Sophie started feeling ill the minute the carriage departed My Cottage. By the time they stopped for the night at an inn in Oxfordshire, she was downright queasy. And when they reached the outskirts of London…Well, she was quite convinced she would throw up.

Somehow she managed to keep the contents of her stomach where they belonged, but as their carriage wended farther into the tangled streets of London, she was filled with an intense sense of apprehension.

No, not apprehension. Doom.

It was May, which meant that the season was in full swing. Which meant that Araminta was in residence.

Which meant that Sophie’s arrival was a bad, bad idea.

“Very bad,” she muttered.

Benedict looked up. “Did you say something?”

She crossed her arms mutinously. “Just that you’re a very bad man.”

He chuckled. She’d known he would chuckle, and it still irritated her.

He pulled the curtain away from the window and looked out. “We’re nearly there,” he said.

He’d said that he was taking her directly to his mother’s residence. Sophie remembered the grand house in Grosvenor Square as if she’d been there the night before. The ballroom was huge, with hundreds of sconces on the walls, each adorned by a perfect beeswax candle. The smaller rooms had been decorated in the Adam style, with exquisitely scalloped ceilings and pale, pastel walls.

It had been Sophie’s dream house, quite literally. In all her dreams of Benedict and their fictional future together, she’d always seen herself in that house. It was silly, she knew, since he was a second son and thus not in line to inherit the property, but still, it was the most beautiful home she’d ever beheld, and dreams weren’t meant to be about reality, anyway. If Sophie had wanted to dream her way right into Kensington Palace, that was her prerogative.

Of course, she thought with a wry smile, she wasn’t likely ever to see the interior of Kensington Palace.

“What are you smiling about?” Benedict demanded.

She didn’t bother to glance up as she replied, “I’m plotting your demise.”

He grinned—not that she was looking at him, but it was one of those smiles she could hear in the way he breathed.

She hated that she was that sensitive to his every nuance. Especially since she had a sneaking suspicion that he was the same way about her.

“At least it sounds entertaining,” he said.

“What does?” she asked, finally moving her eyes from the lower hem of the curtain, which she’d been staring at for what seemed like hours.

“My demise,” he said, his smile crooked and amused. “If you’re going to kill me, you might as well enjoy yourself while you’re at it, because Lord knows, I won’t.”

Her jaw dropped a good inch. “You’re mad,” she said.

“Probably.” He shrugged rather casually before settling back in his seat and propping his feet up on the bench across from him. “I’ve all but kidnapped you, after all. I should think that would qualify as the maddest thing I’ve ever done.”

“You could let me go now,” she said, even though she knew he never would.

“Here in London? Where you could be attacked by foot-pads at any moment? That would be most irresponsible of me, don’t you think?”

“It hardly compares to abducting me against my will!”

“I didn’t abduct you,” he said, idly examining his fingernails. “I blackmailed you. There’s a world of difference.”

Sophie was saved from having to reply by the jolt of the carriage as it ground to a halt.

Benedict flipped back the curtains one last time, then let them fall into place. “Ah. Here we are.”

Sophie waited while he disembarked, then moved to the doorway. She briefly considered ignoring his outstretched hand and jumping down herself, but the carriage was quite high off the ground, and she really didn’t wish to make a fool of herself by tripping and landing in the gutter.

It would be nice to insult him, but not at the cost of a sprained ankle.

With a sigh, she took his hand.

“Very smart of you,” Benedict murmured.

Sophie looked at him sharply. How did he know what she’d been thinking?

“I almost always know what you’re thinking,” he said.

She tripped.

“Whoa!” he called out, catching her expertly before she landed in the gutter.

He held her just a moment longer than was necessary before depositing her on the pavement. Sophie would have said something, except that her teeth were ground together far too tightly for words.

“Doesn’t the irony just kill you?” Benedict asked, smiling wickedly.

She pried open her jaw. “No, but it may very well kill you.”

He laughed, the blasted man. “Come along,” he said. “I’ll introduce you to my mother. I’m sure she’ll find some position or another for you.”

“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?”

“I would be shocked if she hadn’t been,” Benedict replied.

Wickham nodded toward Sophie with an expression that hovered somewhere between curiosity and disdain. “Might I inform her of your guest’s arrival?”

“Please do.”

