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Talk about laughable. The Countess had always treated Sophie like a second-class citizen. But maybe he was being too harsh. Maybe things had changed. “She looks well,” he said. “But how is she really doing?”
“She’s in remarkably good health, and of course, this time of year, she’s very focused on the ball.”
“Oh yes. The annual Wilkins Christmas Gala. I received my invitation last week.”
Sophie couldn’t hide her surprise. “You got an invitation?”
“I get one every year.” Lon answered with satisfaction. He knew, just as she did, that the Countess had never particularly liked him. “I’ve just never been in the country before.”
“You’re attending, then?”
He heard the wobble in her voice. She didn’t want him to attend. Interesting. “Should I?”
“No.” She flushed, and added quickly, “It’s just not your kind of party. Hundreds of people. Not enough food. I don’t think you’d even know anyone attending.”
“But it’d be worth it if I could see you.”
Sophie started to rise and then sat down again. She pressed her hands tightly to the sofa cushion. “Nothing’s going to happen between us, Lon. I’m not over Clive. I’m not ready for anything new—”
“I’m not new.”
How true, she thought, feeling her heart mash in her chest. He wasn’t new. He’d been part of her world for nearly fifteen years but fifteen years ago he hadn’t been right for her. Ten years ago he hadn’t been right. And even today, he wasn’t what she needed. “Please do not make this ugly, Lon. Do not force me to be rude.”
“You? Rude?” He laughed without humor. “You couldn’t be rude if you tried. You’ve made diplomacy an art form. You turned tact into a virtue. You can rest now, Sophie. You’re the martyr you always wanted to be.”
Her head swam. She sank her fingers into the old down-filled cushion. He was so good at wounding her. So good at finding the jugular. “And you, Lon, do you enjoy being deliberately unkind?”
He watched her delicate features tighten, her mouth pinching, her voice dropping so her words were barely audible.
She looked so fragile sitting on the edge of the over-stuffed sofa, so unlike all the cool, casual women he’d learned to fill his life with.
Sophie wasn’t cool and casual. She was rare, and beautiful, almost otherworldly, and he’d once wanted her so badly that losing her had been a death.
Yes. He had been deliberately unkind. He’d meant to hurt her. Deep down he still wanted her to suffer for choosing Clive instead of him.
He’d lost his heart the day he walked Sophie down the aisle, literally handing her over to Clive.
He’d never said it aloud, couldn’t even dwell on the memory, but he’d hated her for asking him to walk her down the aisle. He’d hated filling in for her father who was too ill to participate in the wedding. He’d hated that she’d even try to turn him into family…a surrogate brother or parent.
He didn’t want to be her father.
He wanted to be her lover.
“No,” he answered grimly. “I don’t enjoy being unkind. I just am.”
CHAPTER TWO
LON shook his head regretfully. “It seems as if I’ve enormous control, Lady Wilkins, except when it comes to you.”
“And you wonder why Clive felt uncomfortable around you after we married?” She choked, rising from the sofa.
No, he didn’t wonder why Clive felt uncomfortable around him—he knew. But he couldn’t tell Sophie that, couldn’t tell her anything of Clive’s secret past. Clive had never told her who he was—or what he’d become—and although Lon knew, he’d vowed years ago to protect Sophie from the truth. Because the truth would crush her, just as it’d crushed him.
Clive had been one of them, one with them. He wasn’t supposed to turn into a stranger…
Emotions hot, memories tangled, Lon marched toward her. “If Clive and I grew apart, it wasn’t due to my civility—”
“Or lack of,” she interrupted fiercely, taking a step backward. She didn’t have room to move. The sofa was behind her. Lon in front of her. “You were everything to Clive. He adored you. You know he did. You were his very best friend in the world. So why would he pull away from you? What happened?”
“We grew up.”
“It can’t be that simple. You had been best friends for years. You did everything together. Same boarding school. Same university. Same friends. He even applied to the Royal Air Force when you did.”
