Song for Sophia Read Free

from being brutally raped by Lowdry, her father’s sycophant. She had been punished for defying him.
    The scars across her back and forearms itched and burned, a reminder of what awaited her should she fail in her disguise.
    How had she come to this — living in fear?
    She clenched her jaw and rekindled her anger — that she could manage. Anger forged her onward but grief was debilitating. She allowed herself to succumb to it only a few times per year, and she had already spent her allotments for 1867.
    • • •
    Wilhelm took this way every morning at daybreak. Nine years in the army, rising with the cock’s crow, had beaten the decadence out of him. Today the eastward trade wind brought clean, briny smells from the sea. He walked along the trail and noticed fresh pine and blossoms on the breeze — good, the last frost had passed then. The birds were restless, but they didn’t cry in alarm. No danger, but someone else was in the forest. His forest.
    Ahead on the trail Wilhelm heard a woman’s clear soprano rising and falling in a familiar Spanish melody. The purity of tone and grace of inflection made his chest constrict, an odd feeling. He slipped into the brush, circled the trail, and saw her.
    The woman sat against a fallen log on the side of the footpath. Her hat lay discarded on the ground, and her waist-length hair hung free, twirling in the breeze as she sang. His own dog lay in her lap, as though she was his owner.
    Wilhelm was held in place by a force he could not oppose, alternately praying the siren would stop luring him and hoping she never would. Who is she? Why do I know this music? And why the hell am I spying on a lady?
    The woman either forgot the rest or lost interest, absently humming the melody. She wound endless waves of glossy jet hair into a tight knot, the strands glinting blue and red in the sunlight until a disappointing gray felt hat covered her head. His eyes followed every movement as she fastened the buttons of her plain cotton blouse, hiding the pleated lace edging of what appeared to be very fine Parisian lingerie, dyed the color of a ripe peach.
    Heaven help him, her bare legs! Such delicate lines, long and willowy. Hypnotizing, the iridescent sheen of her skin where the sunlight reflected on it. He must have crept closer but didn’t recall doing so. He swallowed to avoid echoing her sigh as she rolled stockings up her thighs and tied the garter ribbons. He saw the hem of her translucent peach shift. Very short. Edged in rose-shaped lace that teased over her legs, flaying him alive with an almost view of the skin beneath. His mouth went dry.
    She turned in his direction to scan the trail, and his breath stalled as her gaze passed over his hiding place. She was quite possibly the most exquisite woman he had ever seen. Not because of the near-perfect symmetry of her features, but the fire burning in her eyes: intelligence, sorrow, secrets, strength. And oh, how he detested the longing it gave him.
    Over her naughty underwear, she was dressed like a domestic, but she betrayed a straight, proud posture bred through generations of nobility, and she moved with the grace of a dancer. Flamenco in wool.
    Ridiculous, what he was doing. Inexcusable. Wilhelm Montegue, Earl of Devon, crouched in the bushes and peering out like a satyr. He hated this familiar wash of loathing for himself; it followed every instance of shattered self-control. Still he watched.
    He knew he was a slave to the unnatural forces in his brain. He was insane, more or less, but most mad people didn’t know it, while he was entirely aware of his lunacy.
    The doctors called it a disorder, the poets called it obsession, but he was helpless when provoked. An ivory-obsidian chess set, the scent of ancient parchment, the facets of a crystal: all his captors for hours on end, enslaving him to fascination. It was what made him memorize texts, invent formulaic equations, compose music … . Never before had a human caused it. This