My Seductive Innocent

by Julie Johnstone

  The letter was her most treasured possession. Sophia had read the letter so many times since her eighth birthday when Frank had given it to her that she knew each word by heart and could clearly picture her mother’s lovely flowing handwriting.

  Dear sweet boy or girl,

  I have a certainty in my heart that I won’t live to know you, just as my mother did not live to know me, and I want to impart two things to you: first, how much I love you, and second, a bit of advice that I implore you never to forget. Never lose hope that out there somewhere is a person who will love you and treasure you as you deserve to be loved and treasured. No matter how terrible things get—and I’m sure they will get very bad, indeed, knowing your father as I do—keep this hope in your heart and let it sustain you. I lost faith that I would ever meet someone who would truly love me, and I settled for your father. By the time you read this, you’ll likely be old enough and world-weary enough to know how foolish that was of me. Don’t repeat my mistake! The best thing about Frank was that he gave me you.

  For you, I want passion, laughter, and love. For you, I want the world, which I forgot for a while is full of endless possibilities. Don’t you forget it, too!

  Your loving mother.

  Frank had shoved the letter at her with the odd remark that her mother couldn’t haunt him as she’d threatened to do now that he’d fulfilled her dying wish of giving Sophia the letter on her eighth birthday. Thank God her mother had possessed the foresight to prey on Frank’s superstitious nature.

  The letter had saved Sophia’s heart from becoming hard, and the money would save her life. And her brother’s. Three more shillings and she would have enough money to get her and Harry away from Frank and this hellhole. Frank may be their father by blood, but love and caring had nothing to do with the sort of father he was. And now that Harry was about to be nine, Sophia had no doubt that Frank would follow through on what he’d been saying since the day Harry’s mother had left him on Frank’s doorstep. Frank had vowed that he’d sell Harry when he turned nine to Mr. Exington, the town’s master chimney sweep, to be used as a climbing boy. The rotten apple had been repeating the vow ever since.

  Sophia shuddered at the thought. Being a chimney sweep too often ended in death. She had to get them out of here before that happened. Frank was a known drunk and gambler, and it was common knowledge that he’d produced Harry out of wedlock with a barmaid, yet Sophia and Harry were the ones who paid the price for his reputation. She refused to let Harry pay with his life.

  She’d done her research, quietly inquiring of customers who had come through the tavern from London how much it cost to live there. Two pence a night would buy her and Harry a shared bed in a lodging house. Then Harry could go to school as he deserved, and eventually she’d educate herself as Frank had denied her the opportunity to do. She’d find work and build a real future from there. London held opportunity. Eleanor, her best friend, assured her it was so. Eleanor had gone to London four months ago to visit her spinster aunt and had come back in love. Now she was engaged to be married.

  In Sophia’s nineteen years, she’d only encountered one man who treated women well and that was Eleanor’s father, Reverend Cooper. Of course, Eleanor’s fiancé now made two men, but stacked against all the selfish, good-for-nothing men Sophia had known—Frank being at the top of the pile—her chances of meeting someone wonderful were slim. Yet the hope her mother had told her to hold on to had burrowed inside her aching heart and sustained her through many lonely nights.

  A mug banged in front of her downcast gaze, and a sun-weathered hand slapped against the dark wood of the bar. Sophia tried not to wrinkle her nose as she peered at the fingernails with black dirt caked under them. Frank, stinking of gin, as usual, leaned toward her. His fat belly brushed her arm and made her skin crawl. She didn’t so much as twitch. She knew better than to show her repulsion and risk Frank’s ire. Twice—that she could recall—in her nineteen years, she’d displayed her disgust and gotten a cracked lip and a black eye for her disrespect.

  Three more shillings, she reminded herself and forced a smile. “What do you need from me, Frank?”

  His flinty blue eyes narrowed as his lips thinned.

  It only took a second for her to realize her mistake. “Father,” Sophia corrected and nervously reached toward her hair to twine a strand around her finger, only to remember Frank had, once again, cut her locks and sold them. Sophia’s fingers grazed the jagged edges of the mess Frank had made of her hair. She barely held in her wince. “What do you need from me, Father?”

