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There was much to be done at Bridgerton House, and seeing to her evening duties made it quite difficult for Sophie to slip away. Against her better judgment, she had agreed to meet Benedict Bridgerton at nightfall. As it had now been dark for some time, a very large part of her doubted he would still be there, “among the flowers,” as he’d put it, awaiting her.
In the conservatory. In their world away from the world.
In this instance, Sophie’s habit of moving quickly in order to prioritize efficiency served her well. It seemed the crystalline walls of glass and heaping flowers were before her in no time at all. Adjusting her cloak and smoothing her tightly bound hair, she ventured inside what seemed a heavenly bubble.
The air smelled fresh from the absurd amount of blossoms. She drew it deep into her chest and held it there, attempting to savor the fragrance, always expecting each visit to the conservatory to be her last. So far, she had overestimated her own good sense and self-discipline terribly.
“Sophie!”
Just when she was beginning to believe herself alone, Benedict emerged from some hidden spot within the vines and branches. His eyes brightened at the sight of her. He drew close, a warm, welcoming smile tugging his lips into a charmingly uneven slant.
“Mr. Bridgerton.” Sophie acknowledged his greeting with a respectful nod. It was automatic to lower her eyes in the presence of any gentleman, but only with this one specifically was it also a relief. It felt dangerous to look too long at Benedict’s face. It made her feel flushed and lightheaded, as though she’d been working in the suffocating heat of the kitchens all afternoon.
“Benedict,” he corrected her in an exasperated tone. “Goodness, Sophie, please call me Benedict. I’d like it if you’d use my given name at all times, really, but most especially while we are here.”
“I’m sorry, Mr.—”
He cleared his throat.
“Benedict.” Sophie caught herself and glanced up.
His eyes locked upon hers. They were still bright, nearly luminous in the dim candlelight. He chuckled, as though delighted by the sound of her voice. “Thank you for meeting me. I was beginning to fear you’d thought better of it.”
She shook her head. Though she had thought better of it. She’d thought better of it many times. “I was merely delayed by my duties.”
“My apologies. I know it is a… chaotic household.”
“Only in the most affectionate sense of the word.” Sophie smiled. “Truly, I do not mind it.”
The lopsided smile which had never departed from Benedict’s face grew into a wide grin. “You are, as always, too kind.”
The combined effects of his compliment and his radiant expression overwhelmed her, and she looked away swiftly and strode further into the roomful of flowers. She came upon the stone bench where Benedict had surely been waiting. There was some paper piled together in the center of it. And the topmost sheet was not blank, but—
“Were you drawing something?” Sophie approached the bench purposefully now, bending to get a closer look at the design.
Benedict, who had, until that point, been content to follow her, practically tripped in his haste to collect the paper before she could examine it. He seized the stack and covered over the topmost sheet with a blank one. “Oh—no, not really. I was simply… doodling. You know. To pass the time.”
Sophie felt a little thrill, her pulse quickening, a curious swelling sensation in her chest. She straightened, drawing back her shoulders. She could not help but to find his obvious nervousness intriguing. It was not every day that she could make a well-spoken gentleman stammer.
“Doodling or not, I would still like to see it,” she insisted.
“It is nothing to look at.” Benedict lowered his arm, holding the papers slightly behind him. “It is neither very good, nor even original! It is merely flowers. You may glance around you and see a hundred live specimens with a thousand times the beauty of my poor imitation.”
“If that is true, then why are you so determined to keep it from me? You needn’t worry about my judgment, Benedict. I could never afford the luxury of a discerning eye.”
The lie came easily. At this point in her life, it no longer felt like a lie at all. She stepped towards him, reaching for the papers.
He retreated, though he could not travel far before the backs of his legs collided with the bench. “Yet you had all sorts of insightful opinions to offer about my rather pitiful paintings at the cottage. And my sister tells me her new lady’s maid has exceptional taste in literature.”
“Perhaps she was being charitable.”
He laughed, then. A great, whole-hearted laugh that Sophie wished to curl up inside and live in forever. “You do not know Eloise very well yet, do you?”
Sophie stepped towards him a second time, sliding her arm around him, expecting to snatch the papers. He could not back up any further.
Benedict startled her by abruptly twisting around and half-stepping, half-jumping up onto the bench. He stood upon the stone, much taller than he had been on the ground. He hoisted the papers high above his head and waved them playfully, as though to emphasize just how far beyond her reach they now were.
Sophie had gone still in surprise. She watched his dramatic demonstration, as mystified as she was amused. Imagine. A gentleman who did not believe himself above pure silliness, who was not afraid to play the fool. “And just what do you suppose is preventing me from joining you up there?”