Lon’s blue gaze glowed down at her. “Maybe it was too much togetherness. Maybe Clive would have done better making new friends, surrounding himself with people. Because I don’t think I was that good for Clive. I don’t think I made him feel good about himself.”
They were heading into uncharted territory here. She knew Lon had been angry with Clive for a long time now and she needed to understand, just as she needed to understand what happened to Clive in Brazil. “Why weren’t you good for Clive? How did you stop making him feel good about himself?”
He hesitated, as if unwilling to go where she wanted to go. “We…changed,” he said finally. “We grew apart.”
She couldn’t let this go. This was part of the mystery surrounding Clive, part of the mystery surrounding the demise of her marriage. “Clive didn’t change. You must have changed—”
“Clive changed, too. Clive could be very complicated.”
Clive, complicated? Sophie didn’t believe it for an instant. Clive was the least complicated person she’d ever known. “You’re not making sense. I know you, Lon, I know you can be direct, but you’re speaking ’round the subject right now. You’re not telling me anything that I don’t already know.”
“And what good would it do you, to tell you why Clive and I had a falling out? How will it help?” He reached for her, adjusted the cream knit collar on her sweater dress. “We were friends, the three of us, and I don’t want to hurt him. I don’t want to hurt you.” His fingers brushed the side of her neck.
She felt an arrow of pleasure pierce her neck and then shoot fire through her middle. Sophie balled her hands, trying to deny the coil of desire and pleasure.
Life wasn’t about desire, or pleasure. Life required a cool, calm head. Life required practicality.
And Lon was the least practical man she knew.
Sophie held her breath, trying to hang on to the anger, trying to keep from letting her feelings intensify. Remember who he really is, she silently reminded herself. Lon’s a traveling man. She was right to pick Clive. Lon never sticks around. He’s the ultimate bachelor—no ties, no roots, no children, no home.
During their boarding school days Lon was one of the students that never went home. Not on weekends. And not even for most school holidays.
She’d thought it was his mother’s choice for years, and it wasn’t until they’d matriculated that she learned it’d been Lon’s choice. Lon couldn’t bear to live with his mother and new stepfather.
“Do you ever see your mom anymore?” she asked, trying to ignore his hand that remained on her collar, his touch light, deft, even as she tried to ignore the old ache that had returned to her chest. He made her feel so much…
Too much.
The intensity scared her. Still.
“When I can,” he answered, his gaze holding hers, his blue eyes shadowed with secrets he never shared. His blue eyes had been shadowy like that as a teenager at Langley, and yet as he, Clive and Sophie left school, the shadows had cleared. But the darkness was back again. The hardness, too. “Mother and Boyd have returned to Scotland. They live just outside Edinburgh. I’ve promised Mother I’d join them for Christmas. I’ll probably return to London on Boxing Day.”
And on Boxing Day she’d be boarding a plane for Brazil. “Are they well?”
“Yes. They’re enjoying Boyd’s retirement. And you,” Lon said, tugging gently on her collar. “How are you? Are you happy?”
His deep, rough voice went all the way through her and she shivered inside, shivered with a longing that she couldn’t control. Lon still overpowered her in every way possible.
“Happy?” she whispered, knowing that even if she couldn’t love him the way he’d wanted her to, she couldn’t hate him, either. “My husband’s dead. I’ve lost my home. I depend on my mother-in-law’s generosity.” Her eyes met his. “What do you think?”
His thumb brushed her chin. “I think you need me.”
“You’re still unbelievably arrogant.”
“And you’re still deep in denial.”
The library doors opened abruptly. The Countess entered, extending a hand to Alonso. “Dinner, my dear, is served.”
During dinner, Countess Louisa was in fine form, regaling Lon with story after story.
The Countess was one of the worst storytellers alive, but Lon, bless him, listened attentively as Louisa described the Somerset Ladies Horticultural Association’s autumn plans in stunningly dry detail.
Sophie wondered how Lon could possibly keep a straight face. Ten years ago Lon would have never listened to Louisa’s dull stories.
But then, ten years ago Louisa wouldn’t have talked to Lon.
They’d all changed so much in the past ten years. No, make that the past five years. Losing Clive had changed everything for them.
