‘I know it is highly irregular, me coming to your room like this,’ he said. ‘Improper, even,’ he added, shutting the door firmly behind him, lest anyone see him standing there. ‘But I heard you intended to come down for dinner tonight and I may not be able to be there, and did not wish you to think that I was avoiding you.’ He advanced across the sitting room but stopped on the threshold of her bedroom. It was one thing invading her private suite, but to set foot in her bedroom really would be crossing a line.
‘Why,’ she replied nervously, inching away from the bed, ‘would I think that?’
‘Because of the way we parted. I... I was harsh with you. Harsher than I should have been. Later, when I’d had time to reflect, I could see that you might have interpreted what I’d said as a criticism...’
‘It was a criticism,’ she said.
‘Well, yes, but I didn’t mean the half of it. Can’t you see, Sofia, that I was out of my mind with fear? I thought you were drowning. I thought I’d lost you before you were ever truly mine and I could not stand it. And then, when you scolded me for thinking you might need me...’ He ground to a halt. He’d used her given name without first securing her permission to do so. Even though she’d used his, she didn’t appear to think he had the right to do the same, not to judge from the forbidding cast of her features.
‘We both said things we did not really mean,’ she said.
He breathed out.
‘Or at least,’ she added, making him hold his breath again, ‘things that expressed our feelings in a very poor way.’
‘Are you...is that your notion of an apology?’
‘It’s as good as the one you just gave me,’ she retorted.
‘I did not come here to quarrel with you again. The truth is...’ Yes, what was the truth? ‘The truth is that I want you more than is healthy. And I resent you for wanting you so much. You make me so angry with myself that I...’
The wounded look in her eyes struck him to the core. ‘No, no, Sofia, sweetheart, I never meant it to sound as though anything is your fault.’
And then, because he could not help himself, he closed the distance between them and pulled her into his arms.
‘The fault is all mine,’ he said into the crown of her hair, since she’d lowered her head and would not look at him. ‘I have always been afraid to love. Afraid of what it would do to me. And yesterday, at the lake, my worst fears came to pass. You were in danger and, instead of being what you needed, I lost my temper. That is the kind of man I am.’
But in spite of having just admitted, and shown her, the very worst of himself, her arms stole round his waist, like a benediction. ‘You are no worse than any other man,’ she said into his chest. ‘You may have shouted a bit, but then you made sure that I was cared for. You carried me to the carriage so that I did not have to drip my way across the field and then you gave me your own coat to shield me from prying eyes.’
‘Thank you for that,’ he breathed in heartfelt gratitude. ‘Thank you that at least I have not your rejection to worry about tonight. Because if I do not have you to come back to, if there is no hope left for us, then I do not know how I will bear...’
She reached up one hand to cup his cheek. ‘What is it? What is the matter?’
And even though he knew it was the worst thing he could possibly do, he could not help himself. One kiss. He needed at least one, to see him through what he feared he was about to face.
And since her face was turned up to his, it was but a matter of lowering his own a fraction for their lips to meet. She gasped in surprise and tensed, as though she was considering pulling away. But after only a moment, she yielded to the passion that flared up whenever they were together, kissing him back like a woman who was putting her whole heart into it. And there was a bed nearby. It would be an easy matter to guide her over there and push her down and...
He wrenched himself away from her. Ran his fingers through his hair. ‘I should not have done that.’ That was what happened when a man yielded to feelings. It turned him into a beast. Disgusted with himself, he turned and paced away.
‘Pardon me. But I am at my wit’s end. No, no, that is no excuse for pouncing upon you like a beast.’
‘I... I didn’t mind.’
‘Yes, you did. At first. I overbore your reluctance. It is in my blood. I once thought I had managed to conquer that side of me, but with you...’ He paused to look at her, his pulse pounding.
‘I had better go. Before the storm reaches us. I’m sorry, I’m not explaining myself very well. The truth is that Livvy is missing. Nobody has seen her all day. And they...’ He stopped, clenching his fists, his chest weighted with a dread chill. ‘We searched the woods this afternoon, but there was no sign of her. And with the storm approaching...’ he swallowed ‘...I cannot bear to think of my little girl all alone out there in the woods, or wherever she may have run to.’
Sofia strode across the room to him and seized one of his hands. ‘I am sure she is quite safe.’
‘How can you be sure?’
She jerked her head in the direction of the dressing table, before widening her eyes, then blinking, then lowering her gaze to her feet. If it had been any other woman than Sofia, he would have thought she was showing signs of being touched in the upper works.
But it was Sofia, so, to be charitable, he would assume she’d realised how silly her expression of sympathy had been and was hanging her head in shame.
‘I know you are trying to make me feel better, but really, this is not the time to utter empty platitudes,’ he said. ‘You cannot possibly know she is safe. And even if she were, it wouldn’t make me feel any better.’
Her head flew up. ‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because I’ve failed her so badly that she felt she had to run away.’
She regarded him thoughtfully. ‘You do know,’ she said rather sternly, ‘that some dreadful woman has told her that she is a disgrace? That she ought not to be allowed anywhere near respectable people?’
