by Shana Galen
He looked over his shoulder. “Because I don’t want them to catch up to us.”
Sophia knew to whom he referred—the three men who’d been loitering on the street when she’d arrived. She glanced over her shoulder. The three thugs were gaining on them. She’d been so lost in thought, she hadn’t been paying attention and hadn’t noted—until Adrian pointed it out—they were being followed.
So that was two mistakes in one day. She couldn’t afford a third. In Paris, it had been the third mistake that cost her.
She reached into her reticule and withdrew a small, slim dagger. “You take the one on the left.” She nodded to a dark-haired youth in a faded blue coat. “I’ll take the blond and the short one.” The three were probably after money. She didn’t think this would take long.
“I don’t think so.” Adrian was pulling her arm. “If we hurry—”
“If we hurry, we’ll enter that alley even quicker. That’s what they want. We stand a better chance on this street where we can maneuver.” All of her instincts told her to stand and fight.
“Bloody hell.”
She didn’t know if he swore because she was right or because the men were too close for escape now.
“You’re not taking two of them,” he said, pulling a knife from his boot. “I’ll take Blue Coat and Blondie. You take Shorty.”
Now was not the time to argue. She’d dispatch Shorty easily and then help Adrian with the others. As one, they turned to face their attackers.
“Hey, little lady,” Blue Coat called in a singsong voice. “What are you doing so far from home?”
Sophia offered a smile. “I was hoping to meet the three of you.” She held up her dagger, pricked her thumb with it negligently. “It’s been ever so long since I’ve had to clean the blood off this little blade.” She looked at Adrian.
“Two days, at least,” he drawled.
She gave him a genuine smile. He did have a sense of humor!
Shorty held up his fist. “I got something for you, gov.”
“Oh, that’s no good,” Sophia said. The men were closing in now. She could see their strategy. They thought to surround her and Adrian. “We already divvied you up. You, Shorty, are mine.”
Shorty laughed with surprise. “You hear that, Will? She said I get to have her first.” And he lunged for her with one dirty hand. Sophia flicked her wrist and slashed his hand, opening a line of bright red.
“Bitch!” Shorty screamed, cradling his hand. “She cut me!”
His companions jumped to his aid, but Adrian stepped in front of her, pinning her back to a wall. Frustrated, Sophia tried to scoot around Adrian, while he aimed one kick at Blue Coat and punched Blondie in the chin. “Grab him and hold him,” Blondie yelled in a hoarse voice.
Shorty grabbed one arm, and Adrian wrestled to keep the other free from Blue Coat. He was losing ground, though, because he was trying to shield her.
“I don’t need your protection,” she said, attempting to duck under his arm. “Move out of the way so I can hit my target.”
But Adrian ignored her, swiping at Blue Coat with his knife while blocking her attempts to engage Shorty. “Run, Sophia. I can handle this.”
Ridiculous man. But he didn’t give up ground. She dodged right, and he blocked her. She screamed in frustration just as Blondie landed a blow to Adrian’s jaw. “You run, my lord. I can handle this.”
Didn’t he remember their meeting in the East End? She’d more than held her own. But he still didn’t trust her abilities. She’d have to prove to him, again, she could handle a fight.
Finally she saw an opening, skirted past Adrian, and stepped in front of Shorty. In surprise, he released Adrian’s arm. She hoped Adrian could hold the other two at bay and used her dagger to force Shorty into retreat. Now she was far enough from Adrian to keep him from interfering and to give herself room to fight. Having been stuck once, Shorty was eyeing the dagger warily.
“Why don’t you put that down, missy? Try to behave like a lady.” He lunged at her, and she easily sidestepped.
“Because I’m not a lady, and if you don’t run on home now, you’re going to see exactly how unladylike I am.”
She heard a muffled yelp behind her and the sound of a body slamming into the ground. Shorty gaped at whatever he saw, and she took her opportunity. She swiped her leg at his feet, throwing him off balance, then used the side of her hand to smack him across the nose. Blood, watery and plentiful as the Thames, gushed out. Instinctively, he put his hand to his face, and she moved in, slipping behind him. She wrapped an arm around his neck and slid her dagger under his chin.
