Chapter Nineteen #2
Twenty-seven, actually. She hadn’t told him about the three who had gone down on bended knee before her when no one was around.
“You’ve said no to them all. Why?”
“I didn’t see it.”
“It? What it?” Ewan raked his fingers through his hair as he did when he was at wit’s end. He raked his fingers through his hair a lot around her.
She shrugged again. “You know. The look.”
His lips flapped, rather like a trout. “The look? What look?”
Sophia tipped her head to the side. “The look I see in your eyes. When you so much as glance at Violet.” His brow beetled and his attention skimmed to his wife.
That look flared. Doting and warm. Absolute love.
Not the mere flicker of attraction because she was pretty, or the avaricious gleam because her brother was a wealthy and powerful man.
But love. For her and her alone. “Yes,” she whispered. “That one.”
“This is absurd. Heinrich is a fucking prince for fuck’s sake.”
“Ewan! Language.” Violet set her free hand over Will’s tiny shell-like ear.
As though Will hadn’t heard that word before.
Sophia wrinkled her nose. “He’s an Austrian prince.
” Some obscure little burg in the Alps. She’d rather move to the wilds of India.
Africa, perhaps. The colonies? A little thrill trickled through her at the thought.
What an adventure that would be. She’d never had an adventure. Not a real one. Oh, how she’d love to—
Ewan stood in a rush, tipping over his chair. He paced the room. It made Sophia dizzy to watch. “You used to be docile. You used to be obedient. Whatever happened to that girl?”
She blinked. When had she ever been docile or obedient? Had he even been paying attention?
“I worked. Slaved. Sacrificed my whole life to create opportunities for you. And this is how you repay me? By being defiant? By saying no? Time and time and time again?”
Ah. Guilt now. Too bad for him she was heartless. “Yes.”
“I... You... We...” It didn’t become him to sputter so.
Sophia stood as well, but only because, in her estimation, this interview was over. There was nothing more to discuss. “I’m not marrying Heinrich von ?sterreich.”
“See! You don’t even know his name. It’s Wichtigtuerisch.”
He’d completely missed her pun—he often did—but Violet caught it. Her lips twitched and she winked. “Darling,” she said in a soothing voice, bless her. “You didn’t work all your life for Sophia to have a princely husband.”
“I didn’t?”
Lovely. Now he was bellowing at Violet.
She wasn’t intimidated either.
“No. You did not. You slaved and sacrificed so she could have something even more precious.”
“I did?” He frowned. “What was that?”
“Choices. You wanted her to have choices. The freedom to choose her own path. Forge her own destiny.”
He tunneled his fingers through his hair. Again. “What the hell was I thinking?”
“Do you want her to marry just to marry?” She stepped closer to her husband and set her palm on his cheek. Will patted his father as well. “Or do you want her to marry for love? Because I want her to know...”
Ewan’s Adam’s apple bobbed. “Know w-what?”
“What we have, darling.”
She kissed him then and Sophia knew for certain the interview was at an end. Because even though these two had been married for four years, once they kissed they were newlyweds once more.
Violet smiled at her as Sophia took her babbling, drooling nephew from her arms and quit the room, leaving husband and wife locked in a passionate clinch. Heavens. They’d already made three children in the course of their short marriage. They were probably working on number four, even now.
Ah, let them. She adored her nephews and she adored her sister-in-law. No one had ever had a more diligent champion. If anyone could convince Ewan to let Sophia make her own choices, it was Violet.
She resettled Will on her hip, pressing a kiss to his baby-soft curls.
His scent wreathed her and she felt a little tug in the region of her heart.
She would love to have children of her own someday—and a husband too probably, as apparently they were somewhat necessary in the making of them. But not yet. Not now.
She’d told Ewan the truth—she absolutely wanted the passion she saw glinting in his eyes when he looked at Violet and she would not settle for less.
But there was more to it than that. She hadn’t told him the rest of it. She hadn’t shared her deep dark fear.
The bald fact of the matter was, from everything she had seen, life ended at marriage. At least for a woman. She became a man’s property and strictly under his thumb.
Sophia was far too strong-willed for that.
Besides which, she longed for adventure. Always had.
The only adventure in Violet’s life was discovering Will had left a present for her in his nappy.
Her nose wrinkled. She glanced down at her nephew. “What have you done, young man?”
He gurgled and yanked on one of her curls. She carefully untangled his sticky fingers. Nurse met her in the hall and Sophia passed him off, issuing a dire warning about the fragrant gift.
