Romancing the Rogue Page 3

  Wilhelm heard the dogs barking outside and recalled how they’d seemed to guard her. She would be protected, then. Good.

  He retrieved the elliptical chunk of marble she’d thrown at him and couldn’t help his spontaneous bark of laughter. Resting in his palm was a marble penis. The poor Roman statue would never be the same.

  Through the still-open door, Wilhelm saw her retreating form, nymph-like in the moonlight. Then came the memory of her soft peaches-and-cloves-scented hair splayed across his chest, her clear and lyrical soprano voice, the wicked slant of her exotic autumn-hazel eyes… Assaulting him, tormenting him. At night he dreamed it in vivid colors and tangible sensations, and he couldn’t say if it was worse or better than the ghosts who haunted him.

  He needed a few fingers of cognac and a sound coshing up the side of his head.

  ~~~~

  Sophia stared at her shawl, folded neatly on the bedstand. It had been missing since she’d dropped it in the courtyard garden and run away from the man whose scent assailed her now as she unfolded the fabric. Musky pine, leather, and cognac. Her heart skipped a beat as she connected the familiar smell with the man she had argued with in the gallery and unwittingly ambushed in the bathhouse — not a houseguest.

  The same unmistakable masculine smell of wealth and virility thick in the air and branded in the linen of the master suite.

  Lord Devon.

  The ninth one. The eighth had been the grizzled old lord whose portrait she’d long assumed to be current, Lord Devon’s late father. Wilhelm, Lord Devon, didn’t have his portrait on display. She would have noticed.

  She fingered the embroidery instead of pacing the room in a panic. He’d left no note with the shawl, but the message was obvious: I have caught you. Lord Devon had yet to pursue or dismiss her. Perhaps he meant to toy with her. His motives could not be benevolent.

  Why the shawl smelled of him, she decided not to examine. She wished she didn’t know the fragrance so well. And she’d certainly never drawn deep breaths of it while she’d bundled his sheets. Nor had she buried her face in his shirts to capture his wild but comforting essence, not ever. And she wouldn’t dream of doing so now with the shawl. Of course not.

  Only days later she found Lord Devon’s unfinished letter to his aunt atop the desk again, the copy she’d forged after ruining the original. Under the date and salutation she’d copied, new ink had been scripted below.

  Not too shabby an effort, for an addled female. By all means, finish the epistle. I am sure Aunt Louisa would never tell the difference. Do convey all due niceties; I am fond of the Old Dragon.

  —WM

  P.S. You missed a spot on the mirror. Kindly rectify.

  Sophia’s indignation was torn between his signing W.M., Wilhelm Montegue — as though she was either his old schoolmate or his lover — and his term, addled female.

  Addled female? Not too shabby an effort? And she had missed a spot? Give her a clear shot, and she’d show him addled. Sophia snatched the pen left on the desk.

  Dearest Auntie Louisa,

  Forgive the delay of my letter. I insist upon hosting your Ladies’ Guild annual soirée at my estate in hopes that I can make it up to you. Please invite as many young debutantes and their mamas as you can muster. You are right, as always; ’tis high time I settled down and fathered a brood of fine English children. At least a dozen, mostly high-spirited daughters, whom I pledge to educate sparing no expense.

  In my advancing age, I have come to dread the weight of my conscience and confess I heartily regret those qualities of character which render my company a trial to those who must endure it. In an effort to atone for this grievous delinquency, I believe a gesture of humility is in order: let it be known that I bequeath all my earthly possessions to the west wing chambermaid.

  All my love,

  Willie

  She exaggerated his loopy Ys and elongated the frivolous tails on his Qs and Hs, making an unkind but rather accurate mockery of his penmanship. Juvenile of her, and perhaps dangerously impertinent. Would it save her to claim he’d started it?

  Her only reprimand was finding stacked on his bedstand the next morning a selection of works by Herbert Spencer and Patrick Geddes — men who preached that a woman’s intelligence steadily leached from her brain with every monthly cycle, that without the constant guidance of a man, her poor judgment resigned her to a life of depravity.

