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Her aunt regarded her through narrowed eyes for a moment or two before appearing to accept Sofia’s explanation. But then, why wouldn’t she? Sofia had worked so hard to conform to her aunt’s exacting standards that for the last couple of years she’d behaved like a veritable milksop.
Until the day she’d heard Jack mocking her behaviour and she’d begun to wonder why she’d bothered. She could never be anything but the product of a slightly shocking marriage between an Englishman and a foreigner. A Catholic, to boot. And why should she try to shoehorn her personality into the mould her aunt and uncle deemed ‘proper’, when they were so intent on pushing her in Jack’s direction so that he could benefit from the money she would inherit?
Especially since it was the only reason he would consider her as a wife.
‘I will have to marry someone, some day,’ he’d said. ‘So why not her? She may be boring, but at least she’s biddable. In fact,’ he’d boasted, ‘she rather idolises me. I will only have to drop the handkerchief, you know, and she will go into raptures. And then all that lovely money of hers will be mine to spend as I wish. Once she’s breeding, I can leave her in the country and have some real fun.’ They’d both laughed, then, in a way that had turned her stomach.
Drop the handkerchief, indeed! He’d have to do more than drop a handkerchief. In fact, he could weave and embroider and hem a dozen handkerchiefs and it would make no difference. She was most categorically not going to marry Jack. Not now she knew what he really thought of her. Not now she knew he was the kind of man who’d marry a woman for her money, so he could go out and enjoy himself with other women. Because that was what that dirty laughter had been about. She’d spent the first ten years of her life with a father who was a serving soldier and he had most decidedly not lived like a monk once her mama had died. On the contrary, Sofia had lost count of the number of ladies who’d lived with them, ostensibly as nursemaids to her, but who always, always, shared her papa’s bed. Nobody, he’d told her, could replace her mama. She need never fear that he would ever call another woman his wife. But they needed somebody, didn’t they, to take care of them?
Take care of them? Hah! The moment she’d heard her papa was dead, Maria, his latest lady friend, had promptly ransacked their billet for anything of value before leaving to secure another ‘protector’.
Which was yet another reason, she sighed as she went to take her place on her usual chair, that she’d taken such pains to become whatever her aunt and uncle wanted her to become. She’d been so grateful they’d taken her in and told her she must consider Nettleton Manor her home, that she would have cut off all her hair and dyed her face blue if they’d so much as hinted it would guarantee her safety.
‘Did His Grace say something to upset you?’ asked Aunt Agnes with a slight frown.
‘Upset me? The Duke? No.’ On the contrary, he’d reminded her of who she really was. Or at least, who she had once been...and could become again if only she could summon the courage to stand up for herself a bit more.
‘Well, you look a trifle out of sorts.’
Which was the effect that thinking about Jack always had on her, these days.
‘What did you discuss, Sofia?’
‘Oh, Snowball, at first,’ said Sofia, bending to stroke her faithful dog’s ears. ‘And the state of my health and why I hadn’t had a court presentation,’ she said, darting a swift glance up at her aunt from under her eyelashes, to see what effect that statement might have.
‘Those are all rather personal questions. No wonder you are upset.’
‘Yes, but then dukes probably think they can say what they like, to whomever they wish.’ He’d certainly had no compunction about giving Aunt Agnes a set-down.
A smile tugged at her lips as she recalled the moment. Oh, but it had felt so good to have someone rush to her defence. Even if it had been totally unnecessary.
‘Why are you smiling like that?’
‘Oh, well, because he said he would be calling to take me out driving again tomorrow,’ she said as meekly as she could.
‘Without consulting me?’
Sofia shrugged. ‘He’s a duke. I don’t suppose he is in the habit of consulting anyone about anything before doing exactly as he wishes.’
‘And he wishes to take you out in his curricle again,’ said Aunt Agnes with amazement. As if there was no accounting for taste.
Rather than explain that he’d practically reprimanded her for obliging him to waste yet another afternoon on her, Sofia shrugged again.
And smiled.
Oliver clenched his teeth, went down the steps, across the pavement and climbed back into the driver’s seat.
Dammit, the girl had done it again. Diverted him from his original plan. He’d known exactly what he’d wanted to say while tooling her round the lanes and along the seafront this afternoon. It shouldn’t have taken more than ten minutes. But somehow the time had slipped through his fingers like water and before he knew it he was drawing up outside her lodgings having barely touched on any of the items on his agenda. An agenda which he’d drawn up, he reflected as he flicked the whip to set his horses in motion, as a means of passing the time profitably during an outing he’d never meant to take in the first place.
He reached the end of Theakstone Crescent and turned left to take the road up the hill away from the bay, eyeing the neat rows of lodging houses with mixed feelings. Normally he felt a good deal of family pride at the visible proof of the way his grandfather had transformed the fortunes of the people living in what had merely been a mean little fishing village by developing Burslem Bay into a seaside resort. But today, there was also an undercurrent of disquiet. If his grandfather hadn’t wanted more for his guests to do at his nearby hunting box, when there was nothing left on the moors to shoot, Oliver might never have met Miss Underwood. She didn’t mix in the same social circles, even if her grandfather was an earl.
Which was probably why she had no idea how to behave, when presented to a duke. No other female would have handed him a dog, as though he was a mere footman. Or prattled on about the first thing that came into her head as though he was just anybody.
Although, to be fair, she had apologised once or twice when she felt she’d crossed a line. She appeared to know that she ought not to be so familiar with him, but simply couldn’t help herself.
He thought about that for several hundred yards.
And then recalled the slightly anxious way Miss Underwood had glanced up at the front window, as if she could sense somebody watching her.
His brows drew down as he went back further still, to the aunt’s reaction to his decree Miss Underwood was to go out driving with him, alone but for a groom. He’d been too annoyed when he’d deposited her on her front step to notice it, but now that he was going over the scene again, he could see that she’d been bracing herself for a scold.
He supposed he should have gone in with Miss Underwood, and... He drew in a sharp breath. Wasted even more of his afternoon on her behalf? No, it was as well he hadn’t felt the urge to shield her at the time.
It was bad enough that she made him act out of character as far as she had done. He held to that opinion until he was clear of the town. But once he’d reached the open moorland which surrounded Burslem House and there was no traffic upon which to focus his mind, he slowed his horses to a sedate trot, to give himself more time to work out what, precisely, it was about Miss Underwood that made him act so unlike himself, every single time they met.
It wasn’t as if she exerted herself, especially, as far as he could tell. She didn’t pout, or preen, or simper, or flutter her eyelashes at him, like the