Swan's Grace Read online

  Sophie sat in a shaft of sunlight that streamed in from a small, high window. He watched, unable to look away, as she touched the dog, barely, softly. Her fingers drifted across a patch of fur on its brow that was unmarked by violence. She gave no thought to hurting herself, no thought to hurting the fingers she depended on to play the cello with such beauty.

  So quietly that Grayson couldn’t hear, she whispered to the animal. But he understood. Somehow he knew. She truly believed she could heal this dog. This stray. This battered soul that was beyond repair.

  He came farther into the room. Sophie glanced back at him, her eyes filled with silent question. He met her gaze with determination as he pulled out a ladder-back chair and sat down beside her. For one brief, fleeting moment, she smiled, the gesture tired but appreciative. Then she turned back to the dog.

  Grayson didn’t leave her again.

  It was late in the day when Sophie’s stepmother came down the stairs.

  “Sophie, are you here?”

  Sophie turned and Grayson rose.

  Patrice Wentworth was undeniably a beautiful woman, much younger than her husband, not much older than Sophie herself. She stood in the doorway, dressed in a deep blue taffeta gown that matched her eyes, and a rich blue-and-brown-paisley shawl. Her hair was the color of midnight, her skin as white and pure as a bowl of cream. Grayson had only been around her once before she married Conrad Wentworth. But since that marriage she had become a jewel of Boston society, attending all of the city’s finest events.

  Patrice grimaced as she sidestepped a pile of used towels, her beaded reticule swinging on her wrist. “Good heavens, what are you doing down here?”

  No greetings, no hugs.

  “Hello, Patrice,” Sophie responded, a dark, painful look flaring in her eyes. But then it was gone and only a smile remained.

  “Did you bring the girls with you?” she asked.

  Patrice’s footsteps rang daintily on the stone floor as she approached, clutching her shawl as if it were a shield against the dimness of the basement. “No, I didn’t bring the girls— Oh, Mr. Hawthorne, I didn’t realize you were here.”

  “Hello, Mrs. Wentworth,” he offered with a formal nod of his head.

  The woman smoothed her hair, and her decorously painted lips parted on a beautiful smile. “I haven’t seen you in ages.”

  “Not since you called at Hawthorne House for my mother,” he replied, his tone cold and clipped. Patrice Wentworth wasn’t his favorite person.

  “Ah, yes. Your mother.” She seemed to lose interest. “How is she?”

  “She is well. Though recently she was a bit under the weather.”

  “You can’t mean it.” Her brow rose in surprise. “I could have sworn I saw Emmaline just Monday.” She smiled and sighed. “She looked beautiful in a gown of peach silk with a simple inlay of Flanders lace, and a wonderful cape of winter-white wool with fur trim.”

  His brow furrowed with confusion. “You saw my mother on Monday?”

  Patrice placed her gloved hand against her midriff, pulling herself up. “Oh, yes. She looked stunning. She couldn’t possibly have been ill.”

  “You must be mistaken. She was at home.”

  He could feel Sophie’s questioning gaze on him. But he couldn’t keep the hard pounding in his mind contained.

  “Well,” Patrice considered, “I thought it was her.” She shook her head and laughed. “Though perhaps not.”

  She turned her attention to Sophie. “The girls couldn’t come, as they are much too busy with all the things young ladies do.” She stopped abruptly. “Though I always forget that you were too busy with your music to become involved in the… simpler aspects of a young lady’s life.”

  Sophie tensed, he saw it.

  “You were always playing, playing, playing.” She eyed Sophie. “Of course, my girls don’t have a bit of talent when it comes to musical instruments. And you have so much. I sometimes wonder who is luckier. You with your talent or my girls with their brimming engagement calendars.” She tsked. “I suspect that you consider the trade-off well worth it. Especially now that we’ve all seen the article that ran in the magazine.”

  “You saw it?”

  “Why, yes.”

  “Did Father see it, too?”

  “Well, of course he has seen it.” Then nothing else.

  Grayson watched as red flared in Sophie’s cheeks.

