quite real to him anymore. 'She was refined...intelligent...very kind. She never spoke harshly of anyone.' A reminiscent smile touched his lips. 'Eleanor hated to hear anyone curse. She worked diligently to cure me of the habit.'
'She must have been a special woman.'
'Yes,' he agreed. 'But Eleanor was physically fragile--unusually so. In fact, her family did not want her to marry at all.'
'Not ever? Why?'
'Eleanor became ill very easily. After I took her driving through the park one autumn afternoon, she caught a chill and had to rest in bed for a week. Her constitution was frail. Her parents were concerned that she would be overtaxed by the demands of marriage, not to mention my husbandly attentions. They feared that pregnancy might kill her.' Guilt thickened his voice as he continued. 'I managed to persuade them that I would protect Eleanor, and that no harm would ever befall her.' Ross did not look at Sophia as she turned the cloth on his forehead. 'We were happy for almost four years. We thought that she was infertile, because she never conceived. I was actually relieved by the idea.'
'You did not want to have a child?'
'It did not matter to me. All I wanted was for Eleanor to be healthy and safe. But one day she told me that she was expecting. She was overjoyed at the news. She said that she had never felt so well. And so I convinced myself that she and the baby would be fine.'
Ross stopped speaking, too troubled to continue. Any mention of Eleanor was unbearably difficult and private. Yet he did not want to withhold any part of his past from Sophia.
'What happened?' she whispered.
Ross felt something unlocking in his head. All his rigid self-control seemed to have dissolved. He began to tell her the things he had never confessed to anyone--he found it impossible to hold anything back from her. 'The day her labor pains began, I knew that something was wrong. Eleanor didn't bear the pain well. She became too weak to push. The labor lasted twenty-four hours, and as the second day began...God, it was a hellish nightmare. I sent for more doctors, and all four of them argued about what should be done for my wife. She was in hideous pain--she begged me to help her. I would have done anything. Anything.' He wasn't aware that his fists were clenched until he felt Sophia's hands rub softly over the backs of them, soothing the knotted muscles and cords. 'The only thing the doctors could agree on was that the baby was too large. I had to make a choice...Of course I told them to save Eleanor...but that meant they had to--' He broke off, his breath catching. It was impossible for him to tell her what they had done next. There were no words. 'There was so much blood. Eleanor screamed and begged me to stop them. She wanted to die, give the baby a chance to live, but I couldn't let her go. And so they both...' Ross paused and fought to control his choppy breathing.
There was no movement or sound from Sophia. He thought that he had disgusted her, had said too much. She must be horrified.
'I made the wrong choice,' he muttered. 'They both died because of it.' The coolness of the room, so enjoyable before, now made him shiver. He was numb, sick, frozen.
The cloth was removed from his forehead, and Sophia stroked his face. 'It wasn't your fault,' she said. 'Surely you know that.'
Clearly, she didn't understand the whole of the story. Ross tried to make her see the depth of his selfishness. 'I shouldn't have married Eleanor. She would still be alive if I had left her alone.'
'You don't know that for certain. But if that is true, and you had never married her, what would her life have been like? Cocooned, kept away from the world, unfulfilled, unloved.' Sophia drew the covers higher around him and went to fetch a blanket from the bottom drawer of the dresser. She laid the weight of the quilted fabric over him and resumed her seat by the bed. 'You did not force Eleanor to marry you. I am certain that she understood the chance she was taking. But the risk was worth it to Eleanor, because for the time that you were married, she was happy and loved. She lived as she wished to. Surely she would not wish you to blame yourself for what happened.'
'It does not matter that she wouldn't have blamed me,' he said gruffly. 'I know where the fault lies--directly with me.'
'Naturally you would think so,' came Sophia's wry response. 'You seem to believe that you are omnipotent, and that everything good and bad should be attributed to you. How difficult it must be for you to accept that some things are simply beyond your influence.'
Her tender mockery was curiously comforting. As Ross stared into her eyes, he was conscious of an encroaching sense of relief. Although he didn't want to accept the feeling, he couldn't quite dismiss it.
'You are just a man, after all,' she added. 'Not some godlike being.'
Just a man.
Of course he knew that. However, it wasn't until this moment that Ross acknowledged the burden he had felt to convince the entire world otherwise. He had done everything humanly possible to prove that he was invulnerable, and for the most part, he had succeeded. It was nearly a requirement of his position. People wanted to believe that the Chief Magistrate of Bow Street was all-powerful; they wanted to know that while they rested in their beds at night, he was working ceaselessly to protect them. And for years Ross had lived in isolation as a result. No one truly knew or understood him. But for the first time in his adult life, he had found someone who did not regard him with awe. She treated him as if he were an ordinary man.
Sophia left the bedside and moved about the room, quietly straightening articles on the washstand, folding discarded cloths and towels. Ross watched her with predatory intensity, thinking of what he would do to her, with her, when he had recovered his strength. Surely she had no idea about the turn of his thoughts, or she would not be quite so calm.
CHAPTER 8
'You are aterrible patient,' Sophia exclaimed when she saw that Ross was dressed and out of bed. 'Dr. Linley said that you should stay abed at least another day.'
'He doesn't know everything,' Ross replied, working his feet into his shoes.
'Neither do you!' Exasperated and worried, she followed his movements as he went to his dresser and searched in the top drawer for a fresh cravat. 'What are you planning to do?'
'I'm going to my office for an hour or so.'
'No doubt you'll spend the entire day working!' In the past four days since Ross had been shot, it had been increasingly difficult for Sophia to make him rest. As his strength returned and his shoulder mended, he wanted to resume his usual breakneck pace. To keep him still, Sophia had brought piles of paperwork from his office, and had taken reams of notes while he dictated in bed, or in a chair by the hearth. She had served his meals and spent hours reading to him. Often she watched over him while he dozed, her gaze taking in every detail of his sleep- softened face, the way his hair tumbled onto his forehead, the relaxed lines of his mouth.
Sophia had become familiar with his scent, how his throat moved when he drank his coffee, the dense texture of his muscles beneath her fingers as she changed his wound dressing. The bristle of his jaw before he shaved. The rusty catch of his laughter, as if he were not used to making the sound. The way his black hair sprang in unruly waves before he brushed them smooth each morning. The way he surprised her with kisses when she collected his tray or straightened the pillows behind him...kisses like dark, sweet conspiracies, his hands gripping her with gentle insistence.
And instead of denying him, she responded with abandon.
To Sophia's shame, she had begun to have lurid fantasies about him. One night she had dreamed that she climbed into Ross's bed and laid her naked body full-length against his. She had awakened to discover that her sheets were damp with perspiration, her heart was thumping, and the place between her legs was alive with sensation. For the first time in her life, she had put her fingers to that throbbing peak and stroked gently. Delight shot through her loins as she imagined that Ross was touching her again, his mouth tugging at her breast, his fingers working skillfully between her thighs. Steeped in shame and guilt, she continued to stimulate herself, discovering that the more she rubbed, the sharper the pleasure became, until it ended in a wash of heat that drew a shaken moan from her lips.
Rolling onto her stomach, Sophia lay there dazed and puzzled. The feeling ebbed and her body became
