Romancing the Past

by Darcy Burke

  The stiff crepe of her skirts rustled on the granite as she strode purposefully out of the courtyard and into a wide corridor. Lit sconces cast flickering orange haloes against the stone walls, and an oriental carpet swallowed the noise of their footsteps. She led him up one of the spiral staircases tucked into High Bend’s turret towers and down another corridor to a small sitting room, elegantly if impersonally furnished.

  “I didn’t think you’d like my staying on in my old rooms, with the connecting door.” The Dowager opened up a small bureau and extracted a piece of paper from the bottom of a pile. “So I’ve moved all my things here until I can manage a permanent move. Here.” She held the paper with the tips of her fingers. “Proof.”

  Julian took the sheet and read.

  I know what I am doing, and I will not apologize.

  I have no confession to make but this. I meted out the poison and I drank it of my own free will.

  I am so sorry. I never did have the courage to do the right thing until it was too late. Please forgive me for asking you to remember the man I wished to be rather than the one I was.

  Brief. To the point. And fake.

  “What is this?” Julian traced the letters with his fingertip. He knew who’d written this note, and it hadn’t been his predecessor—though the ninth Duke of Clive’s signature did appear at the bottom.

  “He left a note.” Her voice was low, furious. “He wanted us to know.”

  “I suppose it would have been suspicious otherwise,” Julian murmured. He sniffed the paper, but the only perfume he detected was the Dowager Duchess’. “For a man to die of poison without any explanation.”

  “How soft-hearted you are,” marveled the Duchess.

  Julian looked up, startled. It had been a long time since anyone had accused him of undue kindness.

  “He wasn’t trying to protect us.” She slapped the table. “Who would have guessed? Who would’ve sounded the alarm? He was trying to punish us. To make us feel guilty.”

  “And do you?” Julian asked.

  The Dowager Duchess blushed.

  But no. She hadn’t the skill to copy her husband’s hand. Clive the Ninth, only one rung ahead of Julian in the ladder of succession, had worked as a solicitor for more than a decade before inheriting the title. He’d developed a tidy, precise, legal hand. Hard to duplicate without similar training—or a talented forger’s skill.

  And in these frozen hinterlands, he could only name one person whose abilities matched the task. Sophia Roe, Julian’s former fiancée. As a young man, he’d been astonished by her talent. On more than one occasion, he’d seen her forgeries fool the very individuals whose handwriting she had copied. They would take their own memories to task rather than doubt the evidence on the page.

  In later years, after he’d started working for the Foreign Office, he’d been more impressed by her restraint. To his knowledge, Sophie had never attempted to profit from her ability.

  But he’d read Clive’s will. The ninth Duke had left her a handsome bequest—a bundle of properties guaranteeing her a revenue of some twelve thousand pounds a year. Perhaps, threadbare as her pockets were, she’d decided to hasten her benefactor’s demise?

  Perhaps it hadn’t been the first time she’d succumbed to temptation.

  The thought chilled him, but why? She wasn’t his wife. Her crimes couldn’t blacken his name. He hadn’t even seen her in ten years. And yet…

  Julian drew the tip of one finger over a majuscule I. A blot had formed at the base of the downstroke, where Sophie had labored over a letter that would have been a clean, quick line in his cousin’s hand. A small flaw.

  He thumbed the curled flourish that crowned a small o, the line thinner and lighter than Clive the Ninth’s heavy fingers could have managed. Sloppy. Sophie must have written this in a rush. He knew her work. When she took her time, she could fool anyone.

  Why hurry? Unless she meant these little flaws as a message to him. Because only he would look at this note and see the truth. He knew her abilities, and he’d been trained—first by Sophie herself, later by experts at the Foreign Office—to recognize such small irregularities.

  “I have to go,” Julian announced.

  “What?”

  “I have to go,” he repeated, handing the letter back to the Dowager Duchess.

