A story for all those who stand in bookshops and skim romance novels to get to the emotional money shot. Bugger character development, get to the good stuff!
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Sophie sighed as she watched him through the rain streaked window. She could see Cole was angry even from her seat high above him, looking down on the manor's driveway. Usually fluid movements were stiff and his mare shifted nervously as he flung himself out of the saddle. Cole squatted to lift one of the mare's feet, checking it for a stone and, despite her worry, Sophie squirmed. That arse. Firm, high, perfectly shaped. The book in her lap creaked in sympathy under her squeezing fingers.
"That stupid bitch," she muttered. She hadn't seen him like this for months but had little doubt that his deranged whore of a dead wife was to blame. Bella had been in the eighth month of her "cultural tour" of the Continent when her carriage overturned on an icy Vienna street. Sophie's best friend Marianne, herself on her honeymoon, had bumped into Bella only a few weeks before the accident. Marianne knew how Sophie felt about Cole and she'd done her best to edit out the worst of the debauchery when relaying tales of his wife's exploits in Europe . Sophie had read her friend's letters with a mixture of disgust and incomprehension. Bella had thought two midgets and an Irish Wolfhound were an adequate substitute for Cole?
Since her death, Bella's former intimates and thrown over lovers - legion in number - had been writing to Cole. Ostensibly, they wrote to express their condolences or enquire after her daughter. Some wrote of Bella's courage in embracing London's most seedy elements. Others of her irresistible beauty and winning charm. Yet from every elegantly inked line and curlicue there hissed a thwarted, desperate malice. Even Sophie could admit that Bella had been exceptional. Her arrival in a crowded ballroom was like a rock being tossed into a still pond - her presence would ripple though the crush. Far more telling though, was that which stirred in the wake of the disturbance.
Seeing a groom appear round a corner of the house, she tossed her book aside and rose to hurry downstairs. Sophie had no qualms about Cole being in her private salon on the second floor of Salisbury House, her family's home. Indeed, the servants knew to show him straight there - she was always at home to Cole. But the idea of Bella being in her sanctuary with them - even if it was only as they talked of her – Sophie was annoyed at the mere thought. Whisking past her grandfather's library, she paused just long enough to poke her head through the door. The fourth Marquis of Hertford was snoring in front of a dying fire, a newspaper puddled at his feet. Smiling, she eased back to pull the door closed. Hurtling down the last flight of stairs, she sped into the downstairs drawing room and yanked on the bell.
"My lady?"
When Stevens, the butler, appeared, one frantic hair-patting, dress-righting, breath-steadying minute later, Sophie was seated with some long forgotten needle work. She looked up, trying her best to appear as if she always sat sewing in a room she'd once described to Cole as a worse than a tomb; tombs weren't usually painted salmon pink and hung with dyspeptic looking ancestors.
Crammed with mismatched furniture and usually deathly cold, it was very different from Sophie's own cosy chamber. It had, however, been her grandmother's favourite, a private domain from which she had ruled the local matrons since leaving the opera stage to marry her patron, Sophie's grandfather. Her death two years ago had shocked everyone.
"Stevens, if you could please arrange some tea and gingerbread -" she glanced up as a spray of rain hummed against the windows, "and a towel."
"Already on its way, my lady. Shall I show Lord Rochedale in to you here?" he asked, slowly.
"Yes, thank you." Sophie wasn't quite sure how he managed to raise his eyebrows whilst keeping his face utterly still but then, Stevens had been a butler a very long time.
Sophie was lost in a rather gratifying fantasy involving aged butlers and well-aimed embroidery hoops when Cole strode in, leaving a trail of water behind him. Dragging a smile onto her face when she wanted to howl at the sight of his soaked breeches moulded to his strong thighs, was hard. Handing him the towel instead of begging him to use her tongue was even harder. Stephens would have stayed to wait on the pair but Sophie waved him out; the butler's eyebrows were not raised the entire way.
"Another letter from one of Bella's "friends"?" she said, pouring two steaming cups of fragrant darjeeling with deft hands. She stared, then winced, at the ferocity with which Cole was scrubbing the towel over his wet face and hair.
"From whose friends?" he asked, tossing the damp linen onto a nearby chair and accepting the proffered tea, shaking his head at the plate of gingerbread. He didn't drink, just gripped the teacup tightly. Sophie eyed his white knuckles surreptitiously, the sudden image of her favourite doll
sans
head popping into her mind. Cole had been eight years old to her seven and had found himself explaining, over Sophie's screams, that he hadn't meant to behead the doll exactly, only that if the doll could see behind her, she'd make a much better look out when it came to watching for pirates. Sophie had found her revenge in Cole's bedtime cup of chocolate and a bottle of castor oil.
"Bella's? Oh… is all well with Bea?" Sophie thought guiltily of the toy rapier she'd recently slipped to Cole's adorable four year old daughter, Beatrice. She'd heard through servants gossip that Bea had taken to leaping out of dark corners, brandishing the wooden sword and shrieking "Rem'ber Stwasbug!"
"Bea? No, Bea's fine. One of the maids has threatened to leave though, something about being attacked whilst carrying a full chamber pot."