  It was blasted hard to call him Father when he didn’t really deserve the title. Fathers loved and protected their children, or at least the Reverend Cooper did. He was really the only good father Sophia knew, but to be fair, she didn’t know if most the men that frequented this tavern were fathers, and if they were maybe they were nicer to their children than they were to her. The desire to snort made her frown. She was turning right cynical. Of course, who wouldn’t with Frank as a father?

  He was terrible to her, but he was worse to Harry. She suspected Harry’s stuttering embarrassed Frank, which then made him angry. The fool only made Harry’s stutter worse with his tormenting.

  Frank smiled his rotted-toothed grin. “The horse trainers are comin’ in for some ale. Get yer arse movin’.”

  “Yea, get yer arse movin’,” Moses, Frank’s apprentice and the second-worst man she knew, mimicked. He slapped her on the bottom, letting his hand linger as he’d been inclined to do lately. She smacked his hand away and glared at him. Not that it did any good. He returned her glare with a cheeky smile and a wiggle of his bushy red eyebrows. Her stomach flipped over in disgust.

  Frank snorted and stepped between them. “Keep yer hands off Sophia until ye’ve the money to pay me for her. Once ye get the money we discussed, she’s all yers.”

  Sophia clenched her teeth on the nasty words she wanted to spew. Moses―what a colossally ironic name for the disgusting excuse for a human being―would never be her husband. She’d rather burn to death than let that man touch her. But no need for dramatics. She was going to be gone very soon. Very soon, indeed.

  “Get goin’, Sophia,” Frank snapped and gave her a shove.

  Tripping as she walked away from the bar, she smacked into someone coming through the door. They hit hard, causing the breath to swoosh out of her lungs and her balance to shift too far back. Her slipper caught on the raised wood plank that Frank, in all his slothful glory, had yet to fix. Sophia teetered backward and knocked into Moses, who snaked his hand around her torso directly under her breasts. She looked to Frank to help, but he was no longer there.

  “Get off me, you beast,” she hissed.

  “Come on, luv, ye know ye want it.”

  The racket from the patrons increased around Sophia, right along with her pulse, as she turned her head to glare back at Moses. “I want to gouge your eyes out. That’s what I want.”

  Moses’s hand slithered upward, and she went rigid, her mind racing to calculate if she could kick back far enough to get him where it would really wound him.

  “Release the lady.” The man’s unfamiliar voice was as cold as the frozen waters of the Tyne River.

  Sophia whipped her gaze in the direction of the voice and met blackness. Confusion blanketed her mind for a moment, and then she realized she was staring at a topcoat. A very expensive one by the look of it. It appeared so silky, and the cut molded to the man’s broad chest. She trailed her gaze up and over his wide shoulders and to the face that belonged to the commanding voice. He fit his voice perfectly with a strong jaw, angular cheekbones, and dark eyes, at once assessing and calculating.

  Those eyes, so dark brown they were almost black, flickered over her, then settled on Moses before narrowing into twin daggers. “Either you’re deaf or stupid.” The man cocked his head. “I feel certain you can hear so...” A slow, taunting smile stretched his full lips.

  Sophia’s heart thumped at his audacity
and foolishness. Moses was likely to blow any second. She tried to jerk out of Moses’s grip to avoid being hit in the crossfire, but he tightened his hold.

  “Mind yer own business, ye hear?” he spat at the man.

  The man’s face grew stony. “I’m afraid I can’t do that—honor and all. But you wouldn’t know about that.”

  Sophia’s arm pulsed with pain as Moses gripped her harder. “You snobby aristocrats er all the same. Thinkin’ you can order everyone around. I’ll hold this here wench any way I see fit.”

  The man’s brows arched upward as his gaze landed on Sophia and trailed slowly down her body, then back up to her face. She raised her chin as she met his dark gaze. “I’m no wench.”

  The corners of the man’s mouth lifted into barely a smile. “It’s plain to see you’re a lady,” he said in a deep, smooth voice. “A very lovely one at that.”