  “You’ve only just arrived,” she protested. “There’s nothing to be done. Take the afternoon to rest. There will be plenty of time in the morning—”

  But he didn’t wait to hear her suggestion. If Sophie wanted a confrontation, he’d give her one. A decade ago, she’d sent her uncle to break their engagement rather than confront him herself. She’d denied him any chance to plead his case. But he wasn’t small-minded. He’d teach her a lesson just by making an appearance.

  Julian retraced his steps to the front hall. He donned a thick scarf and his greatcoat before stepping out into the chill spring air. High Bend stood atop a windswept tor, perilously steep on three sides with a narrow road winding up the fourth. The gray stone of the building blended with the gray sky, melted into the Derbyshire hills. Weak sunlight glinted off the windows, black as dark water.

  When the stable boy led his horse around to the front drive, Julian heaved himself into the saddle and urged his mount to a trot. Down they went, the road a pale crease dividing rows of rocky mountains, down to a shallow valley where the village of Padley spread from slope to slope.

  Julian left his horse at the inn, flipped a coin to a stableboy, and clicked open his pocket watch.Iron & Wine Writing Fluid, read the label he’d glued to the inside face, 21 Halftail Road. He’d lifted it from a bottle of Sophie’s ink years ago, when she’d just started out. Soaked the bottle in water, peeled off the paper, and… kept it.

  Most men carried a portrait of their beloved, but Julian never had to worry about forgetting what Sophie looked like. He did have to prod himself to remember what he knew in the abstract, but had never seen or felt or tasted: the woman she’d become, the things she’d gone on to do without him.

  Her shop looked much as he’d imagined it, a small cottage only a block away from the row of shops lining Padley’s main street. A sturdy wooden sign with Iron & Wine spelled out in polished brass letters hung from a bracket over the lintel. A woman bent at the waist in front of the whitewashed front door, the ribbons of her apron billowing out from her waist.

  She had the fine, balanced figure of a Greek caryatid. Supple curves crafted by a deity who preached moderation in all things and possessed skill enough to prove his point in the shape of a woman’s body. Sophie had always been just lush enough, just slim enough, just soft enough. Just right, in every way.

  A woven shawl slipped down her shoulders. In his memories, she wore silks and fine woolens, muslin and velvet. Not gray serge and undyed homespun. At least her hair had stayed the same—it snarled and frizzed, skeins twisting loose from pins and bonnet to snap in the breeze.

  Even after ten years, the sight of her moved him. He wanted to fall to his knees, rub his face in the dirt. Why didn’t you want me? Why did you turn me away?

  She reached out with her white, white arms, a crystal phial tipped neck-down between ink-stained fingers. A single drop of sunny golden fluid formed at the lip and then, ever so slowly, fell to the ground.

  Poison?

  Sophie tucked her elbows into her waist and murmured something in a voice too low for him to understand. Sweet words, so gentle and warm that his bone-dry soul wept with envy.

  Then the rage came back, and he could move again. “What have you got there, Sophie?”

  His voice startled her so much that she staggered, looking up and reeling away as she recognized him.

  Her cheeks had hollowed dramatically since he’d last seen her, as though someone had scooped out all the baby fat with a spoon. With her pointed chin, her face now formed the perfect shape of a heart, marred only by a dark mark high on her left cheek.

  The last time they’d been face to face Sophie
had been distraught, more than a little drunk, and gushing blood from just that spot. He had gone to find help, and then he’d never seen her again.

  But he wasn’t looking at a scar, now. It resembled a puncture wound, yes, but this mark was deep black. Inky.

  It had been made. Stamped, branded, tattooed onto her flesh.

  It… didn’t surprise him. He could imagine it so easily. While he’d been beating down her door, out of his mind with heartbreak and rage, she’d been boxed up inside, savage with anger of a different kind. She had the strength of a snake eating its tail, self-immolating and infinite.

  Could a woman like that commit murder? Oh, yes. Absolutely.

  Chapter 2

  Oh, no. No, no, no. Not Julian. Not now. Not ever. Sophie clapped her hand over her scar and tried not to look. She’d watch the bee—the poor bee, if Julian stepped on it, but no, his feet stayed clear of the creature as he gently pried the phial from her numb fingers. Don’t look! But she’d already seen: that perfect profile, his blond hair flopping forward so the individual strands glowed like silver threads, muscles flexing in his lean jaw.

