Wicked Company (45 page)

“Ooh…” Sophie replied weakly as Mrs. Hood beat a hasty retreat to do the baronet’s bidding. She leaned against the mantelpiece to steady herself, humiliated by what had just transpired.

“Probably a bad shrimp,” Peter suggested, taking her arm and leading her over to the daybed where he urged her to lie down. “I’ve had it happen to me… nasty business, that.”

“No,” Sophie whispered, tears flooding her eyes. “’Tis not a shrimp that’s caused this.” Without warning, an overwhelming sadness engulfed her, and she felt a sob welling in her chest. “You’ve gotten me with c-child,” she wailed, “or I’ve gotten myself with it… oh,
God…
how could I have been such a rustic—”

Peter sank to his knees beside the daybed, grasping her hands. “You’re enceinte?’’ he asked incredulously, an odd look of surprise and unaccountable satisfaction passing over his features.

“Aye,” she replied, appalled by his ridiculous posture. “I’ve ignored the signs for weeks, convinced ’twas merely fatigue…”

A broad smile animated his unshaven features.

“That’s wonderful news, darling,” he pronounced delightedly. “We must marry straightaway!”

“W-what?” Sophie stammered, feeling as if the world was whirling in dizzying circles. “No! Absolutely
not!”

“I must make an honest woman of you, Sophie!” Peter said, almost crowing. “I can’t have a Lindsay-Hoyt called ‘bastard,’ can I now?”

“But what of that formidable grandfather you’re always going on about?” Sophie demanded, alarmed by another wave of distress unsettling her stomach. “He’d never agree to it!”

“I’ve been thinking on that very subject, of late,” Peter replied with a pleased smile. “And I’ve determined that ’tis time I’m free of the blackguard’s disapproving prattle. What do I care how dear
grandpère
reacts to our union now?” He raised her trembling hand to his lips. “Our babe’s decided it. ’Twill be my grandfather’s heir as well. ’Tis time I made you my wife.”

Eighteen

Lorna and Sophie stayed up the better part of the night debating Sophie’s alternatives.

“I’m not the first lass to make a fatal slip,” Sophie said morosely, sipping a tisane that Mrs. Phillips had recommended to calm her digestion. “And I fear I won’t be the last. At least the bairn will have a proper name. I couldn’t stand to have a child treated wretchedly, like those poor bastard offspring I saw growing up in the back wynds of Edinburgh.”

“Aye,” Lorna Blount agreed sadly. “And some day the babe may have a title and lands to show for your sacrifice. I’m glad, at least, you refused that purgative Mrs. Phillips offered. Mary Ann Skene nearly died taking that same potion last year,” she added earnestly. “I heard she aborted a lass missing fingers and toes!”

Sophie shuddered at the thought.

“At least Garrick has accepted the revisions Colman wanted,” she said, clinging to at least one shred of good news. The manager and his wife had recently returned to London, full of new ideas for lighting and scenery inspired by what they’d observed on the Continent. Sophie had been too ill to pay them a call but had dispatched a note of welcome.

She sighed and shook her head. “Perhaps Peter and I will eventually… find our way together,” she said, fighting the emotion that sprang from her half-buried dream of seeing Hunter Robertson one day and having all made right between them.

Peter had appeared utterly delighted at the prospect of becoming a father. He would not hear of Sophie’s refusing to marry him and, the following day, appeared on her doorstep with an armload of flowers.

“But your grandfather…” Sophie once again interjected, knowing full well what Peter’s answer would be.

“Sir Thomas Hoyt be damned!” he smiled at her confidently. “We shall be like Colman and Garrick—a force to be reckoned with!”

“What will your friend Darnly say?” she demanded. “Won’t he judge you to have married beneath your station?”

“Darnly’s departed for Henley to visit friends. Once our union is a
fait accompli,
he’ll have to be gracious about it,” Peter shrugged. “And besides, Roderick may be a terrible snob, but I happen to know he quite admires your pluck.”