  He was a liar, to be sure, but he was a nice liar. Her cheeks grew warm at the false but smooth compliment, and she couldn’t help reaching up and tugging on her short hair.

  The gentleman stepped closer to her and Moses, and she got a whiff of a pine-scented soap. Likely expensive rich-person soap. It smelled rather divine. She sniffed one more time, so she’d remember it. Someday, she’d buy Harry a bar of that soap. He deserved it.

  “I’m going to give you ten seconds to unhand the lady, and if you don’t, you’ll find yourself flat on your back with my boot on your chest.”

  “And jest who do ye think is gonna bring me to my back?” Moses snarled.

  The gentleman’s lips twisted into a contemptuous smile. “I will, though it pains me to think of touching you.” He regarded Moses for a long moment before speaking. “I’m counting.”

  Sophia tensed. Moses was a brawny man with a bad temper. She eyed the stranger in front of them. He was taller than Moses, and he looked to be rather strong himself, but he was a gentleman. They didn’t fight―not like commoners, anyway. Men like Moses used fists and any other means they could, including cheating, to win a fight. Gentlemen pranced around, and―

  The flash of a hand in front of her face stole her half-formed thought. Before she could blink, the gentleman was at their backs. Moses cried out, and she flew forward as his hand was snatched from her breast. The air behind her swooshed, and then a loud thump jarred the floorboards beneath her. When she turned to see what was happening, Moses was precisely where the gentleman had said he’d end up―flat on his back with the man’s gleaming black tasseled boot firmly planted on Moses’s chest.

  For a brief moment, the chatter around them stopped, but when it was obvious no more fighting was going to occur, the voices erupted again and the brawl—a rather common occurrence in the Breeding Tavern—appeared to be forgotten.

  With a look of supreme boredom, the gentleman glanced down at Moses. “I did warn you,” he said in a polite, though aloof, tone.

  Sophia barely held in the laughter that bubbled up inside her. She moved to the stranger’s side and looked down at Moses, too, savoring this moment rather indecently. Moses had been tormenting her forever, and she lacked the strength to put him in his proper place as this gentleman just had.

  She pursed her lips, enjoying watching Moses turn a bit blue as he tried to suck much-needed air into his lungs. “He cannot count past five,” she said matter-of-factly.

  The stranger regarded her with a hooded gaze. “I’d say that’s his problem.”

  “Let me up,” Moses growled and bucked his body.

  The gentleman shifted his weight forward, eliciting a wince from Moses, and then spoke. “Talk again and I’ll be tempted to crush your windpipe, which will make you rather dead. Understand?”

  The hairs on Sophia’s arms prickled as Moses nodded while glaring daggers at her. He would seek vengeance against her without a doubt. She’d have to put her dagger in her boot in a little bit.

  The stranger followed Moses’s pointed stare to her, and his black eyebrows dipped as he gave her a concerned look. “Are you going to be all right?”

  The way his gaze bore into her made her heart do a strange flip-flop. “Oh, sure,” she managed to finally say. “I’m stronger than I look.”

  “Most women are, Miss...?”

  “Vane,” she responded and dipped into an awkward curtsy that Eleanor had tried time and again to show her how to properly execute. “But you can call me Sophia. We don’t really put much emphasis on propriety here.”

  He offered her a brief, strained smile that made her think he didn’t smile much. “People cling to propriety to hide secrets.”

  She shrugged. “I guess we don’t have many secrets here. What’s your name?” It only seemed right to ask. He had rescued her, after all.

  “I’m the Duke of Scarsdale.”

  “How very proper,” she teased, even as her chest heated at her playful words.

  A real smile spread across his face this time, and the effect was mesmerizing. His shadowy eyes glistened as if they held a thousand deep secrets, then his thick black lashes lowered to veil those eyes. When he looked up again, those secrets were hidden behind an indifferent visage. “As I said, propriety is a nice mask, and I’ve many secrets to hide, but you can call me Nathan, nonetheless.”

