Sophie was enjoying the ball immensely. Katharine had introduced her to several people she didn’t know and her father and grandmother were mingling happily. She noticed Madame Necker, Lizette and several of her other friends socializing while the orchestra played splendidly.
It was a damp night with rain in the air, and several people shivered as they joined the queue in the foyer.
Katharine and Mohammed greeted their guests and Sophie watched the ease with which they handled themselves. They were a royal couple indeed.
She noticed that for all of Mohammed’s masculinity, he was entranced by his wife. His hand often lingered on Katharine’s hip, which was draped in the finest silver silk.
Katharine held a wine glass in one hand while her other hand was on her husband’s shoulder. Sophie smiled at their closeness.
Sebastian watched Sophie watch his parents and he asked her about it.
“They seem so at ease and so in love,” she remarked.
“They are. My father went through much to safeguard my mother. He never stopped until she was his. It is a true love,” he replied.
Sophie nodded.
“As ours is,” he whispered in her ear seductively and then turned to circulate.
She saw her father speaking with several gentlemen, and her grandmother speaking with Katharine.
As this was their first public ball as a married couple, people who had not attended the wedding ceremony took the opportunity to congratulate her now.
The rented house was quite large, with several rooms being used for food and to gather while others remained empty. Along the foyer, a carved staircase swirled up onto the second floor, which held several more rooms.
It was not unlike her father’s home and the house she shared with Sebastian in its layout and design. She passed a library and small salon and rested her hand along the staircase railing. She moved upstairs and passed several bedrooms and a long corridor filled with paintings. The last door was closed and she opened it and stepped inside.
It was a charming nursery decorated with cheerful wallpaper of a frolicking baby boy and puppy. The owner must have recently had a child before they rented the home to her in-laws. Her hand went unconsciously to her own flat belly and wondered how long it would be before she conceived a child with Sebastian.
The infant’s wooden cradle was empty and painted white with small yellow flowers. A chair with a blanket thrown over it was near the cradle. She could imagine a young mother nursing her baby in this room.
She shook her head. She was being rude. A party was being thrown in her honor and she was upstairs in the nursery. She must rejoin the party.
She turned slightly at the sound of the door opening and closing and her breath caught in her throat at the sight of the red-haired man.
“What are you doing here?” Sophie whispered.
“Why, madame, the same as everyone else. I came to congratulate the young couple on their wedded bliss.”
Sophie stood rooted to the spot.
“I assume it is bliss, is it not?” he mocked.
“Your insinuation being—”
“My insinuation being that when you first married, your husband slept apart from you,” the inspector sneered.
“That is no longer the case,” she said breathlessly.
“Oh, excellent. I thought perhaps I would have to step in and do the deed myself. We can’t have a married virgin,” Alain sneered.
Sophie winced at his coarse words. “What do you want, inspector?”
He looked at her in the darkened nursery and licked his lips. “I want what I assume your husband stole from me.”
“I know nothing of that,” she lied.
He advanced upon her. “Do you remember when I told you that you were just a pretty stepping stone?”