All the Rules of Heaven (All That Heaven Will Allow #1) - Amy Lane Page 0,38

day. He made a hideous row about it—terrorized my father something awful, saying that only a fool would keep his road so poorly it could do that much damage. I brought him some lemonade to take some of his anger from Father, and he thought I was pretty.”

She smiled then, tentatively, as though embarrassed, and Bridget readjusted her thinking.

“Ye are pretty, Sophie girl,” she said, her voice gentle. Ah, a pastor’s child. Ripe for the taking by a rich bastard like Thomas Conklin. Wonderful. Well, Bridget had been her ally since she’d been dragged into the Conklin mansion, practically a child bride. She would continue to be her friend—

Sophie stopped Bridget’s ministrations with the brush by bringing her hand up to capture Bridget’s. “Do you really think so?” she asked, hope shining in her eyes like tears. “I’ve heard it from my father and brother, and Thomas and his father—” She shuddered. Master Conklin was a frigid, foreboding figure of a man. “—say it all the time. But….” She bit her lip and glanced shyly in the mirror. “I never really wanted to be pretty until you brushed my hair, looking at me like that.”

Bridget tried to shift her hand away. Sophie’s touch sent shock waves through her body, but Sophie turned around and clasped the hand—and the brush—to her lips.

Bridget gave up and rubbed her rough, hard-worked thumb along the angel softness of Sophie’s cheek.

“Aye,” she whispered, her voice rough and low. “I think yer beautiful.”

She lowered her head then, thinking to lay a quick kiss on Sophie’s brow, but Sophie tipped her head back, her lips soft, ripe, rich red with promise, and Bridget dipped her head just a bit lower….

TUCKER MADE a soft noise, hoping he could see their lips touch, their mouths open, the kiss land, but as he reacted to the vision, it changed.

SOPHIE’S HAND shook, but she continued to brush her hair as she regarded the sinister dark-suited figure in the mirror.

“No,” she said, proud of how strong her voice was. “I don’t know where Thomas has gone.”

“Well, aren’t you his wife? Shouldn’t you keep better track of him?”

Her heart—fueled by anger—began to beat more steadily and stopped its fearful stuttering. “I am a stranger in a strange house,” she said shortly. “I have no resources to find him, and if I wandered around calling his name, I wouldn’t be a grown woman, I’d be a terrified child.”

She was a terrified child. The elder Mr. Conklin produced that fear in everybody. Sophie had seen him strike out at servants carrying full trays of food, shattering china and splashing tea all over the ceramic-tiled floors—and the person in question. Mrs. Conklin came down the stairs at least once a week with her face heavily powdered—a mark, a bruise, a split lip buried deep beneath. She rarely went out into the world, and when her face was that heavily powdered, her friends were not allowed to call.

Bridget told her that the lady had fewer and fewer friends each year.

“Don’t be impertinent,” Conklin sneered. “You’re a country whore, and why my son didn’t tup you and leave you is one of the great mysteries of life.”

It was a mystery to Sophie too, given that Thomas’s first sexual attention to her had been in their marriage bed. He’d done his duty—she was no longer officially a virgin—and had then rolled off her and gone to the study for a glass of port.

Sophie rather suspected Thomas didn’t like tupping.

At least not tupping her, at any rate.

“I was a virgin when I married,” she said quietly, her jaw locked and grim. It wasn’t that her virginity had defined her, but she respected her father, respected his kindness, and would not want him shamed by this man’s low-spirited insults.

“The hell you were.” A cruel smile flirted with his thin lips, and he pulled a filigreed silver box from his waistcoat and took a pinch of whatever he kept inside with a superior sniff.

And then whatever bond of propriety had held Thomas Conklin Senior in the doorway broke, and he stormed into Sophie’s bedroom, the grimness of his black suit dominating the pleasant white room. Sophie turned partway, holding her hands out in defense and fear, but Conklin was a big man, brutally strong, and he thrust his fingers up through her long silky hair and jerked her head back.

“You’re a whore,” he whispered into Sophie’s ear, his breath foul. From this close, Sophie could see the furry tunnels of his nose