Swan's Grace

by Linda Francis Lee

  His dark eyes glowed like embers. “You are many things, Sophie, but simple is not one of them.”

  She started to protest, but he cut her off as he brushed the tips of his fingers down her arm. Just barely.

  He was too close, she felt too much. Crossing her arms on her chest, she tried to pull free. But he held her there.

  “I make you nervous,” he said quietly. “Tell me why.”

  “You make me nervous?” Despite the truth of his words, pride got the better of her and she pulled her shoulders back. “I don’t think so.”

  He chuckled, and his lips tilted in a way that made her want to reach out and trace the fullness.

  “All right, if you won’t tell me why I make you nervous, then tell me who all these gifts are from. Childhood friends? Your father’s acquaintances?”

  “They’re from admirers.”

  Instantly the glowing embers of his eyes sparked with fire. Any tenderness was gone, only irritation remained. Good.

  “Admirers? You have admirers? Already?”

  “Yes,” she stated, using the word like armor. “It would appear I have scads of them.” And she did, amazingly enough. Men who as boys wouldn’t give her the time of day. “Do you want to know who has paid calls?”

  “No, I do not.” His voice was tight. “You have no business being courted.”

  “Oh, really,” she mused, planting her hands on her hips. “Why ever not?”

  He stared at her, that same, strange war she had seen in his eyes that first night raging within him. With a sudden shudder she dropped her hands to her sides and wondered if he already knew about her performances. Was that why he touched her as he did? Boldly, much too forward.

  She could tell he was on the verge of saying something very serious, and her palms began to tingle. What would it be? A reprimand? A lecture?

  “Sophie, you’ve been here nearly a week and it’s long past time we talked.”

  He was as solemn as she had ever seen him, that dark possessiveness resurging.

  Her breath grew short, though she couldn’t say why. Her chest felt much too tight, and suddenly she didn’t like the look in his eyes. With all her heart she wished she hadn’t started down this path of teasing about admirers.

  He took her hand and his voice gentled. “We’ve known each other for a very long time.” He smiled, his full, wonderful lips tilting with fond amusement. “In fact, other than my brothers and parents, I’ve known no one longer. So I would like to be frank.”

  Her heart began to pound. “You could try to be Frank, but I’ll have a hard time thinking of you as anyone but Grayson.” She searched for a smile, tried to laugh.

  “No more jokes, Sophie. We need to discuss the reason why your father asked you to come home.”

  Sound swirled in her mind, a low buzzing, like the rush of wind whispering through willows. Despite the rough start, her father wanted her back to be a part of his new family; it could be nothing else.

  “I think you know that I have always cared for you,” he continued. “And I would like to think you care—”

  “Good heavens! Look at the time.” She whirled away from his grasp and hurried to the door with a laugh she didn’t feel. “I’m late, absolutely, positively, unforgivably late. I know you understand, since you are about nothing if not schedules and timetables. We’ll talk later. Really.”

  “Sophie!”

  But she didn’t stop. She dashed out of his office, aware the whole time of his dark, probing gaze on her back.

  Chapter Six

  Grayson stood in the window of his office, staring out at the snow-lined street without seeing. He didn’t know what to make of Sophie and her abrupt departure.

  With a sigh, he ran his hands through his hair. He was frustrated and growing increasingly ambivalent about the bride he had chosen. But he also couldn’t deny his increasing hunger for the taste of her mouth. The quick brush of her lips had only made him want more. As always, just thinking about her made his body stir.

  On the morning he had found her wearing his robe, he could tell she had little on underneath. For one stark moment he had imagined parting the cashmere, cupping the bare fullness of her breasts, running his thumbs over the rose-tipped peaks. And his receptionist was only yards away in the kitchen.

  Grayson bit back an oath. His intended was barely home and already she was twisting his thoughts and beliefs into unrecognizable musings.

  Conrad had been pressing him to tell Sophie of the betrothal. He and Patrice, not to mention his father, wanted to announce the joining of the two families at the party Saturday night—in truth, the sole reason for the event. Though Sophie didn’t know that.

