What the Stubborn Viscount Desires

by Sandra Sookoo

  Taken aback at the bitterness in his tone, she widened her eyes. He wished to know her opinion? Not once since their partnership had he done that. “Think like a criminal. Does he truly want the relic, assuming the Chalice of Christ exists, or does he want you chasing down outrageous leads and following weak clues? And if that’s what his game is, ask yourself why? Perhaps you should begin there.”

  “I don’t know.” His forlorn tone tugged at her heart. “I am not good at such things, and as I stated before, I don’t play games. I go straight for my mark and keep on until I have my answers.”

  “They are not your answers but rather knowledge someone else has. What if you have a different question? As an agent, you must adapt depending on your target.” She took a step toward him. “All of that aside, you must believe for yourself that you are smart enough to figure it out. I rather doubt the Duke of Rathesborne would have put you on this assignment if he didn’t think you were capable, but figuring out what your villain is thinking will not happen until whatever is distracting you is dealt with—purged.” She peered up into his face. “What troubles you, Jonathan?”

  The viscount merely growled a response.

  “No.” Sophia stamped a foot in frustration. “This wounded bear routine stops here. We are two civilized people, and I refuse to let you devolve into grunts and growls again.” She planted her fists on her hips while she glared. “You will talk to me like a gentleman or I swear, I will walk out of this library and let you stew in your own emotional quagmire. I’ll walk through the streets alone if need be and will not return.” When he remained silent at her taunt, she huffed. “We cannot move forward while you are trapped in a morass of your own making. I demand to know what you won’t say. What are you hiding from me?”

  Guilt lined his face. “I…” His strong façade began to crack as he curled one hand into a fist around the head of his cane. “Sophia…” His Adam’s apple bobbed with a hard swallow. He found her gaze with his, remorse shadowing his expression. “You’re right. I must confess. It’s eating me alive, and I cannot move forward until I tell you.”

  “To what?” He hadn’t done anything. They’d been nearly in each other’s pockets for the whole trip.

  Agony lined his expression. “I killed your brother. I killed Stephen.”

  Whatever she hoped he would say, it certainly wasn’t that, and her heart shattered at the words—for her brother’s memory, for her belief in the viscount himself. No longer was he a larger than life hero, unattainable to the masses. Now, he was human, and he was broken, hurting, crumbling. “I beg your pardon?”

  And then she sneezed.

  Chapter Thirteen

  This was beyond a worst nightmare. This was the deliberate wounding of a woman who trusted him, a woman he was responsible for, a woman he’d betrayed by his past actions. The accusation and horror in her eyes cut him to the quick. Unfortunately, nothing he had to tell would alleviate those feelings.

  And he would hurt her even deeper.

  “What are you saying?” Sophia fluttered a hand between her mouth and her heart. “You didn’t mention that in the letter you sent home. I know because I read that same letter twenty-five times and committed those words to memory.” Panic and a touch of hysteria lit her voice, rising with every word she uttered. She implored him with her gaze. “Explain. Right this minute, Viscount Trewellain. I need to know.”

  Succinct as always. He allowed himself a ghost of a smile, which was a mistake, for she narrowed her eyes and stared at him with suspicion. “Come back to the table and I’ll tell you.” When Jonathan reached for her hand, she wrenched away.

  “Don’t touch me.” The warning in her voice was unmistakable. “I don’t trust you enough for that anymore.”

  And she was right to think so. Still, his stomach muscles cramped at the verification. “Very well.” He indicated she should precede him around the shelves. Once she led the way back to the table littered with several books and travel journals, he stared until she seated herself on one of the high-backed wooden chairs in the shadows. “Before we were introduced in Kent at Christmas, I recognized your eyes.”

  “What the devil does that have to do with anything?” she demanded as she flexed her fingers into fists on the tabletop.

  “They are very much like Stephen’s, and that made me remember. Guilt for that day—for many days and many people—haunts me. It caught me off guard at the holidays, which is why I ‘came the crab with you.” How did he tell her the tale and not come off looking like an ogre?