  “What did he think?” she asked, as if she couldn’t help wanting to know.

  Patrice smiled in a way that was clear she knew of her stepdaughter’s frustration. “You’ll have to ask him that yourself, dear. I would never be so presumptuous as to speak on his behalf.”

  “Of course not,” she responded, the words tight.

  “Enough about the article. I’ve come to make sure you will be at the party. I understand that you had words with your father last night.” She shook her head daintily. “Not that I’m surprised. You always were strong willed. But the party is set and there is no turning back. And what would people think if our guests of honor weren’t there?”

  “Guests of honor?” Sophie asked, confused.

  Grayson caught Patrice in a hard glare.

  “Guest, guests. The more the merrier, I always say.”

  Patrice glanced over at Grayson and raised a brow defiantly. “You are going to be there, too, Mr. Hawthorne?”

  “Yes,” he answered tightly.

  But Patrice hardly seemed to notice as she gasped, her delicate features blanching at the sight on the table. “Good God! What is wrong with that dog?”

  Sophie looked at the animal. “She is hurt.”

  Patrice’s smiles were gone. “Why am I not surprised that you would be down in the basement tending a bloody animal?” Her eyes flashed annoyance.

  They stared at each other, neither speaking, until Patrice turned away and hastened from the room, a finely wrought handkerchief held to her mouth.

  As soon as the door slammed at the top of the stairs, Sophie seemed to deflate.

  “Nice to see you, too, Patrice,” she said to the empty stairway.

  Grayson stared at the closed door before turning back to Sophie. Her nose was red, her chignon long having fallen about her neck, but all he knew in that moment was that he wanted her. To hold her, to taste her. To brush his fingers along her body to make her want him as much as he wanted her.

  He wanted her with an intensity that left him aching like a schoolboy. An intensity that filled him now as he looked at her.

  “Sophie,” Grayson said, reining in his body with ironclad control, “you need to get some rest. You’ve been at this for hours.”

  “No,” she whispered, touching that one unbattered spot on the dog’s brow.

  Grayson grasped her shoulders, gently turning her to face him. With the palm of one large hand he smoothed back her hair from her face. “Let the dog go, Sophie.”

  She met his gaze, her eyes growing obstinate. “No! She needs me. I am going to save her.”

  Then she pulled away.

  Her words circled in his mind. I am going to save her. Grayson didn’t believe the dog would last until morning.

  But sometime later, with Sophie nearly asleep in her chair, the dog opened its eyes.

  Grayson grew still. Sophie didn’t notice. For one long, solitary moment, he sat in the room, unable to move, just staring at the dog, his heart beating hard. Then, more gently than he had done anything in his life, he reached out. With visible effort, the dog tentatively sniffed his fingers and licked his hand.

  A tremor raced down Grayson’s spine, and the memory of Sophie’s baskets of food shot through his mind, her childlike attempts to save him much like her attempts to save this dog.

  His hand was unsteady when he placed his fingers to that spot on the dog’s brow that Sophie had touched so often. “Do you think she can save me, too?” he whispered into the quiet room.

  A low noise sounded deep in Grayson’s throat as he leaned back, dragging his ha
nd over his face. He would never let anyone know of the fear and emptiness he had felt when his father sent him away. It hadn’t been ambition that made him succeed, rather the desperate desire never to be hungry and cold again. Or afraid. He would never let anyone know that to this day there were nights when he awoke in a cold sweat, the remembered feel of rats brushing against his feet making his skin burn. And the loneliness. It had been a desperate ache that competed with his hunger.

  He had moved beyond that. Today he had food at his fingertips, money in the bank. He had cut off emotion. He had succeeded.

  But now, for reasons he didn’t understand, the past had been dredged up and he had done nothing but remember, turning back the clock to that time when he thought he wouldn’t survive.

  After a moment, he drew in a deep, steadying breath, then touched Sophie’s cheek, uneasy with all that he felt. When she jerked fully awake and looked at him in confusion, he didn’t speak, only motioned to the dog.

