Sophie shifted uncomfortably at the reminder that Mr. Cross didn’t merely know things, he investigated people. Which meant that he would hear about the slightest misstep she made with Jack.
“Lady Sidlow’s a strict old crow!” exclaimed Eliza, mistaking the reason for Sophie’s silence. “Georgiana ranted at some length about her in the letter she sent me. She thinks it’s a lot of rubbish, as if Wakefield would care now, when he’s never cared tuppence before for anything she’s done. You’ve been making wagers at Vega’s for years, and Wakefield never said a word to prohibit Georgiana from calling on you.”
Sophie pleated her dress against her knee. “Those wagers were for money.”
“Wasn’t this one?” her friend asked in surprise.
A week of your company is what I want, echoed Jack’s voice in her head. A vise seemed to tighten around her chest for a moment as she thought of those days at Alwyn House, the fascinated way he looked at her, the desire in his eyes when he finally kissed her.
“You didn’t say much in your note,” Eliza said when Sophie fell silent. “I know something happened, or you would have dismissed the entire thing as the most incredible farce.”
She shot a wry glance at her friend. “It’s less believable than a farce.”
“Don’t you want to talk about it? Perhaps I can help.”
Sophie studied the crease she’d made in her skirt to avoid Eliza’s loyal offer of help. There was no chance of that. Eliza couldn’t make her fall out of love with Jack any more than she could make Jack fall so desperately in love with Sophie that he threw aside his entire ducal history and expectations and married her. “What did you hear?” she asked instead, then rephrased the question. “What did your father hear?”
Faint color marked Eliza’s cheeks again. “He said the Duke of Ware offered you a notorious wager involving a large sum of money, and you agreed. Papa said he understood why,” she quickly added, as if Sophie would be upset by that characterization. “Papa’s a member at the Vega Club, too, you know, and he said it was one of the largest wagers proposed this year, which might have tempted anyone.”
One corner of her mouth lifted. “It did.”
“Was the duke rude to you?” Eliza persisted. “Papa feared he might have been, to provoke you into accepting. I know you don’t want to be notorious, Sophie, and are never reckless. And Ware is known to be rather cold and reserved. For him to engage in such unusual behavior shocked everyone, even Papa.”
Jack isn’t cool or reserved, she thought with another pang. “No, he wasn’t rude.”
“Georgiana’s theory is that the duke fell in love with you at first sight and made an outrageous wager because he went mad with passion for you.” Sophie jerked up her head, and Eliza gave her a little shrug, smiling in her gentle teasing way. “Which story is closer to the truth, Georgiana’s or Papa’s?”
Slowly she set down her cup. The tea must be cold by now anyway, since she hadn’t touched it in several minutes. “The truth might cause your father to forbid you to see me, as Lady Sidlow did Georgiana.”
“Papa is a very keen judge of character. He’s not swayed by idle gossip and savage rumor. He always wants to know the truth before passing judgment.” Eliza’s voice was firm. “He didn’t object when I told him I was coming to see you today.”
She nodded, smoothing the crease fiercely. Mr. Cross had heard the terms of the wager—so much for Vega’s vow of silence—yet Eliza was here anyway.
“Does it make you uneasy? Sad? Afraid?” Eliza guessed. “You look tense enough to snap, which doesn’t suggest it’s a happy thing. You know I would keep it secret until I died.” She paused, but Sophie still couldn’t answer.
She should not speak of it. Eliza was kind and conscientious, and had certainly never done anything half so scandalous. Would Mr. Cross forbid their friendship if he discovered just how much wickedness Sophie engaged in? Georgiana’s chaperone had already done it. She did not want to lose both her friends.
But on the other hand, Eliza knew her better than anyone—and Sophie desperately needed someone to talk to. Eliza would listen with sympathy, if nothing else. Since the age of twelve, she had heeded her own counsel, but this time she was utterly at sea.
“You’re right—something did happen,” she admitted. “I couldn’t put it in a note. And you must swear not to tell anyone.”
“Not even Georgiana, if you don’t wish her to know,” Eliza vowed.