“I’ve put my faith in your unyielding practicality, of course.” Benedict lowered the papers slightly, beginning to fan himself with them. “Benches are intended for sitting; therefore, according to the rules of the world, you must never—”
Sophie did sit on the bench, but only so she might draw up her legs and rise beside him. “This is our world away from the world. That is what you told me, is it not?”
His eyebrows rose, clearly pleased as she sprang up. His hand stilled in midair.
Sophie took advantage of his temporary paralysis, moving incrementally closer, reaching her hand out slowly.
“Yes,” Benedict said finally, his voice going soft. “It is. Ours, Sophie.”
She seized the papers with no trouble at all. They slid easily from his grip. He did not even try to resist her.
“Well, then,” she declared triumphantly. “Here, I will stand wherever I please.”
“As you should.” Benedict bent down and sat on the bench.
Resigned as he seemed to be to her looking through his sketches, he avoided observing her reaction to his work. Each time she glanced down at him, he was staring fixedly at the plants in front of him. And, as Sophie eagerly flipped through the blank pages and settled upon an illustrated one, she began to understand why.
Benedict had indeed been drawing flowers. That much was honest. But it was not all—or even most—of what he had been drawing.
Her own likeness featured much more prominently than any blossom. It was strange to see her face peering up at her from a page. She had not had her portrait painted since she was a girl, still under the illusion that her father loved her, that her image was one someone would wish to be preserved. It was quite good, as far as she could tell, having slightly more than a passing familiarity with the reflection that greeted her in a mirror. Certainly good enough that she could not have mistaken it for anyone else. Benedict had drawn her with a small, knowing smile and her hair down. He had drawn her in a field of flowers. Out in the open. Happy. Carefree.
With a pang of wistfulness, Sophie lowered herself beside him. “Benedict…”
“It’s all right. You don’t have to attempt to spare my feelings. I stopped investing any pride in my doodling the day I discovered a sizeable donation was necessary to convince anyone I was talented enough to study art.” He turned to her and chuckled, like he’d just told a clever joke. But the tension lining his brow was real.
His hands were resting motionless in his lap.
Sophie placed her hand overtop his, lacing their fingers together. She squeezed. “It looked to be the work of a great talent to me.”
Benedict’s fingers tightened around hers. His thumb hooked around her pinky. He went quiet, struck silent in the wake of her praise.
Sophie looked away. She focused on the flowers. Their stems, their leaves, their petals. “It reminds me of our time in the country.”
“Yes,” Benedict said somewhat haltingly. “Those days were a source of inspiration for me.”
“What else have you drawn?” Sophie let go of his hand and carefully set aside the sketch to inspect the page beneath it.
“Just more of you.”
“More of me?”
“I’m afraid you’ve been my unofficial muse of late.”
She found herself staring at an array of fragments. Nothing so complete as the Sophie-in-a-field-of-flowers sketch, but lovingly recreated pieces and parts of her, suspended in blank space. Her eyes peered out from the upper lefthand corner of the page. Her hands, large, magnified, took up the middle of it. There were partial, unshaded outlines attempting to capture the slope of her neck and shoulders many times over. There were dark, scribbling, frustrated repetitions of her mouth, the proportions of her lips and teeth changing to mimic various expressions.
The back of her neck felt cool, the phantom, prickling sensation of being watched giving rise to goose pimples. “You drew all this from memory?”
Benedict had returned to staring at the flowers. “I… can sometimes be annoyingly observant. I probably should have warned you.”
Sophie flipped to the next sheet of paper in the stack, and then the next, and the next. But the rest were blank. She turned back to the sketches and removed them from the pile. She held one in each hand, side by side, her focus divided between them. Silently, she tried to determine whether any of the features Benedict had been practicing in the collection of smaller, rougher sketches had been used as a reference in the more complete picture.
“Does it bother you?” Benedict asked after a few moments.
“No.”
“Are you angry with me?”
“No.”
He pivoted towards her on the bench. “Sophie, tell me what you are thinking, please. It is utter torture, not knowing.”
Sophie put down the sketches, jolted out of her careful evaluations. She felt a jab of guilt for being so distracted as to appear unhappy. “I am thinking… Well, I am wondering what happened to your painting of the Lady in Silver.”
“It is unfinished.” Benedict frowned, shaking his head slightly. He looked almost insulted, eyes narrowing, a clenching of his jaw. “And it shall remain so, obviously, as I have never seen her face, and the impression she made grows dimmer by the day. I sit here with you, and I forget her entirely. She is nobody, Sophie. She is a figment of my imagination I danced with once.”
