Most Improper Miss Sophie Valentine

by Jayne Fresina

  His monocle gleamed brightly, reflecting the light of Lady Hartley’s candles, so each time he moved his head, a flare of white flame replaced the eye behind the glass.

  “I understand he became an inmate of Newgate Prison…”

  Across the table, Miss Sadler was picking at her food, elbows tight to her thin sides. James, his eyes bloodshot, gestured for the servant to bring more wine. Lady Hartley’s hands—two bejeweled, scrawny creatures—stroked the furry head of her lapdog, over and over again, and Mrs. Dykes ran a slow, lizard-like tongue across her lower lip.

  “…but his last sentence was commuted to transportation. He was sent to a prison hulk near Deptford.”

  As soon as Sir Arthur paused for one sip of wine, Sophie wrapped both hands tightly around her purse, took a deep breath, and said suddenly, “I daresay a man born into that life has very few opportunities to rise out of it.”

  Silence descended on the dining room. Even the plaster cupids flying about Lady Hartley’s high ceiling paused their frolicking to look down and listen.

  She didn’t think she’d ever heard her voice sound quite so loud. Everyone was staring at her, shocked by her bold words.

  “Should we not look for ways to help rather than condemn a man simply because he was born in poverty?” she added.

  “I’m afraid, Miss Valentine, you take a liberal view, along the lines of the reformer Grey Bennet and that Fry woman.” The way Sir Arthur spoke their names made his feelings clear in regard to them and their reforms. The red veins on his cheeks looked ready to explode. “I did not know you were a woman of mouthy opinions.”

  “I only wish I could do more than have an opinion. I wish I might help those poor souls.”

  “Poor souls? Had you sat before these degenerates so many years, as did I, you would take a different view.”

  She couldn’t stop herself, and more words spilled out over her tongue. “Surely every child born should have a fair chance at life. We cannot all be wealthy, but we can all be informed.”

  He sneered. “I begin to think you had better not come to Bath after all, young woman.” He turned to a gray-faced Mrs. Dykes and complained that she’d described Sophia as a quiet, mousy girl. “We don’t need these radical ideas influencing our daughters,” he added sternly.

  “Yes, Sir Arthur,” Sophie explained with a great deal more merriment than she felt, “although I’m a woman and not entitled to them, I have my own beliefs and ideas.”

  “Forged by the heart, no doubt,” Henry muttered into his wine, “instead of the head.”

  She continued, “So it would not do to bring me to Bath after all.”

  Mrs. Dykes grew irritable and flushed. “Do allow Sir Arthur to finish his tale about this wretched criminal. One hain’t ’alf intrigued to hear how it will end.” Her teeth formed an ugly grimace.

  Sophie stood and thrust her chair back. “Would you hunt him down for your own amusement? What if he’s begun a new life to make amends for the old one? Is he always to be condemned for where he was born?”

  “Sir Arthur says this fellow has never lived an honest day. He has deceived and harmed many,” James shouted, almost knocking his wine over. “For that he must pay. This is not merely about where he was born, Sophia!”

  “But you don’t know all the circumstances. His crime may be a…a moment he has regretted ever since, when he made a mistake. A rash, reckless mistake.” She closed her eyes, seeing his fist strike a man’s face…seeing the man fall back and hit his head on a stone hearth…and all the blood from his own wounded chest, where that knife remained stuck, darkening his uniform. Horror made her throat tight. And then she saw that ladder again, rushing out of the dark toward her. “For that one mischance…something he never intended…what price could he ever pay to recompense? Nothing could undo it. He surely knows that.” She exhaled finally and opened her eyes.

  Mrs. Dykes gasped scornfully. “Like what I told you, ’Enry, your sister’s a drinker.”

  “Not yet, madam, but I’ve made my own share of mistakes and misjudgments. And lived to regret them bitterly.” She held her head high so they would all look at her scar and remember. Today she was a pirate—as a certain young boy called her—and pirates did not hide their scars; they flaunted them with pride. “We all have our sins to repent and mistakes in our past.” Her words fell like a shower of hot sparks into the stone-cold silence. The Misses Sadler finally appeared alive. Their eyes danced with glee, and their noses twitched. She remained standing, astonishing even herself with the strength of her feelings in that moment. “We all have secrets, do we not? Lapses in judgment?”