  Sophia fumed, completely understanding his meaning. Anabolic natured female, indeed! Surely he did not subscribe to that idiotic, patronizing philosophy? Riled, she laughed out loud in vindication, scrubbing away any thoughts of admiration for Lord Devon that may have budded unnoticed in the back of her mind.

  She tossed his so-called philosophy books into the fire grate, where the low morning embers would only nibble away at the covers, leaving plenty of evidence for her reply to Lord Devon’s challenge.

  Chapter Four

  On Vehement Chivalry

  The remnants of the Crimean 32nd Battalion officers gathered from the far corners of England to lounge in the Rougemont billiard room, as they did annually. Wilhelm enjoyed himself marginally until the men fell silent one by one. Their hands froze mid-gesture, while others stared stupidly with cigars hanging from their mouths, ashes ready to drop onto their laps.

  Rosalie had done nothing to attract their attention, but they watched her gather bottles and glasses on a tray, their heads turned to peer like owls. Wilhelm heard a unison seizure of breath as she bent to retrieve a dropped linen, unwittingly presenting a view down the front of her bodice. The men stared after her as she exited the room.

  “Upon my word, Devon!” roared Sir Vorlay. He slapped his knee and splashed his drink on the upholstery. “What is it you’ve been keeping here?”

  “A mystery,” Wilhelm replied honestly, without inflection. He’d watched her as well, for shame.

  “A mystery you will surely unravel for us! Tell, who is she?”

  “Hear, hear!” a few others shouted.

  Irritation raked down his spine. “A respectable woman, no doubt, if Mrs. Abbott saw fit to employ her.” A fierce wash of protectiveness made him loathe their ribaldry. It seemed a sacrilege in reference to Rosalie.

  “Come now, Devon. Share your tale of conquest. Or is it true you’re a backdoor man?”

  A few officers grimaced in distaste, others rose a brow in interest, likely hoping he would settle the matter of his tastes either way, in favor of men or women in bed sport. Damn them all.

  Vorlay gestured to the mounted game on the walls. “Hunting skirts is not so far from hunting game; the strategy is the same for high-spirited and docile alike, in that—”

  Wilhelm interrupted, “Actually, Vorlay, my brother Roderick was the collector of trophies. Not me.”

  “Too true, Devon, from what I hear. Indeed you must snare yourself a little prize, perhaps… that one.” He glanced toward the door. The old soldiers in the room crowed in assent.

  Wilhelm felt himself heat from the neck up and suppressed a warning growl. “I don’t hunt for sport, Vorlay, and I don’t take what is not mine.”

  “Then you should have a care, Devon, because I do!” His cronies sang a chorus of Oh-ho, daring Vorlay to have at it.

  His vision darkened. Wilhelm shot out of his seat and gave way to the surge of fury. A grizzled ginger-haired man called to him in thick brogue, grasping his arms — Colonel O’Grady, his trusted friend, urging him to let go.

  Wilhelm cursed himself. He’d done it again, lost control. He forced his fingers one by one to release Vorlay’s throat. Spattered cognac streamed down Vorlay’s face, tap, tap, tapping as it dripped on the floor. Stunned silence filled the room.

  Wilhelm shoved Vorlay back into the chair, his stupid expression and the shriek of furniture legs skidding on the floor gratifying to the beast roaring in Wilhelm’s head.

  “I do not take what isn’t mine, but I sure as hell protect it.” His voice emerged gritty and ugly, but his every ounce of c
ontrol was devoted to restraint at the moment.

  ~~~~

  “Oh, Wilhelm. No.”

  He’d been caught spying. Aunt Louisa paused at his side in the library doorway and followed his gaze.

  Rosalie stretched over the balustrade of a three-storey split staircase. She reached with a tool to hook the chain of the great hall’s crystal chandelier. Wilhelm had never thought about the beastly chandelier other than to count the 1,260 glittering pieces, which she would have to clean one by one. There were four footmen on the pulleys, but one mishap, a slip of the hand, and… he couldn’t bear to think about it. Or the sixteen-yard fall to the marble floor below. A human body would drop nearly three seconds before impact. A shudder pricked every nerve in his body. He tried to banish the image—

  Aunt Louisa’s hand clamped over his. The splintering noise was him, cracking the doorframe in restraint. He’d been about to go to her. He wanted to. Would do so now if she hadn’t already stepped away from the railing, guiding the chandelier to its resting place on a pile of dropcloths. The footmen secured the rope below, and the danger passed.

