Chapter Twenty-Three
“I am astonished that you are not shackled in leg chains and barred from leaving your home, given your brother’s reaction last night,” Devlin’s deep baritone drawled from the street below.
He strode up the steps to her residence, a wicked grin on his face and looking for all the world as if he had not a care. Even the bruise on his cheek did not detract from his attractiveness.
How the man could look so good after the events from the night before eluded her. She had spent most of the night tossing and turning, unable to stop thinking of him or what had just passed, and had woken up exhausted. Yet here he stood resplendent in perfectly tailored clothing, without a hair out of place. It took her a second to calm the fluttering in her stomach.
Surely this odd reaction she had to him would eventually subside? At least she prayed it would. It was rather annoying.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded as she put on her gloves.
“I thought that rather obvious? Paying my lovely fiancée a visit, especially as it is all official now.” He reached down and placed a kiss on her gloved hand.
She quickly snatched her arm back. “You do not need to kiss my hand every time you see me, you realize?”
“You prefer a kiss on the lips then, my lady?” He appeared to relish the prospect.
“You are incorrigible.” She couldn’t help her eyes from rolling.
He merely laughed. “Only with you, Sophie. Are you heading out then?”
“Yes,” she answered with a nod, beginning to walk down the steps.
“Perhaps I can offer you a ride to your destination?” he said, following her.
“Thank you, but no. Stokes is already seeing that my carriage is brought around.” Devlin wouldn’t be happy if he knew where she was going, and she was in too much of a hurry to argue about it with him.
“But my carriage is right here,” he countered, “and can take you wherever you wish to go.”
“No, thank you,” she declined with a shake of her head. Stubborn man!
“My lady?” Stokes called out from the top of the entrance. “Your aunt has asked that you pass on her best wishes to Lady Crowley and reiterate her sadness over the news.”
Her shoulders tensed as she grimaced, bracing herself for her fiancé’s reaction. “Thank you, Stokes.”
“You are going to the Crowley residence?” Devlin’s voice was suspiciously even.
She chanced a quick look up at him. The easy grin he had been sporting was now gone, replaced with an expression of steely determination, which she did not like one little bit. “Yes, I am going there.”
“To visit Lady Crowley, was it?”
“Um, yes?”
“She is not even in residence at the moment.” His tone was laced with suspicion.
“And how would you know if she is or is not?” Well, there went her assurance to her aunt. And she hadn’t expected him to pay such attention to detail. Though she should have known he would. The Devil Duke didn’t get to where he was without doing so.
“As soon as you mentioned an interest in attending their house party, I made some enquiries,” he said.
“You did?”
“Yes. Interestingly enough,” he continued, “Lady Crowley has already left town to firstly visit the restoring waters of Bath before she heads to their country estate to host their next party. To which I am sure you will be happy to know I have accepted the invitation to attend.”
“Excellent. Thank you for informing me.” At least now, if she couldn’t get answers today, she would hopefully get answers at the very country estate from which Jane had gone missing.
“No need to go to their residence now, is there?”
“I shall still go and leave my card.” He didn’t need to know exactly what she was about.
“No, you will not,” he countered, his voice brooking no argument. “At least not without me.”
“I am perfectly fine to go on my own and drop off a visiting card.” Honestly, how many times would she have to deal with him trying to dictate to her? She took comfort in the thought that she’d eventually wear him down.
“If that was the actual point of you going, then I would agree it would be fine.”
“You do not believe me then?” Really, she had thought she had the most innocent of expressions on her face. The man was obviously a very good fib detector. The talent would come in handy with others, but she’d rather he not employ it on her.
“Oh, I have no doubt you would leave one of your cards,” he agreed. “But I also have no doubt that there is more to your purpose of visiting than that.”
“There might be,” she conceded. “However, it is not really any of your business.”
“On the contrary,” he remarked, “everything you do is my business.”
She lifted her chin a fraction. “Until we are married, it is not.” She would have to stamp out this interfering habit of his and quickly.
“You think so, do you?”
“I do. Besides, you cannot stop me.” She realized her mistake as soon as she said the words. Sophie had come to realize that Devlin had a particular penchant for doing exactly what others said he could not.
He grinned, though there was little humor in his eyes. “If you do not get into my carriage and allow me to escort you to Lord Crowley’s, I shall pick you up over my shoulder and carry you back into your residence for all to see. Then I would ensure that you were kept under lock and key and that your brother was fully informed of your plans.”