Lon looked up and his gaze met hers. She could have sworn he knew what she was thinking, and he looked at her with so much warmth, and hunger, Sophie felt breathless with curiosity.
Would he ever kiss her again?
Would he—could he—make her feel what she’d once felt when she was eighteen and still so excited about life?
The Countess rattled her cup as she returned it to the saucer. “Have you had enough dessert, my dear?” Her question was addressed to Lon.
“Yes, Louisa. Thank you.”
“Then you’ll join me in the library,” Louisa stated, pushing away from the table even as Sophie rose and began stacking the dishes.
“Why don’t I stay and help Sophie clear the table?”
The Countess waved her hand. “Nonsense. Sophie’s fine.” Louisa sailed forward and took Lon’s arm as if he were the last man alive. “Aren’t you, Sophie?”
“I’m fine,” she agreed, not because she couldn’t use the help in the kitchen, but because she needed a few minutes alone to pull herself together.
Seeing Lon—talking to Lon—discussing the past, had thrown her into a tailspin. She was supposed to be concentrating on her trip to Brazil. Instead at the moment all she could think about was Lon, and the way it’d once been between them.
But wasn’t this how she’d always felt around him? Dazed. Nervous? Hopelessly excited?
“I’m fine,” she repeated more firmly, this time for her sake, not his. She wasn’t a teenager anymore. She’d become a woman. A wife. And now a widow. If she could handle all those life changes, she could certainly handle an evening with Alonso. “I’ll join you as soon as I’m done.”
Sophie was elbow deep in soap bubbles when a long arm covered in fine black cashmere stretched past her, and picked up a dish towel.
“What are you doing?” she asked, turning to get a glimpse of Lon.
He’d pushed up his sleeves and was applying the dish towel to one of the rinsed dinner plates. “Helping you finish.”
“The Countess won’t like it.”
“The Countess doesn’t know. She thinks I’m in the lavatory.” He grinned, and his smile was so boyish, so much like the Lon she remembered from their summer holiday, that Sophie’s heart tightened, too full of memories and pain.
“You haven’t really changed,” she said, shooting him a dark glance.
“No. And you wouldn’t want me to. Now hand me the next plate.” Again his arm reached past her and she felt a tingle of pleasure as he brushed her hip with his own.
“How long have you been staying with the Countess?” he asked.
Her whole body felt far too sensitive. “A little over a year now,” she answered hoarsely. “Ever since Humphrey House was closed.” Humphrey House had been the house Clive took her to as a bride. “I couldn’t manage the maintenance and repairs anymore.”
“What’s it like living with her?”
“Interesting.”
“But you two must be getting along to survive a year?”
“I haven’t had much choice though, have I?” And then she shrugged. “But things are fine. I’m fine. I’m lucky she’s opened her home to me.”
“But?”
“There’s no but. England’s not South America. It’ll never be South America.”
He reached for the last plate. “So you think about Colombia?”
She smiled. “All the time.” Her voice dropped, and she stared into the sudsy water for a long moment. “They were the best years of my life.”
That was telling, Lon thought. She’d been an outcast at Elmshurst. There were two other Americans at the elite girls boarding school, but they were both very wealthy, and very connected. Sophie was neither. “What do you remember when you think about Columbia?”
“Buenaventura.”
The school holiday at the Wilkins beach house. Clive had managed to convince his father to invite both Lon and Sophie that summer.
Dishes done, Sophie pulled the plug on the sink. “It was an amazing holiday.”
Lon’s chest felt tight. She sounded so wistful. So alone. Did she even know how lonely she was? “Come home with me for Christmas,” he said impulsively, thinking she’d be happier—and safer—with him. He needed to keep her away from Federico, needed to make sure she wouldn’t do anything foolish over the holidays. “My mother would be pleased to have you join us. It’d be a quiet Christmas—”
“I can’t leave Louisa here alone,” Sophie interrupted.
“She can come.”
“She won’t.”
“Then that’s her choice, but you shouldn’t let her decisions influence you.”