Immediately, he stopped squirming.
“That’s right. Don’t move,” she murmured near his ear. He smelled like he hadn’t bathed in days, but she couldn’t afford ladylike sensibilities right now. She could play the delicate lady tonight—at Cordelia’s dinner party.
Damn! The dinner party. They were surely going to be late now. She glanced at Adrian, able to see his progress from her new vantage point. He was doing well. Blondie was on the ground, and Blue Coat was taking a beating. She could dispatch Shorty and assist Adrian, but she knew from experience operatives liked to finish what they’d started. Besides, she liked watching him work. As long as he hurried…
“Lord Smythe!” she called.
He glanced at her before turning to deflect a punch aimed for his eye. “Madam, I’m a little busy right now.”
“I can see that. Do you mind hurrying a bit? We’re going to be late for the dinner party. Unfashionably late.”
He ducked to avoid Blue Coat’s fist as Blondie stumbled to his feet and charged. He hit Adrian in the middle of the chest, propelling Adrian back against the wall with an “oof.”
He recovered quickly, his boot landing in Blondie’s abdomen, sending the man sprawling again. The move bought him a moment before Blue Coat charged. Adrian ducked under Blue Coat’s arm and sidled behind him. Sophia, with her knife still at Shorty’s throat, nodded her approval. He was good. Perhaps she could have run home. She might have had a chance at being ready on time…
“As much as I hate to inconvenience my sister-in-law…” Adrian panted, shoving Blue Coat against the wall of the building adjoining Hardwicke’s offices, grabbing Blue Coat’s hair and smashing his face into the brick. “I’m occupied at the moment.”
“Would you like my help?” she offered sweetly, digging her dagger in and drawing blood when Shorty tried to elbow her. Damn. The blood from his broken nose had seeped onto the sleeve of her spencer. It was ruined now.
“No.”
Adrian made to smash Blue Coat’s face into the wall again, but Blondie jumped on him.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Sophia moaned to no one in particular. “This is going to take all evening.”
She shoved Shorty against the brick wall, dug her knee into his back, and with a tug, pulled his shirtsleeves over his hands. She tied them off, yanking Shorty’s hands tightly behind his back and knotting the material. Then she pushed him onto the ground and put her heel on the back of his neck.
“Don’t kill me,” he begged. “I was only hoping for a few shillings to buy something to eat.”
She snorted. “You were going to rape me, kill him, rob us, and buy gin. Not very nice.” She ground her foot.
“Sorry!” he croaked.
She shook her head. They always were. “Listen, Shorty,” she said, “if you so much as lift your face out of the dirt, I’ll have to come back and slash your throat. Understood?”
He whimpered.
“You know I will do it.” She applied more pressure with her foot then jumped away, picked up her skirts, and joined Adrian’s fight. She pulled Blondie off his back, and when he looked over his shoulder in surprise, she punched him in the nose.
Holding back her wince—it had been some time since she’d punched a man and had forgotten how much it hurt her hand—she kicked him between the legs and watched him crumple to the mud-packed street.
She wiped her hands on her skirts, noting the pale pink material had blood spatters on it. They were worse than usual, and she wondered if her maid could get them out. Normally, Sophia tried to keep bloodshed to a minimum.
She glanced impatiently at Adrian and smiled as he finally sent Blue Coat tumbling to the ground. The man rolled into a ball on his side. Adrian stepped forward, prepared to give the man another kick for good measure, but she put a hand on his arm. “We’re late, remember?”
He blinked at her as if just remembering where he was and who she was. He glanced about him, saw Blondie clutching his balls and Shorty facedown in the dirt. He stared at the man and then at her.
“I told you I could take care of myself.”
He bent and caught his breath. “Thank you.”
“You don’t have to treat—what? What did you say?” She bent and looked into his gray eyes. He scowled at her. “Did you thank me?”
