by Amelia Grey
They lay quietly for a few moments before Matson lifted his weight from her and quickly took the sides of his cloak and wrapped it around them like a cocoon. Sophia snuggled tightly to him, fitting her body perfectly against his, with her head nestled on his arm.
Matson propped on his elbow, lifted her chin with the tips of his fingers, looked into her eyes, and said, “Sophia, I know you’re going to find this difficult to believe, but I’m in love with you.”
Sophia held her breath, trying to keep the pain of his words from penetrating to her heart.
“I want to marry you, Sophia.”
She let out a sighing breath. “You know that’s not possible.”
He looked down into her shimmering eyes. “No, I don’t know that, and if I did know it, I wouldn’t accept it.”
She moved to rise, but he touched her arm. “I won’t let you run away from me.”
Sophia stared deeply into his eyes, aching with the pain of loss. “You can’t stop me, Matson.”
“I must. I love you. I want you to be my wife.”
She tried to look away from him. “I can’t marry you.”
“Do you love me?”
“After what we just shared, how can you ask that?”
“Because you haven’t said the words to me that I long to hear.”
She withdrew farther from him. “I won’t say them. I can’t.”
“Sophia.”
“Matson, you know this barrier has always been between us. If I could change taking that vow, I would.” She slowly shook her head and cringed as she looked up at him sadly and said, “No, that’s not true. I don’t think I would change it if I could.”
A deep frown of confusion marred his face, and she knew he didn’t understand what she was saying.
“You weren’t there, Matson. You didn’t see my father struggling and gasping for every breath. I would have promised him anything to ease his suffering.”
“But he is gone, and you are here. This is your life we are talking about, not his.”
She shifted and rose on her elbow too, facing him. “No, this is about me. It’s about who I am. It’s the only way I know how to absolve myself of the guilt I have lived with for so long. I must do this for him.”
“Sophia, any father would have risked his life to save his child from a burning house. It was his duty to save you and everyone else in the house. You don’t owe him anything for that.”
She closed her eyes. Deep sorrow filled her. “You don’t know. It was more than that.”
“More than what? Open your eyes, Sophia.” He touched her shoulder softly. “Tell me.”
That time in her past came rushing back, and it pained her. “No,” she whispered earnestly, “I can’t bear it. Don’t make me tell you what a horrible, selfish child I was.”
“Sophia,” he said huskily, “look at me.”
She opened her eyes and realized they were clouded with tears that wanted to spill, but she refused to let them.
“First, I don’t believe you were horrible or selfish, and second, if you were, do you think it matters to me what kind of child you were?”
“You don’t understand.”
“Tell me so I can.”
She swallowed past an aching throat. “You know the fire was about six months after my mother died.”
With a loving hand he brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “Yes.”
“What you don’t know is that about six months after the fire, my father came home jubilant one day. He told me he was going to marry the most beautiful woman in the world. She was a nobleman’s daughter and had him feeling young and more alive than he’d felt in years. She would come live with us and be my mother. My mother! I remember I just started screaming at him. I still hear my screams in my dreams sometimes.” Her hands balled into fists.
“Sophia, you were a child.”
“Yes, but I continued to scream, and I hit him over and over again, telling him he couldn’t marry her. I ran out of the house, and Papa had to chase me down. I wouldn’t stop screaming until he promised me he wouldn’t marry her, and he didn’t. As I grew older, I realized what a selfish thing that was to have done to him. I’ve often wondered if I thought maybe my mother would come back if he didn’t marry her. Maybe I thought that woman was the reason I had nightmares of my mother being consumed by the fire until there was no trace of her left. I don’t know why I behaved as I did. I only know I have to make amends.”
“Did your father ever tell you he held your actions at that time against you?”
“No. And I often tried to get him to talk about it with me when I was older, but he wouldn’t. When I tried to apologize, he wouldn’t even discuss her with me.”
“I don’t like seeing you in such anguish.” He touched her cheek with the backs of his fingers, wanting to comfort her. “I’m sure he didn’t blame you for his not marrying that woman.”
“But it was the last time I ever saw my father truly happy. I had cost him his healthy lungs when I left my room and he couldn’t find me in the smoke, and I cost him the woman he loved and wanted to marry. I did owe him my vow. I still do.”
“This is madness! You were seven. You had been traumatized. He couldn’t possibly hold that childish behavior against you.”
“No, he didn’t. He would never, but I fault myself. That is why I made the vow to him to marry a title. Don’t you understand, Matson? I need the redemption and forgiveness for what I did to him.”
“Sophia, no.”
“Yes,” she pleaded. “He called her name on his deathbed. Not my mother’s name, not my name, but her name, and I kept him from her. I don’t deserve happiness.”
“You can’t believe that,” he said, looking into her bright eyes.
He reached for her again, and again she pulled away from him. “I have to do this so I can be free of the guilt,” she said, pushing him away. She reached behind her and grabbed her nightgown and yanked it over her head.