  She continued to regard him, but with no trace of amusement this time. No, he recognized the emotion in her blue eyes, and he hated himself for putting that doubt, that horror, that… disappointment there. It was something he was an expert at—disappointing the people closest to him. “I’m waiting, viscount.”

  He flinched at her use of the title, and the generic form at that. Any vestiges of the friendship they might have previously shared had fled. It was his fault, and that guilt added to the already growing pile. “Before I was a king’s agent, I served in the Royal Navy. My assignment was recon after the Battle of Trafalgar, or rather cleaning up the mess we left in Spain.” He moistened his lips before continuing, “I was all of twenty, green but eager without much military training at the time, and I wanted to prove myself. I was also extremely skilled in hand to hand combat, especially against the French scum.”

  When Sophia said nothing, he sighed. Obviously, she didn’t wish to hear his naval history. Fair enough. “Archewyne was right there with me in those years, encouraging me to push myself, and we rose through the ranks quickly, but I digress.” It was important that she knew of his dedication to the military, to the Crown, to serving justice. “I enjoyed that life, loved making a name for myself away from my father’s reach.”

  “I suppose any younger son would,” was all she said.

  He began to pace, needing action to occupy his mind. “In any event, that day in October 1805 will never be forgotten. So many Spanish naval men were lost and injured during the engagement—British allies—defending against the French. The British suffered very little due to their larger navy. Archewyne and I came ashore to hunt down an English officer turned traitor, a man who had given the French our fleet numbers and maneuver information. Fellow navy men—both British and Spanish, already on the ground didn’t take kindly to the fleet being attacked. They met and clashed with the Frenchman, who came through fiercely shooting, beating, killing for sport at that point. Men were caught in the crossfire while trying to flee.”

  This was not the sort of conversation a lady of genteel breeding should hear. He eyed her askance. “Are you certain you wish to hear the remainder?”

  She nodded. “I have to know, at least to let my brother rest in peace in my memories.”

  Jonathan took in a deep breath as much to calm himself as to stall. He let it ease out through his teeth, and thumped the tip of his cane against the floor. “It was chaos, full of gunpowder, smoke and the dead and dying soldiers, as fierce a battle as what we fought on the sea.” Remorse slammed into him with the accuracy of a punch to the gut as those hours flitted through his mind. The screams, the scent of blood would never fade. “I couldn’t save them all.” The dying cries echoed in his ears. Guilt would drown him.

  “Tell me all of it,” she demanded and leaving her chair, paced in the opposite direction that he moved. “You have not gotten to the part I’m interested in.”

  In no way did it appear she felt for him. Why should she? He was beyond redemption. Everyone he’d ever come into contact with met with disaster, disappointment or death. Perhaps death was all he was capable of giving, for he’d honed that skill over the years since his time in the navy. So many men—soldiers, spies, unsavory lots, henchmen, innocents—all met the same fate after crossing his path. Lavinia’s face swam into view and he stifled a cry of regret. With all his willpower, he shoved the image away.

  “Why did you kill my brother?” Of course she
’d want to know; she needed the answers. But how could he confess such a horrible thing? Sophia came close and laid a hand on his forearm. He recoiled as if burned, for he didn’t deserve her compassion. “It wasn’t a violent act from you, was it?” Caring threaded through the question, enough to stab through his chest as if she wielded a knife.

  “No.” Jonathan shook his head. At least she understood enough to ease him into the revelation. “Stephen had been shot in the volleys between the Spanish troops and the French. He was mortally wounded. Even if I had been able to stop the bleeding from his two wounds—one in the chest and one in the thigh—transport would have done him in.”

  She drew him to a halt and looked up at him. “What happened?” Her voice, still low, had lost its annoyance, replaced with curiosity.