  “Who employed her?” Aunt Louisa whispered coldly, the familiar sound of disapproval in her voice.

  “Mrs. Abbott, although I don’t blame her directly. She said Rosalie Cooper came highly recommended by Lady Lambrick, and who could dispute that?”

  “She is not young,” Aunt Louisa conceded.

  “A widow. Supposedly.”

  Rosalie reached over the chandelier for the rope but dropped it and sucked in a breath, clutching her abdomen. She grimaced and breathed deeply with her eyes closed, then sighed as she resumed her work. Wilhelm had seen her do that before; it made him wonder whether she was expecting a baby or battling an illness. Aunt Louisa studied Rosalie with a hard glare.

  Rosalie waved her rag to halt a team of footmen transporting a rolled rug. “No, that’s the Axminster. It goes in the music room with the seventeenth cent—” She pursed her lips at the footmen’s blank expressions. “The scarlet rug. It lies perpendicular to the red rug. Adjacent? Oh for heaven’s sake, there’s a square of darkened flooring where it belongs. And the Tabriz Persian, the gold one, goes here.” She sighed, sending an escaped lock of hair flying.

  Wilhelm wanted to touch it, that unruly piece of hair, to wrap it around his finger.

  The footmen each answered with a respectful, “Yes, ma’am,” as though she were mistress of Rougemont. Wilhelm had always thought authority was ninety percent bluster, and Rosalie had it in spades.

  “How can you not like her, Aunt? She knows her rugs.”

  “I see no humor here, Wilhelm Montegue. What are your intentions? And try not to use dockyard language.”

  Wilhelm considered shocking her just for sport then decided he wanted to be taken seriously. “I mean to have her, of course.”

  “To what end? Until you tire of her and send her away with your bastard? Heaven knows you can afford a dozen, but I always imagined more honor in your character.”

  “Imagined? Dear Aunt, you cut me to the quick.”

  “Leave her be, Wilhelm.”

  “I don’t think I can help it.”

  “After all this time? You choose a domestic? When you have rejected the Princess of Belgium?” She dabbed her forehead with a lace-edged handkerchief and tucked it into her sleeve. “Think of the scandal. Think of your duty.”

  “Princess Astrid rejected me, not the other way around.” He tore his gaze from Rosalie to smile at his feisty little aunt. “And now you’ve persuaded me to be contrary, solely for using that D-word.”

  She twirled her hand at him, plainly struggling to maintain her disapproving glare. Inexplicably Aunt Louisa liked him, no matter how poor his behavior. “You cannot carry on this way when the clock is ticking. What will become of your title? Surely your pride will not allow you to be the one Montegue since Cromwell who fails to pass the earldom to his son?”

  “Blame Roderick for dying. I should never have had the title in the first place.”

  Aunt Louisa lowered her voice, as though the ghosts couldn’t hear if she whispered, “I bless the nitwit for dying. It was the one sensible thing your brother did, leaving the title to you.”

  “Now you are being sentimental, Aunt. Stop or I may weep on your shoulder.”

  “Wicked man.” She rapped him on the head with her fan. He was surprised she could reach. “I cannot dissuade you?”

  “Not a chance. Have you ever seen a woman more lovely, more full of fire?”

  “By the dozen.” Her tone betrayed her true answer: Sadly, no.

  Wilhelm had truly found a diamond in the rough. “Look on the bright side…”

  “There is one?”

  Yes — for you, because I doubt she will even want me in the first place. “She is not American,” he said instead, resurrecting their most volatile argument.

  So many in their acquaintance had made marriage alliances that amounted to trading old English titles for new American money. Aunt Louisa thought it a sign of the apocalypse, but apparently she was too upset to take the bait.