Not for the first time, Sophie considered admitting the truth. That he had, in fact, been drawing her for even longer than he realized. That the sketches in her lap could assist him in filling in the face in the painting, and the end result would be accurate.
She nodded, biting her tongue. “That sounds ideal. For a source of creative inspiration.”
“You are much more inspiring,” Benedict said, the words clearly enunciated, adamant. He reached out and stroked her cheek with the backs of his fingers, the lightest brush of her skin. “Most especially because you do not hide behind a mask and grant me the honor of gazing upon your face.”
A trail of heat followed the path set by his fingers. She was almost certain she was blushing.
“I love your paintings and these sketches,” she murmured, determined to confess at least one secret, looking up and finding herself caught and held by his eyes. “I love that you notice such small things about me, when my position requires that I attract as little notice as possible. You imagine me in ways I dare not imagine myself.”
“I love you.” He leaned in, his joy radiant.
Sophie shut her eyes, wanting more than anything to believe him. Still, doubt cast a shadow over her tentative happiness. She did not trust herself to take a reliable measurement of his sincerity. Even as anticipation thrummed, white-hot and electric, through her veins.
Benedict’s lips pressed urgently to hers, his hand going round to cradle the back of her neck, his breath hitching.
She could all but taste his elation. It was there in the way he kissed her, the movements of his mouth fervent, reverent, almost overflowing with feeling. His fingers slid upward, curling in her hair. He had drawn so near to her on the bench, their legs were touching.
Passion was an exquisite, heady thing, and, devoid of it as her life had been, Sophie had no idea how to harness it. She kissed him back, following his lead at first, still the novice dancer. But his affections were so blissfully unrestrained, she felt herself getting swept away with him. Before long, all that concerned her, all that consumed her, was the need to carry on kissing Benedict Bridgerton as much and for as long as possible.
Forever did not seem too much to ask. Not among the flowers. Not in their world away from the world.
He drew back from her eventually, just enough to tilt his head in the opposite direction, as though craving a different angle.
When Sophie tried to adjust accordingly, his fingers caught in her tightly bound hair. There was a short, sharp tug, followed by a flare of pain at the back of her head that caused her to gasp. Some shorter pieces just above her neck were pulled loose from the carefully smoothed arrangement. She felt them tickling her nape as she winced, massaging her stinging scalp.
“Oh. Sorry!” Benedict withdrew his hand, taking care not to get his fingers any further entangled as he removed them. “I’m so sorry, Sophie. I did not mean—”
“Of course not. It was an unfortunate move on my part.” She kept massaging. The sting was beginning to fade.
Benedict glared at his hand as if it had offended him. “And an unfortunate lack of movement on mine.”
“You couldn’t have predicted it. Really, Benedict, it is nothing. It does not even hurt any longer.”
Sophie attempted to comb the loose strands back into place with her fingers, but they refused to cooperate. At length, she sighed, beginning to remove the pins securing the rest of her hair instead. “It’s late,” she justified. “I would have retired soon, in any case, and taken it down.”
Benedict touched the backs of her hands with the tips of his fingers, urging her to stop. “Allow me.”
She shot him an incredulous look.
His only response was a raised eyebrow and a twirl of his finger, gesturing for her to turn around.
“If you insist. Only… be careful.” She put her back to him.
“You will not feel a thing.”
Sophie tensed, fully expecting to bear the brunt of his inexperience. She prepared for poking, pulling, and prodding. Earnest intentions without any real ability to follow through.
But she felt the pins sliding from her hair. And they did slide, slowly, gently, without getting caught or jabbing her at all. He assisted her with surprising finesse. These did not feel like the same lover’s hands that had held her so urgently just moments before. These were the hands of an artist, charting the most delicate of sweeps with his paintbrush.
When her hair was completely unbound, Benedict released it, letting it tumble down her back. He concluded his task by pressing a lingering kiss to her clothed shoulder.
Sophie smiled. “Thank you.”
“My pleasure.” He stepped closer, murmuring in her ear. “I like it down.”
“It’s not proper.”
“Why should we care what is proper?”
Her smile widened. “It’s not practical.”
“But it is beautiful.” Benedict leaned over her shoulder, brushing his lips from her temple to her cheek to her jaw.
Sophie’s eyes drifted shut. And, in the dark, she allowed herself to dream that she was the Sophie that Benedict had envisioned in his drawing. Carefree. Out in the open. In a field of flowers.
She supposed the blossoms inside the conservatory would have to be enough.