  The sight of him undid her. Always had. She could never steel herself against his beauty. Trying to hold Julian’s image in her mind was like trying to run with a pail full of water: it kept splashing out and dribbling away until she was left with nothing.

  “Honey?” Julian asked, sniffing. He twirled the bottle between his fingers, nimble as a pickpocket.

  Sophie positioned herself so that he’d have to look at her profile, her scarred cheek out of sight. She held out her hand. “Give that back.”

  He caught her by the wrist. She tried to break loose but he didn’t let go, as though he had every right to touch her. He held still, waiting, and she knew what for. Bracing herself, Sophie raised her gaze to meet his eyes, the blue-gray of a pigeon’s wing, his pupils narrowed to small points.

  “Have you poisoned it, Sophie? Is that what you brew in your workshop when nobody’s looking?”

  “Of course not.” Swallowing, Sophie pulled harder against Julian’s grip.

  He responded by reeling her closer, until they stood chest to chest. The gray serge of her skirts folded against the black wool of his trousers, his forearm pressed into the softness of her breast.

  Sophie pointed at the ground with her free hand. “It’s for the bee.”

  They watched in silence as the bee reached her drop of honey.

  “Sometimes, especially now, in the spring, if they look like they’re dying it’s because they’re hungry. They’ve been out for too long looking for pollen and they just drop out of the sky, too tired to go on. But a little bit of honey…”

  The bee rose up in the air and buzzed away.

  “…and he’s back on his way.”

  She could feel that Julian was in the grip of some strong emotion. They’d known each other from childhood; she remembered a time when she could taste the flavor of his silences. As though his heart were a bell and, when struck, the peals vibrated right through her. His soul to hers.

  No longer.

  Julian cracked a smile, crooked and joyless. “You’ve reserved that tone of voice for insects?”

  Sophie tried to jerk away again. “For helpless creatures.”

  “The bee can sting, Sophie. It’s not helpless.”

  “It could. And then it would die.” Sophie held out her free hand for the phial Julian had snatched away. “A bee’s only defense is suicide, which is no defense at all.”

  “Don’t be maudlin.” Julian dangled the bottle just above her open palm. “Oh, God, you’re serious, aren’t you?”

  Sophie snatched the bottle and screwed on the cap, which dangled from a small silver chain secured to her waistband. “Why are you here, Clive?”

  He gave her a strange look: hurt, if she read him right. He hadn’t expected her to address him by his title. She hadn’t wanted to. Clive would always be the old duke to her, the ninth, but she needed to establish distance between herself and Julian however she could manage it.

  “We need to talk.”

  Talk? Sophie traced the outline of her scar with the tip of her middle finger. “No.”

  “No? I thought that was what you wanted.” He placed one fingertip beneath her chin and tilted her head up, so she had to look at him again. She realized—no, she remembered, and her heart gave a terrible throb—that he knew exactly what effect his beauty had on her, that once she had trusted him enough to tell him in plain speech.

  It undid her. And she hated it.

  He didn’t look at her scar. He didn’t look away from it, either. Only the careful blankness of his expression told her that he’d noticed it at all.

  Too proud to admire his handiwork openly, was he?

  Julian’s voice lowered to a purr. “You know I always tried to give you what you want.”

  Sophie’s heart skipped a beat. Gall and vinegar, he played her so easily. She licked suddenly dry lips. Julian’s gaze snapped down to follow the motion. His nostrils flared on a quick, indrawn breath.

  “I want you to go,” Sophie whispered.

  “As you wish.” Julian dropped both hands to his sides and took a step back. “I can take my concerns elsewhere. To the constable, for example.”

  “On what account?”

  “The note.”

  “What note?”

  Julian’s eyebrows, thick and bronze, climbed up his forehead.

  The note… the note… Oh, dregs. “The suicide note.”

  Julian nodded. “You wrote it.”

  Sophie jerked her chin down. “And?”

