“Take me to Lady Sophie’s workroom, please,” he told the butler.
“This way, sir.”
Nash followed, noting each turn into a different hallway and the short flight of steps that took him deeper into the bowels of the home. When they reached the bottom of the stairs, Thornton extended his hand and directed Nash to a short hallway ending at a dark mahogany door.
“The Lady Sophie’s workroom, sir. Will there be anything else?” The butler arched a bushy gray brow.
Prayers, Nash thought, but decided not to voice the request. “Nothing, Thornton. Thank you. That will be all.”
After the shuffling of the man’s retreating footsteps faded away to silence, he stepped forward and knocked.
Nothing but silence answered. The lack of sound or response became deafening.
He knocked again, hard enough to rattle the heavy door’s hinges.
“If you insist—then enter! But do so at your own risk.”
Nash smiled but quickly wiped it from his face before pushing open the door. “Lady Sophie? Your mother suggested I join you, so I might familiarize myself with the threats.”
“Then my mother values your life very little.” She didn’t spare him a look from where she sat at the end of a long worktable, studying what looked to be several letters with the benefit of an oversized quizzing glass and several brightly burning oil lamps.
A chandelier wrought of black iron also burned overhead, and every sconce attached to the sturdy posts inset between the many bookcases had also been lit. Light flooded the large workroom, but what Nash noticed most was the way it enhanced the silky sheen of the lady’s rich, coppery curls she had freed to tumble down her back.
He risked moving closer but remained alert in case the delightful swan attacked. “I apologize for the past, my lady. Surely you can find it in your generous spirit to chalk up my behavior to the foolhardiness of youth?”
She slowly passed the glass over the nearest letter, studying it while ignoring him.
“Lady Sophie?”
Without granting him the courtesy of looking him in the eye, she straightened and set the magnifier aside. As prim as an elderly matron, she folded her hands in front of her and rested them on the table while staring straight ahead. The pink fullness of her pout and the flicker of her heartbeat pulsing at the base of her throat made him wet his lips.
She pushed up from the bench, went to a bookcase on the right, and ran a finger along the spines of the many tomes filling the shelves. After making her selection, she eyed it while cradling it in one hand and slowly flipping the pages. “A blackmailer has so far sent five letters, demanding ridiculously low sums for the price of their silence. I paid them each time, hoping to trap the fiend, but so far have had no success. The last and most recent letter did not demand payment. Instead, it stated that within a month’s time, Queen Charlotte would be revealed as part of the Rydleshire scandal and brought to ruin before Parliament and theton.”
He edged closer, determined to force her to confront and overcome her obvious dislike of him that she had formed at the tender age of five and ten. Perhaps a bit of goading was in order. “I should not have ignored you back then, Lady Sophie. Nor teased you or so soundly trounced you in the classroom or on the practice fields. I apologize. Such behavior was most ungentlemanly. I truly wish you could find it in your heart to forgive me so we might achieve harmony in this household.”
Her head snapped up, and her rich mahogany eyes flashed with fury. “Your memory is quite poor, Sir Nash. Not once did you trounce me in the classroom or on the practice fields, even though you were five years my senior.”
He refrained from smiling but couldn’t resist jutting his chin higher. “Have you forgotten the agility field, my lady? If memory serves, you ended up in the mud with Monsieur Sorbonne’s swine.”
“That was your fault, and you know it.” She bared her straight white teeth as though ready to sprout fangs and rip him to shreds.
With a dismissive shrug, he sauntered closer and allowed himself a smile he knew would annoy her. “It was part of the test, my lady. Do you truly believe the enemy would refrain from tripping you just because you were a female child?”
“I was not a child!” She slammed the book down on the table and sent the parchments fluttering in all directions. With the color riding high on her lovely cheeks, she scooped up the quizzing glass and headed for him, brandishing it like a weapon. “I was a young woman. Almost ten and six. And you cheated that day.” She poked him in the chest with the pointed beadwork at the top of the magnifying glass’s frame. “You not only hurled that staff between my ankles but also rolled the log.”
She jabbed his breastbone again. Hard. “You were a cruel, dismissive churl determined to make my life miserable.” She bared her teeth again, her gorgeous dark eyes gleaming with angry, unshed tears. “Get out of my workroom!”
He snatched hold of her wrist before she could stab at him again. When she swung at him with her free hand, he caught that one too, yanked her against his chest, and held both her hands behind her back.
She reared back and puckered, obviously about to spit.
“Do not do it, my lady,” he warned, pinning her arms tighter behind her and forcing her closer still. “I did not realize I had made such an enemy of you, and again, I apologize for my boorish behavior that created such deep wounds. But you and I are bound now by royal command. You do not have to love me. Even liking me is not required. But you will treat me with the civility I deserve, and I shall do the same for you. Now, what shall it be between us, Lady Sophie? A constant dredging up of past hurts that neither of us can change, or working together to find the devil determined to destroy you, your mother, and the queen?”
Her chest heaved against him, making it increasingly difficult to concentrate. She smelled of jasmine and hot-tempered, furiously irresistible woman. She was the perfect height for a passionate, blood-warming kiss. He would only have to bend his head the slightest bit to taste those lips that had unleashed so much hatred. With more restraint than he ever knew he possessed, he refrained from closing his mouth over hers and burying his fingers in the silkiness of her wild mane. He shoved her away before his control broke.
“Well, my lady?” he growled. “What shall it be?”
She resettled her hold on the quizzing glass as if trying to decide whether to throw it at him. “We shall work together to capture the fiend, but we will be man and wife in name only.” She pointed the glass at him and narrowed her eyes. “Am I quite clear, Sir Nash? You would do well to remember my prowess with a blade. Both at a distance and close range. I assure you, my skills have only improved with age.”
