The Virgin Who Ruined Lord Gray - Anna Bradley Page 0,12

broke the silence, and Sophia turned to find Lady Clifford standing in the doorway to the drawing room, a faint smile on her lips. “Well, Sophia. Here you are at last, dearest. I don’t suppose I need to ask how your evening went. You look as if the devil himself has been chasing you.”

The devil, a specter, or a very determined, vigorous lord. Sophia wasn’t sure which, only that she’d never seen anyone run like that in her life. “Not a devil, my lady. An aristocrat.”

But no ordinary aristocrat. Aristocrats were idle, sluggish things, with bloated bellies from too much beef and port, not—

“An aristocrat?” Lady Clifford raised an eyebrow. “My, how intriguing.”

“That’s not quite how I’d describe it, my lady.” Terrifying, yes, and eerily reminiscent of a Gothic horror novel, what with the moon shrouded by clouds, the deserted graveyard, and the wicked, aristocratic villain.

Even now Sophia’s body was convinced it was still tearing through the streets of London, fleeing her pursuer. Her poor lungs felt like cracked bellows, and she was bathed in sweat from her temples to her toes. Her black tunic was pasted to her back, and her breeches…well, the less said about them the better, and no doubt her cap was still lying in the dirt in St. Clement Dane’s churchyard.

Her best cap, too, blast him, but then she’d gnawed on his glove, so perhaps they were even. “An aristocrat with the longest legs in London. He caught me just outside the door. Daniel came along and chased him off, but I doubt we’ve seen the last of him.” Sophia thought of those wolfish gray eyes, and her head fell against the door behind her with a defeated thump.

Lady Clifford’s gaze sharpened. “Who was he?”

Whoever—or whatever—he was, he had remarkably keen predatory instincts. Sophia didn’t often find herself outwitted, being as wily as a thieving street urchin with a fistful of gold coins, but this man had managed to catch her out neatly enough. “Lord something or other. Daniel knows who he is.”

“This is all very curious. Come along then, and tell me the rest.” Lady Clifford turned back into the drawing room. “Will you have some sherry?”

“Yes, please.” Sophia’s throat was as dry as dust, and the inside of her mouth tasted like ashes.

Lady Clifford perched on the edge of a green silk settee, reached for a silver tray in front of her, and poured a modest measure of sherry into a crystal tumbler. “Here you are, my love. This will settle your nerves.”

“My nerves might require the rest of the bottle.” But Sophia didn’t take up her glass, nor did she join Lady Clifford on the settee. Instead she paced back and forth in front of the fireplace, mumbling to herself as she tried to make sense of what she’d seen tonight before that tangle with the Earl of Great Marlborough Street.

After a bit more pacing, Sophia turned to face Lady Clifford and announced, “You were right all along. This whole business is suspicious from start to end.”

Lady Clifford sighed. “Our business so often is, isn’t it?”

“Someone’s been telling lies, my lady.” The sort of lies that led to an innocent man’s neck in a noose.

Not just anyone’s neck, either, but Jeremy’s.

Jeremy Ives had appeared on the doorstep of No. 26 Maddox Street years ago, begging for work, a ragged little street boy with big, guileless blue eyes. He’d won Lady Clifford over with those eyes, though to this day she insisted he simply happened to come along when she needed a new kitchen boy.

Sophia’s throat tightened. Her own heart wasn’t the soft, pliable sort, but from the first moment she looked into Jeremy’s sweet face, that frozen organ had melted like an icicle in the sun.

Jeremy wasn’t just her friend. He was the closest thing she had to a brother.

He wasn’t a pupil—the Clifford School didn’t accept boys—but Sophia had taken it upon herself to teach Jeremy his numbers and letters. It had been a painstaking process, but now at age eighteen he could work simple sums and read from children’s books.

Lady Clifford patted the seat beside her. “Come, Sophia. Sit here with me and drink your sherry. You look as if you’re about to succumb to a fit of the vapors.”

Sophia snorted, but she crossed the room and sank down on the settee. She took up her sherry, then set it down again without tasting it. “We all knew it to be a lie from the start, of course. Jeremy Ives