Chapter Twenty-Eight
Rider Hall,
August 10, 1813
Sophie came into the back parlor at such a clip that by the time she saw Banallt, it was too late to slow down. Not that it mattered. He had some nerve calling here at half past ten at night when everyone knew that only something dreadful would bring a man from London at this hour. Banallt, she well knew, had been in London. With Tommy. She came to a halt and smoothed her skirts. But Banallt never thought of those things. He’d come here never imagining the terror she’d feel at being told she’d a caller so late at night.
“What is it, my lord?” she asked without bothering to hide her annoyance at being disturbed so late.
The moment she saw his face, her heart stopped beating.
Lord Banallt stood at the fireplace, his greatcoat still on, a beaver hat in his hands. His hair was brushed back from his high, pale forehead, spreading like spilled ink to his shoulders. Cashmere trousers fit close along his legs, and one of his driving gloves poked out from his greatcoat pocket. Absurdly, she noticed the aquamarine he wore on his right index finger. A cabochon set into a heavy gold band. He seemed never to keep a neckcloth properly tied, and tonight was no exception, though a diamond sparkled at the base of the knot. Standing there in the shadows, with his dark, too-long hair and his too-pale face, he looked like a man whose life had just shattered beyond repair.
Tommy must be injured or ill or worse, she thought with a suffocating panic. Why else would Banallt come here with that broken horror in his eyes? A plate of figs, left by the day servants who ought to have known better than to leave them out, sat on the table near where she’d stopped. A stack of books from the subscription library was too near the edge. She put her hand on the table to steady herself and had to catch one of the books to prevent it from falling to the floor.
“Mrs. Evans.” He took a step from the fireplace. His eyes were tortured. He’d not shaved. He wasn’t untidy, but he wasn’t immaculate. “Sophie.”
She gripped the edge of the table. “What’s happened?” she asked. She pressed a hand to her heart. “Is Tommy all right?”
He smiled, but it was the bleakest smile she’d seen in her life, and it struck cold terror into her blood. “Your husband is, to my knowledge, quite well.” His voice was low and controlled. Horribly controlled. For a moment he turned back to the fireplace, but only to balance his hat on the ledge. Just so.
“Then why have you come?” she asked. Something had happened. She knew it. She knew the moment she saw his eyes that something dreadful had happened. While his back was turned, Sophie picked up the book next to the figs. It was not one of the few volumes in the house and not one from the circulating library, either, but one from Banallt’s private library. He must have brought it with him. The morocco cover was engraved with his crest.
“Do you read Latin?” he asked without moving from the fireplace.
She dropped his book. “No.”
“Just as well. Ovid is a rather…fast poet. I do not think you would approve. I should not have brought it. I wasn’t thinking.” His expression was perfectly calm, but his eyes frightened her. She found herself looking into a storm of despair. How would he survive if that storm broke?
“Why not?” She couldn’t bear his eyes and so stared at the straight black hair falling to his collar. His beauty had always unsettled her. He looked as she imagined Satan had looked in the instant after he was cast forever out of heaven.
“If you read Latin, you would know.” He watched her with his tarnish eyes and then walked to the table of books. “But you do not read Latin, and there I think we should let Ovid rest. Perhaps one day I will translate him for you.” He took another book and inspected it, coldly controlled. “I wonder what you would think of my library, Sophie.”
She let his use of her given name pass. “I’m sure it’s much better than the circulating library here.”
“Mm.” He closed the book and said, “I like to balance the light with heavy, spice with bland. Hot with cold.”
“Romance with Latin?” she said. Why was he here? The chill in her blood settled in her chest and slowly spread.
“Amour with hate,” said Banallt. His hair spilled across his cheek when he turned his head toward her. As always, his eyes defied interpretation of his thoughts. The pit of her stomach clenched. With another of his reserved smiles, Banallt tapped the top of the stack of books. “I’m curious, Sophie, do you write novels to feed your reading habit? Or does your reading habit feed your novel writing?”
