Sophie hoped she was no hypocrite. Last night she’d been given the chance of a little pleasure, a little comfort, and she’d seized it gladly. She could hardly criticise anyone else for doing the same. But to see a woman thus displayed to the gaze and the touch of others, to strangers, as though she were nothing more than one of the many precious objects Lord Wyverne possessed and gloated over… Even if Rosanna consented to it freely, it must disturb Sophie, although it undoubtedly suited her purposes.
A man was currently pawing at the jewel, and at Rosanna, as he thrust into her. The spectators, both men and women, were cheering him on from beneath their golden masks, and they were eating and drinking heavily all the while, their wet, avid mouths exposed. They clearly found the lurid scene erotic – some of the waiting men were visibly aroused and impatient to take their turn.
Sophie turned away. The scene did not entice her; on the contrary, if she spent long enough in the room, she thought, she’d be tempted to take a vow of lifelong chastity. Setting aside every other consideration, was none of them worried about the possibility – the likelihood, one might say with justice – of catching the pox? ‘I wonder how they are keeping score?’ she murmured to herself distractedly.
A deep voice close by her ear said, ‘A reasonable question. In other circumstances, with less to distract the eye, no doubt you would have noticed the disturbingly tall and realisticrepresentations of the male member that stand by the head of each couch. When each man has done his part, he slips a ring, provided for the purpose, over the end of it – see, one is doing so now, to great applause. They make a little ceremony of it. Lady Wyverne, I am sure you will be fascinated to know, is winning. But then the night is still young.’
Her heart was suddenly pounding harder, her blood beating in her ears. Sophie hadn’t considered for a second the possibility that he of all people would be here tonight; she had assumed he’d be as far away as he could contrive, in his room upstairs, if not miles away in his own home. She didn’t like to think that the man she’d shared those stolen moments with could possibly enjoy this spectacle. In her shock and disbelief she had pivoted to look at him the instant he’d begun to speak and she had recognised his voice. ‘Lord Drake!’
He was not dressed according to the Roman theme, she saw, but wore his ordinary clothes, covered with a black domino. He was masked, though, and a the coldly beautiful face looked back at her impassively, hiding his expression and his thoughts most effectively.
‘I had not thought to see you here,’ she said. Though it was no affair of hers, since he had made no commitment, no promises of any kind to her, nor she to him, she owned herself ridiculously disappointed. She had with shocking swiftness come to believe that he was nothing like the rest of them, nothing like his wicked father, though a few short days ago, she recalled now, she’d thought that he must surely be as bad. Something had changed inside her in the meantime, and now she was dismayed to realise that she must have been cruelly wrong to begin to have a better opinion of him.
He let out a brief, unamused laugh, and drew her aside, out of the nearby door and into the corridor, where they could converse unobserved. ‘Last night I told you, did I not, thatRosanna is not and never has been my mistress? Did you not believe me? If I have resisted her manifold charms for the last fifteen years or so, and I promise you that I have, despite all her best efforts to seduce me, I am hardly likely to succumb to them now, in such a public arena. If I wanted to fuck – I think we can both agree that that is themot justehere rather than any of the more usual euphemisms – her, or indeed her competitor for that matter, then I would scarcely choose to do so while Lord Wyverne sits and watches. The idea fills me with horror. But actually, Sophie, I don’t have the least interest in either of them. Nor, for that matter, in watching this… I don’t have words for what this is. Except to say I hate it. The ostentatious public display, Lady Wyverne’s involvement, the fact that those present will undoubtedly spread word of every detail of it far and wide…’
She was somehow comforted. It was reassuring to know that she had not been so mistaken in him, but still, he was here, was he not, despite all his fine words? ‘So why are you not miles away, then?’
‘I was looking for you – why else?’ he said, his dark eyes glittering behind the mask. ‘And now I have found you, have I not, Mademoiselle de Montfaucon?’
19
Of course. The Dowager must have told him. It was only natural, she supposed, though it was devilish awkward. ‘Your grandmother…’ she began to say, but he shook his head, forestalling her.
‘She didn’t need to tell me. I recognised you,’ he said. ‘I should have done so before, perhaps, but this morning I was musing over the token you so kindly granted me last night, and I came to a certain realisation.’
Sophie swore, in crude, pungent, unladylike English. How could she have been so careless? And he laughed with genuine amusement this time, it seemed to her.
