‘You seduced him.’
‘It wasn’t very difficult.’
‘I don’t suppose it was. But you aren’t together any longer.’
‘We were happy for a while, for a year or more, but in the end he wanted to marry me. Or thought he did. He was from a good family, just playing at being a romantic starving artist, and he was getting tired of the cheap lodgings and the cheap wine and living like a pauper. He wanted to be respectable. He was very talented, and people were starting to buy his pictures, to pay more for them. If he knows your father has one, he’ll be delighted. He’s very ambitious.
‘He had some idea, because I’d carelessly let something slip, that I am – I was – of noble birth, and he thought we could be respectable together. He liked the idea that I was a French aristocrat’s daughter, and so he was prepared to be very generous and forget I’d been his mistress, and that I’d chosen him as my first lover. But I thought actually he never would quite forget it. And I didn’t want to be forgiven. Why should there be one rule for him and another for me? He wasn’t a cruel person, and I don’t regret what I did. We enjoyed each other. But I’d lost sight of my purpose for a while, and as we started to argue and grow apart I remembered it again.’
‘And here you are.’ He might have said, in danger of losing sight of your purpose again.
‘And here I am.’ They were still lying very close, his arms were still about her, and she was glad she’d told him. There was no future in this, she knew that as well as he did, no more than there had been with Bart, but it was so tempting, here in Rafe’s embrace, to relax into the novelty of having someone she could really talk to, even setting aside the other temptations that he offered. She’d never shared half as much with her artist – her body, certainly, but not the details of her past or her deepest thoughts.
‘Just one lover?’
‘One and a half, counting you.’
‘I’d like to be more than a half. You must know that.’ He wasn’t caressing her, except with his voice. He scarcely needed to.
‘I would too, but… I’ve always been careful – you know women have to be. I can’t stop now. I dare not.’
‘So have I. I’ve had an example of appalling irresponsibility set in front of me my whole life, Sophie. Wilfully destructive behaviour, a total lack of concern for others’ safety and one’s own. And my grandfather was no saint either; it appears to be a family tradition. I was always going to choose one extreme or the other – to become exactly the same and spread chaos all around me, or to be very different. You know that I have made love to just one woman in my life. Perhaps I needed to prove to myself that a Wyverne could be faithful – well, I was. We were together for many years and I would have married her if she hadn’t already been tied to another. But we made sure we did not bring a child into the world that I could never give my name to.’
If one was honest, one couldn’t complain when receiving honesty in return. ‘And is she still…?’
‘We parted a year or so ago. Her husband came back into her life unexpectedly after many years of separation, and she felt she needed to accede to his wish to live together again. He spun her some story that she chose to believe. I don’t think she’d ever fully recovered from his desertion of her – I was always second choice. And she did desperately want a child. I had begun to think, even before her husband reappeared, that she gave herself to me because when he left her she didn’t really care what happened to her. Once such a thought has occurred to you, it makes it rather difficult to continue together with any self-respect – or it did for me. Perhaps that was really why she left me, in the end.’
Sophie had a strong desire to ask him if he’d loved her, whoever she was, and if his heart was broken still, but wasnot sure if she truly wanted to know the answer. And what good did it do to talk of love? They shouldn’t. It was a foolish indulgence she could not afford. Love was for girls like Clemence de Montfaucon, girls who deserved the best of everything, not for Sophie Delavallois. She’d never spoken of love with Bart, and now she was glad she hadn’t. And she wouldn’t now. She would not put Rafe under the awkward obligation of pointing out to her that he was a viscount and she was a thief.
‘We are both a little bruised, are we not?’ she said. She felt as though this room, though it was only a temporary and precarious refuge, was a precious haven, a tiny bubble where the world didn’t matter and couldn’t intrude. But it wasn’t true. She wouldn’t let the illusory sense of safety seduce her. ‘I’m very tempted to throw caution to the winds. But I won’t. I don’t want to risk bringing a child into the world either.’
‘Never, or just because of our particular circumstances?’
What a question to ask her. She looked up at him, desperate to make him understand the nature of her life, so very alien to all he knew. ‘Rafe, I’m a thief. You know I am. More than that, I’ve stabbed people and told myself they deserved it. I’d do it again if I had to. I’m not an assassin – it’s not quite as bad as that – but there have been occasions when I’ve been cornered by men much bigger and stronger than me, and the only way out has been by means of the blade you know I carry. And I’ve used it.’
‘Were any of these people officers of the law?’ The question showed the true size of the gulf between them, she thought.
‘No, but if they had been, I can’t swear to you I’d have done anything different, if the choice was escape or be taken and hanged. And Rafe, I live – in so far as I live anywhere – in a room above a sordid tavern. How could I even contemplate making a child? Should I get Fancy Fred, Nate’s tapster, to mind the baby for me while I go out picking pockets? Or maybe one of the whores – One-Eyed Sally, or Daisy the Dasher? You spokeof appalling irresponsibility earlier – well, I won’t live like that either, or inflict it on a helpless child. I won’t. There are too many suffering innocents in the world already.’
He didn’t try to argue with her. ‘Eight years ago,’ he said a little sadly, ‘Lord Drake might have wooed Mademoiselle de Montfaucon. One dance could have led to more. It would have been an eminently suitable match in anyone’s estimation.’
‘You know it’s far too late for that.’
‘It may be. But we can still take comfort from each other. I have been taking comfort, lying here, and I think you have too. I’d never do anything you didn’t want, Sophie. If you say I mustn’t touch you, I won’t, however much I desire you. Need you.’
‘What do you want?’ She felt weak for asking, but she couldn’t help herself. His honesty pierced her to her core.
‘I want everything. I want things I can’t have. But just now I’d settle for tasting you again.’
She hesitated for a moment, as if she might refuse him, but she was fooling herself, she knew. ‘Yes,’ she whispered.
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m not sure of anything. But I do want that too. I’m not strong enough to resist completely.’ She’d known when she lay down in his arms that sooner or later passion would flare between them once again.
‘May I undress you?’
She could not help but laugh. ‘Such a typical man – you say you’ll settle for one thing, but then immediately ask for more.’