  When Henry looked up to find her watching him, he fumbled with his wine glass and spilled a few bloodlike drops across Lady Hartley’s pristine tablecloth.

  “We all strive to better our circumstances,” she went on and turned her eyes now to Lavinia and then Mrs. Dykes, who glared back at her in fury. “Why should some be forbidden that chance?” Finally she turned to James. “That diamond pin in your cravat could provide an education for at least one poor child—like that man you’re all so keen to condemn—and set him on a path to greater things. Would it not benefit all of us to help those born into circumstances worse than our own?”

  Again there was silence. Then Lavinia said, “I do wish she’d sit down. She’s putting me off my dinner, and I’m sure I don’t feel guilty for what I have. I deserve it and more too, which I would have if certain people were not so tight with the purse strings!”

  Sophia cursed at her with words some folk around that table had never before heard. The Misses Sadler inhaled as one creature.

  “Is that Latin or Greek?” Lady Hartley asked, slightly frustrated by the inadequacies of her ear trumpet.

  Lavinia bristled, and her tight curls trembled with indignation. “Well! To be so spoken to! Me! A well-brought-up young woman from a good family!”

  Suddenly her husband snapped at her to be quiet, and they all looked at Henry in surprise. “I believe my sister’s point,” he said slowly, “is no person deserves it more than any other.”

  And Mr. Bentley—gentle, peaceable Mr. Bentley—quietly and somberly stated, “Miss Sophia raises many good points. It would behoove us all to consider our advantages and help others less fortunate. She is perhaps a little impassioned in her speech, but the message is one with which I concur most heartily.”

  Her mouth open, Maria swiveled in her chair, gazing upon her husband in wonderment and growing quite giddily pink.

  Lady Hartley appealed now to Sir Arthur. “What is that dratted girl saying? Why is she standing in the midst of dinner?” She raised her voice for the table in general. “Is she foxed?”

  Sir Arthur cleared his throat loudly, and his voice boomed out, filling the impressive space of her elegant dining room. “All this chatter is gibberish, young woman. But it matters not one whit, in any case. This Kane fellow has been dead five years, at least. Died on that hulk, apparently.” He snuffled with scornful laughter. “The Devil caught up with him in the end, as he always does. The Devil always gets his due.”

  Sophie felt her knees buckle. She pressed her hands to the tablecloth. Dimly she heard Mrs. Dykes protesting he may not be dead, but Sir Arthur was adamant, and of course, he was never wrong. The man was dead. He decreed it to be so.

  “Furthermore, it cannot be the same young buck living nearby,” he added, “for Kane was an old fellow—in his eighties.”

  Relief touched her like gentle, warm, summer rain. She belatedly remembered her manners, stammered an apology into Lady Hartley’s ear trumpet, and left the room.

  Kane—of course, that must have been the old man who helped him, the man who was almost a father to him. So Russ took that name when he escaped to make a new life. It was a tribute of sorts, and no one but she knew his real name…the name written in his dusty, old, scuffed boots.

  Chapter 35

  Sophia crossed the foyer and kept walking, through the front door of the house, down the step
s, and into the street. It was the grandest street in Morecroft, and she’d walked it many times but never alone. A few people turned their heads as she passed, but she looked at no one. Tonight she was escaping again, but this time she knew where she was going. The beaded purse tucked under one arm, she quickly stripped off her long gloves and let them fall. From now on she would touch life directly.

  James followed. She heard his unsteady footsteps slapping and tripping along the pavement, his angry shout for her to wait.

  Finally she stopped by a lantern, because she had a stone in her slipper. As he approached, he stooped to retrieve her discarded gloves from the pavement. The amber lantern light cast warm waves of gold in his hair. She breathed hard, and her bare fingers tightened around her small purse.

  He was, fortunately, moving beyond his angry, drunken stage into a morose sulkiness. “I suppose this means you still don’t know what’s good for you.” He must have seen the tears in her eyes. She felt them—great, hot droplets hovering in her lashes.