Ah, yes. What a thrilling life that would be.
Ever since she was a girl, running barefoot and amok in the wilds of Scotland, Sophia had craved adventure.
She’d had it too—after a fashion. Hunting with the boys in the woods, exploring caves in the tors, fording wild rivers and climbing unclimbable trees, and then later scrabbling around the hard back alleys of Perth.
It had been glorious. But then the worst had happened.
Ewan made his fortune and announced he was sending her to prison. Well, to the confines of a strict finishing school, which was practically the same.
Lady Satterlee’s School for Girls had been abominable. Rules for everything. They governed what she wore, ate and thought. How she spoke. Where she went and when. And worse she was required to wear shoes, always.
The other girls had been odious in their contempt for a Scottish heathen. If it hadn’t been for Violet and Kaitlin, who had befriended her, she didn’t have any idea how she would have survived the torment.
Sophia shuddered at the memory as she made her way downstairs. The sight of a tall and handsome man handing his hat to Duncan stalled her steps.
Ned Wyeth, Violet’s older brother stood in the foyer. He was striking, adorable, utterly scintillating. There had been a time when she would have flown down the steps and thrown herself into his arms. But now...
Now she swallowed her welling excitement and arranged her features into a mask, trying desperately not to think on it. Still, the words crowded her mind.
Off with you, girl. Don’t be such a pest.
She hadn’t cared that he’d said this in the company of his friends.
She didn’t give a whit what they thought of her.
But ever since she’d met him, on the cusp of her first season, she’d had a tendre for him.
His rebuff had scored her deeply. After that, the easy amity, the friendship between them, had waned.
A pity he was so attractive. A pity her heart still trembled at so much as a glimpse of him.
He lifted his gaze and it settled on her. He stiffened. A muscle bunched in his cheek. Disdain, or something like it, swept across his patrician features. He nodded. “Lady Sophia.”
Lady Sophia. Not Soph, or Bugnut or any of the other affectionate names he’d once had for her.
“Ned.” She cleared her throat of some annoying blockage. “What brings you to McCloud House today?” She didn’t dare hope it was to see her. It never was to see her.
“I have business with your brother.”
Ridiculous though it was, her heart plummeted.
“He’s in the study with your sister.” She forced a smile. “I believe they are making a baby.” She said it just to see him wince. It was the only pleasure she had left with Ned, needling him.
He shifted his shoulders back, and my, they were broad. Broader than they’d been the last time she’d seen him. She curled her fingers, stifling the urge to measure the breadth of them with her hands. “I’ll wait.”
Lovely.
Sophia cast a glance around the hall. They were utterly alone. Decorum demanded she entertain him until Ewan was available. “Shall I call for tea?”
His features tightened. Probably at the realization he was saddled with her for the next few minutes. “Tea would be...nice.” His tone intimated anything but.
Stiffening her spine, she led the way to the sitting room and tugged on the bell pull. When Duncan appeared she gave the order for tea and cakes—Ned loved cakes—and asked him to inform Ewan his brother-in-law was here to see him.
“Won’t you sit?” She gestured to the divan.
Ned appeared torn. His gaze flicked from the divan to her and back again. His lips worked. But then he blew out a defeated sigh and perched on the very edge so he could escape quickly, one would assume.
Sophia glared at him.
When he noticed, which took a while as he was avoiding her eyes, he flinched.
“Am I so hideous?” She shouldn’t have asked. Lord help her, she should have held her tongue. But she was bad at holding her tongue and a roiling anger in her gut forced the words up and out.
Oh, of a certainty, she’d made a fool of herself over him during her first season. Granted, he’d led her on—and then rebuffed her—but that was all long ago. She’d learned her lesson. He should be beyond it by now as well. They were both much older and wiser.
He went pale as her question registered. “H-hideous?” His throat worked.
She leaped to her feet and paced the room. “For God’s sake, Ned. Our siblings are married. We have to see each other on occasion. Can you not, at least, be civil?”
“I am perfectly civil.”
She gored him with a glare. “Are you?”
“I most certainly am.”
Her snort rounded the room.
“What do you want from me, Sophia?” The words seemed ripped from him, torn in a bloody mass, but when she glanced at him, his face was emotionless, cold.
“A smile now and again would be nice.”
He fixed his teeth in a grimace.
“A real smile.”
“Hell, Soph—”