‘Yes, I...that is, you told me about it and I confronted her governess. Demanded she tell me who could have said such a thing. She promised to find out and have that person punished.’
She raised her eyebrows as though she was astonished. ‘You...asked her to find out...don’t you know that she was the one to say such things?’
‘She was?’
‘Well, yes, if her name is Mrs Starchypants. Although I suppose Livvy might have meant the housekeeper, for a more starched-up woman I have never met.’
‘Livvy’s governess is Mrs Stuyvesant. So it is...but, no, I cannot believe she would...’
Sofia gave him a reproachful look. ‘Do you think Livvy is untruthful?’
‘I do not know her well enough to judge...’ He had to stop, for Sofia was looking at him as though he’d really disappointed her. ‘That is, Mrs Stuyvesant came highly recommended.’
‘By whom?’
‘By...my secretary, Perceval.’
‘And he has a lot of experience of bringing up children, does he?’
‘No. And come to think of it, he was the one who suggested that I send Livvy away to some family in the country and pay them to have her brought up in secret. Perhaps that is what I should have done.’ He sighed. ‘After all, they might have known how to make her happy. And I was better off with my foster parents than I would have been had I stayed here.’
‘In what way?’
He gave a bitter laugh. ‘Well, at least they did their best to keep me alive. Even if it was only because I was their main source of income.’
When Sofia looked perplexed, he added, ‘Look, I am wasting time standing here talking about my past and why I so badly wanted to keep Livvy with me. I have failed her. She is out there, lost and afraid, and there is a storm approaching. It has already started to rain. And now that I have explained why I must search for
her, rather than attend to any of my guests this evening, I ought to go...’
As he turned, she laid a hand on his sleeve and shook her head. And then pointed at the dressing table.
He’d only glanced at it before, but now he examined the litter strewn across its surface more keenly. There was a hairbrush, various pots, and some notepaper and a pencil.
And scrawled across the top of the notepaper, in a childish hand, A bome for Snowpall. His heart kicked. Livvy was always getting her p’s and b’s mixed up.
‘You have not really explained why you wanted to keep Livvy with you,’ said Sofia, firmly. ‘Or why, since you have, you have allowed that dreadful woman to make her feel as though she is not fit to be seen.’ She then jerked her head in the direction of the bed.
He was not fool enough to think it was an invitation to take her to it. Not with a sample of Livvy’s handwriting sitting out in the open. This time, he was also certain she was not jerking her head like that because she’d developed some form of mania.
‘Do you love her, Oliver?’ If anyone else had asked him such an impertinent question he would have given them short shrift. But Sofia was not asking out of curiosity. No, what she was doing was providing him with the opportunity to explain his motives to Livvy, who was, if he was not mistaken, hiding under Sofia’s bed. And she’d used his given name. The way she’d done in the summer house.
Before he could properly consider the significance of her doing so he heard a rumble of thunder from somewhere to the west. His mind flew back to a long-ago stormy night when he’d been the child hiding under a bed from his own father.
The comparison shook him so badly it took the strength from his knees. He just made it to Sofia’s dressing-table stool before they gave out completely. He sat down hard and buried his face in his hands. How could he have turned into the very kind of monster he’d striven so hard to eradicate from his personality? And yet he must have done, or his own child would not be hiding from him this way.
Everything he’d done had all been for nothing.
‘What is it?’ Sofia laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Are you ill? Should I pour you a glass of water?’
‘I...’ He shook his head. He could not brush this off. Besides, if he answered her truthfully, it would also give him the chance to explain his behaviour to his daughter without betraying the fact he knew she was cowering under Sofia’s bed. And he had to persuade her to come out of her own free will. There was no way he would get down on his knees and terrify her by trying to drive her out. By swiping at her with a poker.
‘A glass of water would help,’ he admitted. It would give him the excuse he needed to stay and talk Livvy out from under the bed without scaring her. Or scaring her further, anyway.
Sofia crossed to her bedside table, upon which stood a jug, and poured him a glass. She followed the direction of his gaze, which was riveted upon the small gap under her bed.
‘Would it help,’ she suggested, ‘to talk about it? I know that men find it hard to speak of anything besides sport, or at least, the men in my family do. But in this case...’ She gave another speaking look in the direction of her bed.
When she returned to him with the glass of water he gripped her hand, squeezing it in gratitude.
‘I don’t know where to start,’ he admitted.
‘Perhaps...’ She bit down on her lower lip and frowned. ‘Perhaps you could explain how it is you were so averse to having Livvy sent to a foster family and how you know so much about them.’
‘Ah. Well, it isn’t a pretty story.’ He paused and took a sip of the water while he thought about how much he could reveal without damaging his daughter even further.
‘I told you that my father sent me away to live with strangers after my mother died, did I not?’
There was a shocked gasp from under the bed and then a muffled bump, as though someone had jerked and bumped their head. He couldn’t pretend he hadn’t heard it. He turned his gaze to Sofia, his heart squeezing in a sort of anguish.