  God, those eyes, the same eyes that had gazed up at him from the field as he’d held her dying brother. “It was a mercy killing. I couldn’t bear to see him suffer any longer.” His words, once released, came out in a rush. “I didn’t want the damn French to come back and brutalize him. They were savages and often would go through a battlefield and stab bodies with bayonets to make certain they were truly dead.” He shook his head. “I wanted your brother to find peace instead of dishonor.” His throat constricted. “I… I held him as he struggled for breath—that horrible death rattle!—held him in my lap.” He sucked in breath after breath as if it were him dying. “I told him I was proud of him, that he’d fought well and I would always remember him.”

  Sophia tightened her fingers on his arm. Tears sparkled in her eyes. “At least he wasn’t alone when he died, and found comfort. That was what I’d feared the most.”

  How could she be so sympathetic when she faced her brother’s killer? “You don’t understand, Sophia. I killed Stephen. I told him to close his eyes and think of something happy in his life, and then I pinched his nose closed and put a hand over his mouth until he slipped away. He’d truly been in bad shape, and the French were bearing down on our position.”

  “You gave him his dignity.” Silence reigned, broken only by her soft sobs. “Thank you.” She wrapped her arms about her middle, and he wished he had the courage to hug her, to comfort her, to do something other than stand there like a damn statue. “At least I have answers.”

  “And yet you haven’t slapped me.” How would he react if their positions had been reversed? Respect for her took root. She had more integrity and strength than he.

  “You don’t deserve that.”

  “I do, for what I did to Stephen.”

  “No, I believe what you did, wrong in the eyes of the church and law, was done for the right reasons. That doesn’t make you a horrible man. I understand why you did it, and it does ease my mind.” Her smile was a watery affair. “Yet you believe you are the harbinger of death.”

  “I usually am.” He rested his cane against the nearest shelf.

  She shook her head. “You aren’t. It’s just that death is an unfortunate but necessary part of what you do in order to keep England safe.”

  Her pragmatic outlook left him reeling. Where most women would have fallen into hysterics or fainted, yelled or screamed or threw things, Sophia attempted to bring comfort to him. She wishes to make me feel better. His chest tightened. Me, when I committed such a horrible act. Would she be as understanding once he confessed to the rest of what he’d done to destroy her future and family?

  “Thank you,” he managed to squeeze out from an emotion-clogged throat.

  Another huff escaped her. “That’s not all, is it?” Either she knew him too well, or she was much more intelligent than he’d given her credit for.

  “I didn’t know how to tell your father, so I wrote a quick note and left it at that.” He rubbed a hand along his jaw. Nothing he’d done over the years was as difficult as confessing a few of his sins to this woman. “When I met your father years later, he gave no indication that he recognized my name. Granted, thirteen years had passed, and I didn’t help him remember. I played cards with him, knowing full well he had no skill and was half in his cups. I wanted to bury him because he cared about nothing except himself, but then throughout the course of the evening I realized it was an act. He covered his grief, perhaps his own guilt, by drowning himself in drink and gambling—to forget.”

  “My father has vices like every man.” She shrugged. “I have made my peace with that.”

  “Your father and I are the same.” How had he not seen it before? The knowledge sickened him.

  “Absolutely not.” Sophia emphatically shook her head. A couple tendrils of hair escaped her updo. “You are nothing alike. You are brave while he is nothing but a coward. He emptied our coffers since Mother died, and thinks nothing of mucking about in his children’s lives—using us for his gain. Why do you think one of my sisters and one of my brothers fled to London?”

  Jonathan barked a laugh, but it held no mirth. “We both hide pain through drink, through gambling, through women.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not?” He stared at her. She stared back with a lifted eyebrow. “Hoping that somewhere, somehow, we can find redemption.” He yanked on his cravat that was suddenly too tight. This was the man he’d become. He didn’t like it, not after seeing himself as he must appear to her. “I took your father’s offering of your hand because to not do so would have insulted his honor.”

  She snorted. “If he offered me up, he had no honor to begin with.”

