Chapter 23 #3
She held up her paintbrush like a sword to warn him away, but he put his arms around her and gathered her close, unheeding, capturing her hands between their bodies, brush and all.
“Don’t!” She cried, struggling in his arms. “The paintbrush—”
“Hang the brush.” He reached between them, jerked it from her grip, and sent it flying across the room. Then he pulled her close and lowered his mouth.
She turned her face away, and his lips caressed her cheek, her ear, her neck.
“Sophie. Please.”
“No. I can’t,” she choked out. “Don’t you unders—”
He found her lips, covering her protest with his mouth. How he had missed this. Missed her. Victory flared in his heart, but then she wrenched her mouth away.
“Stop it!” she cried. “Please . . . stop . . .”
The door banged open, and Wesley turned with a snarl, ready to send Keith or a housemaid or whoever it was packing. Instead Miss Whitney stepped inside, broom raised high.
“Let her go, Master Wesley.”
Sophie ducked her head in mortification and pulled from his arms.
He stared down at the irksome old woman. “Mind your own business, Winnie. It isn’t what it seems.”
“It is exactly what it seems. And you have the mark to show for it.”
She pointed to his chest, and he tucked his chin to look at his shirtfront. At the blood-red smear over his heart.
Behind them, Sophie let out a gasp. He looked over in alarm, and saw her press her hands over her mouth, staring at something across the room.
Wesley followed her gaze, and his gut twisted.
When he’d whipped the brush away in frustration, he’d sent a spray of paint over her portrait of Stephen.
A drop of red ran down the captain’s face like blood. Like an omen.
Sophie ran from the room.
Wesley squeezed his eyes closed and released an irritated sigh. Angry with himself and with the woman before him. He braced his hands on his hips and faced her.
“You think you know so much, old woman. But do you know I love her?”
She lowered the broom. “I know you think you do, and will say anything to get what you want.”
“It isn’t like that. We have history together. We belong together.”
“You say you love her. But would you be true to her?”
“Of course I would.”
She shook her head. “I think it quite likely you will be tempted to betray her this very night, before the jester sings and the cock crows.”
He scowled. “What a bag of moonshine. Does Marsh believe all your superstitious tricks? I don’t.
” He turned toward the portrait, considering how best to repair it.
He would probably only vex Sophie more if he dared touch her precious Captain Black.
Instead he stepped around Miss Whitney and crossed the room.
At the door he turned back. “You keep your mouth closed about what you think you saw here today, and I won’t mention your skulking about to my mother, who would not think twice about dismissing you.”
“Stephen won’t let her.”
“Stephen isn’t here.”
He saw fear flash in the woman’s eyes and regretted his idle threat. He meant the old nurse no harm, but he’d dashed well had enough of her interruptions and prophetic nonsense.
Wesley returned to Sophie’s room that night.
He felt terrible about the scene in the schoolroom and wanted to apologize for damaging her portrait.
And for allowing his frustration to get the better of him.
He’d never in his life forced a kiss on a woman before today.
Never had to. He knew he’d behaved badly and hoped she would forgive him.
He also hoped that, without Miss Whitney there to interrupt them, Sophie might even admit her feelings for him.
He softly knocked, and when no answer came, tried the latch. Locked.
Dash it.
He rested his forehead on the cool wood, but it did nothing to cool his frustration. He was not such an idiot to break down the door and wake the whole house. He didn’t want to incur the wrath of his entire family.
“May I help you, sir . . . ?” came a tentative voice.
He turned in alarm, but it was only a housemaid on her way up the attic stairs.
“No. I had something I wished to ask my . . . sister. But she is already asleep and I don’t want to wake her. I shall ask her in the morning.”
He waited until the maid had ascended out of sight, then started up toward his own room.
Realizing he would not sleep for hours, he retrieved a candle lamp and continued up the next set of stairs.
He might as well go to the schoolroom and work on Sophie’s portrait, since it appeared that was as close as he would get to her that night.
The maid Flora paused at the landing and looked back down at him. “Is there something I can do for you, sir?”
“Hmm? Oh, no. I am just heading up to the schoolroom.”
“Are you now? For a moment I thought you might be following me. Not that I would mind if you were. . . .”