“Might I inform her of your guest’s identity?”

Sophie looked over at Benedict with great interest, wondering what he’d say.

“Her name is Miss Beckett,” Benedict replied. “She is here to seek employment.”

One of Wickham’s brows rose. Sophie was surprised. She didn’t think that butlers were supposed to show any expression whatsoever.

“As a maid?” Wickham inquired.

“As whatever,” Benedict said, his tone beginning to show the first traces of impatience.

“Very good, Mr. Bridgerton,” Wickham said, and then he disappeared up the staircase.

“I don’t think he thought it was very good at all,” Sophie whispered to Benedict, careful to hide her smile.

“Wickham is not in charge here.”

Sophie let out a little whatever-you-say sort of sigh. “I imagine Wickham would disagree.”

He looked at her with disbelief. “He’s the butler.”

“And I’m a housemaid. I know all about butlers. More, I daresay, than you do.”

His eyes narrowed. “You act less like a housemaid than any woman of my acquaintance.”

She shrugged and pretended to inspect a still life painting on the wall. “You bring out the worst in me, Mr. Bridgerton.”

“Benedict,” he hissed. “You’ve called me by my given name before. Use it now.”

“Your mother is about to descend the stairs,” she reminded him, “and you are insisting that she hire me as a housemaid. Do many of your servants call you by your given name?”

He glared at her, and she knew he knew she was right. “You can’t have it both ways, Mr. Bridgerton,” she said, allowing herself a tiny smile.

“I only wanted it one way,” he growled.

“Benedict!”

Sophie looked up to see an elegant, petite woman descending the stairs. Her coloring was fairer than Benedict’s, but her features marked her clearly as his mother.

“Mother,” he said, striding to meet her at the bottom of the stairs. “It is good to see you.”

“It would be better to see you,” she said pertly, “had I known where you were this past week. The last I’d heard you’d gone off to the Cavender party, and then everyone returned without you.”

“I left the party early,” he replied, “then went off to My Cottage.”

His mother sighed. “I suppose I can’t expect you to notify me of your every movement now that you’re thirty years of age.”

Benedict gave her an indulgent smile.

She turned to Sophie. “This must be your Miss Beckett.”

“Indeed,” Benedict replied. “She saved my life while I was at My Cottage.”

Sophie started. “I didn’t—”

“She did,” Benedict cut in smoothly. “I took ill from driving in the rain, and she nursed me to health.”

“You would have recuperated without me,” she insisted.

“But not,” Benedict said, directing his words at his mother, “with such speed or in such comfort.”

“Weren’t the Crabtrees at home?” Violet asked.

“Not when we arrived,” Benedict replied.

Violet looked at Sophie with such obvious curiosity that Benedict was finally forced to explain, “Miss Beckett had been employed by the Cavenders, but certain circumstances made it impossible for her to stay.”

“I…see,” Violet said unconvincingly.

“Your son saved me from a most unpleasant fate,” Sophie said quietly. “I owe him a great deal of thanks.”

Benedict looked to her in surprise. Given the level of her hostility toward him, he hadn’t expected her to volunteer complimentary information. But he supposed he should have done; Sophie was highly principled, not the sort to let anger interfere with honesty.

It was one of the things he liked best about her.

“I see,” Violet said again, this time with considerably more feeling.

“I was hoping you might find her a position in your household,” Benedict said.

“But not if it’s too much trouble,” Sophie hastened to add.

“No,” Violet said slowly, her eyes settling on Sophie’s face with a curious expression. “No, it wouldn’t be any trouble at all, but…”

Both Benedict and Sophie leaned forward, awaiting the rest of the sentence.

“Have we met?” Violet suddenly asked.

“I don’t think so,” Sophie said, stammering slightly. How could Lady Bridgerton think she knew her? She was positive their paths had not crossed at the masquerade. “I can’t imagine how we could have done.”

“I’m certain you’re right,” Lady Bridgerton said with a wave of her hand. “There is something vaguely familiar about you. But I’m sure it’s just that I’ve met someone with similar features. It happens all the time.”

“Especially to me,” Benedict said with a crooked smile.

Lady Bridgerton looked to her son with obvious affection. “It’s not my fault all my children ended up looking remarkably alike.”