“The only thing my father ever asked of me is that I do for him what he could never do for himself, and that was to have a title connected to my name.” Her voice cracked. “I will do that for him.”
Matson threw the cloak aside and grabbed his trousers and started shoving his legs into them. “Do you want to spend the rest of your life bearing the touch of a man you don’t love?”
“No,” she said, tying the ribbon at her throat. “But I will. I must. I can’t live with this guilt.”
“Sophia, you are making me crazy.”
“Have you ever made a vow?”
Matson thought for a moment as he pulled his shirt over his head.
His eyes turned guarded. “Yes. I have vowed that I will never forgive Sir Randolph for having an affair with my mother and fathering me.”
“Do you know of anything I could say that would make you change your mind so you would forgive him?”
“No,” he answered quickly.
“Yet, you ask it of me.”
He hesitated. “I must. Sir Randolph is not keeping us apart. You are. Sophia, what do you want from me? Am I to be your lover while you are married to Snellingly, Bighampton, or someone like Beckett?”
“No, of course not,” she whispered earnestly as she gathered her hair underneath the hood of her cloak. “Once I am married, I will not betray my husband.”
Matson put his hands on his knees and clasped them together and shook his head. “So what are we to do then, Sophia? Look at each other from across the room at every ball and dinner party and wish we could touch and kiss like we have this night?”
“After tonight, nothing else is possible between us. I must choose a husband.”
Sophia rose and ran across the lawn. She had to get to her room before the tears started flowing.
Twenty-five
Love is light from He
aven; a spark of that immortal fire.
—Lord Byron
There was no public room in London as opulent as the Grand Ballroom, with its gilt moldings and carved fretwork. There was hardly an evening of the year that the baroque chandeliers were not lit with burning candles that threw colorful prisms and dancing shadows of golden light across the large room.
Tonight was no exception.
Matson leaned against a column where he could watch the dance floor. Sophia had been on it three times since he’d been standing there. He’d seethed with that rotten, green-eyed beast called jealousy, watching her glide easily through the steps, turns, and twirls with Lord Hargraves, Mr. Beckett, and the rapidly recovered Lord Snellingly. The hell of it was that all three men measured up to what Sophia wanted; Matson didn’t.
No, he thought, she didn’t want them, she wanted him but was going to settle for one of them.
Matson tried to stay away from the party, telling himself that he didn’t give a damn, but the problem with that was he did. He’d spent the entire day at his home, replaying his time with Sophia last night in her garden with the moonlight shining on her delicate white skin. He remembered every kiss, every caress of her rounded shoulders, swelling breasts, curved waist, and the soft flare of her shapely hips. He remembered every detail of making her his and then her refusal to accept him.
He didn’t know how long he’d sat in her garden after she’d left him. He was too stunned to move at first. Sophia would rather live with a vow than give it up for him. A thousand thoughts had crossed his mind, including one he’d thought long and hard on today. His heart was telling him one thing, but his honor was telling him another.
He had a ship heading back to America at first light. He’d thought seriously about kidnapping Sophia and sailing away with her on his ship. She loved him. He was convinced of that, and felt in time she would forgive him for forcing his will on her. But that thought had lasted only as long as the afternoon. If anyone had forced him to give up his vow, he would have never forgiven them. Honor was a matter of personal choice, not someone else’s choice.
The cold, unmasked truth of what Sophia made him face last night rang in his mind. He was asking her to do something he wasn’t willing to do himself, until now.
It took a lot of soul searching to realize that he wasn’t going to let his hatred for Sir Randolph keep him from Sophia. He didn’t want to spend the rest of his life hating a man and defending a mother who’d said yes to the very kind of passion he’d shared with Sophia that afternoon in the rowboat.
He had to tell Sophia that.
He watched her leave the dance floor and be escorted back to her aunts. Matson pushed away from the column and headed toward them.
As he waded through the crowd, Matson smiled and accepted words of congratulations, hearty claps on the back, and nods of admiration for winning the race yesterday.
“Good evening, ladies,” he said, stopping in front of Sophia and her aunts.
“Delightful to see you, Mr. Brentwood,” Mae said with a beaming smile.
“That’s a lovely dress you have on, Miss Shevington,” he said to Mae. “And you, too, Miss Shevington.”
“Good evening, Mr. Brentwood,” June said tightly and then lifted her chin and looked away, as if she were searching for someone in the room.
“How are you this evening, Mr. Brentwood?” Sophia said.
Her eyes seemed to be caressing his face as he spoke to her. “I’m well, Miss Hart, and you?”
“I’m—I’m still trying to get over the events of yesterday—and last night.”
So am I.
“I’ve never seen a lady row a boat as well as you,” he said.
“And you, sir, are by far the strongest gentleman I’ve met,” Sophia said.
“Mae,” June said sharply, and Matson and Sophia looked at her. “Is that man smiling at you?”
Mae turned to her sister. “Why, yes, Sister. Yes, I believe he is.”
June clucked. “It’s disgraceful for an old spinster such as yourself to be flirting with a gentleman, and one who appears younger than you too.”
