Midnight Pleasures

  But he pulled on his clothes and left the room rather than face the answer to that “because.” Why would he, who had never needed anything from anyone, need to hear words of love from a woman?

  Patrick ate breakfast alone in the kitchen. Floret was holding court, surrounded by a bemused group of Welsh women who likely couldn’t understand a word he said but looked fascinated by one of Floret’s greatest accomplishments—breaking an egg with one hand.

  The sky, visible behind a stained oilcloth that intermittently blew open over the kitchen window, was clear again. The storm had blown over. Patrick was anxious to get back to the Lark and see if she had suffered any damage.

  He found Sophie in the sickroom. She was talking to Hankford’s mother, over on the other side of the room. Patrick noticed immediately that Henri was still glued to her side.

  “Young Henry has taken quite a shine to your wife,” said a voice at Patrick’s elbow. Hankford stood there, looking in the same direction. “He’s been talking to her nineteen to the dozen, about his mum and such.”

  Patrick looked down at the cherubic young man beside him. “What will you do with Henri and the other boys when they are well?”

  Hankford looked a bit anxious. “I don’t rightly know. A few of ‘em are good enough to leave now, but I don’t know where to send ‘em. There’s precious few Frenchies in these parts, and they’ll stand out, that’s for sure and certain. And they can’t go back, or they’ll just become cannon fodder again.”

  Patrick sighed. “Send them to London,” he said.

  Hankford looked at him cautiously. “What do ye mean, sir?”

  “Send them to London and we’ll find them work somewhere. London is full of Frenchmen and they won’t be conspicuous.”

  Blue eyes smiled up at Patrick as if he had suddenly turned into a gold statue. “It’s right kind of you, sir, right kind indeed. Do you know, your lady suggested the same thing, but I told her no, because you might not agree. As the Good Book says, a man’s the head of the household. That’s right kind of you.”

  Patrick strolled across the large room, conscious of something odd. Hadn’t John said that his mother spoke no English? And little French? So what language were she and Sophie speaking? But by the time he reached them, Mrs. Hankford had returned to her patient, and Sophie turned to him, smiling.

  “Good morning, Patrick. I have been telling Henri that we would be very pleased if he could make us a visit—”

  But Henri broke in. “Sir, I told her that you won’t want me to make a visit, as if I were a true personage. I thought perhaps you might give me a position in your stables.”

  Patrick glanced down at Henri. His little face had fallen into anxious lines, and his body was hunched as if to ward off disappointment. But his gray eyes were fiercely proud.

  “I was looking forward to making your acquaintance,” Patrick said gravely. “As a guest, not a stableboy.”

  Henri shook his head. “I’m not a cas de charité. I must earn money to keep myself.”

  “Who was your father, Henri?”

  Henri stood straighter. “That is unimportant, because he died when I was very young, and I was brought up by Monsieur Paire, who was a fisherman.” Henri had clearly absorbed Republican principles as he grew.

  “Who taught you to make a bow?” Sophie asked. “And to speak English?”

  “Before, I had an English nanny,” Henri said. “But she and Maman died too.” He stopped there.

  Henri was a gentleman’s son, no question about it, Patrick thought. Perhaps they could locate some of his relatives, if any survived.

  “Do you know your father’s name, Henri?” Patrick asked gently, but there was an implicit command there too.

  “Monsieur Leigh Latour,” Henri said reluctantly. And then, after Patrick met his eyes, he added, “the Count of Savoyard.”

  Sophie knelt down and took Henri’s hands. “I would like you to come to London as my guest,” she said. “I become lonely sometimes, and you would be very good company.”

  Patrick suppressed a smile with difficulty. Sophie—lonely?

  Henri glanced at her briefly from under a thick fringe of dark lashes, then stared back at the floor. “I think … I don’t belong in a fine house,” he said. His voice was perilously close to tears. “My parents cannot return the honor.”

  “You would be doing me a great favor,” Patrick said. “I am away from the house a great deal of the time and, as my wife has explained, she grows lonely. You could be her—her aide-de-camp when I am gone.”