“If the blame can’t be placed with you,” Benedict asked, “then where may we place it?”

“Entirely upon your father,” Lady Bridgerton replied jauntily. She turned to Sophie. “They all look just like my late husband.”

Sophie knew she should remain silent, but the moment was so lovely and comfortable that she said, “I think your son resembles you.”

“Do you think?” Lady Bridgerton asked, clasping her hands together with delight. “How lovely. And here I’ve always just considered myself a vessel for the Bridgerton family.”

“Mother!” Benedict said.

She sighed. “Am I speaking too plainly? I do that more and more in my old age.”

“You are hardly elderly, Mother.”

She smiled. “Benedict, why don’t you go visit with your sisters while I take your Miss Bennett—”

“Beckett,” he interrupted.

“Yes, of course, Beckett,” she murmured. “I shall take her upstairs and get her settled in.”

“You need only take me to the housekeeper,” Sophie said. It was most odd for a lady of the house to concern herself with the hiring of a housemaid. Granted, the entire situation was unusual, what with Benedict asking that she be hired on, but it was very strange that Lady Bridgerton would take a personal interest in her.

“Mrs. Watkins is busy, I’m sure,” Lady Bridgerton said. “Besides, I believe we have need for another lady’s maid upstairs. Have you any experience in that area?”

Sophie nodded.

“Excellent. I thought you might. You speak very well.”

“My mother was a housekeeper,” Sophie said automatically. “She worked for a very generous family and—” She broke off in horror, belatedly remembering that she’d told Benedict the truth—that her mother had died at her birth. She shot him a nervous look, and he answered it with a vaguely mocking tilt of his chin, silently telling her that he wasn’t going to expose her lie.

“The family she worked for was very generous,” Sophie continued, a relieved rush of air passing across her lips, “and they allowed me to share many lessons with the daughters of the house.”

“I see,” Lady Bridgerton said. “That explains a great deal. I find it difficult to believe you’ve been toiling as a housemaid. You are clearly educated enough to pursue loftier positions.”

“She reads quite well,” Benedict said.

Sophie looked to him in surprise.

He ignored her, instead saying to his mother, “She read to me a great deal during my recuperation.”

“Do you write, as well?” Lady Bridgerton asked.

Sophie nodded. “My penmanship is quite neat.”

“Excellent. It is always handy to have an extra pair of hands at my disposal when we are addressing invitations. And we do have a ball coming up later in the summer. I have two girls out this year,” she explained to Sophie. “I’m hopeful that one of them will choose a husband before the season is through.”

“I don’t think Eloise wants to marry,” Benedict said.

“Quiet your mouth,” Lady Bridgerton said.

“Such a statement is sacrilege around here,” Benedict said to Sophie.

“Don’t listen to him,” Lady Bridgerton said, walking toward the stairs. “Here, come with me, Miss Beckett. What did you say your given name was?”

“Sophia. Sophie.”

“Come with me, Sophie. I’ll introduce you to the girls. And,” she added, her nose crinkling with distaste, “we’ll find you something new to wear. I cannot have one of our maids dressed so shabbily. A person would think we didn’t pay you a fair wage.”

It had never been Sophie’s experience that members of the ton were concerned about paying their servants fairly, and she was touched by Lady Bridgerton’s generosity.

“You,” Lady Bridgerton said to Benedict. “Wait for me downstairs. We have much to discuss, you and I.”

“I’m quaking in my boots,” he deadpanned.

“Between him and his brother, I don’t know which one of them will kill me first,” Lady Bridgerton muttered.

“Which brother?” Sophie asked.

“Either. Both. All three. Scoundrels, the lot of them.”

But they were scoundrels she clearly loved. Sophie could hear it in the way she spoke, see it in her eyes when they lit with joy upon seeing her son.

And it made Sophie lonely and wistful and jealous. How different her life might have been had her mother lived through childbirth. They might have been unrespectable, Mrs. Beckett a mistress and Sophie a bastard, but Sophie liked to think that her mother would have loved her.

Which was more than she received from any other adult, her father included.

“Come along, Sophie,” Lady Bridgerton said briskly.

Sophie followed her up the stairs, wondering why, if she were merely about to begin a new job, she felt as if she were entering a new family.

It felt…nice.

And it had been a long, long while since her life had felt nice.