Free The Water Nymph by Michele Jaffe Page B

speaking were certainly not the words of Sophie Champion. Sophie Champion would rather have leapt off the top of Saint Paul’s than take her clothes off in front of a man. The only thing that sounded like Sophie at all was the guileless gourmet description of what were clearly the symptoms of physical attraction. As Octavia’s concern that she really had poisoned Sophie ebbed, her curiosity about what human male could possibly have induced such sensations in her friend increased. “Who was this man who ordered you to strip?” she asked nonchalantly.
    “The Earl of Sandal,” Sophie replied, avoiding her friend’s eyes.
    “I see.” This was the delicate part, Octavia knew. She paused for a moment, twirling a lock of golden blonde hair around her finger as she tried to figure out the best way to phrase her question. “And after you took your clothes off, you decided to go to bed with him?”
    “Are you mad?” Sophie was no longer avoiding Octavia’s gaze. “With that disreputable caterpillar? That odious worm? That—that—” Sophie spluttered and decided to change tactics. “Go to bed with him? Never. And then, because of your mustache paste and his infernal hatefulness, I was compelled to make a wager with him. And the next thing I know I am lying in his bed, naked, and it is nearly midday and my clothes are gone.” Sophie stopped for breath.
    Emme entered the room then, carrying a silver cake platter, but she stopped abruptly when she saw the pained expression on Octavia’s face. “What is wrong?”
    “Oh, nothing,” Octavia answered, obviously struggling to keep breathing and avoid either weeping or laughing, Emme could not be sure. “Sophie was just telling me about how the mustache paste made her sick and compelled her to strip off her clothes, make a wager, and then spend the night with the Earl of Sandal, and it is all my fault.”
    The silver platter fell to the floor with a bang, sending a round sugary confection flying across the floor. “You spent the night with the Earl of Sandal?” Emme stopped gaping long enough to ask.
    Sophie rose from the tub, frowned at the round confection, and then turned her frown on Emme. “Where is the orange cake?”
    Emme managed to unlock her jaw. “Richards says there is no need to make orange cake when you order a dozen meringues from Sweetson the baker to be delivered every week.”
    “Meringues are quite delicious,” Octavia added in a slightly stilted tone.
    “Maybe,” Sophie said, waving the comment aside. “But they are not orange cakes and I did not order them. Why would I order anything from anyone else when I have Richards—Satan’s knockers!” Sophie had just remembered the second thing she had forgotten to remember earlier, and it was all thanks to the meringue. Relieved, and feeling much better after her bath, she stepped out of the tub, scooped the fluffy confection from the floor, kissed it, and tossed it out the window. Then she danced toward Emme and gave her a kiss likewise. “Thank you. It would never have come back to me if not for you. Now, be wonderful and tell Richards that I don’t know anything about ordering meringues and I am still begging for orange cake.”
    She watched the now doubly stunned Emme totter out of the room, and then swung toward Octavia. “I need clothes, women’s clothes, but easy to move in,” she explained.
    Octavia and Emme had grown accustomed to Sophie’s unusual behavior and no longer thought twice when she went from pensive to ebullient in the blink of an eye, but this business of sleeping with men and kissing desserts was out of the ordinary, even for her. Beginning to wonder if indeed the mustache paste had made Sophie mad, Octavia opened the armoire that was stuffed with the gowns she had designed for her friend and selected a pale blue silk.
    “No, not that one,” Sophie said, shaking her head, and Octavia felt that her worst fears were confirmed. Sophie had never, in all their years