Behind the Courtesan - By Bronwyn Stuart Page 0,85

me. I was so ashamed and humiliated and terrified. I would have ruined everyone’s lives. He wouldn’t have been able to stop Blakiston from dragging me back.”

“How do you know that? Perhaps Blake would have embraced his birthright if it had meant saving you.”

“He wouldn’t have done that for me.” As soon as the words were out, Sophie knew them for the lies they were. Of course he would have saved her. Matthew and he would never have allowed anything to happen to her, but it had taken so many years to come to the realization and by then, too much time had passed. Too much had happened.

Her mind drifted back to the night she fled—the pain she was in, the humiliation that her innocence had been taken so violently. She hadn’t wanted to face anyone at all, let alone the man she would have married had he asked. And then what of revenge? What if Blake or Matthew got it in their heads to avenge her honor and wound up swinging from a rope? Yes, she’d taken the lighter fork in the road.

“He would have saved you then and he would do it now.”

“I don’t need saving.”

“Are you sure?”

Sophie looked away from the question in Violet’s eyes.

In the sense of immediate danger she did not need rescuing, but she had turned out to be her own worst enemy. Who would save her from herself? She enjoyed London. The bustling metropolis always delivered something different. No two days were ever the same and she had her life mapped out there. She had the clinic and the children they helped; she had her friends and her wealth. Everything was easy.

Except for the men.

Despite the fact her reputation was mostly gossip, she had slept with men for housing and gowns. It was a necessity she’d accepted very early on, but she was older now. She liked to think she was wiser. She hadn’t made a rash choice in years.

What do you call fleeing into the driving rain?

Blake had really hurt her. She’d never realized how much the man could hurt her. Why should she stay somewhere like that with a man like him?

The question of what she would do once she returned to London still lingered. Since there was no lower legal occupation than the one already pinned to her, she was at a loose end.

“Damn,” she muttered.

“He loves you,” Violet put forward gently.

“He certainly has a fine way of showing it.”

“It killed him when you left all those years ago. He was a wreck for months, picked fights with his uncle, Matthew, anyone who could give him a different type of pain than what you left him with. Even then, it was you he loved.”

“How do you know that? I can’t imagine Blake poured his heart out to you.”

Violet shook her head. “He didn’t tell me any of it but Matthew knew it all. What Blake told him and what he didn’t.”

“And he just told you?” Wasn’t there an unspoken bond between best friends? Between men? Would Blake be embarrassed to know that Matthew told his wife all of his dark secrets?

“A husband and wife have no secrets.” She smiled. “Matty tells me everything.”

Sophie rather doubted it. “Even if he does love me, we can’t talk for more than five minutes without nearly declaring war. If I were a man, we would have chosen our seconds and had it out at dawn already.”

“If you were a man, he wouldn’t argue with you so. If you were a man, your leaving would have only left him angry rather than devastated.”

Devastated. The word rattled around in her head. If he was so devastated, why had he never written to her? Matthew had her address in recent years. Why hadn’t he come to the city to declare his love and bring her home? It’s what she secretly waited for all those years of men and gambling and the never-ending night life. In the back of her mind she’d replayed the fairy tales endlessly and hated the princesses and damsels in distress for their knights. She especially hated the trusty steeds for not carrying a prince to her rescue to live happily ever after.

She’d almost given up on happily-ever-afters but sometimes, when she saw a couple like Matthew and Violet, her hope would be renewed. At least until the next blow came to knock her back to reality. Like losing the babies. For a few weeks, she had been in the happiest of places, had