  Sophie gasped as she pushed the hair out of her face. The dog whimpered and tried to wag its tail—barely a movement, but enough.

  With that, Sophie’s tears spilled over. She threw her arms around Grayson and kissed him full on the mouth. “Oh, Grayson! We saved her,” she whispered before carefully burrowing her face in the dog’s neck.

  Abruptly he pushed up from his seat. Sophie called out to him, but he didn’t stop. Taking the stairs, he didn’t think about where he was. He only wanted away.

  He went straight up to the bedroom that he had made his own. But the unexpected sight of Sophie’s belongings mixed with his stopped him cold. As if they already lived together. His best Hessian boots were still where he had left them before she arrived. Her sheer night wrapper was flung with careless disregard over the back of the chair, papers scattered in a jumble across his desk.

  The bed was unmade, drawers half closed, her undergarments tossed in with his. The mess sent a flash of heat through him. Anger, he told himself, denying that the intimacy of it all affected him in any other way.

  He knew he should return to the hotel or his club. Maybe even Lucas’s gentleman’s establishment for a stiff shot of brandy. But he knew he wouldn’t. Shutting the door, he yanked off his shirt and strode to the deep closet that held his clothes. This time he wasn’t surprised when he found her gowns lined up next to his suits, soft velvets and satiny silks next to crisp, pressed wool.

  He’d had many women over the years. But he never stayed overnight. When he got up in the morning, he preferred to be alone. He had never woken to the intimacy of a woman next to him. The casualness of her clothes tangled with his. He was from a house full of men—their mother off-limits in most meaningful ways.

  Forcefully Grayson emptied his mind, choosing a new shirt, then tossing it on the bed before he went into the private bath and turned the sink knob. Within minutes steaming hot water gushed into the basin. With a minimum of ceremony, he mixed up a lather, pulled out his finest razor, ran it across the strop attached to the wall, then started to shave. The motion cleared his mind, brought an ease to him. An order. The way things should be.

  The coil of tension began to unknot.

  After no more than two swaths across his face, he bowed his head, planted his palms against the sink, and leaned against the porcelain basin, the razor still in his hand.

  What was she doing to him?

  How was it that his perfectly ordered world suddenly seemed upside down?

  But when he looked up, it wasn’t his own reflection he saw in the mirror, rather Sophie’s, as she stared at him from the doorway.

  “I was worried,” she whispered, her voice oddly hoarse. “You left so abruptly.”

  “No need to be.”

  He gave little thought to his bare chest, and forced himself to look away from her when he knew he wanted to hold her tight, bury his face in her hair. Make her promise she would never leave him again.

  Biting back a curse, he resumed shaving, but stopped again when Sophie came up beside him.

  “There is something so incredibly intimate about seeing a man shave.”

  His hand tensed. “I’d say there aren’t many unmarried women, at least of a certain kind, who have seen a man shave.”

  His tone was meant to intimidate.

  Sophie only laughed, then reached out and ran her finger through the white lather, leaving a streak on his cheek. “I’m not that certain kind, Grayson.” She grew serious. “I haven’t been in a very long time.”

  He pivoted on his heel to face her. “You mean to tell me you have been with men in this type of intimacy?”

  She shrugged but wouldn’t turn to him. “Well, not exactly. Actually I haven’t seen anyone shave but you.”

  His brow furrowed.

  “When you were young. Remember?”

  Suddenly he did. He saw it so clearly. Sophie unexpectedly standing in the doorway of his room in Hawthorne House, she only eight, he pretending he needed to shave with any regularity. She had worn a dress with too many ruffles, and her knees had been scraped, no doubt from having tried to play stickball with the boys down the lane. Sophie had always wanted to do everything any other kid did. But the other kids hadn’t wanted her around.

  Had they understood she was different from them? Smarter? Wiser? Or had her mother’s ruffled dresses and superior attitude put them off?

  “You weren’t quite such a prude back then, as I recall,” Sophie interjected. “Not so proper.”

  “I was sixteen.”

  “You were fun.”

