No, not apprehension. Doom.
It was May, which meant that the season was in full swing. Which meant that Araminta was in residence.
Which meant that Sophie’s arrival was a bad, bad idea.
“Very bad,” she muttered.
Benedict looked up. “Did you say something?”
She crossed her arms mutinously. “Just that you’re a very bad man.”
He chuckled. She’d known he would chuckle, and it still irritated her.
He pulled the curtain away from the window and looked out. “We’re nearly there,” he said.
He’d said that he was taking her directly to his mother’s residence. Sophie remembered the grand house in Grosvenor Square as if she’d been there the night before. The ballroom was huge, with hundreds of sconces on the walls, each adorned by a perfect beeswax candle. The smaller rooms had been decorated in the Adam style, with exquisitely scalloped ceilings and pale, pastel walls.
It had been Sophie’s dream house, quite literally. In all her dreams of Benedict and their fictional future together, she’d always seen herself in that house. It was silly, she knew, since he was a second son and thus not in line to inherit the property, but still, it was the most beautiful home she’d ever beheld, and dreams weren’t meant to be about reality, anyway. If Sophie had wanted to dream her way right into Kensington Palace, that was her prerogative.
Of course, she thought with a wry smile, she wasn’t likely ever to see the interior of Kensington Palace.
“What are you smiling about?” Benedict demanded.
She didn’t bother to glance up as she replied, “I’m plotting your demise.”
He grinned—not that she was looking at him, but it was one of those smiles she could hear in the way he breathed.
She hated that she was that sensitive to his every nuance. Especially since she had a sneaking suspicion that he was the same way about her.
“At least it sounds entertaining,” he said.
“What does?” she asked, finally moving her eyes from the lower hem of the curtain, which she’d been staring at for what seemed like hours.
“My demise,” he said, his smile crooked and amused. “If you’re going to kill me, you might as well enjoy yourself while you’re at it, because Lord knows, I won’t.”
Her jaw dropped a good inch. “You’re mad,” she said.
“Probably.” He shrugged rather casually before settling back in his seat and propping his feet up on the bench across from him. “I’ve all but kidnapped you, after all. I should think that would qualify as the maddest thing I’ve ever done.”
“You could let me go now,” she said, even though she knew he never would.
“Here in London? Where you could be attacked by footpads at any moment? That would be most irresponsible of me, don’t you think?”
“It hardly compares to abducting me against my will!”
“I didn’t abduct you,” he said, idly examining his fingernails. “I blackmailed you. There’s a world of difference.”
Sophie was saved from having to reply by the jolt of the carriage as it ground to a halt.
Benedict flipped back the curtains one last time, then let them fall into place. “Ah. Here we are.”
Sophie waited while he disembarked, then moved to the doorway. She briefly considered ignoring his outstretched hand and jumping down herself, but the carriage was quite high off the ground, and she really didn’t wish to make a fool of herself by tripping and landing in the gutter.
It would be nice to insult him, but not at the cost of a sprained ankle.
With a sigh, she took his hand.
“Very smart of you,” Benedict murmured.
Sophie looked at him sharply. How did he know what she’d been thinking?
“I almost always know what you’re thinking,” he said.
She tripped.
“Whoa!” he called out, catching her expertly before she landed in the gutter.
He held her just a moment longer than was necessary before depositing her on the pavement. Sophie would have said something, except that her teeth were ground together far too tightly for words.
“Doesn’t the irony just kill you?” Benedict asked, smiling wickedly.
She pried open her jaw. “No, but it may very well kill you.”
He laughed, the blasted man. “Come along,” he said. “I’ll introduce you to my mother. I’m sure she’ll find some position or another for you.”
“She may not have any openings,” Sophie pointed out. He shrugged.
“She loves me. She’ll make an opening.”
Sophie held her ground, refusing to take a single step alongside him until she’d made her point. “I’m not going to be your mistress.”
His expression was remarkably bland as he murmured, “Yes, you’ve said as much.”
“No, I mean, your plan isn’t going to work.”