“Why have you come here?” She stared into Banallt’s pewter eyes, her throat threatening to close, as if he’d somehow transferred to her the horror banked within those tarnished depths. She filled her lungs with air, but it didn’t help, because she knew, she knew with absolute certainty, that someone had died.
“If not Tommy, then who?” she whispered. Banallt’s face slid into nothing. He opened his mouth and then closed it. She went to him, against her better judgment, narrowed the distance between them, and laid a hand against his cheek. “Banallt, what’s happened?” At first she thought he meant to deny anything was the matter. “You know you can tell me anything. Anything at all, Banallt.”
“My daughter,” he said, and then his voice cracked, and with that break emotion stormed in his eyes. He bent his head to her shoulder and put his arms around her, holding her tight. He sobbed until Sophie thought her heart would never mend itself. She held him until the worst had passed.
“What happened?” she softly asked.
His breath trembled on the way in and more on the way out. He shrugged once, a slight movement of his shoulders as he lifted his head. “Everyone said she’d be fine. The physician more than anyone, and I believed him. Children fall ill and recover all the time. But she didn’t. She died in my arms, Sophie, and there was nothing I could do.”
“My poor Banallt,” she said. Emotion quavered in her voice, too. She knew he loved his daughter, wholly and without any reservation whatever. She wanted there to be a way to take away his devastation and there wasn’t. “My heart is broken for you.” She stroked his cheek. She’d never touched him like that before, and despite the unshaven face, his skin was softer than she’d imagined. “But you held her, and that must have been a comfort to her and to you, as well. She was not alone.”
“I am her father,” he said. “I should have been able to save her. It was my duty. She is the only good thing I’ve ever done in my life, and now she’s gone.”
“Hush,” she said. Tears dammed up in her throat.
“The world stopped,” he said. “And began again. Without her.”
“I am here.” She walked to the sofa and sat down, Banallt next to her. “Tell me,” she said. “Tell me everything.”
For quite a long time he talked about his daughter, the why and how and all the moments when he fell into the unconditional love of a parent for a child. During the silences, she held his hand and sometimes pulled his head to her shoulder. But after a while, he recovered himself and sat back. She stroked his cheek, brushed away a lock of hair that fell like silk across her fingers. His gaze found hers and held hers. She was aware, all too aware now, that theirs could be a lover’s embrace. She stood, and his hands slid along her hips as she did. “Let me get you something to drink.”
He watched her all the way to the side table where Tommy kept the brandy she never touched. How many times had she wanted to dash the bottle against the wall? The silence was altogether different now. His mood had shifted from broken to dangerous, and she was no longer certain how to behave. An intimacy had been breached. She wiped her hand on her skirt before she dared fill a glass with brandy. Banallt left the sofa. Her pulse raced at the thought that he was walking toward her, but he was only going to the fireplace. She heard the skittering of the scuttle against the bin that held the coal.
He wouldn’t, she thought. She trusted him. He wouldn’t presume.
The silence deepened. Banallt replaced the screen. She could not see him but knew he’d walked behind her. If she were to look at him now, she’d have to crane her neck. She took great care in stoppering the brandy. The stopper tapped the rim of the bottle and let out a perfect crystal chime.
“Are you writing still?” he asked. He wasn’t as near to her as she thought. Thank God. She turned, put the glass into his hand, and retreated.
“Yes.”
“Is your heroine in danger?” he softly asked.
“Yes,” she replied. His voice sent a ripple of awareness up her spine. “Trapped in the ruins of an abbey with a ghost and the body of her murdered mother.”
“Has she swooned yet?” His fingertips moved up and down the glass, and the light from the fireplace caught the aquamarine.
Sophie nodded.
“Why do you suppose heroines are so weak-minded as to swoon whenever they are in danger?” he asked. He took a sip of brandy, but his eyes stayed on her. She did not like the hunger she saw there.
“Convenient, I suppose.” She walked to the table and went through the stack of books there, arranging them in opposite order nearer the center of the table.
“Would you swoon if you were in danger?” he said.