  His thoughts hardened, but at the same time his pulse began to throb. He glanced at her mouth. Her lips parted and his blood surged when her gaze drifted low. Taking a towel, he wiped the shaving cream from his face, and though he told himself to turn away, he could do little more than toss the linen aside, then reach for her. He touched her mouth, just barely, his fingertips over the fullness.

  Her lips moved with half-uttered silent words.

  “Was I?” he asked in a whisper.

  Confusion creased her brow.

  “Was I fun? Ever?” He waited for her answer, needing to hear it.

  Her expression softened. “Yes,” she whispered. “But you were more than fan. You were strong and kind.”

  His fingers slid into her hair, cupping her head. He pulled her to him as if he had no will of his own, and pressed her close. He wanted to curse, wanted to scoff in response to her answer. It was weakness that made him care. He knew it. But the words meant too much.

  “Sophie,” he said softly against her hair.

  Her fingers flattened against his chest. He tipped her head and looked into her eyes. There was so much he wanted to say, but didn’t know how. Words, half-formed in his head, disappeared like smoke before he could grasp them. He only knew that, for better or for worse, he couldn’t let her go.

  The decision was made. He would marry her.

  He kissed her then, slowly, languorously, until she moaned. And that was his undoing. Running his hand down her back, he could feel the tremor that raced through her body. He deepened the kiss, his tongue seeking entrance. When she opened to him, her arms came up and wrapped around his neck. She held on to him as if she, too, didn’t know how to let go. The thought filled him with satisfaction. After all these years she wasn’t indifferent to him.

  He grazed her tongue with his teeth, and he felt her breath. Like oranges in winter. Delicious and sweet, but rarely tasted.

  His hands ran up her sides, then he brought one palm up to cup her breast. With that touch, everything changed.

  “No,” she gasped, flinging herself back, her eyes flashing wildly.

  But just as quickly, she calmed herself, as though she had turned a page in a book and become a new character.

  “Now, Grayson,” she all but purred, though there was a tremor in her voice, “you’re the proper one here. I don’t think I need to spell out why I shouldn’t be standing in a bathroom with you half-naked. I simply wanted to thank you for helping me wi
th the dog. It was kind, and I couldn’t have done it without you.”

  She didn’t wait for a response. She left as unexpectedly as she had appeared, leaving him alone to stare at the empty doorway. Who was Sophie Wentworth?

  He turned away and found his reflection in the mirror. Who was he?

  Once, life had been different. Once, he would have tried to save that dog. But life had changed, and he had changed along with it. She had credited him with attributes that he didn’t deserve. He hadn’t saved anything.

  He would have left the dog to die—and never would have known that souls wounded beyond repair could be saved.

  Chapter Seven

  Smoothing the voluminous folds of her taffeta skirts, Sophie felt the thrill of anticipation wrap around her as she stood in her father’s palatial home. The house brimmed with two hundred of Boston’s elite, all of whom were there to see her.

  A grand party in her honor.

  She searched the faces for Grayson, then scowled when she realized what she was doing. She hoped he didn’t come. He had completely unnerved her in the bathroom of Swan’s Grace. The kiss. The intimacy.

  It had been with great effort that she had managed finally to pull up the sophisticated, unemotional wall she had built around herself. She couldn’t let it drop again.

  She had taken great care with her appearance. Her gown was stunning, though demure, the collar high, the sleeves long, with proper white gloves covering her hands. It had been ages since she had cared what people thought about her. But tonight she cared. Deeply. Tonight she wanted to make her father proud.

  Making her way through the Italian-marbled foyer, she took in the house. Crystal chandeliers glistened. Candles burned in hand-carved bronze candelabra, imported from France. The treasure of a king, Patrice had explained. Nothing but the finest for her father.

  Sophie had often thought her father should have been a king. What he lacked in bloodlines he made up for in an extravagant display of wealth. He had made so much money in shipping, her mother had told her as a child, that even the most blue-blooded, puritan-minded Bostonians couldn’t turn their noses up at the man.