“Am I going to regret doing so?”
“No.” She stood straight again, shook her head. Adrian had thanked her. Agent Wolf had thanked her. She looked about the dirty street, the decrepit buildings, the sniveling men, and thought this was the best day of her life.
Adrian, still bent, was looking at her. “Why are you smiling?”
She leaned over, took his face between her hands, and kissed his lips. “Thank you.” Blondie tried to grab her ankle, and she shoved him back down with her foot. “Now, we really must go. Can you hail a hackney?”
***
Despite Sophia’s masterful management of the jarvey, their staff, their coachman, and Adrian himself, they were an hour late. The dinner party was to have begun at nine, and when they breezed in at five past ten, Cordelia’s look could have produced snow in August. “Lord and Lady Smythe,” she said icily, “we were about to sit down without you.” She wore a light blue dinner dress heavy with what Adrian thought were called flounces. She had matching blue ostrich feathers in her dull brown hair, which was arranged with a profusion of ringlets about her face.
“How rude of us to make you wait,” Sophia said before Adrian could reply. Cordelia stared at her, as Sophia rarely spoke if she did not have to. “It’s my fault completely.” She shrugged off her mantle—the same one she had declined to relinquish to the butler just moments ago—and handed it to the servant now. “I simply couldn’t decide which gown to wear.”
Cordelia gaped. Edward, Adrian’s brother, gaped. Every man in the room gaped. And Adrian turned to look at his wife and saw why.
Sophia wore a gown like those he’d seen in Paris recently. It was startlingly blue, simple but elegant. Nary a flounce to be seen. But true to the current Parisian fashion, it was cut very low in front and behind—very low. She’d had the mantle over her hair to conceal the gleaming pearls set in the thick chestnut waves. It wasn’t in ringlets on the side of her face, as was the current fashion, but swept up in a sophisticated coil, threaded with more pearls.
“Why, Sophia, you look… different,” Cordelia managed.
That was not precisely how Adrian would have described her. He would have said she looked ravishing.
And half-naked.
He wanted to throw his coat over her. Even more, he wanted to touch her—her face, her hair—find the true Sophia in there. Something told him this was she. This was the woman he had married, the woman who had been hiding under the disguise of large spectacles and tentlike gowns. He wondered when he would become accustomed to seeing her like this… in all her splendor.
And nakedness. He tightened his fingers at his sides to keep from hiking the gown up and over the swells of her breasts. Or dragging her off so he could yank it down…
“I see your condition agrees with you.” Cordelia stood.
Though Sophia undoubtedly knew exactly what his brother’s wife referred to, she gave her a puzzled look. “What condition?”
Cordelia looked at him, and Adrian merely blinked.
“Why, your pregnancy, of course,” Cordelia said, looking about the room. Several of the ladies in attendance raised their fans. Women did not usually speak so bluntly. Everything was couched in terms like “delicate state.” Obviously, Cordelia was out of sorts.
Sophia waved her hand jauntily. “I’m not pregnant,” she said breezily. “Did you want to go in to dinner? I’m sure your cook is wringing her hands.”
Adrian closed his eyes, knowing Sophia had just usurped Cordelia’s duty as a hostess.
“Y-yes. Of course,” Cordelia stammered.
And just like that, Adrian found himself leading Sophia into the Hayes’s dining room. He cut her a sidelong glance. Her chin was high, her smile bright, but the hard press of her fingers on his arm told him Cordelia had wounded her. He knew, now, how much Sophia wanted to be pregnant. Did Cordelia know as well? Was that her way of sniping at his wife? He’d always known the two women were not the best of friends, but he never thought much of it. He’d seen their interactions as little more than womanish squabbles, but now he felt Sophia’s pain at Cordelia’s thoughtlessness. And he felt a stab as well. Unlike his brother—blessed with two healthy sons—Adrian had no children to carry on his shoulders or bounce on his knee.