  Heat seared her entire body. She was sure her face and chest must be red with her blush. He probably thought her a silly lady who would swoon if he took her in his arms and kissed her. Her gaze inadvertently went to his full lips and then his strong arms, and her legs, much to her dismay, felt a little wobbly. She locked her knees in place. She refused to be the sort of nitwit that swooned. “All right, Nathan, what can I do for you?”

  “That’s rather a dangerous question to ask a gentleman, Sophia.”

  “Seems a rather normal question to me. You are, after all, standing in my father’s tavern. Did you want a drink? A meal? Directions?”

  “Touché,” he said with a chuckle. “In my defense, I was distracted.” He glanced toward Moses. “I’m going to teach Sophia that clever little boot to the throat trick and a few others she can use to kill you rather easily. I’d behave myself from now on if I were you.”

  Nathan removed his foot from Moses’s chest, and Moses lumbered to his feet. “You’ll pay for that,” he snarled before stomping off toward the kitchen.

  Sophia frowned as he disappeared behind the kitchen doors. “Better be aware on the road today. Or better yet, tell your coachman to keep a look out.”

  “I left my coachman in London, but I’ll be sure to keep my guard up.”

  She regarded him. “I wasn’t aware dukes travelled alone,” she teased. She couldn’t help it; she was too intrigued.

  “I prefer to be alone,” he replied.

  “Isn’t that rather improper?” She didn’t usually banter with the men in the tavern, but this was fun. And Nathan was no ordinary man. Besides, it was harmless. He would be gone very soon, and she’d never see him again.

  His brown eyes glittered with flecks of light as it held hers. “I’m no proper duke.”

  His voice had dropped very low and husky, and her heart thumped in response. She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry. “You only pretend to be?”

  “That’s right. Now you know one of my secrets.”

  “I’ll guard it with my life.” She tried to joke, but her voice came out thick and strained sounding, even to her own ears. He must have noticed too because he gave her a strange look before stepping back and putting space between them. “Say, you don’t know where Mr. Bantry’s horse farm is, do you?”

  She did, but if Mr. Bantry owed this man money, she wasn’t going to lead him there, no matter if he’d just saved her or not. Mr. Bantry had mouths to feed, and she wasn’t going to be the one to make his children go hungry this winter. “Why?” she demanded.

  Another tight smile stretched his lips but this one reached his eyes. “I’d like to purchase a horse from the man, so you can lower your hackles.”

  “Oh,” she said, a tad embarrassed, as the tension
drained from her shoulders. “I can give you directions, but he trains horses for men who are disabled and I don’t see anything incapacitated about you.” As she spoke, she found herself following the curve of his massive shoulders down his broad chest toward his tapering waist, and finally to his thighs. He wore tan breeches that fit snugly around his legs so that his muscles strained against the material. Suddenly hot, she swallowed hard. She’d never seen a more perfect example of masculine beauty or power. It made her stomach flutter and her heart speed.

  Good God above, she hoped she wasn’t a trollop at heart. Her poor dead mother would probably flip in her grave to think the child she’d died giving birth to had turned out not to be worth it.

  “Sophia?”

  Her name rolled off his tongue in three distinct, silky syllables. It made her heart stop and then jolt to a start again when she realized she was staring at him. She whipped her gaze up and found his brilliant dark eyes fixed on her. Embarrassed didn’t quite cover how she felt. Mortified was closer. The wish to have never gotten off her cot this morning and started this day was an even more apt indication of her current state.

  “I can give you directions if you wish,” she choked out, though her tongue felt thick in her throat.

  “That would be very generous of you, and if it sets your mind at ease, the horse is not for me but for my cousin who has a bad leg. I assure you I’m not trying to trick you.”

  She knew her mouth had parted in surprise because when she sucked in a breath, cold air hit her teeth. She promptly snapped her jaw shut. Tensing, she expected Nathan to make some lurid remark about how she had been ogling him, but instead he offered her a gentle smile, as if being gawked at was something he was used to, which he probably was. Still, gratitude filled her chest. Twice today, this man had shown her kindness and she wanted to return it in kind.