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After all this time—after all these years—Ro had finally come to him. He had to know why.

CHAPTER FOUR

Sophronia was in his bedroom. She knew it was Rowden’s by the scent of him.

Lily was enjoying the quiet repose of the innocent in the verdigris bedchamber that she and Sophronia had been given to share. They had left Hungerford shortly after dawn in the post chaise Sophronia had hired and followed the dust of mail coaches, wagons, horses, and other chaises to the great sprawling city of London, where Lily had gaped at everything and found every stage of their journey an adventure, even when they were tangled in a snare of traffic at Hyde Park Corner and had to wait ages to pay their toll.

The post boy, for an extra charge, had set them and their luggage down in Clarges Street, which saved them the fuss of having to transfer at a coaching inn. Sophronia liked this area on the western side of London, closer to green parks and fresh air.

Henry had liked it too and always looked for houses to let nearby, in Half Moon Street or Bolton Row. He had never seemed satisfied with any of them, and Sophronia had found herself, every time she came to London, learning how to be hostess of a new household, with new staff, new tradesmen and suppliers, and new quirks of the house to learn. It was a relief to present herself to an establishment that was already running smoothly under the sharp-eyed oversight of Aunt Dobbs, who had been nearly as close to Sophronia throughout her childhood as her dear old Aunt Edmons.

It was currently well past nightfall, and Baron Denford was enjoying his solitude in the masculine preserve of the study, a room of dark paneling and gloomy art where, as Sophronia understood, the Baron’s private liquor stock was kept under lock and key and away from Giles.

Giles had come home with shoes scuffed and neckcloth askew, his thin frame sagging between two young boys who said they had brought him from Rowden’s establishment. Sophronia suppressed the strange thrill that wound through her at that name, a combination of alarm and something less easily defined. It was the same pull on her spine that she’d known as a young girl when she was about to do something that would be marvelously exciting and potentially dangerous.

Giles was painfully thin these days, the tendons standing out in his neck as his head drooped. His blond hair was unwashed and coming loose from its queue, and his clothes were thick with a sweet, cloying smoke, a scent she didn’t recognize. She first thought him unconscious, the way his head bobbed as the boys dragged him over the threshold, but when she spoke to him he looked up and about, blearily searching, and when he spotted her, his mouth broke into a broad smile. His eyes were heavy-lidded and unfocused, as if he were both here and elsewhere.

“Soph!” he said, his speech slurred. “Frightfully terrific t’see you.”

“That Mrs. Hinton should be forced to witness you in such a disgusting state.” The Baron’s voice had lashed across the small entrance hall. The boys from the Albion transferred Giles into the grasp of a footman and butler, neither of whom demonstrated surprise or alarm at his state of inebriation. “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Giles.”

“Do not take offense on my account, milord,” Sophronia said. She had known the Baron Denford all her life, as her neighbor and the uncle of her closest friend, but he was still his lordship to her. “Mr. Hinton would occasionally arrive home in an altered state when he had spent a merry evening at his club.”

With Henry, though, the indulgences were rare. He did not like the lack of control that resulted from intoxication, and he expressed nothing but scorn for those who could not hold their drink. Sophronia understood it was customary for young men to be in a habitual state of glee, but Giles’s manner, and his father’s response, suggested his behavior was not simply a young blade sowing his oats.

The Baron watched with narrowed eyes as the servants bundled Giles toward the stairs and his bedchamber on the first floor of the narrow townhouse, the one done up in soft pale blues. The father’s eyes held scorn and something else as he looked upon his only son and heir.

On another man, Sophronia would have called it fear.

Aunt Dobbs invited Sophronia into her parlor to enjoy a sip of sherry before bedtime. The sweet wine steadied her nerves, she said. Sophronia, whose nerves were generally steady, accepted a small glass just to enjoy the taste of it and try not to think about when Rowden might be home from the club. He kept all hours, Aunt Dobbs said, and sometimes she heard his tread in the early morning when she was taking coffee on her tray in bed—the luxury of a married lady which Aunt Dobbs allowed herself in her brother’s household.

Sophronia had only rarely indulged in that same luxury, and typically only when she was at her father’s. On the mornings after Henry had come home from somewhere with a thick head and she didn’t particularly care to deal with his surly attitude across the breakfast table, she had simply spent more time on her daily ride. Sophronia was the sort who rose in a good mood and preferred to get a brisk start on her morning tasks. She only settled in a chair with her morning coffee or chocolate when it was time to tend to correspondence or make calls.

She hadn’t been a guest in another person’s home for so long that she wasn’t certain she would know how to go about it, but Aunt Dobbs quickly instructed her on the patterns of the house. The Baron would sleep late, leave for his club, which was not the Albion, and be gone to his own amusements for most of the day. He would come home to dress for dinner and then go out again to a dinner or card party. He did not enjoy the theater, but Aunt Dobbs thought he might be coaxed there to show off Lily and introduce Sophronia to some of his acquaintance. It would be well also, Aunt Dobbs added, if she could help Giles to be sociable now and again.

“Is Giles entirely well?” Sophronia would not have dared to ask that of anyone else but a woman she considered as close as her own aunt, and she had only dared do so because they sat alone in the quiet room. Candlelight flickered on the decorative touches placed throughout the room, and the thick draperies shut out the noise of the street.

Aunt Dobbs sighed. She was a sturdy, managing sort of woman, and Soph had never known her to falter, weep, or lament her lot. Her husband had died serving in the army of the East India Company, leaving her childless and with no way to support herself. Her only viable option had been to move in with her brother to be companion to Lady Denford, who did not live long enough to make the task disagreeable. She had thereafter become nurse to her ladyship’s young son, who had never been robust.

“London does not agree with Giles.” Aunt Dobbs stared into her glass. Sophronia noted, with some surprise, that Aunt Dobbs showed more gray in the curls tucked under her lace cap, and the lines that fanned out from the corners of her eyes and mouth were now etched there.

“Would a change of air suit him?”

“I think so. But Denford cannot persuade him to leave town. I am glad you brought Lily. If all goes as we hope and she takes his fancy, she can lure him back home and away from the enticements of the city.”

Sophronia nodded. “That shall be our goal, then.”

Lily needn’t know that Aunt Dobbs and Sophronia had been plotting her future without the girl’s knowledge or input. Sophronia, at that age, would have been outraged to have her elders playing matchmaker for her; she had arranged her marriage to Henry by her own lights, thank you very much.

Sophronia knew that Aunt Dobbs would not allow the young people to be coerced into a lifelong commitment they themselves did not willingly embrace. But if the two did develop an affection for the other and decided to join their lives into a tender whole, all to the good. Sophronia could feel she had done something to arrange for her friend’s happiness, even if she had no notion how to go about arranging her own.

“It’s Rowden I worry most about,” Aunt Dobbs confided, putting the stopper on the sherry and stowing it on the small figured mahogany sideboard. “Denford will look after Giles and go to any lengths to restore him to health. But Rowden has no one to look after him.”

That strange clench and pulse went through Sophronia’s middle at the mention of his name. Goodness, after all these years, how could that memory upset her? She was being a goose, which was very unlike her.

In the end the sherry did not settle her as hoped, and Sophronia felt little disposed toward sleep even after Aunt had taken her candlestick and retired. Sophronia took up her own candlestick with the small dish to catch the dripping wax.

While the Baron, Giles, and Aunt Dobbs had their boudoirs on the first floor, the guest chambers and former nursery lay on the second floor, and it was to this realm that Sophronia ascended. And found herself, rather than going directly to her own chamber and composing herself for sleep, pushing open doors to various rooms wondering which was Rowden’s bedchamber, until she found it.