her against his chest, both of them dripping with foul mud. He carried her inside, ignoring the men crowded in the doorway making suggestions about what he could do with “Her Highness.” He tried to ignore her feeling of insult that hardened her like pine in his hold, though he knew he was to blame.
“I’m sorry, Sophie.” He set her on her feet outside the private dining room.
“Do you think coming back is easy for me, Blake?” The naked emotion in her voice and downcast eyes only made him feel worse. He was despicable.
He’d waited in tense anticipation from the moment Matthew had announced she might return, and now he’d made a right mess of it all.
His apology was lost as she forged on. “When I left here, I promised I would never, ever return.”
She made it sound as though the village was plagued. “Why did you come then? If it’s so hard, why didn’t you stay in London?”
“I came because Matthew asked.”
“You’ve never answered his summonses before.” The accusation was out before he could catch it. It was none of his business.
Her face fell and she turned away from him, hand on the door. “Things are different now.”
“You could at least appear happy when he arrives.” He didn’t want to know how things were different. They were still the same for him. Same tavern, same work, same existence, same everything. Blake turned to leave and send word to her brother, but then she spoke again.
“I was nervous. Worried, if you must know. Perhaps even scared.”
“Oh?” he said, her admission paling in the light of years of being ignored. Now she wanted to pour her heart out? Now she wanted to confide in him? Pent-up anger spurred him to say yet more things he didn’t mean. “Were you scared of me? Of facing your brother? Or returning to the country without your maids and footmen?”
A sharp intake of breath made her shoulders rise in outrage. “Have you forgotten where I came from? I am perfectly capable without servants, thank you very much.”
As if he could ever forget. There were only two women in his life he had loved unconditionally and they had both abandoned him without word or regret. That kind of betrayal wasn’t likely to ever be forgotten. Or forgiven. “You were a girl then. What happened to her?”
“The same thing that happened to the bastard son of a duke. We grew up.”
He gritted his teeth hard, the pain easing the urge to hold his hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t utter another word. “I grew into what my life should have been. I was born a nobody and I will die a nobody just as the circumstance of my birth decreed.”
“And my birth?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “What did my first breath mean to the world? Was it written on Destiny’s tablet that I would become a courtesan?”
“No.” Sadness weighed him down. The kind of sadness he’d only ever known in connection with her. “You made your decisions. No one else.”
“Yes, I did. Regardless of what you think you know, my life is full and happy. I learned to accept my lot a long time ago.”
If she looked him in the eye and told him she was happy again then he would know she had become a liar as well as a nobleman’s plaything.
Fury reddened his vision until he saw only the woman she could have been. The wife she would have made. The love they could have shared. He blinked and his dream Sophie vanished into Sophia. He didn’t have to be nice to Sophia. He didn’t have to respect or like her so she could break his heart again when she left. Let her go to her brother’s. “Is that what you call lying on your back for pretty things?”
The crack of her palm across his face echoed off the walls. Then she opened the door at her back and fled into the warmth and safety of the parlor.
He sagged there in the dim light as he rubbed a hand over his stinging cheek and cursed his tongue. He as good as called her a whore. Despite what he told himself in his mind, she was still Sophie. Little Sophie he’d carried on his back when the walk was too far or the river too deep. He’d wiped blood off her skinned knees, held her up so she could pick the sweetest apple from the highest branch, had his first kiss with