Read Lady Sophia's Rescue (Traditional Regency Romance) for Free Online Page A

of comfort stole over her. Comfort mingled with fear. Mr. Birmingham would do his best to disengage her from Dottie in order to demand information that only the mysterious Isadore possessed.
    She must not allow herself to be alone with him.
    As the carriage turned onto Grosvenor Square, Mr. Birmingham announced that they had arrived at his home. An impressive address. Her great aunt, Lady Gresham, lived there at Number 12.
    “Perhaps, sir,” Sophia said, “you might wish to enter through the back.”
    A devilish smile broke over his face. “A very good suggestion, Miss Door,” he said. “Were my neighbors to see so bedraggled a man from so bedraggled carriage enter my house, they would be certain to send for the Watch. And we couldn’t have that, could we, Miss Door?”
    He instructed the coachman to drive to the back.
    A moment later they were disembarking from the carriage, kindly Mr. Birmingham offering Sophia a wet hand. As soon as they stepped into the gracious house, he began to bark orders to his servants to put the sisters into the Blue Room and Yellow Room respectively and to hasten with baths for the ladies.
    “What about yourself, Mister Birmingham?” the housekeeper asked, her shocked gaze lingering on her employer’s torn, muddy clothes.
    “I shall avail myself of one once the ladies are finished.”
    As London houses went, especially those on Grosvenor Square, Mr. Birmingham’s was small. As befitted a bachelor. Sophia’s chest tightened. He was a bachelor, was he not? A lump the size of a walnut lodged in her throat as she climbed the stairs behind him. “Is there. . . a Mrs. Birmingham?” she asked. Please say no .
    “You will be staying in her room.”
    The queasiness returned to Sophia’s stomach.
    “My mother visits once or twice a year. My sister used to occasionally stay in the Yellow Room, but she is married now and has her own house in town.”
    “Is that the sister you were just visiting in the north?” Sophia asked, her step lightening.
    “Yes.” He opened the door to the blue chamber, a high ceilinged room carpeted in pale blue, its walls covered in silk of the same shade. The room bespoke impeccable taste from its high, velvet-draped tester bed to its marble chimney piece that was centered with a gold clock and flanked by turquoise Sevres vases. Whatever illegal activities Mr. Birmingham engaged in certainly paid handsomely.
    “Your sister will have the next room,” he said, still standing in the doorway as a pair footman carried the slipper tub into the room and placed it in front of chimney, where a maid was kneeling down to start the fire. “I beg that you ladies join me in the dining room at six,” he added.
    That would give them three hours to clean, rest, then dress for dinner. “It will be our pleasure,” Sophia said.
    * * *
    Before Sophia and Dottie made their way to the dining room, Sophia demanded two things of her maid. “First,” she said to Dottie, who had sneaked to her room to help her dress, “you are NOT to wait upon me.”
    “Not even to help with yer ’air?”
    “Not even to help with my hair. You’re to pretend to be a gentlewoman yourself.”
    Dottie nodded. “A deaf gentlewoman.”
    “Not deaf. Mute.”
    “I always get them two mixed up.”
    All the more reason for Sophia to congratulate herself for demanding that Dottie play the mute. “There is another thing I must ask of you.”
    Dottie arched her brows.
    “You’re not to allow me to be alone with Mr. Birmingham.”
    “You’re that attracted to him, eh? If ye ask me, it would be a very good plan if ye let ’im ruin ye so ye wouldn’t have to go back to that odious Lord Finkel.”
    There was merit in what her maid said. If Sophia had a mind to ruin herself with a man she could not think of a more worthy candidate than the sublime Mr. Birmingham. A pity he was a criminal. “That’s not what I mean! I cannot be alone with Mr. Birmingham because then he will expect me to be