“I don’t even know how to put it into words! It all began so innocently . . .” Sophie grimaced. “Well, perhaps not entirely innocently.”
Eliza was listening with compassion. “I gather it did not remain innocent, or there wouldn’t be rumors furious enough to throw Lady Sidlow into a fit.”
Sophie blushed. “I made a mistake about Philip Lindeville. You remember Georgiana teased me about him? I thought he was a flirt—amusing but harmless.”
“You said he was charming.”
“He was, but growing less so.” Again she thought of all the trouble she could have avoided simply by being colder to Philip sooner. But then nothing would have happened between her and Jack, either, and she couldn’t regret that. The whole thing made her head ache. “But I was loath to lose a friend, any friend, and so I ignored his hints that we could be more than friends.”
“Forgive me for asking this,” said Eliza, “but would that be so terrible?” She and Georgiana were the only people in the world who knew her Grand Plan, and from a distance, Philip looked like the perfect solution: handsome and charming, with impeccable connections.
“Yes,” said Sophie at once. “Beyond terrible. He’s too reckless. A reckless friend can be amusing, but a reckless husband is ruinous. And his behavior of late does nothing to recommend him. It was his insistence that I wager with him that began the trouble. I suggested hazard—”
“Hazard!” exclaimed Eliza in dismay. “You never play hazard!”
Sophie put her hands over her face for a moment. “I thought it would teach him a lesson. He wagers so wildly, he was sure to lose. If he lost, he would go home and leave me be sooner.”
“Gaming hells must bring out the worst in people,” said her friend hesitantly. “Georgiana says he’s so charming and handsome . . .”
She sighed. Eliza was too romantic for her own good, having been sheltered and protected by her doting father. Sophie, however, saw a very different side of gentlemen than her friends did. Men who would treat Lady Georgiana Lucas with respectful decorum had no hesitation leering down Sophie’s bodice every chance they got. Men who knew Edward Cross would take off their heads for any impropriety toward Eliza felt no qualms making indecent innuendos to Sophie over cards. “I know. But he insisted I gamble with him that night, and I gave in.”
“But how did you begin wagering with the duke?”
“He had come to Vega’s to pay off a debt for Philip. It must have been large, because Philip vowed to quit the club for a month, a vow he broke within a day of making it. The duke was furious to see him at the hazard table. He ordered Philip away from Vega’s.”
Eliza’s eyes widened. “In front of everyone?”
“Yes,” she said ruefully. “It wasn’t well done of him. He admitted as much later.” Deep interest filled Eliza’s face. Sophie braced herself. “When Philip refused, the duke forced his way into the game. I—I may have spoken somewhat impertinently to him, and he said I should stop fleecing Philip and gamble with him instead. In pique I agreed.”
“Georgiana will be so very sorry she missed this tale,” murmured Eliza. “Papa didn’t tell me even half of it.”
Sophie hoped that was true, but she forged onward. “And he lost very badly, which piqued him, and then he made that outrageous wager and like a fool, I agreed again.” Sophie shook her head. “It was too good to be true—five thousand pounds! Against a week of my company. I should have known I’d lose.”
Eliza’s mouth fell open. For a moment the room was entirely silent, until the mantel c
lock chimed the hour, making both of them start. “Sophie, what were you thinking?”
“I was thinking of the five thousand pounds,” she admitted. “I thought I would win. He had the worst hand at hazard of any player I’ve ever met.”
“So you lost? And had to spend a week with him?” Eliza goggled at her. “I can’t believe it. You wrote to me that you were sick in bed!”
Sophie’s vision blurred. Her chest felt tight. She thought of Jack frowning in concentration at the cards when she tried to teach him vingt-un. Of his laugh when they rode in the mist and her absurd borrowed hat blew off. Of his smile when she woke to see him lounging in bed beside her, wishing for the rain to begin again. She sniffed, and it turned into a lump in her throat. “It began as scandalously as you heard, but Eliza—Eliza, it’s so much worse. I’ve gone and fallen in love with him, and I don’t know what to do.”