Having considered the problem from every angle, Sophie felt she really had no choice. Within ten days’ time, the banns were read and she and Sir Peter Lindsay-Hoyt were wed quietly at the Actors’ Church, St. Paul’s, Covent Garden. Only Lorna Blount and Mrs. Phillips knew of Sophie’s reluctant decision to marry and served as the sole witnesses to the ceremony. In spite of her many reservations, Sophie McGann had, indeed, become the Lady Lindsay-Hoyt.

A week following their wedding, Sophie was reclining one evening on the daybed in Peter’s sitting room, trying to think of something besides her wretched nausea, when she heard a sharp pounding on the front door. Mrs. Hood grumbled under her breath all the way through the foyer. The next instant, Roderick Darnly strode into the chamber in high dudgeon.

“Ah… Darnly, you’ve returned!” Peter said genially. “How was Henley, old man?”

But Roderick ignored the friendly greeting.

“What have you
done
you foolish, foolish girl!” he declared loudly in Sophie’s direction and then turned to confront his erstwhile companion. “Peter, you really have behaved despicably, though I’m not surprised! You’ve deflowered this poor young woman to secure a scribbling drone who’ll keep you out of Newgate.”

“’Twas far too late for any deflowering, I fear, old boy,” Peter said nervously, pouring himself a brandy. “Some other worthy gentleman had already had that pleasure… but, yes… I think Sophie’s writing abilities should prove useful. What of it?”

Sophie jumped to her feet in the midst of this appalling discourse and immediately regretted such precipitous action. Feeling dizzy, she clutched at the sofa arm to steady herself.

“How dare you speak of me thus!” she cried to her husband of less than a week.

“Ah… playing the lady already,” Peter chided. “Well, since Darnly’s here, we might as well hazard all our cards on the table, shall we? Yes… I have given your babe a name and in return, I expect you to earn your keep—as you have proven you are fully capable of doing. A comedy or two a year should bring in a nice annuity… and if the world thinks
I’m
the clever one, so much the better,” he chortled.

Dumbfounded, Sophie stared at her new husband. The charming smile had vanished, as had his teasing, affectionate manner. In its place, Sir Peter had adopted a smug, self-satisfied air.

“I would advise your bride not to play the ‘lady,’ as you put it, for an entirely
different
reason!” Darnly declared, his features flushed with uncharacteristic anger. “I regret to inform you, Sophie, that Peter may have given you a name for your child, but ’tis not the name you think! I have recently discovered that he is no heir or even an aristocrat. In fact, Sir Thomas Hoyt of Yorkshire
has
no son. He has a
daughter
—one he has thoroughly disowned—and she is Peter’s mother.”

“W-wha—?” Sophie stammered.

“This is absolute drivel!” Peter exclaimed, glaring at the visitor. But Darnly ignored the interruption.

“Peter’s
mother,
Agnes Hoyt… a foolish woman, I am told… ran away with Jarrard Lindsay, a stonemason from the Borders. The man had come to Yorkshire to make some repairs on Sir Thomas Hoyt’s country mansion. This common laborer then eloped with Sir Thomas’s only child, Agnes, when she was sixteen.”

“Preposterous!” Peter cried. “Why, the man is inventing this out of whole cloth!”

“By God, but I am
not!”
Darnly thundered, and Sophie knew with a sinking heart, he spoke the truth. “When I returned from Henley, I learned from Mary Ann Skene about the gossip that you two had said your vows at St. Paul’s. Frankly, I was appalled,” he snapped, gazing sternly at Sophie. “I thought you intelligent enough not to become entangled with such an obvious bounder—”

“Now see here,” Peter interrupted with an injured air, “I thought you were my friend! Why are you—”

“’Tis true, you provided amusing companionship, at times,” Darnly interrupted acidly, “and as we are both diverted by an interest in theater and certain other pleasures, we had some basis for keeping company. But that presumed you were one of my set. The fact is, you’re not.”

“He’s been posing as an aristocrat?” Sophie asked faintly.

“I called on His Majesty’s Officer of Arms this afternoon and asked him to consult the archives regarding some suspicions I had all along.” The Earl of Llewelyn’s son strode over to the drinks cabinet, poured two brandies, and offered one to Sophie, who numbly declined.

“Officer of Arms?” she echoed.

