At this point, Aurelia picked up her puce silk skirts and swept away, while Sophie could only look on in despair. Her continued stay with Lu Lu was entirely dependent on her story remaining in London– and even then she’d told herself there could be a thousand respectable reasons for a debutante to disappear for a while– but Aurelia’s determination to destroy her reputation would ensure she could never return to England.
And it was all her own fault.
Suddenly, the faint yet joyful waltz of the violins was more than her jangled nerves could bear and, picking up her gown, she hurried through an arbour of orange blossom, before plunging along a garden trail. Then she ran until the only sound was the hum of a lone bee among some tulips, when she finally allowed herself to sink down on a stone bench. Breathing unsteadily, she reached up to fix her loosened curls, while trying not to give in to the swirl of panic inside.
She’d told herself she could find a way, that she could be heroic like Phoebe, but the harsh reality was that she’d created a scandal that Aurelia would never let the ton forget. Her life, as she knew it, was over and worst of all, she’d brought deep shame on the Fairfax name. Sophie dropped her head into her hands, and for the first time since leaving Dover, felt truly and horribly alone.
‘I am always surprised by the Tuileries,’ a low voice murmured quietly. ‘It is a veritable treasure trove of hidden delights, though I must admit, you are my first debutante. I do hope you’re not seeking more rogues, Miss Fairfax, for I thought we’d exhausted them as a source of new friends?’
Sophie caught her breath somewhere between a laugh and a sob, quite aware that if Lord Rotherby learned of her current despair, he might use it to accelerate his own plan.
‘And in truth,’ he continued, ‘when Lu Lu suggested an evening at Les Tuileries,I thought a little music and dancing might be of interest to a newly betrothed young lady– entertain her even? Either way, I certainly didn’t expect to find her quite alone in these beautiful gardens, which leads me to wonder whether it is Lu Lu’s company, or your intrepid curiosity, which is to blame?’
Sophie drew a steadying breath, never more grateful for the cover of darkness for her blotched face.
‘Madame Dupres is not responsible for my current situation, my lord,’ she replied with a catch in her voice, ‘and we both know I am not your betrothed!’
Exhaling softly, Lord Rotherby closed the gap and sank down on the stone seat beside her. Sophie stiffened, aware of a thousand competing feelings, but mostly of the strange air about his person tonight. He seemed thoughtful in a way she’d not seen before, and it softened all his movements.
‘Are you avoiding company?’ he asked.
Briefly, she glanced at his midnight blue coat, a colour which contrasted vibrantly with his mossy eyes and dark locks swept back àla Brutus, while his spotless pantaloons and gleaming Hessians only accentuated his long limbs. Yet it was his distracted face, silhouetted in the half-light, that really stole her attention, taking her back to the night he kissed her. Sophie swallowed. He really was the most carelessly beautiful man she’d ever known.
‘Tell me,’ he pondered aloud, ‘what sends a fearless Fairfax out into these lonely gardens, when I would have thought she might benefit from being seen tonight, especially looking as radiant as she does?’ Sophie glanced up swiftly, but there was only sincerity in his expression. ‘Lu Lu shared with me her plan to find you an alternative husband as I ‘wasn’t to your taste’,’ he added with a faint smile, ‘but I’m not entirely certain you’ll find one in the rhododendron bushes. Furthermore, I’m not sure my presence will add the right note of… brotherly guardianship.’
Sophie smiled wanly. He couldn’t be any less someone’s brotherly guardian.
‘You know, the whole world will be a kinder place again if you would but take my name.’
The words were uttered so gently that the garden seemed to still momentarily. Sophie clenched her fingers, steeling herself not to soften towards the melodic persuasion in his voice, to recall that he was a skilled rake, and that someone without a heart could never be trusted with hers.
And yet there was such a curious ache in her chest that she could hardly meet his gaze.
‘I know this is not what you planned,’ he added, laying a hand over hers and sending a jolt through her cold limbs. ‘It isn’t what I planned either, but I believe we can make sense of this mess, and it will be vastly better than an existence eked out in some quiet backwater of Paris.’
‘But why?’ Sophie replied. ‘Why, when you have made it your life’s work to avoid this precise situation? You may feel a degree of responsibility, but I made the decision to intervene the night you left London. You owe me nothing.’
He paused as a shadow flitted across his face, and his eyes fixed on the mid-distance.
‘When I was a small boy,’ he replied after a beat, ‘my father would force me to watch while he slit the throats of the animals he’d hunted. Then he would hang them and go inside and beat my mother.’
Sophie stilled as he spoke entirely without emotion, as though describing the colour of his boots.
‘She was everything good and kind,’ he continued. ‘At night she would read stories until I fell asleep, just so I wouldn’t lie awake, thinking about him. And she never complained, but he was, in every way, a father and a husband to be despised. He drank, he gambled, he whored and he beat. There was nothing redeemable about him whatsoever. Yet all this I overlooked, for the sake of our blood tie, until the night he killed my mother and unborn sister.’
Sophie stared in shock, knowing she had gone as pale as the blossom at her feet.
‘He… killed them?’ she whispered so faintly even she could hardly hear her own words.
‘He beat my mother repeatedly when she was with child, so she barely had strength enough for herself, let alone an unborn baby,’ he went on, his profile unflinching. ‘Which meant when she came to her labour, she was far too weak… so yes, he killed them.’
He broke off then and exhaled roughly, while Sophie felt as though she’d been allowed a glimpse through a dark veil.
‘I swore that night never to marry, or to allow a Rotherby to harm anyone else. I would exist in a space where no one got hurt, and that is precisely what I’ve done. Except this situation will hurt you, if Idon’tact.’
He looked at her then, his velvet eyes sending the oddest flare through her veins. He was only a breath away, his scent stirring an impulse that started behind his eyes, and reached right through to the tip of her toes, an impulse to do something extremely foolhardy. She inhaled shakily as a nightjar churred nearby, yet was conscious of such sudden longingthat she didn’t stop his fingers tracing a gentle path to her face. And when his thumb brushed gently over her lips, she only gazed back with absolute certainty that whatever he wanted, she wanted it too, so that when he leaned closer, and let his lips graze over hers, she was conscious only of yearning regret when he paused.
She exhaled raggedly, locked in his gaze, their lips a fraction apart. Then his arm slid around her, pulling her tight against him so his lips could return with a burning heat, and she kissed him back until her head spun. It was a kiss so unlike his last– hungry and intimate– the kind of kiss that existed only in dreams, and for one intoxicating moment she let herself envisage a whole life with this impossible man, until the memories began to reach through.