“You would not,” she countered, even though she knew that that was precisely what he would do. An overwhelming urge to hit him flooded through her, another feeling she was becoming all too accustomed to recently.
“Very well, then.”
“What does that mean?” she asked, but before she even had a chance to blink, he bent down and scooped her up and over his shoulder. Sophie gasped and clung to his waist from behind. “Put me down,” she squawked.
He ignored her as he strode toward the steps of her residence.
“Fine!” she yelled out. “You can escort me to Lord Crowley’s.”
“Good,” he said, but instead of putting her down, he marched back toward his carriage.
Sophie looked up toward her residence and saw Stokes’ startled face at the top of the stairs. She must look a sight, being carried like a sack of potatoes.
“Lady Sophie? Do you need assistance?” Stokes asked as he started down the stairs.
Lovely. Just what she needed. Stokes telling her brother about this spectacle. Then there would be no stopping Daniel from calling her highhanded fiancé out, where goodness knew what injuries they would inflict upon each other. “I am fine, Stokes. The Duke is simply escorting me to Lord Crowley’s,” Sophie called out.
“Then you will not be needing the carriage?” Stokes asked, concern still alight in his eyes.
“No, thank you. Truly everything is fine, and please do not tell my brother of this,” she called out a moment before Devlin unceremoniously hefted her into the carriage. “Are you mad?” she whispered to Devlin. “My brother will have your head if he hears of this.”
He merely shrugged and stepped in behind her. “To Lord Crowley’s residence,” he called out the window to his driver. Without warning, as the carriage lurched forward, he leaned over and hauled her onto his lap.
“What are you doing?” Sophie yelped as her backside came to rest squarely on his thighs.
“Greeting my betrothed,” Devlin replied before his fingers caressed the nape of her neck and his mouth claimed hers.
She felt the heat of his lips, but before she could even gather her wits, he pulled away from her and deftly deposited her back on the opposite seat. She blinked. “You seem to be doing an awful lot of greeting me lately.”
He sat back against the cushions, a decided twinkle in his eyes. “A benefit of being engaged. Now, will you tell me the purpose of our visit to Lord Crowley’s?”
Sophie took in a deep breath as she, too, settled herself on her side of the carriage. The man’s mouth did all sorts of wicked things to her equilibrium. It was very unsettling.
Discombobulated as she was, she supposed that there was no getting out of telling him now, and after all, perhaps he could help. With his size, let alone his rank, that crotchety old butler would not close the door in his face. “Very well,” she said, proceeding to tell him all about her worry over Jane, the visit from Tina, news of the new footman’s death, and the footman’s origins in the Crowley household.
After she finished her account, he sat silently for a moment.
“That is why you are so determined to go to Lord Crowley’s house party then,” he said, “to find out what has happened to this girl Jane?”
“Exactly so,” she agreed. “You see now how imperative it is that I speak with the Crowley’s butler or housekeeper. I need to find out what they know of Jane’s disappearance, and now I have to ask about this Robert Benlow, too.”
“A more apt description would be that you wish to play detective and fish about for clues, would it not?” his deep voice suggested.
“I am not playing at anything,” she briskly informed him. “Jane is an ex-Grey Street orphan. She is like family to me, and I cannot just abandon her. I must do all in my power to find out what has happened, and even though it looks like he was a thief, Benlow was in my family’s employ when he was murdered.”
He leaned his elbows on his knees and groaned. “I once pitied the poor sap that would be saddled with you, and now I find that I am pitying myself.”
Sophie, for one, had no pity to spare for the Devil Duke. “A situation entirely of your own making.”
“I know,” he readily conceded. “Thank goodness I decided to pay you a visit today. Heaven knows what you could have gotten yourself embroiled in if I had not.”
“You make it sound so sinister, as if I am visiting a dockside tavern in the dead of night.”
“You might as well be. You have no idea how dangerous this situation may be.” His stare was intense, as if he was trying to scare her into changing her plans. “If Jane has met with some malevolent outcome, which certainly this Benlow has, then do you truly believe that snooping around trying to find out what has happened to her is safe?”
“But Devlin, I have to find out what has happened to her. I shall not rest easy until I know.” And really, how could going to the Crowleys’, in the middle of Mayfair, with a dozen servants about, not be safe? Jane was her friend and part of her Grey Street family. Sophie would not give up on her.
“You are determined on this course of action then?”
“Most definitely.”
He gazed steadily at her, an unreadable expression in his eyes. “Very well then. Let us go and see what the butler knows.”