“We have trust.”
“Says the scoundrel who plots against me and kidnaps me and keeps secrets from me.” Her gaze grew penetrating. “Why would I ever marry you after this? A man I can’t trust? A man who doesn’t trust me with even the simplest facts? You never thought to mention your bitter quarrel with your father or even that you stood to inherit a princedom. You’ve never said a word about your mother either, or your brutal captivity when you were a child. You’ve kept hidden all the events that shattered your life.”
The shock of pain that speared through Jack at her inventory caught him by surprise, and he lashed out with unexpected force. “I watched my mother die, Sophie. They had to pry her stiff body from my arms. That isn’t something I can discuss easily.”
She stared at him a long moment before finally shaking her head and lowering her gaze once more to her plate. But at least the heat had gone out of her demeanor.
After that, supper was a silent affair. Sophie ate sparingly but she did eat, perhaps because she feared he would decide to hand-feed her if she refused.
When they finished, Jack pushed back his chair. “It is late, and we have a long drive ahead of us on the morrow. We should get some sleep.”
Her response was not what he expected. For a moment, Sophie closed her eyes and bowed her head, as if fighting back tears of despair. But then she visibly bucked herself up and squared her shoulders.
“If you think we are sharing a bed, your wits have gone begging.”
“If you think I mean to ravish you, you are quite mistaken.”
“I wouldn’t put it past you.”
“If I try, I give you leave to slice me up with my dagger.”
“If I wanted to slice you up, I would not require your permission,” she retorted. “And either way, you will sleep on the floor.”
Sophie tossed a quilt and a pillow at him and waited as he made a bed for himself near the door. Resigned to enduring an uncomfortable night, Jack stirred the hearth fire and put out the lamp, then removed his coat and cravat and boots before stretching out on the hard floor.
As semidarkness enveloped them, he heard Sophie sit on the bed and then pause to pull the pins from her hair. Turning his head, Jack watched her in the glow of the fire’s light as she let the rich, coiling tresses fall down her back. A few moments later, she lay down fully dressed and pulled the covers up to her neck.
The sound of her breathing was uneven and occasionally broken by soft, restless sighs. Apparently Sophie couldn’t sleep, for she rolled over and punched her pillow.
Jack felt like doing the same. Remorse was starting to return rather forcefully, along with a measure of black humor. He was sharing a bedchamber with a warm, vibrant, passionate woman and sleeping alone on the cold wooden floor. What had become of his vaunted seductive skills?
He wanted Sophie more than he’d ever wanted any woman in his life. He wanted to explore that glorious mass of hair with his hands. He wanted to lie with her and hold her and absorb her potent warmth all night long.… But sadly, his need to wrap himself in her special warmth would remain unfulfilled. Unless he could convince her that he wasn’t the blackguard she thought him.
Unless he could restore her trust in him.
Rolling onto his back, Jack stared at the flickering firelight on the ceiling. He couldn’t bear to see her so unhappy, knowing he was the cause. He’d abducted her and risked plunging her into a scandal—and yet his secretiveness was an even greater issue with Sophie than his high-handedness.
Jack took a slow, uncertain breath as he struggled with his next words.
“I don’t know how much Skye told you about my childhood,” he finally said in a muted voice.
Sophie didn’t reply, so he began talking in the hushed quiet of the room.
“I had an unusual upbringing, chiefly because my mother was caught between two different worlds. She was a member of the English nobility—a wealthy marquess’s daughter—yet she was essentially a foreign prince’s mistress. She was hopelessly in love, so much so that she gave up her former life and made Paris her home in order to be near her lover. She was also vivacious and enchanting and I worshiped her.”
Jack paused, remembering his mother. To a young boy, Lady Clara Wilde had been beyond wonderful—high-spirited and beautiful, with the kind of lively warmth Sophie had in abundance. But love had made her reckless and foolish. She’d remained in Paris despite the increasing violence against the aristos, not knowing she would become one of the many innocent victims of the French Revolution.
Jack shut his eyes at that last gruesome memory of his mother when he was six. For the better part of a year, it had been the two of them against a world gone mad. And then, that one fateful day, he’d watched his vibrant mother’s life snuffed out by a mob crazed for blue blood.
“I saw her killed right before my eyes,” he said in the barest rasp. “We were returning home when we were separated from our footman by a rabble mob. My mother only cared about protecting me, not her own safety. She screamed at me to run while she tried to fight them off with her bare hands, but I couldn’t leave her … and I couldn’t stop them. I watched as they beat her to a bloody pulp with clubs and pitchforks.”
Jack squeezed his eyes shut more tightly at the excruciating memory. “I couldn’t save her.”
Sophie spoke for the first time since he had put out the lamp. “You were only a young child, Jack. You could not possibly have saved her.”
“I know. But my father could have. Prince Raoul de Villars had the wealth and resources to protect her if he chose. Instead, he was determined to save his own skin. When the Revolution turned deadly, he fled Paris and left her to fend for herself and her young son alone.”
“That is why you hate him so much. Because he deserted your mother.”