  But she wasn’t sad. She was too many other things now. A passion stirred inside her, more deeply felt than anything she’d known before Russ Adamson’s first kiss—before the first caress of his fingertips. She blinked and shook a few of those teardrops loose, and as they rolled slowly down the curve of her cheek, she said, “Jump, and I’ll catch you.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just…thinking.”

  He grumbled, “You always did too much of that.”

  She wiped her tears on the back of her hand. “Whom did you take to your grandmama’s summer ball instead of me?”

  “Miss Sadler. Hannah. Not a bad girl,” he mumbled. “Knows a good thing when she sees it.” He smirked and tucked her gloves away inside his evening coat. “Nothing like you.”

  “I’m sure. To be honest, I wonder what you ever saw in me.”

  He shook his head. “Sometimes I wonder the same. It was one of those evenings, I daresay, when the candles are bright, the air is warm…”

  “Yes.” She knew exactly what he meant. “Strong punch, dancing, and candlelight are a deadly combination with a great many unhappy marriages to answer for.”

  Unsmiling, he said, “If he ever hurts you, that blackguard will rue the day he met me.”

  “He will never hurt me, James.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because I know him. And I…I love him. Don’t cause any more trouble for us. Let him be. Everyone deserves a second chance.”

  But he turned his head, his lips pale, nostrils flared.

  She stepped off the pavement and walked across the road to the small park with its border of black iron railings. Again he followed her, stumbling over the cobbles and stubbing his toe on the curb.

  She sat on a painted bench, closed her eyes a moment, and tempered the fleeting instinct to run away. The gate squealed, and then he was there at her side, dropping to the bench with a groan. “What has got into you tonight?” he mumbled.

  This time he couldn’t blame her behavior on the iniquitous Ellie Vyne’s presence, she thought.

  Her fingers blindly played with the beads on her purse. “Do you remember, James, the little dark-haired housemaid who worked for Lady Grimstock in Mayfair? Do you remember her?”

  “Maid?” he grumbled sourly. “What maid? She had many.”

  “I wasn’t certain of her name, so I wrote to Lady Grimstock to be sure.” She paused for breath. “Her name was Rebecca Adamson.” Now she opened her eyes and looked at him. “Do you remember her now, James?”

  He stood abruptly and moved away to lean against the railings. “How am I supposed to remember one maid from another?”

  “Don’t you, James? Truly? You should—”

  “Why the Devil should I remember a housemaid?”

  Slowly, carefully, every word sharp as a pin, she told him, “I saw you that evening, when I stood on the balcony waiting for you to bring my shawl. I saw you stop and talk to her. And she looked up at you with two big, dark brown eyes shining with adoration. Her name…was Rebecca.”

  “Well, then,” he blustered as his hands clasped the railings, “if you say that was her name, I suppose it must have been.”

  “She had a baby, James.”

  There was a long, heavy silence.

  “It was your baby.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!”

  The branches above his head trembled in a sudden breeze, and he raised his shoulders as if he felt a chill. She walked up to him slowly. “You knew. You could have helped her, but you turned your back.”

  “Oh, for pity’s sake, what makes you think it was my child?” he roared.

  She looked up at his moonlit face. “She died, James. Did you even know? Didn’t you care what happened to her after your actions got her dismissed?”

  He blanched, every ounce of heightened color fading instantly.

  “She died giving birth to your child.”

  He backed away and blustered, “I suppose this is one more of your great causes, is it? Unwed girls getting themselves into trouble.”

  “That sort of trouble takes two people, James.” She suddenly opened her purse and passed him the note she’d recently found in her lover’s trunk. At first he wouldn’t take it, so she pressed it into his clenched hand. “There is no signature, but I recognized your handwriting at once. For proof, I wrote to Lady Grimstock and asked if she remembered the name of that dark-haired maid who was dismissed because of a pregnancy. She did remember, of course.” She sighed. “She has a memory like an elephant, especially when it comes to other people’s transgressions.”