“The King of Arms has the final word when it comes to establishing the legitimacy of aristocratic titles. It was all in their dusty tomes. Your new husband,” Darnly said in a gentler tone as he surveyed her pale features, “whose real name is simply Peter Lindsay, by the way… has no baronet’s title of his own. He simply tacked on his grandfather’s name
Hoyt
to make his masquerade appear more convincing.”

“Darnly, is this some sort of unamusing jest?” Peter declared heatedly.

“What I find
unamusing,”
the nobleman declared in a low voice, “is having been played the fool. You drank my brandy, frequented my club, borrowed untold sums of blunt, and posed as a gentleman, yet you are in line neither for your grandfather’s title—since it descends only through the direct male line—nor the old man’s estate.” He glared at the object of his scorn. “Will not the fortune, titles, and land pass to a male cousin through your great uncle? And isn’t it true that Sir Thomas Hoyt disowned your mother the instant she married beneath herself and refuses even to recognize he
has
a grandson, albeit a lowly mason’s get?”

Peter remained silent, apparently unable to summon a suitable reply.

“Is this so?” Sophie asked, barely above a whisper, staring at the man to whom she was bound for life. “You’ve lied about your name, in addition to everything else?”

Peter’s black eyebrows knit together in a scowl.

“’Tis unfortunate,” Darnly interjected more calmly, “but there are some people in this world who seem virtually unable to tell the truth. I believe Peter to be among that group. I’ve discovered him to be a man who can look one straight in the eye and fabricate such a convincing tale so skillfully, he eventually believes it himself!”

Sophie gazed at Peter in a state of utter shock. His customary, lighthearted demeanor was nowhere in evidence. In the brief space of Darnly’s staggering announcement, her husband had assumed a truculent stance and merely scrutinized his shoe tops.

“Peter let it be known, for instance,” Darnly continued, glancing at his erstwhile friend with a look of disgust, “that his father, Jarrard Lindsay, the supposed baronet with lands near Lockerbie, died when he was a mere babe. The truth is, the blackguard deserted Peter’s mother soon after their son was born, abandoning them to live in disgrace and penury in a cottage on her father’s property. It is doubtful they every legally wed.”

“Oh, Peter…” Sophie blurted, “I can understand how ghastly it must have been for your poor mother, but why invent—”

“Oh, do be still!” Peter exploded, grabbing Sophie’s untouched glass of brandy and downing it in one gulp. Roderick Darnly surveyed him with disdain.

“You were ignored and despised by the old man, although, I’m told, your grandfather, Sir Thomas, did send you to an inferior boarding school. Gave you three hundred pounds when he banished you to London three years ago and ordered you to fend for yourself. Those funds, I’ll wager, have been frittered away on fashionable clothing and your unquenchable thirst for gambling and drink. No wonder, as your funds ran low, you saw Sophie as a way out of your financial embarrassment,” Darnly finished contemptuously.

This last statement seemed to stir Peter from his state of brooding lethargy. Then, suddenly leaping to his feat he shouted, “You, sir, will regret this! I shall call you out!”

Roderick laughed harshly and waved a dismissive hand.

“Now, now, Lindsay,” he answered coolly, swiftly demoting Peter to his genuine name, “no need for histrionics. I promise, for Sophie’s sake, I won’t reveal the truth to the town. It matters not to me if you style yourself a baron, duke, or prince of the Realm. Just don’t try to deceive your betters. And at least Sophie now knows not to invest time or trouble in you as a husband—or a playwright.”

“Why ever not?” Peter snapped. “We’ve done quite well thus far. And even if the world knows she pens most of the stuff, whatever she earns belongs to me.”

Roderick advanced toward Sophie who was too stunned to do anything but stare.

“If only I’d known you were considering this match,” he said gruffly, “I would have revealed to you my suspicions and gotten you the proof that I now lay before you. Perhaps some alternative could have been found…”

“I ‘considered this match,’ as you put it, only because I am with child,” Sophie reminded him dully. Darnly’s eyebrows raised almost imperceptibly. “Yes,” she sighed, “’tis definitely Peter’s offspring.”