She waited at the railing while he slowly mounted the remaining stairs. He had noticed the girl before, though she was relatively new, he believed. She was a pretty, buxom girl with dark curls peeping out from beneath her cap. If not for her crooked teeth, she might be worth painting. Or . . .
For a moment he considered what she might be offering. She was clearly flirting with him, and her room was probably just around the corner. He was frustrated—in more ways than one. He felt as if Sophie had betrayed him by marrying Stephen. She should be his wife, sharing his bed.
He paused at the top of the stairs and stood looking at the girl, the hills and valleys of her face and figure showing to good advantage by candlelight.
A slow smile lifted her mouth. “A handsome man like you ought not spend his nights alone . . .”
For a moment, he was tempted to accept the maid’s offer, but then Winnie’s words came back to him. “You will be tempted to betray her this very night, before the jester sings and the cock crows.”
Wesley pressed his eyes closed, blocking out the vision of the plump figure before him, fighting for the self-control to subjugate the urge for temporary pleasure beneath his future happiness.
He didn’t want to be the man Miss Whitney clearly thought he was.
He didn’t want to ruin things with Sophie, if there was any chance at all. . . .
Over the girl’s shoulder a decorative plaster mask on the wall caught his eye.
He stilled, peering at it. It was a jester’s face—one of several masks throughout the manor.
This one’s mouth was wide open in an O, as if singing.
Wesley knew of two similar masks in the house that disguised squints.
Might this one as well? Might there be someone watching him at that very moment?
He shivered, even as he told himself he was being foolish. No one had used those squints in years.
Wesley cleared his throat. “I am just going into the schoolroom to paint. Alone. And you had better get some sleep. I know Mrs. Hill makes the staff rise before the cock crows.”
He stopped in his tracks, his own words echoing through his mind.
Seeing him hesitate, the girl tried again. “You sure? A body gets awful lonely in an empty bed. . . .”
Yes, he does.
Flora tried once more. “I saw you outside Mrs. Overtree’s door, but you’re wasting your time there. A cold one, she is. I have it on good authority the captain slept in his dressing room.”
Wesley reared his head back in surprise. “You’re joking. . . . Really?”
She nodded eagerly.
Would Captain Black have put up with that?
Wesley wanted to believe the girl and exalted at the thought that maybe Sophie had refused Marsh for his sake.
If so, was it possible they had never consummated the marriage .
. . ? It seemed too good to be true. Even though non-consummation alone was not grounds for annulment in England, the thought gave him hope.
He drew himself up. “Good night, Flora. There’s a good girl. Work hard and don’t gossip and you’ll no doubt have a long and successful career here at Overtree Hall.”
Her smile fell. Her confidence with it. “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
As the girl disappeared around the corner, Wesley stood staring at the mask of the singing jester.
Then, thinking the better of tempting fate—or remaining in tempting proximity to a flirtatious housemaid, Wesley changed his mind about painting and went downstairs, retreating into his own room.
He had no specific plan, but he saw his retreat as a minor victory. A first step in becoming a better man. To earning Sophie’s trust all over again.
In the morning after breakfast, he went back upstairs, ready to deliver a setdown to his old, critical foe.
He tapped on Winnie’s door, and when she called “Yes?” he opened the latch and stepped inside the dreaded room. Bad memories of noses in corners and scoldings surrounded him.
Miss Whitney looked up at him from her breakfast tray, dressed in one of the same blue dresses with a white collar she’d worn as long as he could remember.
“You were wrong, Winnie,” he announced.
“Was I?” she mused. “I said you would be tempted to betray her and you were. Beyond that, I am glad to be wrong.”
His triumph deflated. How had she guessed?
She tilted her head, giving him that knowing look that had so often struck irritation—or fear of consequences—in his young heart.
“Well, Master Wesley, perhaps you are growing up at last.”
After that, Wesley began meeting with the new estate manager, Mr. Boyle, and their tenants and estate workers, doing his best to fill Marsh’s big boots.
He was heir to Overtree Hall, after all, so perhaps it was time to assume the duties that role entailed.
It would prove to his family and to Sophie that he was responsible.
And hopefully he would prove it to himself as well.
He also began planning a painting of The Last Supper to be placed over the chancel archway, at the church warden’s request. Though he found out soon enough that his mother had instigated the idea and was acting as his patron, probably hoping to keep him busy.
And perhaps away from his new sister-in-law.