  Grayson had returned from court early, determined to tell her. And he would have, but she hadn’t given him a chance.

  Impatience flashed through his mind at the thought. This was the woman he had chosen to marry. He had written up and signed a flawless legal document to do just that. She was the woman who would bear and raise his children. Hell, based on what he had seen so far, Sophie needed some raising of her own. The irony wasn’t lost on him.

  The woman was trouble, and trouble he didn’t need.

  But still, he couldn’t get her out of his mind.

  He heard the slam of the front door, then he saw Sophie race out onto the landing. Wearing heavy woolen gloves, she pulled on a coat and buttoned it awkwardly, popped open a parasol against the winter sun, then hurried down the flagstone path.

  He didn’t believe for a second that she had someplace to go. Though what he wasn’t as certain about was whether she had known what he had been trying to say.

  He watched as she crossed the street, then strode down the granite walkway that was bordered by a waist-high, black wrought-iron fence, topped with spikes that were more decorative than deterrent. Despite himself, Grayson started to smile. She was outrageous and maddening, but beautiful beyond words.

  Her hair was uncovered, a generous hat of bells and bows held in her free hand. Wild golden curls were pulled up and away from her face, but escaping its confines. His fingers itched to pull free the simple ribbon that held the riotous mass in place. He longed to touch her hair, her lips. He thought of her eyes, large and brown, shot with shards of gold and green. Vivid and wild. Yet again, his body surged at the thought.

  Suddenly she stopped. Grayson watched, his thoughts churning to a halt, as she slowly sank down to the walkway in front of a place in the wrought iron that had been broken but not yet repaired. With his shoulders stiffening, he saw her curl her gloved fingers around the bent lengths of fencing and peer into the bushes just beyond. Something was wrong.

  Sophie pushed up from the ground, then looked frantically from side to side. He started to go to her, but his jaw fell open in amazement when she dropped her hat and parasol on the walkway, gathered up her skirts, and squeezed through the jagged opening in the fence, then got stuck.

  Grayson stood half stunned, half furious. Sophie wriggled around, only making things worse, until suddenly twisted lengths of wrought iron poked through the voluminous folds of her coat.

  Seconds later, Grayson banged out the front door.

  Commonwealth Avenue was busy, the sound of wheels on cobbles and cinders ringing in the air as carriages and wagons vied for the right-of-way. He crossed the narrow lane, the frozen expanse of the grassy mall, then the opposite lane, giving little thought to the cold.

  He drew closer as she struggled to free herself. Even from a distance he could hear her muttering curse words that would have made a drunken sailor blush. But she managed only to entangle herself more thoroughly. Grayson was pounding forward when another man whistled his appreciation. For the first time Grayson noticed that with her skirts impaled on the fence, her underclothes were exposed.

  “Havin’ a problem?” the man called out to Sophie, approaching from a wagon he had pulled over to the side of the street.

  Anger sliced through Grayson. “You’re going to have a problem if you d
on’t step away this instant.”

  The man whirled around to see who had spoken, his body tensed for a fight. He was stocky, with the uneven face of a man who was used to using his fists. But one look at Grayson clearly made him think better of it, and he backed off. Whether it was Grayson’s look of authority or his broad shoulders and six-foot-four-inch frame that had deterred the man, Grayson didn’t care.

  “Good Lord. The man was only trying to help,” Sophie said, craning her neck to see him.

  “He was gawking.”

  “And no wonder,” she stated dryly, renewing her efforts to pull away. “How often do you think he sees a woman with her skirts skewered on a fence?”

  Grayson’s features hardened. “How foolish of me. I should have left you to his whim.”

  “Enough,” she interjected. “Will you please help me out of here?”

  Grayson stared at her for one long, exasperated moment before he took the last few steps that separated them. Then he started to untangle her skirts.

  “Come on, Grayson.”

