“I’d tell you something,” she returned.
“But not the truth.”
She shook her head. “This isn’t a night for truth.”
“My favorite kind of night,” Colin said in a jaunty voice.
“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” Benedict asked.
Colin shook his head. “I’m sure Mother would prefer that I be in the ballroom, but it’s not exactly a requirement.”
“I require it,” Benedict returned.
Sophie felt a giggle bubbling in her throat.
“Very well,” Colin sighed. “I shall take myself off.”
“Excellent,” Benedict said.
“All alone, to face the ravenous wolves . . .”
“Wolves?” Sophie queried.
“Eligible young ladies,” Colin clarified. “A pack of ravenous wolves, the lot of them. Present company excluded, of course.”
Sophie thought it best not to point out that she was not an “eligible young lady” at all.
“My mother—” Colin began.
Benedict groaned.
“—would like nothing better than to see my dear elder brother married off.” He paused and pondered his words. “Except, perhaps, to see me married off.”
“If only to get you out of the house,” Benedict said dryly.
This time Sophie did giggle.
“But then again, he’s considerably more ancient,” Colin continued, “so perhaps we should send him to the gallows—er, altar first.”
“Do you have a point?” Benedict growled.
“None whatsoever,” Colin admitted. “But then again, I rarely do.”
Benedict turned to Sophie. “He speaks the truth.”
“So then,” Colin said to Sophie with a grand flourish of his arm, “will you take pity on my poor, long-suffering mother and chase my dear brother up the aisle?”
“Well, he hasn’t asked,” Sophie said, trying to join the humor of the moment.
“How much have you had to drink?” Benedict grumbled.
“Me?” Sophie queried.
“Him.”
“Nothing at all,” Colin said jovially, “but I’m thinking quite seriously of remedying that. In fact, it might be the only thing that will make this eve bearable.”
“If the procurement of drink removes you from my presence,” Benedict said, “then it will certainly be the only thing that will make my night bearable as well.”
Colin grinned, gave a jaunty salute, and was gone.
“It’s nice to see two siblings who love each other so well,” Sophie murmured.
Benedict, who had been staring somewhat menacingly at the doorway through which his brother had just disappeared, snapped his attention back to her. “You call that love?”
Sophie thought of Rosamund and Posy, who were forever sniping at each other, and not in jest. “I do,” she said firmly. “It’s obvious you would lay your life down for him. And vice versa.”
“I suppose you’re right.” Benedict let out a beleaguered sigh, then ruined the effect by smiling. “Much as it pains me to admit it.” He leaned against the wall, crossing his arms and looking terribly sophisticated and urbane. “So tell me,” he said, “have you any siblings?”
Sophie pondered that question for a moment, then gave a decisive, “No.”
One of his brows rose into a curiously arrogant arch. He cocked his head very slightly to the side as he said, “I find myself rather curious as to why it took you so long to determine the answer to that question. One would think the answer would be an easy one to reach.”
Sophie looked away for a moment, not wanting him to see the pain that she knew must show in her eyes. She had always wanted a family. In fact, there was nothing in life she had ever wanted more. Her father had never recognized her as his daughter, even in private, and her mother had died at her birth. Araminta treated her like the plague, and Rosamund and Posy had certainly never been sisters to her. Posy had occasionally been a friend, but even she spent most of the day asking Sophie to mend her dress, or style her hair, or polish her shoes . . .
And in all truth, even though Posy asked rather than ordered, as her sister and mother did, Sophie didn’t exactly have the option of saying no.
“I am an only child,” Sophie finally said.
“And that is all you’re going to say on the subject,” Benedict murmured.
“And that is all I’m going to say on the subject,” she agreed.
“Very well.” He smiled, a lazy masculine sort of smile. “What, then, am I permitted to ask you?”
“Nothing, really.”
“Nothing at all?”
“I suppose I might be induced to tell you that my favorite color is green, but beyond that I shall leave you with no clues to my identity.”
“Why so many secrets?”
“If I answered that,” Sophie said with an enigmatic smile, truly warming to her role as a mysterious stranger, “then that would be the end of my secrets, wouldn’t it?”
He leaned forward ever so slightly. “You could always develop new secrets.”
Sophie backed up a step. His gaze had grown hot, and she had heard enough talk in the servants’ quarters to know what that meant. Thrilling as that was, she was not quite as daring as she pretended to be. “This entire night,” she said, “is secret enough.”
“Then ask me a question,” he said. “I have no secrets.”
Her eyes widened. “None? Truly? Doesn’t everyone have secrets?”
“Not I. My life is hopelessly banal.”
“That I find difficult to believe.”
“It’s true,” he said with a shrug. “I’ve never seduced an innocent, or even a married lady, I have no gambling debts, and my parents were completely faithful to one another.”
Meaning he wasn’t a bastard. Somehow the thought brought an ache to Sophie’s throat. Not, of course, because he was legitimate, but rather because she knew he would never pursue her—at least not in an honorable fashion—if he knew that she wasn’t.
“You haven’t asked me a question,” he reminded her.
Sophie blinked in surprise. She hadn’t thought he’d been serious. “A-all right,” she half stammered, caught off guard. “What, then, is your favorite color?”
He grinned. “You’re going to waste your question on that?”
“I only get one question?”
“More than fair, considering you’re granting me none.” Benedict leaned forward, his dark eyes glinting. “And the answer is blue.”
“Why?”
“Why?” he echoed.
“Yes, why? Is it because of the ocean? Or the sky? Or perhaps just because you like it?”
Benedict eyed her curiously. It seemed such an odd question—why his favorite color was blue. Everyone else would have taken blue for an answer and left it at that. But this woman—whose name he still didn’t even know—went deeper, beyond the whats and into the whys.
“Are you a painter?” he queried.
She shook her head. “Just curious.”
“Why is your favorite color green?”
She sighed, and her eyes grew nostalgic. “The grass, I suppose, and maybe the leaves. But mostly the grass. The way it feels when one runs barefoot in the summer. The smell of it after the gardeners have gone through with their scythes and trimmed it even.”
“What does the feel and smell of grass have to do with the color?”
“Nothing, I suppose. And maybe everything. I used to live in the country, you see . . .” She caught herself. She hadn’t meant to tell him even that much, but there didn’t seem to be harm in his knowing such an innocent fact.
“And you were happier there?” he asked quietly.
She nodded, a faint rush of awareness shivering across her skin. Lady Whistledown must never have had a conversation with Benedict Bridgerton beyond the superficial, because she’d never written that he was quite the most perceptive man in London. When he looked into her eyes, Sophie had the oddest sense that he could see straight into her soul.