  Then he had an idea. No reason he should let Aunt Louisa’s talent go to waste. “I wonder if you might help me. And in turn, I promise I won’t lay her out on a silver platter dressed only in grapes when I next host a ball.”

  They exchanged smirks. Wilhelm never hosted balls.

  “Mercy. Anything for you, Wilhelm.” However grudgingly, she meant it.

  “Find out who she is.”

  ~~~~

  Mr. Cox finally sent a letter. She pretended not to care when a curious Mrs. Abbott handed her the envelope, but in private, Sophia tore it open and unfolded the paper with fumbling hands. Clever Mr. Cox, her solicitor, who had found her the position at Rougemont with the help of the prankish and brazen Lady Lambrick, a dear friend of her mother’s. Flaming liars, the three of them, but for a worthy conspiracy.

  Sophia saw her father’s name near the top of the letter. A jolt of anxiety made her heart leap and her skin flush cold. She would read that part later. But first, the information she’d specifically requested:

  Wilhelm Cavendish Montegue, Ninth Earl of Devon. Retired lieutenant-general in the Army, decorated in the Russian war, Order of the Garter, etc., etc. Prior to that his military record is sealed. I find only hearsay, scandal concerning the deaths of enemy officers, and rumors he acted as a spy in Turkey.

  A second son, he inherited when the eldest perished of illness, but some believe the succession unlawful. Lady Lambrick recalls his mother Margaret Montegue claiming Wilhelm was fathered by another man, yet her husband acknowledged him as his own.

  He is never seen in London except to sit in the House of Lords. Regarding his insanity and unnatural practices, I find only rumors. Please have a care, Miss Duncombe. The man is inarguably wild and dangerous. I know such a warning would send your mother — God bless her — straight into the arms of such a man. However, I expect more sense from you.

  She didn’t want to, but Sophia now forced herself to read the information about her father.

  Last month Lord Chauncey located Lady Chauncey in France. Her ignorance concerning your whereabouts, however prudent, cost her dearly. She asked me to tell you, and I quote, “No worse than usual.” I assure you, Lady Chauncey is being looked after in Edinburgh. I believe I have finally convinced her to go into hiding, but I doubt she will disappear as skillfully as you have, Miss Duncombe.

  Regardless, Lord Chauncey discovered that you returned to England. I learned of four investigators hired by your father. One paid me a visit the past Tuesday. I sent him to Scotland on a false lead, which I pray succeeded. I will send some men after the investigators to keep watch and alert you to any danger. Meanwhile, stay hidden. Trust no one.

  That night Sophia dreamed of blows striking between her shoulders, raw lightning bolts where the fabric tore. Each lash grew more vivid and scorching than the last. She felt paradoxically warm and cold; the chill air cooled her flayed skin, yet
her shoulders dripped streams of scalding blood. Too much of it pooled around her hands and face, both from her dog and herself. She thought ironically that the blood of the animal and human ran the same dark color.

  She choked and panicked as her instinct to writhe was utterly crushed by the trembling force of her father’s hand still wrenched in her hair. Her pulse throbbed in her ears, drowning the sound of all but the whip landing on her back. Sophia lost the energy to fight and could only shriek in agony. She lost count. Her vision blurred and sound wavered. Unconsciousness finally approached on dark wings. Before she succumbed to the void, she heard her mother’s screams.

  Sophia startled awake to find the screams coming from her own parched throat. She’d fallen from the bed, still tangled in a sheet. Mrs. Abbott’s worried voice sounded from the other side of the door.

  “I am well, Mrs. Abbott.” Her voice croaked. “Bad dream. Sorry to have bothered you.” Terrified, more like, judging from the murmuring voices outside the door.

  Sophia didn’t open it and reassure the concerned staff. Her knees and elbows stung, she shuddered beyond control, and she couldn’t calm her voice if Gabriel himself commanded it.

  She dragged herself back onto the thin mattress and lit a candle with trembling hands after three failed attempts. With no hope of falling back asleep, she opened Elizabeth’s Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters… yet again. The familiar uncomplicated text soothed her:

  In a country there was a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room there was a bed, and in that bed there lay a little girl…