  “I’m doing the best I can without ripping your clothes off,” he ground out.

  “Forget my clothes. If you don’t hurry I’m going to tear them off myself.”

  With a muffled curse he yanked at her skirts, pulling them off the twisted metal with a loud rip.

  Once she was free she ended up inside the yard in a profusion of ice-covered bushes, the fence between them. Without so much as a word of thanks, she dropped to her knees.

  “What in the world are you doing, Sophie?”

  “Quick, I need your help.”

  Grayson couldn’t imagine what kind of trouble Sophie had managed to find, though he had no doubt that trouble was exactly what she had. But when he leaped the fence with a curse and squatted down to see what it was, he stilled at the sight that met his eyes.

  A dog lay beneath the bush, bloody and beaten.

  “Get away from there,” he demanded, jerking back, pulling Sophie with him.

  But she shook free, her face set in firm lines. “We have to help her.”

  “The dog is going to die, Sophie. All we have to do is get away from here and call the authorities.”

  She glanced over her shoulder to look at him, and he was surprised to see tears.

  “No,” she stated with a steely obstinacy.

  Grayson cursed as he looked back at the dog, its eyes clouded with pain, regarding Sophie warily. But the animal was weak—from hunger, he was certain, as much as loss of blood. Soon the dog’s eyes drooped closed, its head bobbing before finally sinking down onto the ground. Carefully, Sophie tried to pick up the animal.

  “Sophie,” he warned sharply, coming forward.

  She glanced at him with a look of determination mixed with a sudden flash of desolation that he recognized.

  “I will not leave her here to die,” she stated, her voice strained but determined. “If she dies she will not die alone.”

  Their gazes locked, hers stubborn as the muscle in his jaw leaped. “Damn it, I’ll carry the blasted dog.”

  Her expression grew as wary as the dog’s had been earlier. But she held her tongue while Grayson picked up the animal, its once golden fur matted with dirt and blood and gritty ice that smeared his Savile Row suit. When Grayson stood, the dog cradled against his torso, Sophie looked at him with a solemnness that made his heart constrict. Silently she nodded her head, as if somehow words would betray her.

  For reasons Grayson didn’t understand, he felt a flash of certainty that her concern for this dog went much deeper than he could fathom. The sudden darkness in her golden brown eyes spoke of a great deal more than frivolous days playing the cello—of more than the outrageous troublemaker he had been convinced she was only minutes earlier. But what could she have seen in her life to make her eyes become as troubled as they were now?

  “We’ll take her home.” Sophie pushed up from the ground, mindless of the stains and rips that marred her clothes.

  Forgetting her hat and parasol, Sophie cut across the yard. They stepped through a gate onto Commonwealth Avenue, and before Grayson could stop her, she walked out into traffic, forcing drivers to jerk their reins to keep from running her down.

  She ignored the angry men who leaped up from their wagon seats, shouting heated curses. “Hurry, Grayson,” she called from the road.

  He stepped out onto the length of Commonwealth Avenue. Abruptly the angry din of voices broke off at the sight of the bloody dog that lay limp in his arms.

  Grayson walked through the sudden, eerie quiet, no sound, no thought, only the feel of the dog’s unconscious shudders of pain against his chest. He was certain that as long as he lived he would never forget the sound of that silence and the feel of life ebbing away in his arms.

  Sophie threw open the front door of Swan’s Grace, then raced past a startled Henry, who stood in a smoking jacket sipping coffee from a china cup. She led Grayson down the back stairs to the basement laundry room.

  “Put her here,” Sophie instructed.

  No sooner had Grayson set the dog down than Henry appeared in the doorway and grimaced.

  “Get some towels, Henry,” she stated.

  “Me?” he squeaked, his cup rattling.

  But he was saved from doing anything when the efficient woman called Margaret bustled into the room. Grayson was all but pushed aside when Sophie and Margaret hovered over the battered dog, working as if they had done this before.

