably an ulterior motive for the revelation, but by then the old duke’s mind had cracked. Daemon had only sought Blake out so he could know if Blakiston lied or not. Though they had different color hair, the other resemblances were too strong to deny the truth.

  Blake eyed Daemon warily, tried to gauge the other man’s mood as he watched him pick his way through the crowded taproom. The morning rain that had just started to fall was proving to be good for business, and lunch would see the place packed to the rafters as men sought refuge from the cold.

  As Daemon came to stand in the doorway, Blake stepped back like the coward he was. He didn’t say a word. Just waited. Never had he felt more like a younger brother than in that moment.

  Daemon looked him up and down from his boots to his head and back again, but Blake couldn’t detect any anger, no fury set to be loosed.

  “They told me you’d been injured, but you look hale and hearty to me,” Daemon said with a half smile.

  Blake released his breath on a relieved sigh. “As do you. Obviously inheriting a dukedom agrees with you.”

  “I’m happy if that’s what you are asking.”