  Henri chewed on his lip.

  “You cannot return to France,” Sophie pointed out, “and you cannot stay here in this monastery forever.”

  The boy still looked unconvinced, so Patrick intervened. “Your father would have wished it,” he stated firmly.

  “I don’t remember my father,” Henri replied.

  Damme, but the boy was as obstinate as a mule! “Then you will have to accept that I am right,” Patrick announced, in the most stiff-rumped tone he could summon. “Your father would want you to live in a gentleman’s house, not in a Welsh monastery, and certainly not in the stables.”

  Sophie stood up and shook out her skirts. “There, that’s settled,” she said briskly. “Henri, will you find Simone and Floret and inform them that we are ready to return to the Lark?”

  As Henri trotted off to the kitchens, John Hankford stepped forward. He had been listening silently. “I was that sorry when your servant said you had to take shelter here,” he said. “I thought as Lunnonfolk would certainly have black hearts. But I’m happy to say, and say I will, that it’s not the case. All Lunnonfolk do na’ have black hearts.”

  Sophie began to respond, but John broke in. “An’ another thing … I never thought you’d be so well to speak, either, ma’am. Not in our tongue. I’m mov’d, that’s what I am, mov’d. And so I’ll tell m’friends at the pub tonight. Lunnoners who speak Welsh! It’s enough to make one believe that the English aren’t all bad.”

  Sophie cast Patrick a nervous glance. He was clearly lost by the turn in the conversation.

  Oh well. The jig was up, so why not be polite? Ignoring Patrick, she smoothly switched into rolling Welsh and said a proper good-bye to John’s mother. Then she turned to her husband, giving him a sweet smile.

  “Shall we return to the Lark?” Her heart was pounding. Was Patrick angry? He didn’t look angry. If anything he looked mildly bemused.

  The minute they were out in the corridor, Patrick said, “Welsh? Welsh? Is your mother Welsh-French, if there is such a combination?”

  “Oh no,” Sophie replied. “It was the laundry woman who was Welsh.”

  “The laundry woman!” Her husband was clearly astounded. “What contact had you with the laundry or the person who washed it?”

  “Her name was Mary. I used to spend a good deal of time with the maids,” Sophie explained, “because my governesses kept leaving—or being dismissed. Finally, Mary taught me Welsh.”

  Patrick looked at her speculatively. “What were you doing to drive off governesses, hiding mice in their beds?”

  Sophie choked back a giggle. “No! No, I was a most biddable child. It was my father, actually,” she added uncomfortably.

  “Oh.” Patrick handed Sophie her muff. Henri—who was obviously taking his role as aide-de-camp very seriously—herded Simone and Floret down the winding cliff steps before them. The sun had risen on a clear, cold-hearted day. Far above, two hawks swooped and circled around the tumbling chimneys of the monastery.

  “Look,” Sophie cried, trying to change the subject. “My nanny used to say that hawks swept the cobwebs from the sky.”

  “Your nanny,” Patrick repeated. “Where was your nanny while you were consorting with the laundry woman?”

  “She was married to Mary’s brother,” Sophie explained. “That’s how Mary found a position in our house. Normally my father didn’t allow any servants in the house who weren’t French.”

 
Patrick was starting to get a very odd feeling about Sophie’s childhood. “So all the servants were French, including the governesses—whom your father freely wooed?”

  “ ‘Wooed’ isn’t precisely the word,” Sophie said. “I wouldn’t call it wooing, because he always pulled them into his arms just when Mama was going to pass by. He was quite obvious about it. Even as a child I realized that his behavior had more to do with vexing Mama than with the governesses themselves.”

  “Well, I’m sure they disliked that,” Patrick observed.

  “Yes,” Sophie replied. “Perhaps they would have objected less had he expressed genuine admiration. However, I think even my father would have had trouble wooing some of my governesses. Mademoiselle Derrida, for example, had a bosom like the prow of a ship. She stayed with us for quite a long time.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “Oh, Papa was discarded by his latest amour, which left him no way to provoke my mother in the ballroom. So he fell back on the household. But by this point Mama had replaced all the household servants with rather elderly and extremely unattractive women, so Papa was forced to resort to Mademoiselle Derrida.”