Eliza jumped up and ran to her side, throwing her arms around Sophie. “Oh, my dear! But why is that so terrible? If you lost your heart to him, he cannot be the cold, calculating man rumor says he is. I know you—you would never care so deeply for someone heartless or dismissive.”
“He’s not cold or calculating. He’s decent and kind and wonderful,” she said, her voice wobbling. She groped for the handkerchief Eliza held out. “But it’s doomed. He’s a duke, and I’m a woman who lies about her name, gambles every night, and has no connections.”
“I suppose it depends on how much he wants you,” Eliza said. “Papa is fond of saying nobility can do anything if they want to desperately enough.”
She swiped at her eyes. She’d thought so as well, but it either wasn’t true, or Jack didn’t want her enough. “That’s not encouraging.”
“Well, where do things stand now?” asked Eliza with her usual sensibility.
“An affair,” Sophie confessed in a small voice. “It’s a complete secret. I know I should stop, and yet I can’t. He was at Vega’s one night and even though I know it would be ruinous to connect our names again, I invited him to share my hackney, and then I invited him in and asked him to make love to me.”
“Oh my.” Eliza released her. Sophie realized too late she had said far too much. “Have—have you done that before?”
“No!” she exclaimed. “It’s utterly unlike me. I know it’s dangerous and could ruin everything I’ve worked for. So why can’t I stop myself from thinking about him?”
Eliza squeezed her hand. “Because you’re in love with him. When you’re in love, you lose some sense, I believe, and do things you wouldn’t consider doing otherwise. All you can think of is him, and when you’ll see him, and how you’d give anything for it to be sooner than expected. Love can make one a thorough optimist that everything will—must—work out well, because how could such happiness be denied?”
Her voice had grown soft and dreamy again as she spoke, enough to make Sophie’s heart contract in anguish. Eliza was speaking of Lord Hastings, not Jack; she had met a gentleman the proper way, and he had conducted a very proper courtship. Sophie was happy for her friend, she truly was, but at the same time it made her own situation even more stark.
“What do you want to happen?” Eliza prodded, obviously putting Lord Hastings from her mind. “Perhaps he’s the solution to your Grand Plan.”
Sophie sighed. “I doubt it.” Jack felt the weight of his heritage and duty very keenly, and the Dukes of Ware did not marry for affection, as he had told her himself. Philip had once said his brother would be sure to marry the most boringly proper woman in London. Would he even imagine marriage to someone like her? It seemed unlikely, not least because he had never mentioned it.
Only once, on that last sunny morning at Alwyn House, had she thought for even a moment he might consider it: he’d snapped that their association needn’t lead to ruin. It had made her hope that he might want more, as she did. But when she cautiously asked what he meant, he turned his back and walked away. The only thing he did was ask if she really wanted it to be over, and with little other choice, she assured him she did.
Obviously she had lied. She wanted more, but Jack held all the say in that. When he agreed that he wouldn’t see her again, that he would pretend they had never been lovers, it told her all she needed to know. She still wanted him enough to overrule her own good sense and carry on an affair that could only end with her heart broken, but she wished he’d made even the smallest attempt to persuade her that he cared for her more deeply than that.
“Do you want him to be?” Eliza squeezed her hand. “If he did propose, would you accept?”
“Yes,” she whispered without thinking. The longing in the word surprised her, but obviously not Eliza, who was nodding.
“You made your plan to find a husband. Why can’t he be it?”
“He’s a duke,” she pointed out again.
“And you’re the granddaughter of a viscount.”
“The disowned granddaughter of a misanthropic viscount,” she corrected. “With scandalous parents and only the fortune I’ve won at the tables. Even if my connection to Makepeace were known, it would do me no good because I’m just as dead to him as my father was.”
“If the duke loves you, he won’t mind,” persisted Eliza.
“And I gamble every night,” Sophie went on. “He dislikes gambling.”
“If you married him, you wouldn’t need to gamble again. Would you give it up?”
She gave a dispirited laugh. Some nights it only felt like she went to Vega’s to pass the time until Jack knocked on her door. She hadn’t even checked her account there in a fortnight, something she’d never overlooked before. “Yes. But—”
“Sophie.” Eliza pressed her hand again. “If you love him, you must tell him the truth.”
