Sophia didn’t argue, but stumbled up the steps on trembling legs and hurled herself through the front door. She slammed it closed with a deafening thud, then fell against it, tears in her eyes, and herlungs burning.
Chapter Three
“Sophia?” A voice drifted down into the entryway from above.“Is that you?”
Sophia glanced up and saw Cecilia hanging over the third-floor railing. She was clad in her night rail and she held a book in her hand, her finger marking the page.
“Where have you been? What’s kept you so long? We thought you…” Cecilia trailed off when she caught a good look at Sophia’s face. “Sophia? My goodness, what’s the matter?”
Sophia turned, her lungs still clamoring for air, and peered through the arched window above the door. Nothing but darkness met her gaze. Daniel and Lord…Lord…well, she hadn’t any idea what or who he was lord of, but he was gone.
Vanished.
No, no. Not vanished. Of course, he hadn’t vanished. Daniel had sent him away, that’s all. Aristocrats didn’t simply disappear into the mistlike specters—
“Sophia?” Cecilia was watching her with wide eyes. “Are you all right? You look as if you’veseen a ghost.”
“I think I…I think Ihave.” Sophia slumped against the door, patting her chest to calm her racing heart.
“It’s all right, Cecilia. Go back to your bedchamber, love. Sophia will be up soon.” A cool voice broke the silence, and Sophia turned to find Lady Clifford standing in the doorway to the drawing room, a faint smile on her lips. “Well, Sophia. Here you are at last, dearest. I don’t suppose I need to ask how your evening went. You look as if the devil himself has been chasing you.”
The devil, a specter, or a very determined,vigorouslord. Sophia wasn’t sure which, only that she’d never seen anyone run like that in her life. “Not a devil, my lady.An aristocrat.”
But no ordinary aristocrat. Aristocrats were idle, sluggish things, with bloated bellies from too much beefand port, not—
“An aristocrat?” Lady Clifford raised an eyebrow. “My, how intriguing.”
“That’s not quite how I’d describe it, my lady.” Terrifying, yes, and eerily reminiscent of a Gothic horror novel, what with the moon shrouded by clouds, the deserted graveyard, and the wicked, aristocratic villain.
Even now Sophia’s body was convinced it was still tearing through the streets of London, fleeing her pursuer. Her poor lungs felt like cracked bellows, and she was bathed in sweat from her temples to her toes. Her black tunic was pasted to her back, and her breeches…well, the less said about them the better, and no doubt her cap was still lying in the dirt in St. Clement Dane’s churchyard.
Her best cap, too, blast him, but then she’d gnawed on his glove, so perhaps they were even. “An aristocrat with the longest legs in London. He caught me just outside the door. Daniel came along and chased him off, but I doubt we’ve seen the last of him.” Sophia thought of those wolfish gray eyes, and her head fell against the door behind her with adefeated thump.
Lady Clifford’s gaze sharpened. “Who was he?”
Whoever—orwhatever—he was, he had remarkably keen predatory instincts. Sophia didn’t often find herself outwitted, being as wily as a thieving street urchin with a fistful of gold coins, but this man had managed to catch her out neatly enough. “Lord something or other. Daniel knows who he is.”
“This is all very curious. Come along then, and tell me the rest.” Lady Clifford turned back into the drawing room. “Will you have some sherry?”
“Yes, please.” Sophia’s throat was as dry as dust, and the inside of her mouth tasted like ashes.
Lady Clifford perched on the edge of a green silk settee, reached for a silver tray in front of her, and poured a modest measure of sherry into a crystal tumbler. “Here you are, my love. This will settle your nerves.”
“My nerves might require the rest of the bottle.” But Sophia didn’t take up her glass, nor did she join Lady Clifford on the settee. Instead she paced back and forth in front of the fireplace, mumbling to herself as she tried to make sense of what she’d seen tonight before that tangle with the Earl of Great Marlborough Street.
After a bit more pacing, Sophia turned to face Lady Clifford and announced, “You were right all along. This whole business is suspicious fromstart to end.”
Lady Clifford sighed. “Our business so oftenis, isn’t it?”
“Someone’s been telling lies, my lady.” The sort of lies that led to an innocent man’s neck in a noose.
Not just anyone’s neck, either, but Jeremy’s.
Jeremy Ives had appeared on the doorstep of No. 26 Maddox Street years ago, begging for work, a ragged little street boy with big, guileless blue eyes. He’d won Lady Clifford over with those eyes, though to this day she insisted he simply happened to come along when she needed a new kitchen boy.
Sophia’s throat tightened. Her own heart wasn’t the soft, pliable sort, but from the first moment she looked into Jeremy’s sweet face, that frozen organ had melted like an icicle in the sun.
Jeremy wasn’t just her friend. He was the closest thing she had to a brother.