  Fascinated and revulsed, Patrick prompted, “What did he do?”

  “Well, as I recall, he embraced Mademoiselle fervently in the Blue Parlor.”

  “And?”

  “She struck him on the head with a brandy decanter.”

  Patrick winced involuntarily.

  “It wasn’t really her fault; it was the first thing that came to hand. But it was also the first time that my father rather than my mother dismissed a governess. He had a bump over his eye for days. I remember being quite happy because he stayed home every night for a week. After Mademoiselle Derrida left, I was sent to Cheltham Ladies’ School. I think my mother despaired of finding another suitable governess.”

  Patrick gave Sophie a rather grim smile. No wonder she thought he’d be out buying negligees for other women the moment she turned her back. Life with the marquis sounded like Bedlam.

  By this point they had reached the pier and the waiting skiff. Even Simone climbed the rope ladder back up to the Lark without complaint, eager to get out of the wind that was blowing the last of the storm clouds out to sea.

  Patrick saw his wife off to her bedroom, placed Henri under the watchful eye of a dependable crew member, then went to find Captain Hibbert. The storm had caused no apparent damage to the Lark, and he preferred to round the point to Milford Haven without delay.

  For some reason he didn’t feel eager to bound down to the cabin and join Sophie, the way he usually did. In fact, he sent a message downstairs informing his wife that he would eat above, rather than join her for dinner, as was their habit.

  It was only when he was standing at the wheel, rounding the point, that Patrick pinned down the source of his dissatisfaction. Damme it, would his wife ever fall in love with him when she was convinced that all men followed the pattern of her father? Sophie seemed to accept without question that he, Patrick, was a rake of the same cut. Patrick’s heart sank. Who but a rake would seduce a maiden in her own bedroom? Who but a rake of the worst caliber would steal his school friend’s betrothed?

  Down in the cabin, Sophie was also wrestling with despair. Obviously, her mother was correct about male dislike of bluestockings. Patrick had never stayed above for a whole day before. He was disgusted with her. And it seemed that he was more top-lofty than she had thought—the very idea of her spending time with the laundry woman seemed to rattle him, let alone the question of her knowledge of Welsh.

  Without a second thought, Sophie opened the porthole and tossed out her precious Turkish grammar. Patrick must never, never learn that she spoke seven languages.

  By the time shadows began to steal across the polished wood floor of the master cabin, Sophie was utterly miserable. The worst thing was that she had secretly wanted Patrick to know about her fluency. If the truth be known, she had relished showing off her Welsh in front of him. Inside I was proud, Sophie thought. Well, pride goeth before a fall.

  Ruthlessly she tamped down the seeds of disappointment. Patrick was her husband. The fact that he was a man just like any other was not significant. One lesson she could take from her parents’ situation was that disappointment in one’s spouse could not be allowed to fester.

  One has to accept, and then forget, Sophie told herself. The lesson applies to little facts and large ones, to languages and mistresses.

  Patrick finally appeared at the cabin door at supper time, feeling faintly ashamed of himself. The Lark was sweetly rocking at its moorings, ready for him to inspect a messy pile of half-built fortifications the next morning. But Sophie hadn’t ventured from the cabin all day.

  He had steered the ship, admired Henri’s new skill at tying knots, reviewed the captain’s log, and looked again and again at the staircase leading to the master cabin, hoping that Sophie would appear. But she hadn’t. And he’d missed her.

  None of the crewmen twitched an eyebrow when the master finally gave up and dashed down the stairs to the main cabin. They had become inured to such goings-on, especially after Captain Hibbert warned them to turn a blind eye to any irregular activity or it would be the worse for them.

  But Sophie wasn’t waiting for him. She was tucked into their marriage bed, fast asleep. With some surprise, Patrick saw traces of tears on her face. Somehow he’d thought she would simply appear if she wished to come above board. Now he really felt ashamed. Why hadn’t he fetched her?

  Sophie woke up as Patrick stroked her hair.