‘Precisely,’ he said. ‘One cannot think of everything, and it was dark last night, but this morning, in daylight… I have met a young lady before, I thought to myself, long ago, who had big brown eyes and hair of bright red-blonde. Who was she, and where did I meet her? And then I remembered. We danced together.’
‘It wasn’t me, really,’ she said, almost whispering. ‘It was a girl with my face, and I was acquainted with her, I admit, but she seems so distant. It was another life, certainly.’
‘Beforehe…’ Lord Drake nodded in the direction of the room in which his father presided. ‘Beforeheruined your life and drove your family to their deaths, and set in motion the events that brought you… wherever you are now. I do not know, though perhaps I can guess, what other pain and suffering beyond the horrors I am aware of have been your portion over the last eight years. But I do know that every part of it, every single moment of distress you have suffered, ishisfault. I had not the least inkling of any of these terrible events before today, but I knew what he was, and have for a long time. Sophie – Clemence – I am so very, very sorry.’
She found herself quite unable to speak for a moment, and it was a while before she said, ‘None of it was your fault. When I came here, I had the impression – if I thought about you at all – that you must be as bad as he. I knew, or thought I knew, that your stepmother was your mistress, so it is perhaps understandable that I believed ill of you. But I know better now. I expect,’ she said with a sudden flash of insight, ‘that you have been his victim too, as much as I. So you have nothing to apologise for.’
They were intensely focused on each other, very close together in the quiet hallway, and somehow the masks they both wore seemed to make it easier to speak these uncomfortable truths. ‘I have been accustomed to thinking that I was his victim,’ he said a little unsteadily. ‘I have had my moments of self-pity, which I am ashamed of now as I stand here with you. It would be idle to deny that I have found it hard, being his son, knowing that those foul rumours were spreading about me, and that most people who heard them believed them, and there was nothing I could do to change their minds. But in reality my grandmother protected me from the worst of it, as I am trying now to protect my brother and sister. He has no interest in children, since he cares much more for things than people,and so has been an absent, indifferent parent to all three of us, and for that I must be thankful, for it might have been so much worse. And nothing that he has ever done to me approaches anywhere near what he has inflicted on you, and on your family.’
It was seductive, to be so near to him, in this little bubble isolated from the world. But she must break the spell. ‘I think you must have guessed what I came here to do,’ she said, hearing an undercurrent of wistfulness in her voice and hoping he could not hear it too. ‘And what I need to know,’ she went on more firmly, ‘is whether you mean to stop me.’
‘You intend to take back – I will not say steal, for it is yours by right – what was taken from you.’
‘I do.’ She was resolute now. ‘I mean to take that, and more. As much as I can carry. It is my intention to deprive him of so many things that are precious to him.’
‘And will you leave tonight, after you have done so? Shall this be our last meeting?’
‘No. No, I want to see the after-effects of what I have done,’ she said fiercely. ‘I’ll hide it all in the house, and leave traces that will make it appear that the thief has fled. And I will stay here, in his home, and watch him suffer. And I must ask you again, now you know that I shall not take only the Stella, do you mean to stop me?’
He did not hesitate for a second. ‘Of course I don’t.’
She was incredulous. ‘Really? You will allow me to deprive your family of thousands and thousands of pounds of jewels, a fortune, and you will not raise a finger to stop me?’
‘Not one finger,’ he repeated. His voice was deep and cold and sure as he said, ‘Apart from the fact that you are owed your revenge, apart from the fact that there may well be stories of misery like to yours behind every single bauble, can you imagine for a moment that I would wish to see my sister or a future wife of mine, supposing such a creature should ever exist, decked outin the finery thatshenow wears? In there, while one man after another makes use of her, a crowd of degenerates cheers her on and the man I must call father watches?’
‘I can quite understand why you might not want that,’ she said drily. It was certainly a valid point of view. But she had been desperately poor once, where he had not, and so she said practically, ‘You could always sell it all. One day when he is dead.’
‘I couldn’t rest easy doing that. I have no idea where it all came from, so that I might give it back, and I do not know how I could set about finding out. Many of the smaller stones have been re-set and re-cut – it is one of his more innocent hobbies, to design such things to adorn his wife, and one ruby or white diamond must be much like another. Surely now I must assume that the bulk of it was acquired as he acquired the Stella Rosa from your family. Stolen, in effect. Worse than stolen – a housebreaker is benign compared to him. I want no part of it to be my inheritance. And if it hurts him to lose it, can you really think that I will be sorry?’
‘So I am free to do what I must?’
