Sleepless in Southampton by Chasity Bowlin

Chapter Twenty-Five

The carriage wheel disintegrated. One minute, Sophie was on Henry’s lap. He was kissing her and touching her in ways that made her head spin. And the next, they were both sprawled on the floor of the carriage as it listed to one side and the horses whinnied in protest.

“I’ll kill him. No. I won’t. But I will sack him this time,” Henry murmured.

“What are you muttering about?” Sophie asked as she pushed herself up from the carriage floor and dusted off her hands.

“My coachman who does not listen. Ever.”

Sophie watched as Henry forced open the door and leapt down from the coach. She could hear him shouting to the driver and then could hear the driver’s shouted return. It was harder to make out as he spoke with a heavy Scot’s burr. But it sounded as he if said something about it being the other wheel.

A moment later, Henry returned. “There’s an inn not far ahead. I’ll secure a room for us… I don’t want you alone there. I have no notion of how safe it is as I’ve never been to that inn before. It’s not a stop on the regular coaching route. Under the circumstances, I think it best if I simply say you are my wife. I know you dislike lying—”

“Under the circumstances, I do not think we have a choice,” Sophie replied. “I have no wish to be alone. I do not know that the doctor is in pursuit, but given what we know about him, I think it likely. It’s fine, Henry.”

“Right,” he said. He quickly gathered their things and then helped her down. “I’m going to send someone back to assist Burton with the carriage. The road is wide enough and we are far enough to the side that it should pose no threat to anyone.”

They walked in silence for a few moments, the bustling of the inn ahead becoming more apparent as they drew near.

“If we’re sharing—”

“I don’t want you to—”

They both stopped, as they’d been talking over one another. It was Henry who said. “It is imperative that I say this to you now, Sophie. I do not wish you to feel obligated to continue what we had begun in the carriage just because we will be sharing a room. I am content to sleep on the floor.”

Sophie looked away, biting her lip as she considered how best to proceed. “I was actually going to suggest that having a room, shared under the guise of being man and wife, presents an opportunity to go beyond what we were doing in the carriage. Does it not? Had that not been your primary objection? That in light of my innocence, that was not an appropriate locale for our activities?”

He stopped walking. He simply stood stock-still in the middle of the road and stared at her. “You confound me at every turn. I am trying, Sophie, against every baser urge I have, to be a gentleman. To do the honorable thing.”

Sophie laughed. “You don’t understand, do you? You have been honorable. You are honorable. Everything about you, even when you were lying about your name, was honorable. It’s not something you have to aspire to. It’s simply who you are. That is why I love you, and that is why it matters not to me if we have been wed prior to or after… well, after.”

“There’s a carriage approaching. It isn’t Dr. Blake as it’s coming from the wrong direction, but we should get out of the way,” Henry said. It was clear he was done with the discussion, but his decision remained a mystery.

Sophie sighed. “It was much easier when it was just the two of us locked inside that small space and pretending that the rest of the world didn’t matter, wasn’t it?”

“That it was,” he agreed.

“Sophie!”

They both looked up at the shout of her name. The approaching carriage was one she recognized. It belonged to Lord Highcliff and the woman shouting her name from the window was none other than Effie herself.

“Well that decision has been taken out of your hands, it seems,” Sophie suggested.

“Regrettably so,” Henry offered. “I was painfully close to being seduced by you, Miss Upchurch.”

Sophie grinned as Effie’s carriage rolled into the inn yard ahead of them.

*

It had beensheer luck that had allowed Effie to see Sophie in the distance. The moonlight had shone on the girl’s red-gold hair as their carriage had rounded a bend. And of course, sprawled across Highcliff’s lap, she’d had an excellent view through the window at that precise moment. She’d scrambled off his lap so quickly that he was still sputtering and had promptly hung her head out the window and shrieked like a fishwife.

“It’s Miss Upchurch,” she tossed over her shoulder. “We’ve found her.”

“So I gathered,” Highcliff said. Without any embarrassment or even a hint of shame, he proceeded to adjust himself behind the fall of his breeches.

Effie’s gaze was drawn immediately, following each movement and wondering precisely what would have happened had she not seen her charge. It wasn’t a great stretch of the imagination to think that her curiosity about the act itself and about the man before her would have both been satisfied. “I suppose it is for the best… before we did something regrettable.”

“I have regrets, Effie,” he said. “And not a damned one of them has to do with what we did not do in this carriage.”

Dry mouthed and with hands that shook ever so slightly, Effie straightened her clothing and tidied her hair. “And tomorrow? Will that change?”

He met her gaze steadily. “No, Effie. It will not change. If I were a better man—but I’m not. I’m not a better man. I cannot and will not be one. So I might as well have what I want and damn the consequences.”

She had no notion of what he meant by that, but she’d take it. Because as much as it pained her to admit it, she’d take any part of him she could have. Even if it was only temporary. “Then we are to be lovers.”

“Yes. But understand me, Effie. There will be no happy ending. We will be lovers, but we will never be more than that. I’ll have no wife… I’ll have no children. This cursed line will end with me. If that isn’t enough for you—”

“Stop trying to irritate me so I’ll let you off the hook,” Effie interrupted him. “I know where you stand on the matter. If and when that isn’t enough for me, I shall let you know.”

“Then let us go and discover what sort of catastrophes have befallen your Miss Upchurch,” Highcliff offered in companionable agreement. “The sooner her issues are addressed, the sooner we can resume our earlier activities.”