An Offer From a Gentleman

“She may not have any openings,” Sophie pointed out.

He shrugged. “She loves me. She’ll make an opening.”

Sophie held her ground, refusing to take a single step alongside him until she’d made her point. “I’m not going to be  your mistress.”

His expression was remarkably bland as he murmured, “Yes, you’ve said as much.”

“No, I mean, your plan isn’t going to work.”

He was all innocence. “I have a plan?”

“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “You’re going to try to wear me down in hopes that eventually I’ll give in.”

“I would never dream of it.”

“I’m sure you dream of quite a bit more,” she muttered.

He must have heard her, because he chuckled. Sophie crossed her arms mutinously, not caring that she looked most  undignified in such a position, standing right there on the pavement in full view of the world. No one would pay her half  a mind, anyway, dressed as she was in the coarse woolens of a servant. She supposed she ought to adopt a brighter  outlook and approach her new position with a more optimistic attitude, but drat it all, she wanted to be sullen just then.

Frankly, she thought she’d earned it. If anyone had a right to be sullen and disgruntled, it was she.

“We could stand here on the pavement all day,” Benedict said, his voice lightly laced with sarcasm.

She started to shoot him an angry glare, but that was when she noticed where they were standing. They weren’t in  Grosvenor Square. Sophie wasn’t even certain where they were. Mayfair, to be sure, but the house before them definitely wasn’t the house at which she’d attended the masquerade.

“Er, is this Bridgerton House?” she asked.

He quirked a brow. “How did you know my home is called Bridgerton House?”

“You’ve mentioned it.” Which was, thankfully, true. He’d talked about both Bridgerton House, and the Bridgertons’  country residence, Aubrey Hall, several times during their conversations.

“Oh.” He seemed to accept that. “Well, no, actually, it’s not. My mother moved out of Bridgerton House nearly two years  ago. She hosted one last ball—it was a masquerade, actually—and then turned the residence over to my brother and his  wife. She’d always said she would leave just as soon as he married and started a family of his own. I believe his first child  was born a mere month after she left.”

“Was it a boy or a girl?” she asked, even though she knew the answer. Lady Whistledown always reported such things.

“A boy. Edmund. They had another son, Miles, earlier this year.”

“How nice for them,” Sophie murmured, even though it felt like her heart were strangling. She wasn’t likely to have children  of her own, and that was one of the saddest realizations she’d ever reached. Children required a husband, and marriage  seemed a pipe dream. She hadn’t been raised to be a servant, and thus she had very little in common with most of the men  she met in her daily life. Not that the other servants weren’t good and honorable people, but it was difficult to imagine sharing her life with someone who, for example, couldn’t read.

Sophie didn’t need to marry someone of particularly high birth, but even the middle class was out of her reach. No self-respecting man in trade would marry a housemaid.

Benedict motioned for her to follow him, and she did, until they reached the front steps. Sophie shook her head.  “I’ll use the side entrance.” His lips thinned.

You’ll use the front entrance.”

“I’ll use the side entrance,” she said firmly. “No woman of breeding will hire a maid who enters through the front.”

“You’re with me,” he ground out. “You’ll use the front entrance.”

A bubble of mirth escaped her lips. “Benedict, just yesterday you wanted me to become your mistress. Would you dare  bring your mistress to meet your mother through the front door?”

She’d confounded him with that. Sophie grinned as she watched his face twist with frustration.

She felt better than she had in days.

“Would you,” she continued, mostly just to torture him further, “bring your mistress to meet her at all?”

“You’re not my mistress,” he bit off.

“Indeed.”

His chin jutted out, and his eyes bored into hers with barely leashed fury. “You’re a bloody little housemaid,” he said, his  voice low, “because you’ve insisted upon being a housemaid. And as a housemaid, you are, if somewhat low on the social scale, still utterly respectable. Certainly respectable enough for my mother.”

Sophie’s smile faltered. She might have pushed him too far.

“Good,” Benedict grunted, once it was clear that she was not going to argue the point any further. “Come with me,” Sophie followed him up the steps. This might actually work to her advantage. Benedict’s mother surely would not hire a maid who  had the effrontery to use the front door. And since she had steadfastly refused to be Benedict’s mistress, he would have to accept defeat and allow her to return to the country.

Benedict pushed open the front door, holding it until Sophie entered before him. The butler arrived within seconds.

“Wickham,” Benedict said, “kindly inform my mother that I am here.”

“I will indeed, Mr. Bridgerton,” Wickham replied. “And might I take the liberty of informing you that she has been rather  curious as to your whereabouts this past week?”