  “And?” That seemed to give him pause. “You admit it?”

  “Why shouldn’t I?”

  “You tell me, Sophie. Why shouldn’t you confess to forging the handwriting and signature of a peer? Why shouldn’t you have penned a declaration—for a dead man—that will taint his legacy and spoil the good name he spent a lifetime building?”

  Sophie dropped the phial of honey to dangle on its chain at her thigh and wiped her palms on her apron. Her memories lost their clarity very quickly. A month was a long time for her to hold onto the sharp edges of any sight, sound, touch. But she could still hear the urgency in the old duke’s voice. Still feel his hand, hot and smooth, crushing hers. I know what I am doing, and I will not apologize.

  That night. The second worst of her life. “Clive dictated the note.”

  “Clive dictated the note,” Julian mocked.

  “Every word.”

  “You expect me to believe that Clive had sufficient forethought to procure a deadly poison, but not enough to prepare his own suicide note before swallowing it?”

  “I never thought…” Sophie stared down at the dirt path and the stone stoop, the freshly turned flowerbeds. She hadn’t expected logic, so she hadn’t looked for it. “But that’s what happened.”

  “And you showed up at just the right moment?” Julian persisted. “Or did he summon you?”

  “Not to High Bend. The Duchess had invited us—well, everyone who’d worked on the new altar cloths. Aunt Jenny and Bettina spent months embroidering. My uncle, Peter, and I went along to celebrate the donation.”

  “So Clive dictated to the whole room?”

  “No. Of course not. He excused himself early and I thought…” Things she couldn’t say about a dead man. Clive the Ninth had been a dour and petulant brooder. “I thought he might need cheering up,” she finished lamely.

  “So you went to him?”

  Sophie nodded.

  A pause.

  “Alone?” he asked.

  Sophie recoiled. “He was like a father to me.”

  Julian’s eyebrows twitched eloquently.

  A small gesture, but it called up all the things they’d done together. Julian had seen and touched and tasted every inch of her body. Not once, but many times. In attics and haylofts, barns and bowers. She had been bashful, at first, but he’d cured her of that.

  If he called her shame
less, she wouldn’t deny it.

  “Speak plainly,” she said quietly.

  “If he wanted a note, he would have written a note.” The dirt scraped beneath his shoes as he pressed closer. His lids drooped lazily, but the look he fixed on her was so cold it trickled over her like snowmelt. “In advance.”

  Sophie stopped breathing. What?

  “Clive trained as a solicitor. He’d never have left a thing like that to chance.”

  “I was there,” she whispered.

  “You falsified the circumstances of this death,” Julian pressed.

  “To help him.” She sounded shrill; couldn’t help it. “He needed me.”

  “And you would never spurn a request from an intimate acquaintance, made in desperation—would you?”

  But of course she would, and she had: from him. When he’d been her dearest friend. The man she’d loved and trusted above all others. Her fiancé.

  Until he’d disfigured her. Then she’d turned him away, and she hadn’t any interest in his appeals or his desperation. Not a grain, not a gram, not a drop. None.

  “That’s different,” she hissed. “And you know it.”

  A man’s voice calling, “Miss Roe!” prevented Julian from replying. Sophie spun to see William Allsop turning onto Halftail Road, an armload of feathers puffed out from a burlap sack he hefted under one arm. She’d never been so glad to see him in her life.

  “Miss Roe!” His wide mouth clamped into a thin, lipless smile as he looked past her to her visitor. “Julian.” He did a double take. “Clive, that is, what?”

  “William! Old Frogger!” One corner of Julian’s full mouth hitched up. Sophie winced in anticipation. “What brings you to Miss Roe’s place of business this morning?”

  “Don’t call me that,” snapped William, his glare slipping away from Julian to land on her. She’d coined the nickname Frogger aeons ago, when they were children. He’d wonder if she’d been the one to revive it.

  He was a handsome man, if one banished all thought of amphibians from one’s mind. Smooth-skinned, with flashing dark eyes set just a bit too far apart and fine, broad shoulders.