  He stared down at the crumpled letter. She didn’t know whether he was reading or simply staring emptily. “Where did you get this?”

  “From Rebecca’s brother.”

  “Rebecca’s…?”

  “He doesn’t know who you are. I won’t tell him. I just wanted you to be aware of what you’d done—to face up to it after all these years.” He kept his eyes on the letter. His shoulders sagged. “You could have helped her, James. She reached out for your help, but you pushed her aside with that cold, miserable little letter, telling her you could do nothing for her except send her money.”

  For a moment he was silent and still, staring beyond the letter. “I was too far from London when I heard,” he murmured finally. “She had someone write to me. I never knew she was with child until then.”

  “She died, James, with only her brother at her side, and he was a boy of fourteen, just dismissed from his post without references.”

  “I…I didn’t know she died.” He thrust the letter back into her hands. “When I returned to London, I went to the last place she’d lived, and the people there knew nothing.” Briefly he covered his eyes with one trembling hand, and then he shook his head. “Who is he…her brother?”

  She licked her lips. “I think you guessed that somewhere in these last few minutes, because you must know why I showed you that letter and what I’m going to ask of you.”

  He said nothing, just stared.

  “Leave him be, James. Stop this persecution. You owe him that much after the great wrong you did to Rebecca. I’ll never tell him who ruined his sister, but in return you’ll let him go on with his life and be loved.”

  He stumbled away from her, returned to the bench, and sprawled clumsily on it, head tipped back. Moonlight danced over his brow and limned his proud nose and sharp chin. She’d seen that haughty profile in Rafe’s small face when he looked up at her and called her a bossy woman, but she hadn’t recognized it then. And the little boy’s blue eyes—those were James Hartley’s eyes.

  He hadn’t asked anything about his son, she realized. Should she tell him? It would upset Russ. James had no space in his busy life for a bastard son, one he could barely admit was his own flesh and blood, and Russ loved the boy dearly. She wouldn’t want to risk James getting any ideas about taking the boy away.

  But was it right to keep his son away from him? Surely
, as the father, he should know the boy lived.

  And then what would Russ do if he discovered the identity of the “fancy gent” who ruined his sister? She must break the news to him very carefully, choose her moment wisely.

  So for tonight, at least, they were all better off as they were. One day soon, when things were calm and settled and tempers had died down, she could let her husband tell James himself. That might be best. Her loyalties now must lie with the man she was about to marry. Let Russ, who had struggled all these years to keep the child safe, decide when the time was right for little Rafe.

  “That’s what you came here tonight to ask me?” James said suddenly. “That’s the only reason you came, isn’t it, Sophia? For him.”

  “Yes.”

  “You dressed up like that because you knew I’d have to do anything you asked when you looked so beautiful.”

  “Well, I tried my best.”

  “I almost don’t see your scar tonight,” he muttered.

  No, but he did see it, and he always would, because he looked only with his eyes and didn’t see beyond. Yet. One day he would learn what was important. She had faith in it. Now that she had found love, she wanted everyone to know the same happiness.

  “I haven’t lost you”—he soothed his own pride—“because you were never really mine.”

  “No,” she admitted frankly.

  “I was in love with you, though. Wasn’t I?”

  She shook her head. “You will know when you fall in love. Properly in love. You’ll understand then.”

  He glared at her, still sulking and confused.

  “He lost his sister, James. You owe him.”

  Finally he groaned, one hand to his forehead. “Very well, then, Sophia, you may have your gypsy. I won’t interfere.”

  She wanted to cry with joy and relief, but she couldn’t let him see how scared she’d been. “Thank you. I wish you good luck, James. May you find happiness of your own.”

  And she walked out of the park.

  ***

  Lady Hartley once again loaned her barouche for the return journey to Sydney Dovedale. The travelers were subdued. Lavinia sulked up a storm, and her mother was so angered by her thwarted plans, she could barely breathe. She’d hoped for a union between Valentine and Hartley, one that would shoot her daughter into the upper rungs of society at last, but that opportunity had now slipped out of her grasp. And it was all Sophia’s fault—and Henry’s for not silencing her shockingly opinionated tongue.