Chapter 21
“Oh no,” Nicholas whispered, his stomach somewhere down near his feet. “I’ve done it again.”
Sophie’s eyes narrowed but he couldn’t bring himself to meet her gaze.
“Done what?” she demanded.
“Ruined an innocent miss.”
He pushed upright and leapt off the bed. To distract himself, he searched for a cloth, ignoring her gasp of outrage. Finally finding one, he returned to her and used it to wipe down her thighs, then cleaned up himself.
Sophie smoothed her skirts into place, rose to her feet, and dusted herself off with all the bearing of a royal princess. “I don’t feel ruined at all. I feel alive.”
He swallowed and fidgeted with the cloth, uncertain where to dispose of it. In the end, she snatched it from him and tossed it in the corner.
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said awkwardly. “But we still went much further than we should have.”
She raised her chin. “Nothing irrevocable was done.”
“Yes, but—”
“And who on earth is this other miss you supposedly ruined?”
Oh, fuck.
She’d taken that the wrong way.
Not that he supposed there was a right way to take it. Not in the context.
“It wasn’t like that.” He grabbed his trousers from the floor and yanked them on.
“I’ve never deflowered a virgin. I wouldn’t intentionally trifle with an unmarried lady’s reputation.
” Glancing at her, he realized that she might also take that the wrong way and added, “You’re different. There’s never been anyone like you.”
Perhaps her expression gentled slightly, or that could have been wishful thinking.
He paced the length of the room, his jaw clenched and aching, a sweat breaking out at his hairline.
He didn’t know what to do.
Perhaps his actions hadn’t caused irrevocable damage, but he’d still done something irreparable.
God, he’d made a mess of this, as usual.
Theo would be furious, and his mother would have his head—after she’d had a fit of the vapors and required smelling salts to recover.
If this got out, his family might not want anything to do with him ever again.
His gut roiled unpleasantly. Bile rose up the back of his throat. He couldn’t lose his brother. He didn’t want to lose his mother, but he could survive it. Losing Theo was not an option.
“Nicholas, it’s all right.” Sophie’s voice was softer now, and she took him by the arm and led him back to the bed. She must’ve straightened the blankets while he was panicking because they were no longer rumpled. “Sit down.”
He sat, and she smoothed her hands over his shoulders. She left enough of a space that her proximity wouldn’t muddle his brain and perched on the edge of the bed, her legs now hidden by the skirt.
“What’s happening?” The question was gentle, but he got the feeling he wouldn’t be able to wiggle out of answering it. “Why did you panic?” There was a long pause, and then she added, “And who did you ruin? Because if I have competition, I’m going to be angry.”
He scoffed. As if anyone could compete with her. “Don’t worry, it was just Kate. There is no competition.”
She flinched away from him and scooted sideways, widening the gap between them until it felt like a vast chasm—even if it was really more like two or three feet. “Kate?”
Spinning toward her, he was horrified to find her eyes shimmering with tears, her hand over her mouth. Belatedly, he realized how his comment had sounded.
“No, it wasn’t like that. Let me explain. Nothing ever happened between Kate and me. Well, nothing untoward, anyway.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better,” she snapped.
He looked around the room, frantically searching for either an explanation that he could get out in a matter of seconds so she would stop looking so hurt or a bottle of brandy that he could glug down and drown his problems in.
“I’ll explain,” he promised, reaching for his shoes. “Just give me a moment.”
He pulled on one shoe and tied the laces, then repeated the process with the other. If she suddenly kicked him out of her bedchamber, he didn’t want to find himself without his clothes in the corridor. That would be a surefire way to create a scandal.
That done, there was nothing else for it but to start talking. He angled himself toward her and drew in a deep breath before the words spilled out in a messy deluge of unfiltered truth.
“I never touched Kate inappropriately. I’ve never been interested in her that way. When I say I ruined her, I swear, we didn’t do anything like what you and I did. I haven’t laid a finger on her except in friendship, and I never will. Just listen. I promise it will make sense soon.”
She stared at him for a long minute and then nodded. “I’m listening.”
He exhaled roughly, his limbs going weak with relief. “It’s a long story. The part about Kate takes a while to get to.”