“That I love him?”
“No, about you. No love can flourish and grow without honesty.”
If Sophie had any secret that she kept more hidden than her affair with Jack, it was her history. She pulled free of Eliza’s grip. “Honesty could also be fatal.” She jumped up from her seat and paced to the window. “I fear he doesn’t want more than what we have now. Telling him everything would only confirm that I’m not fit to be a duchess.” Telling him everything might also cause him to reconsider their whole affair, and deep down Sophie feared that most of all. She had already accepted that she would never be a duchess, but now that she had embarked on this doomed, wonderful, secret, passionate affair, she wanted it to last as long as possible.
“Well.” Eliza gave her a sympathetic look. “You know the only way to find out. You must ask him—after you tell him the truth about yourself.”
Sophie folded her arms and gazed out at the street. Almost unconsciously her brain started asking what the odds were. Jack never asked about her family, but he listened to her stories of her childhood with a fond smile. That boded well. He never said anything against her attendance at Vega’s, possibly because he was there himself every night. That also helped. And, as strange as it seemed, she felt they were equals in their affair. Whatever you will give me, I will take, he’d said. What if she offered him her heart, along with all the rest of her? Perhaps the chances weren’t so negligible after all . . .
There was a rustle of cloth as Eliza came to stand beside her. “When I told you about Hastings, you assured me he couldn’t fail to love me. That’s quite ludicrous for you to say, as you don’t know him at all. Why do you dismiss it so quickly when I suggest the duke might fall in love with you?”
“Because I’m not as sweet as you are.”
“Rubbish,” declared her friend. “You’ve endured more than I have. You’re stronger and more resourceful and cleverer—”
“No,” she protested.
Eliza nodded stubbornly. “Far more clever, and more beautiful. I’m sure His Grace can see all that just as well as I can. You must give him a chance.”
Sophie made a face, but her brain was being won over by Eliza’s argument. Jack knew what she was—not every detail, but enough. If she
wanted a chance at real happiness with him, she would have to tell him everything. If he recoiled in disgust and stopped coming to her, then she must accept the fact that his feelings weren’t as deep as hers. Perhaps it would be the spur she needed to end things.
But if he didn’t recoil . . .
“Yes,” she said softly. “You’re right.” She took a deep breath and nodded once. “I’ll tell him.”
Chapter 22
Jack spent the day trying to determine whether or not Lucinda might consider herself engaged to him.
It had to be investigated with extreme discretion. As certain as he was that it was all a scheme his mother had concocted with Lady Stowe, if word got around that he was discussing it, everyone would believe it was true, or that he was on the brink of proposing and making it true. If all of London believed them engaged, he would be in an impossible situation. When engagements were rumored but then failed to occur, it was widely presumed that either the lady had declined the offer of marriage, or something had changed the gentleman’s mind about making the offer at all. The latter would spread a rash of unfair whispers about Lucinda, which Jack had no wish to do; but the former would put the matter entirely in Lucinda’s hands. And if she had indeed grown up expecting—wanting—to become a duchess . . . he could very well find himself caught, with no honorable way out.
He made very little headway in either direction, though. His solicitor assured him that legally he was under no obligation to a woman until settlements had been negotiated. But Percy produced records showing the extent of his “looking after” of Lady Stowe and her daughter that surprised even Jack. He had approved everything at the time, but only when he saw the sum of it over seven years did he realize how devoted it appeared.
In desperation he called upon a man he knew only slightly. Once upon a time, before his father died, Jack had run with a crowd of hell-raising rogues. The wildest of them all had been Lord David Reece. He doubted Reece would have anything helpful to add—Reece still possessed a wild streak and would never be called discreet—but his elder brother was a different story. The Duke of Exeter, Jack dimly remembered, had been supposedly engaged to a society lady when he suddenly presented an entirely different woman to the ton as his bride. The new duchess had set tongues wagging; she was a commoner, the widow of a country vicar, and London seethed with curiosity to know how on earth Exeter had ever met such a woman, let alone married her.
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