An awful, horrible, terrible voice.
Dear God, it was Araminta.
Sophie’s heart stopped, and she quickly pressed herself back against the wall. Araminta was facing the street, and unless she turned around, she’d never notice Sophie.
At least it was easy to remain silent when one couldn’t even breathe.
What was she doing here? Penwood House was at least eight blocks away, closer to—
Then Sophie remembered. She’d read it in Whistledown last year, one of the few copies she’d been able to get her hands on while she was working for the Cavenders. The new Earl of Penwood had finally decided to take up residence in London. Araminta, Rosamund, and Posy had been forced to find new accommodations.
Next door to the Bridgertons? Sophie couldn’t have imagined a worse nightmare if she tried.
“Where is that insufferable girl?” she heard Araminta said.
Sophie immediately felt sorry for the girl in question. As Araminta’s former “insufferable girl,” she knew that the position came with few benefits.
“Posy!” Araminta yelled, then marched into a waiting carriage.
Sophie chewed on her lip, her heart sinking. In that moment, she knew exactly what must have happened when she left. Araminta would have hired a new maid, and she was probably just beastly to the poor girl, but she wouldn’t have been able to degrade and demean her in quite the same fashion she’d done with Sophie. You had to know a person, really hate them, to be so cruel. Any old servant wouldn’t do.
And since Araminta had to put someone down—she didn’t know how to feel good about herself without making someone else feel bad—she’d obviously chosen Posy as her whipping boy—or girl, as the case might be.
Posy came dashing out the door, her face pinched and drawn. She looked unhappy, and perhaps a bit heavier than she had been two years earlier. Araminta wouldn’t like that, Sophie thought glumly. She’d never been able to accept that Posy wasn’t petite and blond and beautiful like Rosamund and herself. If Sophie had been Araminta’s nemesis, then Posy had always been her disappointment.
Sophie watched as Posy stopped at the top of the steps, then reached down to fiddle with the laces of her short boots. Rosamund poked her head out of the carriage, yelling, “Posy!” in what Sophie thought was a rather unattractively shrill voice.
Sophie ducked back, turning her head away. She was right in Rosamund’s line of sight.
“I’m coming!” Posy called out.
“Hurry up!” Rosamund snapped.
Posy finished tying her laces, then hurried forward, but her foot slipped on the final step, and a moment later she was sprawled on the pavement. Sophie lurched forward, instinctively moving to help Posy, but she jammed herself back against the wall. Posy was unhurt, and there was nothing in life Sophie wanted less than for Araminta to know that she was in London, practically right next door.
Posy picked herself off the pavement, stopping to stretch her neck, first to the right, then to the left, then ...
Then she saw her. Sophie was sure of it. Posy’s eyes widened, and her mouth fell open slightly. Then her lips came together, pursed to make the “S” to begin “Sophie?”
Sophie shook her head frantically.
“Posy!” came Araminta’s irate cry.
Sophie shook her head again, her eyes begging, pleading with Posy not to give her away.
“I’m coming, Mother!” Posy called. She gave Sophie a single short nod, then climbed up into the carriage, which thankfully rolled off in the opposite direction.
Sophie sagged against the building. She didn’t move for a full minute.
And then she didn’t move for another five.
* * *
Benedict didn’t mean to take anything away from his mother and sisters, but once Sophie ran out of the upstairs sitting room, he lost his interest in tea and scones.
“I was just wondering where you’d been,” Eloise was saying.
“Hmmm?” He craned his head slightly to the right, wondering how much of the streetscape he could see through the window from this angle.
“I said,” Eloise practically hollered, “I was just wondering—”
“Eloise, lower your voice,” Lady Bridgerton interjected.
“But he’s not listening.”
“If he’s not listening,” Lady Bridgerton said, “then shouting isn’t going to get his attention.”
“Throwing a scone might work,” Hyacinth suggested.
“Hyacinth, don’t you da—”
But Hyacinth had already lobbed the scone. Benedict ducked out of the way, barely a second before it would have bounced off the side of his head. He looked first to the wall, which now bore a slight smudge where the scone had hit, then to the floor, where it had landed, remarkably in one piece.
“I believe that is my cue to leave,” he said smoothly, shooting a cheeky smile at his youngest sister. Her airborne scone had given him just the excuse he needed to duck out of the room and see if he couldn’t trail Sophie to wherever it was she thought she was going.
“But you just got here,” his mother pointed out.
Benedict immediately regarded her with suspicion. Unlike her usual moans of “But you just got here,” she didn’t sound the least bit upset at his leaving.
Which meant she was up to something.
“I could stay,” he said, just to test her.
“Oh, no,” she said, lifting her teacup to her lips even though he was fairly certain it was empty. “Don’t let us keep you if you’re busy.”