Adrian glanced at Edward—pudgy, balding, and pale—who took his place at the head of the table. Adrian had no ill feelings toward his brother. He didn’t care one way or another about Edward, though Adrian knew their mother tended to favor Edward. Adrian could hardly blame her, though, when Adrian resembled his traitorous father so completely. Even at the age of eight, Adrian had known his mother’s marriage to his stepfather represented a desperate attempt at a new start. Edward was the tangible proof of that.
Adrian took the seat offered him and looked around the table. Besides the host and hostess and he and Sophia, there were three other couples. It was unfashionable for a husband and wife to sit beside one another, so he was between two women and across from the other. Sophia was similarly situated. Adrian tried not to notice how the men on either side of Sophia smiled at their good fortune.
Surely they would bore her in a matter of moments. Seated across the table from him, in her formal gown and gloves, Sophia looked the perfect viscountess. But he had seen her only a few hours ago easily dispatch two dangerous men. It was that Sophia—the woman with blood on her gown and a dagger in her hand—he wanted to get alone.
The first course, a white soup, was served, and Adrian tried to focus on something other than his wife. “Have you heard from Mother, Edward?”
Edward sipped his soup and nodded. “They are still in the Lake District. She says London in the summer is unbearable and plans to stay away as long as possible.”
This was news to Adrian. He rarely saw his mother and had not known she was out of the city. In fact, he’d expected to see her and his stepfather here tonight. Apparently he knew more about operatives in Munich than the whereabouts of his own family.
Well, part of his family.
He glanced at Sophia. Her gaze had been on him, but it slid away quickly.
For once, he knew exactly where she was.
But it pained him that he’d grown so distant from his mother and had no relationship with her. He had always thought a career as an operative with the Barbican group was more important than anything else. But now he saw how isolated he’d become—from his mother, his brother, his wife…
“Oh, the Lake Country sounds just wonderful this time of year,” the woman beside Adrian gushed. The oversized feather in her hat poked him in the eye. “Have you ever been, my lord?” She touched his sleeve and smiled.
“No.” He looked down at her hand, and she quickly removed it. Across the table, Sophia smiled
and tilted her head as a gentleman wearing a blue coat and a spill of lace down his chest enthralled her with a tale. The man’s hair looked like a rag upon his head, but Adrian surmised it was supposed to look fashionably tousled. He looked down at his own dark blue coat, simple cravat, and buff breeches. He thought of his boring, untousled hair.
Surely Sophia wasn’t interested in a fop like the man beside her. But then he’d never through she cared much for fashion, and she was undoubtedly the most fashionable woman in the room tonight. So perhaps he didn’t know her at all.
What the bloody hell was wrong with him tonight? He felt as though his world had been turned on its side. He was a bad husband, a bad brother, and, he supposed, a bad son.
He’d been a good spy, and at one time that had made up for the rest. But he wasn’t a spy anymore. Yes, he could win his place in the Barbican group back—he would win it back—but would that be enough anymore?
Dinner dragged on for several hours, with partridge, cheeses, trifle, and more. Adrian ate mechanically, not tasting his food and making little conversation. The meal was torture. Worse than the time he’d had two toenails pulled out by two French agents who hoped to get information out of him. They hadn’t. But seated across from Sophia, able to see her, hear her, and not touch her was just about enough to break him.
Finally the meal ended, as expected, with port and cigars. Adrian escaped the dining room as quickly as possible. The ladies were in the drawing room, playing cards, but when Adrian peeked in, he didn’t see Sophia.
No doubt she wasn’t missed by Cordelia.
Sophia wouldn’t have left without him, but she’d probably slipped away to avoid Cordelia. Where might she seek respite? Nowhere any of the members of the dining party might find her. She’d spent much time in their garden at home of late, so he headed for his brother’s garden.
The garden was small but lush. The fragrance of roses and some other flower he could not determine—perhaps dahlias—crept over him. And the faintest hint of orange… The moon was full in the sky, the evening warm but breezy. He made his way along the path, noting some of the flowers had been trampled, no doubt by his young nephews.