Her bright eyes seemed to see right into him. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Thank God for that. If she’d been more impetuous, she might have stormed out the moment he mentioned another woman, let alone her best friend.
“You have to promise never to repeat this to anyone.” He hesitated, then amended the statement. “Actually, you can discuss it with Kate. She already knows.”
She drew a cross over her heart. “You have my word.”
“All right.” He gathered his whirling thoughts and tried to force them into some kind of order. “The first thing you need to know is that Theo and I are twins.”
She cocked her head. “But I thought he was a year older than you.”
“That was a lie spread by my parents. They’d seen how families could be torn apart arguing over inheritances, so when we were born, they retired from society for several years and pretended that I was younger.
They had good intentions. They wanted to ensure that the family stayed together.
Unfortunately, they didn’t realize something important. ”
A shadow passed over Sophie’s face, and she studied him so closely that he wondered if she had an inclination of what was coming.
“We were identical,” he confirmed. “It didn’t become completely obvious until we were already toddlers. It was clear that we resembled each other as babies, but all babies look similar to a certain extent.”
“I always thought there was a striking likeness between you,” Sophie said, apparently unable to take her eyes from him. “But your features are more rugged, and you dress more elegantly, whereas he’s more refined in the face and more somber in his attire.”
Nicholas shook his head. “We only look different because he keeps his hair short and his face clean-shaven, whereas I don’t. If we had matching hair and clothing, there would be very little way to distinguish us.”
“And Kate knows this?”
“Yes. But we’ll get to that soon. When we were young, my parents did everything they could to maintain the ruse. They sent us to different schools, dressed us differently, and would only leave the house with one of us at a time lest anyone see us together and realize they’d been lying.”
Sophie huffed. “But surely they knew they couldn’t do that forever?”
“Father did,” Nicholas admitted. “As we became men, he encouraged us to give up the ruse. Mother disagreed with him and made a scene whenever we went against her wishes—particularly if we appeared together in public. If Father had lived longer, we might have worn down her resistance, but he died in a storm.”
Sophie nodded. No doubt she had heard the rumors. After Theo’s first wife died in a carriage accident, people began to whisper that Theo had done away not only with her but with his father, too, in order to get a hold of the Blackwell title.
“Without Father to support us or to provide protection for Mother against the vultures of society, she became even more conscious of how precarious her position was. As a widow, her social standing was all she had left, and she pressured us not to do anything that might damage it.”
Something dangerous gleamed in Sophie’s eyes. Nicholas didn’t know exactly what she was feeling, but it must be strong.
“It isn’t fair of her to ask you to structure your lives around a lie she told more than twenty years ago.” Sophie fisted her hands at her sides. “You must have given up so much. Why would you go along with it?”
Nicholas shrugged and looked down at his hands. “Theo and I have different interests, and, when Father had first passed on, Theo rarely came to London, so it wasn’t a hardship. By the time we realized how inconvenient it might be, Mother already expected us to obey her edicts.”
Sophie scrambled onto the bed and leaned against the headboard, drawing her knees to her chest and resting her chin on them. “And how does Kate feature in this?”
Sighing, he scraped his hand down his cheek, the roughness of his beard familiar and a reminder of the decisions that had been made for him.
“Theo was miserable after Elizabeth passed. He was lonely and bitter, and I hated to see it. I thought it would do him good to remarry, so I shaved and cut my hair to look more like him, and then I attended a ball in his stead.”
His stomach lurched at the memory of how panicked he’d been when everything had gone wrong. He still hated himself for putting Theo in an untenable situation even though it had all worked out in the end.
“It wasn’t Theo who walked Kate onto the balcony, Sophie. It was me. Nothing happened between us, but our simple presence there was enough to cause…. Well, you know how it turned out.”
Sophie’s lips thinned, and her eyes were full of reproach. “Why wouldn’t Kate tell me this?”
“She was protecting us.”
“But I wouldn’t have said anything. She should have known that. You can trust me.”
He hated how hurt she sounded. “We do. Maybe she was just trying to make it easier for you. If you knew something, you’d have to remember not to say it. If you’re in the dark, there’s no need to be wary.”
She just grunted.
“Sophie, talk to me.” He’d just exposed his deepest secret to her. Surely the least she could do was make it clear what she thought about that.