He cursed luridly.
"So much for your first night at my wonderful house," he said, and punched his pillow. He then pulled her closer to his side. "I'm sorry, Sophie. This is all a damned bloody mess and I've dropped you right in the middle of it."
She didn't answer. Not that he expected her to, because he was so furious, so ashamed that he'd let himself be such a lazy, worthless clod that such a thing could happen, that he wanted to rant, and so he did. "I'll find the fellow. It shouldn't be difficult. All the furnishings were catalogued, a fact I doubt our Mr. Dubust knew about. But Uncle Brandon was a great one for detail, indeed so much detail, I think he died finally from choking on it. In any case, we'll track all the things down, then I'll find Dubust and cut off his . . . well, the fellow will end up in a bad way, I swear it."
Ryder paused a moment, then realized that his bride was fast asleep. He kissed her forehead.
Life, he thought as he eased into sleep himself, was occasionally irritating and made one face up to what one was. On the other hand, life did bring some pleasant surprises, like the wonderful soft one who was nestled in the crook of his arm. Her palm was lying over his heart.
The next few days were beyond anything Sophie had ever experienced. She felt like a general directing her troops, that is, when she wasn't spending her time on the front line side by side with them. She spent her days immersed in dirt, bone tired by mid-afternoon, and having more fun than she could ever remember. What she was doing meant something. She felt wonderful. She felt worthy for the first time in a very long while.
Her hair was bound up in a dirty bandanna, smudges on her face, her gown too short and just as dirty as her bandanna, when Doris, a very fat good-natured woman, yelled from the front entrance hall, "Mrs. Sherbrooke! There's a gentleman here."
Sophie barely had time to set her broom aside when she came face to face with a very handsome man who had something of the look of the Sherbrookes. She said, her hand thrust out, "You must be Tony Parrish."
"Guilty, ma'am. And you are my cousin's new wife." He turned then and called out, "Come in, love, and dredge up all your wondrous charm. Our new cousin doubtless needs it."
When Melissande Parrish, Lady Rathmore, floated on fairy-slippered feet into the entrance hall looking like a princess stepping into a slum, Sophie could do nothing but stare at the incredible vision. She had never seen a more beautiful woman in her life.
"You're Alex's sister?"
"Oh yes. I'm Melissande, you know, and you must be Sophie. You're a surprise to every Sherbrooke in England, so Tony tells me. No one ever thought that Ryder would . . . that is, Ryder is so very much in demand with the ladies, but Tony believes he won't see his other mistresses now and—"
"I believe that's enough abuse of the topic, love," Tony Parrish said, and leaned down and kissed his wife full on the mouth, much to Sophie's astonishment.
Melissande blushed and said, "You shouldn't have begun that in the carriage, my lord, and now you will—" She broke off, shook herself, and said to Sophie, "My husband is a dreadful tease, you know. Now, I see no place to sit. It is very strange. Whatever shall we do?"
Sophie was stymied. In that moment, Ryder strode into the house, looking so beautiful in black Hessians, buckskins, and white shirt open at his throat and wild and male that she wanted, in that brief instant, to hurl herself into his arms. He'd changed so very much in the past three days. Or, she thought, her brow puckering, perhaps it was she who had changed, but just a bit, just a tiny little bit. No, he was just Ryder and she didn't feel a blessed thing toward him. He had a very nice smile, his teeth white, his face so very expressive, his light blue eyes crinkling at the corners with pleasure. There was something different about him. It took another moment for Sophie to figure out what it was. He was clearly in charge here. It hadn't been that he'd lived in his brother's shadow, no, not that, but here, at Chadwyck House, he was the master and he fitted the role very well. And I, Sophie thought, am the mistress.
The cousins shook hands, slapped each other on the back, and insulted each other's manhood in high good humor. Sophie felt herself stiffening as she waited for Ryder to turn to the beautiful woman at Tony's side. She was waiting for him to metaphorically fall at the fairy slippers of the gloriously beautiful Melissande.
He didn't.
He smiled down at her, a social, quite impersonal smile, and said, "Welcome to Chadwyck House, cousin. I told Tony to keep his distance else I'd put him to work."
"I'm not such a sluggard," Tony said. "Behold two willing slaves to do your bidding."
"We're not going to London until next week," Melissande said, looking around her and shuddering. "Until then Tony insists that we help out. However, it is much worse than I'd imagined. I've never been dirty before and I think that grime beneath one's fingernails is quite disgusting."
Artless, Sophie thought, achingly beautiful and artless. She tucked her fingers into a fist because her fingernails were black with blackening from the grate.
"You won't do a thing," she said to Melissande. "At least not in that gown." Sophie looked at her husband, a question in her eyes, but Ryder was looking at Tony, who, in turn, was grinning at his wife, saying, "You've been sweaty, very sweaty. Ah, I do remember a time in the Northcliffe gardens— you remember, don't you, sweetheart?—beneath that statue of Venus trying to cover her bosom with a very small hand—that you got really quite grimy and you didn't give a good damn."
Melissande punched him in the arm.
"Some things never change," Ryder said, shaking his head at his cousin. "Then again, some things change so much that it leaves a poor mortal nearly speechless."
"Ah," said Tony, "that is a state my dear wife hasn't yet quite achieved. But she draws ever nearer."
Melissande said, puzzlement in her voice, "You appear pretty, Sophie, even though you are wearing that horrid thing around your head and your gown is beyond awful. But you're not beautiful. It is all very odd, you know. I simply don't understand it."
Sophie blinked.
"There is simply no accounting for a man's preferences," Ryder said easily. "I daresay it is a lack in my man's character. She means," Ryder said in his wife's ear, "that it's incomprehensible to her that I, a manly man by all accounts, would prefer you to her."
"I can see why she would feel that way," Sophie said. She smiled at the vision. "You are very beautiful."
"Yes, I know, but Tony prefers that I try to turn aside such compliments, that I treat them as if they were as insubstantial