  By then the animal was barely breathing. Grayson’s eyes narrowed against unexpected emotion, emotion that seemed to have tangled in his mind the minute he picked up the dog. He didn’t want to care. The dog would die. He had learned that as a boy, had learned that favorite dogs died and fathers refused to let sons care. But if Sophie realized it, she didn’t let on.

  “I’ll build a fire to warm the room,” Margaret said.

  The woman stepped away, grabbing a towel to wipe her hands. Grayson hadn’t moved since they entered.

  “I’ll do it,” he said suddenly.

  Sophie and Margaret looked at him as if he had spoken in tongues.

  “I’ll build the fire,” he repeated, his voice low and commanding.

  Sophie stared at him with a furrowed brow, as if trying to understand him. But before he could give it another thought, she pointed toward a neat stack of firewood.

  “The kindling is over there,” she said, then returned her attention to the animal.

  He watched her for a moment, her tender hands, her capable but gentle ministrations as she tended the dog’s wounds. Without warning a memory surfaced from years before. He was young, no more than four or five years old, knocked into the street by a gang of laughing older boys. He was hurt and bleeding, his wrist throbbing, and tears streamed down his cheeks. Then his father, standing over him like a giant, his face angry as he told him to buck up, to stop crying like a weakling.

  Grayson had picked himself up, but when he headed for his mother, his father had cut him off. “Only a baby needs coddling from his mother.”

  In the end he had washed his cuts in the upstairs lavatory alone, tears streaking his grimy face, his meal sent up by his father as if he had done something wrong. His cuts and scrapes had healed. And he had never cried again.

  Grayson didn’t understand the strange pounding of his heart, or why he suddenly remembered the incident—why memories were wrapping around him. A father’s duty was to teach his son to be a man, to be strong and powerful. Grayson had become both.

  Suddenly he wondered why he was still there. He didn’t need this; he didn’t want this. Outrageous behavior, traveling the world with an entourage of hangers-on, up to her elbows in dirt and muck from an unknown dog that was sure to die. Once and for all he saw so clearly that this was not what he wanted in a wife.

  He wanted an ordered world, important work, a warm, calm home to return to at night. He wanted the life he had spent over fifteen years building.

  But the pounding didn’t stop and he
turned away sharply, tossing wood into the fire with more force than was necessary.

  When there was nothing more they could do, Margaret and Sophie leaned back against the wall. Margaret left, and when Sophie told him she didn’t need anything else, he stared at her for a long time as he told himself to leave. Forced himself to leave.

  With measured steps he returned to the hotel, forcing his mind to a careful blank. He concentrated on the small bed, the cramped space. He had to use the small basin of water in his room when the shared bath down the hall was full.

  He grimaced before his lips flattened to a straight line. Memories swelled of the earlier days in the garret, when he had faced the shock of dingy hallways and shared baths with rusty streams of trickling water, and unscrupulous men who would have as easily stolen his razor as used it to slit his throat. He’d been thankful that at sixteen, he hadn’t needed a razor all that often.

  He searched for a laugh, but found nothing close to humor.

  When he went to the small hotel wardrobe to change, Grayson realized that he was down to his last pair of trousers and an older shirt.

  Frustration snaked through him, though for so much more than lack of clothes. Too many memories. His life suddenly felt out of control.

  The situation needed to be remedied, and soon. But what did he want? What did he really want to do about Sophie and the betrothal? He had no answers.

  He had always been a man of quick decision. Once made, he moved forward. But since Sophie had arrived, one minute he couldn’t wait to marry her, the next he wanted her out of his life.

  When he once again left the Vendome, he was intent on going to his men’s club. He refused to think—of Sophie, of the dog, of the past.

  But when he should have hailed a hansom cab to take him downtown, he turned instead toward Swan’s Grace. Like a moth drawn to a flame.

  He found Sophie still tending the dog, and instead of continuing on to his club, Grayson went to his office in Swan’s Grace to work. But his concentration was fractured. Every few minutes he found himself standing in the basement doorway.