She threw back her shoulders.
‘I suppose you heard that.’
When he nodded, she said, ‘I have a confession to make. Please, do not be too cross with me.’ She gave him another speaking look. He took it to mean that if he could demonstrate forgiveness for whatever she had done, then perhaps Livvy would have the courage to believe he could forgive her, too, for having turned his entire household upside down while searching for her.
‘I don’t believe,’ he said a trifle hoarsely, ‘that I could ever be really cross with you. Or not for long, anyway,’ he concluded, for the sake of complete honesty.
Sofia’s eyes welled up. She swallowed, then said in a clear, ringing voice, ‘Snowball. Come.’
From under the bed came the wriggling, furry form of her pet.
‘I know she is not allowed in the house, I know she should stay in the kennels but she was pining for me. And so...’ She dropped to her knees and put her arms round her dog’s neck and now there were two pairs of hopeful brown eyes gazing up at him, as though begging him for clemency.
To his knowledge, she hadn’t stirred from her room since her impromptu swim in the lake and there was only one person in his entire household who might have been concerned enough about her dog to go and check, and decide the creature was pining for its mistress, then have the nerve to break her out of her canine prison.
But he could not let on that he suspected the true culprit was Livvy, rather than Sofia.
Not yet. Not until Livvy was ready.
‘I think,’ he said decisively, ‘it is about time some of the rules in this household changed.’
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘From now on,’ he vowed, ‘Snowball will have the run of the house. I shall make sure of it.’
His heart swelled at the look of gratitude in her eyes. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘Snowball is very well behaved and won’t cause any mess, I promise.’
‘The rule was not mine to begin with. I leave all aspects of managing the house, or at least I have done until now, to Mrs Manderville. And I think she is more concerned about preserving the Court’s treasures than she is with the comfort of my guests.’
He glanced around the tiny rooms in which he found Sofia.
‘I only learned today that she had put you here. Practically in the servants’ quarters—’ he indicated the ceiling ‘—rather than in the main house with all my other guests. This...’ he waved one hand round the box-like proportions of her sitting room ‘...is no doubt her expression of displeasure at me for adding you to the guest list so late in the day.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said generously. ‘It is a lovely set of rooms. Better than I’m used to, in most ways.’
‘In most ways? In what way is it not an improvement on what you are used to?’
‘Oh, it’s nothing really. It’s just that one of your servants appears to be having trouble sleeping. I keep hearing them pacing up and down at night.’ And then it was her turn to point at the ceiling.
‘Ah. I must apologise. You see, the room directly above this one is the schoolroom. It will have been me you’ve heard, pacing back and forth. I go in to look at Livvy every night, you see, while she is sleeping. And then I...well, I go to the schoolroom and think. And I tend to pace when I am thinking.’
‘You wait until she is asleep,’ she said with disapproval, ‘before going to see her?’
‘Well, I don’t wish to intimidate her by summoning her to my study every day as though she has to give an account of her movements. But I do need to see, with my own eyes, that she is well.’
‘But why all that pacing up and down?’
‘Because, so very often, I can see tear-tracks down her cheeks. She isn’t happy here and I don’t know how to make things better. I often wonder if I should have found somebody who could care for her the way I seem incapable of
doing. I...’ He reached inside himself for the courage to expose his deepest, most private self. The weakness he was so vigilant about concealing from everyone else. ‘I have no idea how to be a father. My own, you see...’ He swallowed and rolled the water glass between his palms a few times while choosing his words, knowing that whatever he said, his daughter would hear.
And realising, with faint surprise, that for once he felt no need to weigh up the consequences of sharing this topic, not with Sofia. Because he trusted her. She would never, he knew, hold what he was about to tell her over his head. She would never use the knowledge she was about to gain to further her own ends. It was not in her nature.
‘One night, when I was very young, my father dragged me out of bed in the middle of a storm. He was in a rage. He shook me like a terrier would shake a rat. I saw blood on the cuffs of his shirt, just before my nightshirt tore, so that I fell to the floor. I was so terrified that I wriggled under my bed and refused to come out, no matter what he threatened. The space was too small for him to get under and drag me out. So he went to fetch a poker.’ He paused, drawing in a breath or two to steady himself.
‘All the while,’ he continued when he could, ‘he was shouting at me, calling me foul names. Bastard among them. And the Duke’s Bastard was how my foster family referred to me. That was what I thought I was. Just a bastard. A nothing.’
Sofia had pressed her hands together at her chest, as though trying to hold back some deep emotion, though he could see it on her face. Normally, he would have recoiled from such a look of pity. He was not an object of pity!
But...there was Livvy to consider.
‘That is why, when you saw Livvy you...’
‘I thought I knew exactly how she felt, yes. But more than that, you must see why I am so angry that somebody in my household has used words to make her feel bad about herself when she has done nothing wrong, any more than I did anything wrong, apart from being born. I brought her here specifically to shield her from that very kind of ill usage.’
A Duke in Need of a Wife Page 21
