The Virgin Who Ruined Lord Gray - Anna Bradley Page 0,16
around a long, elegant finger. “Oh, your hair is wet. Is it raining?”
Sophia rested her head on Emma’s calf with a contented sigh. “Not anymore. It was earlier.”
“What in the world is that smell?” Georgiana pressed the back of her hand to her nose. “It smells like Gussie when his fur is wet.”
Gussie was Lady Clifford’s pinch-faced pug. He was dreadfully ugly, and had an unfortunate chronic nasal condition that made him snort. To add insult to these injuries, he’d been saddled with the name Gussie in his puppyhood, before anyone realized he was, in fact a boy dog. By then, the name had already stuck. Despite these drawbacks, he was much beloved at the Clifford School, especially by Emma, who was fonder of animals than she was of people.
“It’s not so bad as all that.” Sophia lifted her tunic to her nose for an experimental sniff, then winced. “Bad enough, though.”
“You look as if you’ve been hiding in a gutter.” Cecilia rose from the bed and crossed to the basin, then paused and turned back to Sophia with a doubtful look. “You haven’t been, have you?”
It was a fair question, given Sophia had hidden in gutters before. “No, not tonight, but I did spend some time on Lord Everly’s roof.”
The room went quiet for a moment as Cecilia, Emma, and Georgiana exchanged looks.
“Is there any word of Jeremy?” Cecilia asked, an anxious frown on her brow.
Sophia bit her lip. Lady Clifford discouraged them from sharing information about their assignments with each other. The less her friends knew about Jeremy’s predicament, the safer it was for all of them, yet Sophia knew they were as concerned about Jeremy as she was.
“No change there, I’m afraid.”
Sophia didn’t offer anything more than that, and her friends fell silent again until Georgiana approached Sophia with a damp towel in her hand. “Here. Take this, and give me your tunic.”
“What’s Lord Everly’s roof like?” Emma asked. “Nice and quiet, I imagine.”
“Not as quiet as you’d think. Not as private, either.” Sophia peeled her black tunic over her head. “As it happens, Lord Everly’s neighbor saw me up there and chased me from one end of London to the other.”
The other girls looked at each other, then back at Sophia. “Chased you?” Emma asked. “No one ever chases you. Not for long, anyway. Is Lord Everly’s neighbor a racehorse?”
“No, he’s a Bow Street Runner.” Sophia hesitated. “He’s, er…he’s Tristan Stratford.”
Two mouths dropped open at once.
“The Ghost of Bow Street?” Emma breathed. “Lord Everly’s neighbor is the Ghost of Bow Street?”
Sophia sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. If I’d known, I never would have climbed onto Everly’s roof in the first place.”
“Who in the world is the Ghost of Bow Street?” Cecilia looked from Emma to Sophia with a puzzled frown. “I’ve never heard of him.”
“Only you would ask that question, Cecilia.” Georgiana leaned over and grabbed a gossip sheet from the table beside the bed and handed it to Cecilia.
“I don’t care a whit for the gossip. It’s a waste of…” Cecilia’s voice fell away, the rest of her lecture left unsaid as she stared at the drawing in front of her. “That’s the Ghost of Bow Street? My goodness.”
Emma took the paper from Cecilia and stuck it under Sophia’s nose. “That’s him? That’s the man who chased you?”
Sophia glanced down at the page. Yes, it was him, all right. The drawing hadn’t properly captured the slash of his cheekbones, the sternness of his lips, the severe, aristocratic elegance of his face, but there was no mistaking him.
For better or worse, he wasn’t the sort of man one forgot. “Yes, that’s him.”
Emma gave her the slightly crooked smile that made every man she came across her devoted slave. “I would have let him catch me.”
Sophia thought of his cool gray eyes and the pressure of his hand against her mouth, and a shiver tickled down her spine. “No, I don’t think you would have. Not if you’d seen him for yourself. But never mind Lord Gray. Come, Cecilia. I want to hear about the banditti.”
Cecilia opened the book and read to the end of the first chapter, then she turned down the lamp and they tucked themselves into their beds. Her friends were soon asleep, but Sophia lay awake for a long time, listening to the soft sounds of peaceful slumber around her.
Ghosts and headless corpses, swooning virgins and bloody daggers…
A man lying in the dirt in St. Clement Dane’s churchyard, his life’s blood gushing from his slit