  “True, but he did, and I accepted the winnings. I played my cards to the hilt; he had no chance. I thought I could keep you from a worse fate, for your father saw you as a way to fill his empty coffers, to fund more of his gambling. He said so at the table, and he was determined to come away the victor.” And God, how he’d hated the man for that. No matter the squire was a bounder, he should never have treated his youngest daughter in such a way. Jonathan glanced about at the shelves of books, at the high window. How telling it was to have this conversation amidst tomes of learning and answers.

  “Why would you do that for a woman you’d never met, a woman you’d not heard of before?” Shock lined her expression and shadowed her eyes.

  He shrugged. “I wanted to save you from a horrible marriage, figured that in your brother’s stead, I would look after you, shield you from your father’s machinations.” He forced a hard swallow. “I owed Stephen at least that.”

  When she formed an “O” with her lips, he couldn’t stop looking at that plump flesh. Then her expression shuttered. She focused on a shelf of books behind him. “You left me in the country for nearly three years. You never visited, never acknowledged I existed, never even called to discuss our arrangement. Why?” Yet there was no accusation in the question, only a push for understanding.

  For that, he thanked God. Still, he had to tread carefully. “I had to. What was I to do with a wife while being a king’s man? My position with the Crown means I’m constantly in harm’s way, gone for long stretches at a time, never able to write home.” A wave of shame broke over him. That wasn’t an excuse. He’d mucked everything up. Jonathan slid a hand along the books closest to him, tracing their spines as he marshalled his thoughts. “Over the years, I forgot my obligation to you.” There was no gentle way to say it. He’d had missions for the Crown. Saved Archewyne’s arse a couple of times. Lost his leg in that bloody duel. Plus, he’d fallen in love with Lavinia. Yet he couldn’t manage to keep her safe or even alive. What made him think he’d be better at that with Sophia? He nearly cried out from the pain assaulting him, plowing into him, burying him alive where he stood. “When I saw you at Christmas as the Hawkins’ governess, everything came tumbling back. I couldn’t stop it, didn’t know what to do.” He rubbed at his chest where guilt lodged near his heart, wielding a dagger.

  “Oh, Jonathan.” Sophia scrubbed at the tears on her cheeks. “Whether you think so or not, you are a good man.” She lifted onto her toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “You have suffered more than any man should by rights. I d
on’t need to hear anything further to know you are more than you wish to tell, and quite easily a hero. Not just through your actions, but from your thoughts.”

  Her words were like a benediction, and they lifted part of the weight from his shoulders. “I don’t know about that. I’m merely trying to make a difference without leaving a trail of heartbreak behind me.” And failing miserably.

  “Never think so.” Once more she lifted onto her toes, and this time she brushed her lips over his, a confusing mix of hesitation and need. “Believe in yourself, Jonathan. Believe in what you do.” She kissed him again with more pressure and held his gaze the whole time, waiting, watching.

  Caring.

  His resistance began to crumble.

  The warmth of her lips on his revitalized him. He groaned and wrapped his arms around her. He wanted her, of course he did, wouldn’t be alive if he didn’t, but how could he claim her body when she wasn’t for him? When he’d promised not to touch her in such a manner? Regardless, he returned her kiss with more passion. The darkness and shadows around them closed in, and still he worked her mouth as if it was his only task in the world.

  It would be so easy to lose himself in her ample charms and curves. To forget…

  “Don’t hold back, Trewellain,” she whispered and with each word, her lips cradled his. “Kiss me like you mean it, like you might have done if none of the history we share had happened.”

  But it had, and essentially that history brought them together for the time being. But… she was warm and willing. What harm could a few kisses do?

  “I shouldn’t—”

  “I want you,” she whispered, interrupting him.

  Jonathan settled her more comfortably in his arms and applied himself to the task of making her forget her own name. He nibbled her bottom lip, licked the plump flesh, nipped at the corner of her mouth. When she twined her hands behind his nape, pressed her breasts against his chest, and a shuddering moan escaped her—the same sort of sound she made that first night on the ship when he’d sent her flying with his fingers—he took full advantage and pushed his tongue inside to fence with hers.