Mae smiled at the man. “Oh, I know it’s absolutely scandalous, Sister, and I’m enjoying it so much.”
Sophia looked at Matson and gave him a weak smile. A waltz was announced. “Are you free for this dance?” Matson asked her.
“Yes,” she answered quickly.
“You don’t mind, do you, Miss Shevington?” he asked Mae, deliberately not looking at June.
“No, of course not.”
As Matson and Sophia started to walk away, the gentleman who had smiled at Mae walked up to her and asked her to dance. She accepted. Matson smiled to himself. Perhaps Miss Shevington was finally going to get a beau.
Matson led Sophia to the far corner of the dance floor, where they would wait for the music to start. He looked at her face for a long time before finally saying, “Has anything changed?”
She shook her head as if she didn’t trust herself to speak.
“You have a past, Sophia, but so have I.”
She cleared her throat. “What do you mean?”
The music started, and Matson took Sophia’s hand with his left hand and placed the other high on her back between her shoulder blades. Her body was warm. He stepped forward, and she slid her foot back, starting the box step.
“My first love was a married woman,” he said to her as they danced.
“Oh,” she said, clearly surprised. “I didn’t know you had a first love.”
“I was only twenty when I met her and didn’t know she was married until a few nights later. My heart was already involved by then. At every party I went to, I had to watch her with her husband, knowing I could never touch her. It was hell for a couple of years, but I managed.”
“I don’t know what I can say to that.”
“You don’t have to say anything. I watched you dance with other men tonight, Sophia, and I knew that what I felt for Mrs. Delaney doesn’t compare to what I feel for you.”
Sophia missed a step, but Matson made up for her error. “Matson, don’t.”
“You asked me last night if I could think of reason that would make me give up my vow to hate Sir Randolph, and I realized today I have a reason. You. You are that reason. Marry me, and I will deny my vow and welcome Sir Randolph into our home.”
Tears pooled in her eyes. She missed another step. Matson quickly corrected for her again.
“There is a difference.”
“No.”
“Yes,” she whispered earnestly. “Your vow was made on hatred. Mine was given in love. I can’t break it.”
He swallowed hard and looked around the dance floor for a moment, trying to handle her rejection. Finally he said, “I can’t stay here and watch you marry another man. When I was in love with Mrs. Delaney, I could stay in Baltimore, see her, talk to her, and put my desire for her aside. I know myself and what I’m capable of, and I can’t stay here and watch you going home with another man, to his bed for his kisses and touches, and not mine.”
“No, don’t.” She looked away.
“I have had you, Sophia. I had you first. Marry me,” he said as his hold on her tightened.
“You know I can’t. Don’t ask me again.”
Matson felt as if a knife sliced through his heart, but he managed a nod, and they finished the waltz in silence. As the crowd left the dance floor, he held back and said to Sophia, “You know I thought about kidnapping you and taking you away with me on my ship. I wanted to steal you from the titled men pursuing you and force you to be my bride.”
She gave him a sad smile. “Perhaps you should have and left me with no choice.”
“I won’t dishonor you by forcing you to give up your vow. I wish I could. And I know if I stayed here, I would ask you to betray your husband. I can’t wa
tch you live with another man. I want you to have a good life. I have a ship leaving at first light for America. I’ll be on it. Good-bye, Sophia.”
Matson turned and walked away.
***
On what felt like wooden legs, Sophia followed her aunts and Sir Randolph into the house later that night. She had felt as if she were in a stupor since Matson left her on the dance floor.
She stopped in the foyer and gave her wrap to Mrs. Anderson. Ever since Sophia had watched Matson walk away, she’d felt as if her heart had shriveled into a cold, hard knot. She kept hearing him say that he would give up his vow for her, but he couldn’t dishonor her and take her vow away. Sophia had thought of nothing else since he left. Her guilt over what she did to her father had always been great, but through his actions, she knew he had forgiven her.
Now she had to forgive herself.
“Sophia, aren’t you coming up?”
Sophia looked up the stairs and saw June, Mae, and Sir Randolph at the top of the stairs. “No, I’m not. I’m going to pour myself a glass of port.”
“Port? You don’t drink port,” June admonished.
“Tonight I do.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Mae said.
Sophia paid no mind to her aunt. She walked down the corridor and into the drawing room. She was pouring from the decanter and into a glass when her aunts and Sir Randolph walked in with worried expressions on their faces.
“Tell us what is wrong, Sophia,” Sir Randolph said, coming to her side.
She took a sip of the deep-red wine. “I had decided earlier tonight that I was going to marry Lord Snellingly.”
“Oh, how wonderful,” June said. “Sir Randolph, did you hear that?”
“Of course, Miss Shevington. I might be old, but I’m not deaf.”
“No wonder you want a port. This calls for a celebration. We need champagne, Sir Randolph.”
“There is no cause for celebration, Auntie. After I decided on Lord Snellingly, a man I didn’t love and could never love, I realized I would probably cringe every time he touched me, because I love another man.”