He was all innocence. “I have a plan?”
“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “You’re going to try to wear me down in hopes that eventually I’ll give in.”
“I would never dream of it.”
“I’m sure you dream of quite a bit more,” she muttered.
He must have heard her, because he chuckled. Sophie crossed her arms mutinously, not caring that she looked most undignified in such a position, standing right there on the pavement in full view of the world. No one would pay her half a mind, anyway, dressed as she was in the coarse woolens of a servant. She supposed she ought to adopt a brighter outlook and approach her new position with a more optimistic attitude, but drat it all, she wanted to be sullen just then.
Frankly, she thought she’d earned it. If anyone had a right to be sullen and disgruntled, it was she.
“We could stand here on the pavement all day,” Benedict said, his voice lightly laced with sarcasm.
She started to shoot him an angry glare, but that was when she noticed where they were standing. They weren’t in Grosvenor Square. Sophie wasn’t even certain where they were. Mayfair, to be sure, but the house before them definitely wasn’t the house at which she’d attended the masquerade.
“Er, is this Bridgerton House?” she asked.
He quirked a brow. “How did you know my home is called Bridgerton House?”
“You’ve mentioned it.” Which was, thankfully, true. He’d talked about both Bridgerton House, and the Bridgertons’ country residence, Aubrey Hall, several times during their conversations.
“Oh.” He seemed to accept that. “Well, no, actually, it’s not. My mother moved out of Bridgerton House nearly two years ago. She hosted one last ball—it was a masquerade, actually—and then turned the residence over to my brother and his wife. She’d always said she would leave just as soon as he married and started a family of his own. I believe his first child was born a mere month after she left.”
“Was it a boy or a girl?” she asked, even though she knew the answer. Lady Whistledown always reported such things.
“A boy. Edmund. They had another son, Miles, earlier this year.”
“How nice for them,” Sophie murmured, even though it felt like her heart were strangling. She wasn’t likely to have children of her own, and that was one of the saddest realizations she’d ever reached. Children required a husband, and marriage seemed a pipe dream. She hadn’t been raised to be a servant, and thus she had very little in common with most of the men she met in her daily life. Not that the other servants weren’t good and honorable people, but it was difficult to imagine sharing her life with someone who, for example, couldn’t read.
Sophie didn’t need to marry someone of particularly high birth, but even the middle class was out of her reach. No self-respecting man in trade would marry a housemaid.
Benedict motioned for her to follow him, and she did, until they reached the front steps.
Sophie shook her head. “I’ll use the side entrance.”
His lips thinned. “You’ll use the front entrance.”
?
??I’ll use the side entrance,” she said firmly. “No woman of breeding will hire a maid who enters through the front.”
“You’re with me,” he ground out. “You’ll use the front entrance.”
A bubble of mirth escaped her lips. “Benedict, just yesterday you wanted me to become your mistress. Would you dare bring your mistress to meet your mother through the front door?”
She’d confounded him with that. Sophie grinned as she watched his face twist with frustration.
She felt better than she had in days.
“Would you,” she continued, mostly just to torture him further, “bring your mistress to meet her at all?”
“You’re not my mistress,” he bit off.
“Indeed.”
His chin jutted out, and his eyes bored into hers with barely leashed fury. “You’re a bloody little housemaid,” he said, his voice low, “because you’ve insisted upon being a housemaid. And as a housemaid, you are, if somewhat low on the social scale, still utterly respectable. Certainly respectable enough for my mother.”
Sophie’s smile faltered. She might have pushed him too far.
“Good,” Benedict grunted, once it was clear that she was not going to argue the point any further. “Come with me.”
Sophie followed him up the steps. This might actually work to her advantage. Benedict’s mother surely would not hire a maid who had the effrontery to use the front door. And since she had steadfastly refused to be Benedict’s mistress, he would have to accept defeat and allow her to return to the country.
Benedict pushed open the front door, holding it until Sophie entered before him. The butler arrived within seconds.
“Wickham,” Benedict said, “kindly inform my mother that I am here.”