Benedict fought to school his features into an impassive expression, or at least to hide his shock. The last time he’d informed  his mother that he was “busy,” she’d answered with, ‘Too busy for your mother?”

His first urge was to declare, “I’ll stay,” and park himself in a chair, but he had just enough presence of mind to realize that staying to thwart his mother was rather ridiculous when what he really wanted to do was leave. “I’ll go, then,” he said  slowly, backing toward the door.

“Go,” she said, shooing him away. “Enjoy yourself.”

Benedict decided to leave the room before she managed to befuddle him any further. He reached down and scooped up  the scone, gently tossing it to Hyacinth, who caught it with a grin. He then nodded at his mother and sisters and headed  out into the hall, reaching the stairs just as he heard his mother say, “I thought he’d never leave.”

Very odd, indeed.

With long, easy strides, he made his way down the steps and out the front door. He doubted that Sophie would still be  near the house, but if she’d gone shopping, there was really only one direction in which she would have headed. He  turned right, intending to stroll until he reached the small row of shops, but he’d only gone three steps before he saw

Sophie, pressed up against the brick exterior of his mother’s house, looking as if she could barely remember how to breathe.

“Sophie?” Benedict rushed toward her. “What happened? Are you all right?”

She started when she saw him, then nodded.

He didn’t believe her, of course, but there seemed little point in saying so. “You’re shaking,” he said, looking at her hands.  ‘Tell me what happened. Did someone bother you?”

“No,” she said, her voice uncharacteristically quavery. “I just... I, ah...” Her gaze fell on the stairs next to them. “I tripped on  my way down the stairs and it scared me.” She smiled weakly. “I’m sure you know what I mean. When you feel as if your insides have flipped upside down.”

Benedict nodded, because of course he knew what she meant. But that didn’t mean that he believed her.  “Come with me,” he said.

She looked up, and something in the green depths of her eyes broke his heart. “Where?” she whispered.

“Anywhere but here.”

“I live just five houses down,” he said.

“You do?” Her eyes widened, then she murmured, “No one told me.”

“I promise that your virtue will be safe,” he interrupted. And then he added, because he couldn’t quite help himself:  “Unless you want it otherwise.”

He had a feeling she would have protested if she weren’t so dazed, but she allowed him to lead her down the street.  “We’ll just sit in my front room,” he said, “until you feel better.”

She nodded, and he led her up the steps and into his home, a modest town house just a bit south of his mother’s.

Once they were comfortably ensconced, and Benedict had shut the door so that they wouldn’t be bothered by any of his servants, he turned to her, prepared to say, “Now, why don’t you tell me what really happened,” but at the very last minute something compelled him to hold his tongue. He could ask, but he knew she wouldn’t answer. She’d be put on the defensive, and that wasn’t likely to help his cause any.

So instead, he schooled his face into a neutral mask and asked, “How are you enjoying your work for my family?”

“They are very nice,” she replied.

“Nice?” he echoed, sure that his disbelief showed clearly on his face. “Maddening, perhaps. Maybe even exhausting, but nice?”

“I think they are very nice,” Sophie said firmly.

Benedict started to smile, because he loved his family dearly, and he loved that Sophie was growing to love them, but then he realized that he was cutting off his nose to spite his face, because the more attached Sophie became to his family, the less likely she was to potentially shame herself in their eyes by agreeing to be his mistress.

Damn. He’d made a serious miscalculation last week. But he’d been so focused on getting her to come to London, and a position in his mother’s household had seemed the only way to convince her to do it.

That, combined with a fair bit of coercion.

Damn. Damn. Damn. Why hadn’t he coerced her into something that would segue a little more easily into his arms?

“You should thank your lucky stars that you have them,” Sophie said, her voice more forceful than it had been all afternoon.  “I’d give anything for—”

But she didn’t finish her sentence.

“You’d give anything for what?” Benedict asked, surprised by how much he wanted to hear her answer.

She gazed soulfully out the window as she replied, “To have a family like yours.”

“You have no one,” he said, his words a statement, not a question.

“I’ve never had anyone.”

“Not even your—” And then he remembered that she’d slipped and told him that her mother had died at her birth.  “Sometimes,” he said, keeping his voice purposefully light and gentle, “it’s not so easy being a Bridgerton.”

Her head slowly turned around. “I can’t imagine anything nicer.”

“There isn’t anything nicer,” he replied, “but that doesn’t mean it’s always easy.”

“What do you mean?”