  “What’s this about?” Patrick’s finger trailed over her cheeks, his voice slightly rough.

  Sophie smiled. “I had a blue afternoon, that’s all. You know, it’s a woman’s privilege to cry.”

  Patrick brushed her lips with his. “Were you crying because I didn’t issue a formal invitation to join me on the deck for backgammon?”

  “No,” Sophie said.

  “I missed you.” His warm breath sent shivers down Sophie’s spine. “I kept hoping you would appear, O wife of many languages.”

  Sophie looked at Patrick intently, but his dark eyes gave nothing away.

  “Do you dislike it that I speak Welsh?”

  “Lord, why on earth would I dislike it?”

  His voice sounds genuinely surprised, Sophie thought.

  “I was shocked,” Patrick said, “not so much by your Welsh—that was a delightful surprise—but by what you said about your childhood. It cannot have been easy, growing up with your parents.”

  Sophie didn’t see any point in discussing it further. “What about your parents? Did they argue?”

  “I have no idea,” Patrick replied, lying down on the bed beside her, propped up on one elbow. “I saw my father only on formal occasions. They must have dealt tolerably well together. I never heard anything to the contrary.” He didn’t need to add that Sophie’s parents’ incompatibility was known far and wide among the ton.

  “What was your mother like?” Sophie asked, her eyes curious.

  Patrick bent forward and traced a finger across her cheekbone. “She was rather like you,” he said. “Small and delicate. I remember our nanny scolding because whenever mother came into the nursery, Alex and I would climb up on her lap and wrinkle her clothing. She was always very elegant, but she never minded it when we crushed her dresses. She used to wear hoops, I remember that. And she smelled like bluebells.”

  “How old were you when she died?” Sophie asked.

  Patrick’s hand dropped from his wife’s face. “We were seven. She died giving birth to a boy who did not live either.”

  Sophie picked up Patrick’s hand and cradled it against her cheek, wriggling over a trifle so that her body fit warmly against his.

  “I’m sorry, Patrick. I’m so sorry.”

  Patrick turned his head in surprise. He had been staring at the wall, thinking back to those days. “It was a long time ago,” he said, smiling down at her. One could become add
icted to a wife who snuggled under one’s chest like a chick going to nest, he thought.

  “So, have you any other grand surprises for me, wife? Perhaps you speak Norwegian? Swedish?”

  There was a heartbeat’s worth of silence in the cabin.

  “No, oh no,” Sophie assured him, shaking her head vehemently. “No more surprises, Patrick.”

  He rolled over on his back, pulling her across his chest. “It’s splendid to have such a knowledgeable wife,” he said dreamily. “Tomorrow we’ll dock the boat for a week or so. We will go to an inn and you can order all the food and argue with the innkeeper.”

  Sophie’s cheek was resting against Patrick’s linen shirt. “Did you miss your mother dreadfully when she was gone?” She was suspiciously close to tears again.

  “Oh yes,” Patrick said matter-of-factly. “I was rather a mama’s boy, I think. Alex used to be summoned to sessions with my father, since he was the heir, and then I would have Mother all to myself. It was supposed to be a consolation, since I wasn’t the heir, but in fact Alex would have given anything to be able to stay with Mother, and we both knew it.”

  A tear rolled down Sophie’s cheek and disappeared into the creamy whiteness of Patrick’s shirt. She couldn’t bear thinking of a small Patrick missing his mother. She couldn’t bear it.

  “Did you cry?” Her voice was suspiciously high, but Patrick didn’t notice. He was thrown back to the nightmarish week of his mother’s death.

  “Cry? I cried and cried. Unfortunately, I had misbehaved the day before she died. I told some fibs, actually, and she had, quite rightly, reprimanded me. But no one had any idea that the birth would be perilous since Mother had had no trouble with Alex and me. I waited for her that night. She always came to kiss us good night, and I knew she wouldn’t be angry with me anymore. But she never came.”

  More of Sophie’s tears soaked into Patrick’s shirt. “Oh Patrick!” Her voice cracked, but Patrick was still deep in memories he had almost forgotten.