“I’d like to think not. I expect I shan’t know until it’s too late.” She heard him walking again, and a moment later, he appeared beside her, one hip leaning against the table. Sophie’s stomach somersaulted when he put down his glass, empty now, and crossed his arms over his chest.
His eyes were pools of shadowed silver, drawing her under the depths. “You are a very great beauty, Sophie.”
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t bother.” She summoned a smile with the hope of dispelling the odd and far too intimate mood. “You can’t flatter me.”
“Of course I can.” His greatcoat hung open, exposing his coat and waistcoat.
“Go on then just as you like.” She moved another book. “You know I am not vain enough to believe your lies.”
“Lies? No lies between us. Trust me, darling,” he said bitterly, “I’ll never lie to you.”
She laughed. “Gentlemen lie all the time.”
“Gentlemen pay good money for a mistress with a figure like yours. Delicate and yet, a woman’s curves.” He leaned over her, which was rarely difficult for anyone, least of all him and his six feet and some inches, his hair falling forward. “Your eyes are intelligent, and your clever mind informs your every expression. An intelligent woman confident and happy in herself always attracts a man of discernment. There is no doubt of it, Sophie. You are a beautiful woman.”
“It isn’t true,” she said tartly. “But thank you for saying it so convincingly. If it were anyone but you saying so, I might be flattered.”
He pushed away from the table. “Must we constantly argue?” he said.
“Are we?”
“You are astonishingly good at disagreeing with me.”
“Everyone has at least one talent, my lord.”
“I wouldn’t mind if you called me Gwilym.”
“But I would.” She started again on the books, restacking them and taking Banallt’s Ovid out of the pile. If he left it behind, she’d find a Latin grammar and try her luck with a translation.
He put his bare hand over hers. The warmth of his palm startled her. “I had to come here,” he said. “No one else would do. No one else will ever do.”
She lifted her head. “I am so sorry.”
His fingers curled around hers, and for a moment, Sophie relaxed. They would get through this moment after all, without disaster. “I thought of you all the way from London. I must be mad, I told myself. She’ll not want to see me.”
“That’s not so.”
“And here we are.”
The moment crossed back into danger. His smile was wrong. Inappropriately intimate. “Don’t,” she whispered. She pulled her hand free of his. “Please don’t.”
“Why not?” he asked. “Your husband is even now in London and I daresay hasn’t thought of you in weeks.”
Sophie’s head jerked up. “Don’t,” she said again, more forcefully. “You will only regret where this leads us.”
“What will it take to woo you from your worthless husband?” He made a face. “No woman could be as faithful as you for no reason on earth.”
She shook her head.
“Ten thousand pounds? Twenty?”
“That’s quite enough.” She pulled herself upright. “No more of this. You’re distraught and—”
“I’m dying for want of you. Fifty thousands pounds, Sophie. That’s in addition to the discharge of your husband’s not inconsiderable debts.”
Her heart raced. This couldn’t be happening. He wouldn’t do this to her. “You’re mad with grief.”
He laughed. “I’m mad with lust. You’re not so naive that you don’t understand that I want you. Come now, you know I’ll treat you better than Tommy ever has or will.”
“I’m married, Banallt.”
“So is your husband, as I recall, and yet I left him quite happily in the tender arms of my cast-off mistress.”
She lifted her hand, but he caught her wrist and pulled her toward him. “Carte blanche,” he said. His face was hard, his mouth tense, and something wild came up from him and she was in an instant reminded of just how much smaller she was than him. Fear spilled down her spine, and she hated Banallt for this. For making her afraid of him.
“Get out.” She shoved him hard enough that he let her go.
His eyebrows rose. “I’m quite serious about this Sophie.” His gaze raked her from head to toe. “I adore you, I have since nearly the moment I laid eyes on you.”
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“Of course I do. I’ve never offered any woman carte blanche. But the offer’s there for you. Only you, my beautiful, lovely Sophie. My fortune at your feet. Ruin me if you like. You’ve already ruined me for any other woman. You may as well complete your triumph.”
She reared back. “Don’t ever call here again. Do you understand me? I shan’t see you.”
“Don’t be a fool, Sophie.”