Behind the Courtesan - By Bronwyn Stuart Page 0,64
go and ask her what happened.”
“Don’t go anywhere near her.”
Matthew stepped toward him, his face grim. Blake stepped back.
“What happened?”
“Nothing. A mistake.” He used her words and it cut him to the bone. A mistake was when you added salt to your custard instead of sugar. Or when you didn’t saddle your horse right and fell off because of it. Sleeping with her hadn’t been a mistake. He’d wanted to. Hell he still wanted to. He groaned.
“Is she all right?” her brother asked, his fists clenched.
Blake wanted to tell him the truth. Then Matthew could swing the first punch and Blake could let his frustrations go, but his friend didn’t deserve that. As much as Blake wanted to hit someone or something, it would not be Matthew Martin.
He turned away from his old friend, unable to look him in the eye and say nothing happened, that Sophie was fine, that everything was fine. The red-hot fury faded to a kind of numb desolation. Damn.
“I’m serious, Blake, if you don’t tell me what happened, I’ll ask her and she’ll tell me and then I’ll come back and...” He didn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t have to.
“I slept with her.” He still had his back to Matthew; he couldn’t bear it.
“Did she consent?”
He didn’t have to look around. He heard Matthew’s teeth grind while he waited for an answer. “She started it.”
“Are you blaming her?” Another shuffling step.
Blake finally faced his friend, the man who knew him better than any other. “We were drunk and our clothing wet. I would have walked away, I swear, but she... She was very persuasive. I couldn’t say no.”
“That’s my sister you’re talking about, Blake. Be very, very careful.”
“I’m so sorry, Matthew.”
“Do you think I’m the one you should apologize to? From the look on your face when I came in, you should be saying sorry to Sophie for whatever it was you did.”
“You don’t understand.” He borrowed her words again, the meaning finally beginning to sink in to his thick head. “I really began to admire her.”
“You say that as if it’s a bad thing. She’s an admirable woman.”
Blake shook his head. “If only I’d seen that sooner.”
“Are you going to tell me what’s got you looking as if you lost your best friend?”
“I think I just did lose my best friend.” He slumped down the side of a stall to the dusty ground and put his head on his knees. He hoped it wasn’t true. God, he hoped he hadn’t ruined everything. He’d loved once; he still did in a way.
“Why don’t you go and tell her that? Why don’t you go and throw yourself at her feet and beg for her mercy? She’s not the woman you thought her to be when she first arrived. She will forgive you.”
Blake was saved any reply when Dominic walked a majestic black horse into his barn. It was possibly one of the finest horses he’d ever seen, other than Blakiston’s own steeds. “Is that St. Ives’?” he asked the young man.
“It is. He came up for Blakiston’s auction. He asked to see you when you’re free.”
“So it’s true?” Matthew breathed once the lad had gone into another stall.
“It must be. But surely Blakiston doesn’t need the money? He’s bleeding us all dry already. What could he possibly need more for? Unless he’s thinking about adding to that damned house out there.” Blakiston Manor was huge and imposing and didn’t need to be upgraded. Well, not since Blake had last seen it as a teen.
“I had better see what St. Ives wants.”
“Are you going to talk to Sophie?” Matthew asked, brushing dirt and hay from his dark trousers.
“If she will let me anywhere near her. If St. Ives will let me anywhere near her. If he finds out what happened, it may be the end of us both.”
“Don’t let him find out.”
As they walked through the double barn doors and into the yard, Blake looked up to her window, the same window he’d fled only hours earlier. The couple he saw silhouetted stopped him in his tracks. “That’d be easier said than done,” Blake muttered with a curse and a gesture toward the inn’s second floor.
* * *
Sophie sighed into St. Ives’ familiar warmth and breathed his scent. He was spicy and sweet while remaining masculine and forbidding. How she loved to hug the man. With her emotions crumbling around her she needed to hug him, to know he was there for her.