Page 33 of The Earl's Inconvenient Houseguest

Chapter Fifteen

Sophie hadn’t thought of the ring in a decade.

Hadn’t thought about it.

Hadn’t looked at it.

Hadn’t been able to do either.

Hadn’t dared.

Yet now, seeing it again, as shiny and new as it had been when Michael had also held it out in his palm smiling, it seemed to hold the power to transport her back to that fateful Tuesday a decade before.

The day before her life was supposed to start. And the exact day it ended.

She could see his face. Taste his kiss. Feel the warmth of the rising summer sun on her face as she waved him goodbye from her bedchamber window. Just as it had that fateful morning as the dawn broke, her tummy fizzed with excitement and anticipation for the adventure to come. So eager for a mad joyous dash to Gretna that he had only just suggested as he had given her the ring he had saved for months to buy her. The solution to all their problems and a glorious act of rebellion which thumbed their noses at her unreasonable father and all his cruel machinations.

Freedom and for ever were only twelve hours away. Just as soon as Michael finished his last shift at the docks and collected his final wage.

Only twelve more hours.

She remembered thinking that as she floated back to her bed and snuggled under the covers on the exact patch that he had warmed. Her hand fluttered to her belly. To the new life which quickened within. Half her, half Michael. A happy accident, yet a welcome one because it was a testament to their enduring love against all the odds stacked against them. Certainly not even one her father could deny, although they had agreed not to tell him yet. They would save that wonderful news for after the wedding when their ‘unthinkable’ union was a fait accompli, and he could no longer stand in their way. She planned to write him a letter from wherever they set up their new home on the day she turned twenty-one. To let him know that he hadn’t beaten her or broken them. That they would live happily ever after just to spite him. One final act of rebellion before she cut all ties with her controlling and ambitious sire for ever.

She felt another hand touch her arm that wasn’t Michael’s, dragging her back to the present and yet another tragedy she was trying not to think about. All so overwhelming and hideous she had bottled it with her past the moment the walls of the only sanctuary she had left crumbled to dust.

As if seeing it all for the first time, the scale of the devastation around her suddenly pulled the ground from beneath her feet as her entire world imploded properly for the second time.

‘Whose is it?’

‘Mine.’

‘You were married?’

She shook her head, the pain of that day suffocating her alongside the pain of this. ‘He died.’ Against all her better judgement and the voice of sanity screaming in her head to run away as fast as her legs would carry her, Sophie reached out to touch the thin gold band. Then her hands fluttered to her stomach again when the usual denial failed to numb the agony. ‘So did our child.’

And just like that, like a volcano erupting inside of her, unstoppable and unrelenting, everything spewed out in a tumbled rush because the ring had rendered her powerless to stop it.

Sophie told him everything.

From the forbidden three-year love affair with her father’s clerk, to her father’s vindictive reaction when Michael had begged for her hand in marriage. How he had dismissed him on the spot and had him thrown out of his lodgings. How he had blackened her beloved’s name in Cheapside ensuring that no decent business would employ him so he had been forced to take manual, back-breaking work at the docks. How he had done everything in his power to stop her from seeing him. How they had thwarted his plans to separate them by meeting in secret whenever they could, how they had plotted to run away together. How Sophie had pawned all the jewellery she had been left by her mother while Michael had worked all the hours God sent to save enough for them to escape. How her tenacious lover had still managed to sneak into her room that night while the house slept to present her with the ring and to plan their elopement.

Then, as her legs gave way and she crumpled in Rafe’s stunned arms, she recounted every second of that dreadful week in graphic detail. Waiting for Michael in the churchyard of St Paul’s for hours and hours clutching a small bag of belongings and with his ring in her pocket. The mad dash to his shabby lodgings in Whitechapel when he failed to materialise. Learning the news of the accident when, in desperation, she had ventured to the docks. Of the crane snapping and sending its heavy load to crush him as he unloaded more cargo on the dockside below. Staggering back home in a daze and crying on her maid’s shoulder. Collapsing on the mattress only to be dragged from the bed by her hair and beaten because the maid had told her father she was with child. Being tossed on the street. The two-day walk to her aunt’s, her heart shattered into a million pieces, sleeping in fields when she could not walk another step. Existing only for the life still growing within her while wishing she were dead too. Willing the unbearable pain to end because it hurt so much.

‘What happened to your child?’ Rafe’s voice was soft against her ear as he held her close, and Sophie realised they were somehow sitting under the shelter of a tree near the stream. Rain splattered heavy on the leaves overhead because the threatened storm must have started but she had been too distraught, too bombarded with all the hideous memories, to notice.

‘I miscarried the night I arrived here.’

That had been the final blow. One too cruel for her bludgeoned spirit to bear. She had lost herself then. Lost all sense of reason. All sense of purpose for goodness knew how long until she had decided to ignore what had happened. To lock it away where it couldn’t hurt her and ruthlessly never think of any of it again. Self-preservation rather than self-destruction. Not so much a new chapter but a rewrite of the whole book. One that started when the suffocating darkness had lifted and never looked behind.

His strong arm tightened around her, and he sighed. A long, shocked, hopeless sigh which somehow said more than any words ever could. When he finally spoke, it wasn’t with empty platitudes or any philosophical nonsense about time healing all wounds, yet once again it was somehow more appropriate.

‘Hell, Sophie. Bloody, bloody hell.’

Thunder rumbled overhead to punctuate that point and the rain fell harder, punching though the flimsy leaves above to drench them, yet still neither of them moved. Bizarrely, the silence and contact felt a fitting and symbolic end to the sorry tale she had just told in more graphic and honest detail than she had shared with her aunt on her first night here—or even with herself since.

They were both soaked to the skin before Rafe spoke again. ‘And I thought fate had dealt me a shocking hand.’ He exhaled into her hair, his warm breath heating her sodden locks momentarily until they reminded her she was freezing. ‘If he were kicking up daisies, I’d visit your father’s grave today too and spit on that. Or better still, I might just gallop to Cheapside and spit in his face. Right before I slam my fist into it!’

‘I cannot allow you to do that. You’re not allowed to ride, remember.’

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