She wanted to be free—he could show her freedom.
He could show her happiness.
Except he couldn’t.
Cursing under his breath, he handed the first of the four horses off to the coachman and made quick work of unhitching the second when she poked her head out of the door. “My lord?” she called, before returning to the shadows of the carriage.
He didn’t wish to think of her. He was too busy thinking of her.
“Bollocks,” he muttered.
Christ. Now he was swearing like her.
“My lord!” She was sounding more panicked.
He passed the second horse to the coachman and returned to her. “What is it?”
“I must go inside.”
“You shouldn’t be seen. You stay here.”
She pressed her lips into a thin line. “I have necessary requirements.”
He sighed. Of course she did.
“And I think perhaps I ought to find other clothes. The livery has become somewhat . . . obvious.”
She was right, of course. She looked like a footman who’d been dragged through the muck, shot, and left for dead. Which wasn’t an entirely incorrect assessment of her situation. And with her long brown hair coming out of her cap, she would be discovered in a heartbeat. And when her hunters arrived, a girl dressed as a bedraggled footman would certainly count as something unique enough to mention. He hadn’t a choice.
“You handle your needs. I shall get you a dress.”
He charmed the pub owner with a long-suffering sigh and a handful of coin, and returned to the carriage with a frock and food and a skin of hot water. Opening the door, he found her already returned, and tossed the first two items into the carriage before handing her the water. “For your tea.”
He did not give her a chance to thank him, instead closing the door before returning to help the coachman hitch new horses.
“We’ve two good stretches before we get to Longwood, sir,” said the coachman. “We’ll need another change of horses in the night.”
“And a new coachman. You’ll need to sleep,” King said, triple checking the leather harnesses.
“I can see you through until then.”
King nodded. “Good man, John.”
John smiled. “The night is the best time to ride the roads.”
King knew it keenly. He also knew it was the worst time to ride inside a carriage—the darkness closing in around him, reminding him of the past, which became more and more difficult to ignore as they drew closer to Cumbria.
He opened the door to the carriage with more force than he’d planned, and she squeaked from her seat, hands clutched to her chest. She was wearing the green dress, festooned in little frills of lace and ribbon. “I’m not ready for you, yet,” she said, the words nearly strangling her.
“Why not?”
“Because I am not,” she replied, as though it were a legitimate answer to his question.
He raised a brow and did not move.
“I require another five minutes,” she said, shooing him out of the carriage. With her foot.
It was the foot that tipped him to her concern. His gaze fell, lingering on the hands at her breast, white laces crisscrossing up the bodice of the dress. “Are you having trouble lacing yourself into it?” he asked.
She went crimson, and he had his answer. “Not at all!” she squeaked.
“You’re a terrible liar.”
She scowled at him. “I don’t typically have cause to lie, sir. It is rare that men ask me such . . . ungentlemanly questions.”
“Don’t you mean rapscallionesque?”
“That, as well. Yes.”
He smiled. “Do you require my assistance, my lady?”
“I most certainly do not,” she replied. “It’s simply that the previous owner of this particular garment was somewhat less . . .”
Close the door, he willed himself. Don’t let her finish that thought.
Sadly, his arms forgot how to work.
And then she finished the sentence and his brain did the same.
“. . . ample.”
Christ.
“You have five minutes,” he said, “and then we leave, laced or no.”
He closed the door and returned to the horses, checking the cinches again as he counted to three hundred. By thirty-six, he was imagining her ample breasts. At ninety-four, he was cursing himself for not having a good look at the breasts in question when he had Sophie in hand earlier in the day. By one hundred and seventy, he’d relived the events of earlier in the day, much to the twin emotions of pleasure and guilt. By two hundred twenty-five, he was cursing himself the worst kind of scoundrel, but, truthfully, she was the one who had brought up breasts.
You are the one who is acting like a boy in short pants.
No. Boys in short pants were much more appropriately behaved.
Two hundred ninety-nine.
Three hundred.
He opened the door and climbed in, working very hard not to look at her. She did not squeak, so he supposed that meant she’d finished the task at hand. He rapped on the roof, and the carriage took off.
They traveled in silence for long minutes—twenty or so—before she broke the silence. “Do you remember me?”
He looked at her then.
Mistake.
She was beautiful. The dress was shabby and too small for her, and he could see why she’d had trouble. It had to be laced as tightly as possible up her midline to cage her breasts, which spilled out of the top, as though they were desperate to be free.
Just as he was quite desperate to free them.
He dragged his gaze to meet her eyes. “I was not gone very long.”
She smiled at that, and he warmed at the sign of her entertainment. Good God. It felt like he was a boy in short pants, eager for her approval. “I did not mean from earlier today. I meant from earlier in our life.”
“Remember you from where?”
The smile faltered a touch. “We danced once. At a ball.”
His brows rose. “I would remember that.”
“It was a quadrille. At the Beaufetheringstone Ball.”
He shook his head. “You’re mistaken.”
She gave a little huff of laughter. “My lord, I believe that I would remember you more than you would remember me.”
She was doing it again. “Stop it.”
“Stop what?”
“Stop believing whatever everyone has said about you for all these years. There’s nothing about you that is unmemorable. The last week has been the most memorable of my life, for Chrissakes. Because of you. Stop imagining that you’re something you’re not.”
Her eyes went wide, and King immediately felt like an idiot.
“What does that mean?” she asked quietly.
He didn’t want to answer. He’d made enough of a fool of himself. So instead he said, “I’m simply saying that I should remember that we danced.” She went silent, and for a long moment, he thought she might be hurt that he didn’t remember. “I will remember you now.”
It was an understatement in the extreme.
And then she said, “May I still have my question?”
The question he’d promised her before they stopped. Before he’d almost kissed her. Before he’d noticed her breasts. Well. Before he’d noticed her breasts, today.
This evening.
“Yes.”
“You said you were going to your father to tell him something before he died.”
“I did.”
“When was the last time you saw him?”
The feel of the carriage returned, as did his awareness of the waning light. Darkness was coming, and with it, memory. And demons. And this woman was not going to let him ignore them. “Fifteen years ago.”
“How old were you?”
“Eighteen.”
“And why haven’t you ever come back?”
He exhaled on a long breath and leaned back against the seat, wishing she were n
ext to him again. He’d liked that, the time when she’d been next to him, her thigh against his, as she’d read her excruciating book on stones. “I don’t wish to see him.”
“Was he very cruel?”
He did not answer, and she eventually added, “I apologize. I should not have asked such a thing.”
Silence fell once more, and he reached down to the basket he’d placed on the floor of the carriage when they’d stopped to change the horses. Opening it, he extracted a bottle of wine, bread, and cheese. He tore her a piece of bread and offered it with some of the cheese. She took it with a quiet “Thank you.”
The Duke of Lyne had been as good a father as an aristocrat could be. Where other fathers had spent their time in London, machinating at their clubs and pretending their families did not exist, King’s had prioritized the country estate and his time with King.
“He was not cruel. Not with me.”
“Then why—?” She stopped, clearly aware that she trod a strange, fine line.
King drank deep of the wine, willing it to stay the memories she awakened. “How is your shoulder?”
“Tolerably sore,” she said before taking a deep breath and diving in. “Why don’t you wish to see him?”
He should have known she wouldn’t be able to stop herself. “You’re like a dog with a bone.”
“You’re calling me a dog again?”
He smiled, but with little humor. “Cruelty is not the only way fathers ruin their sons. Expectations can do the same damage.”
“What did yours expect?”
“For me to marry well.”
She cut him a look and spoke dryly. “What a horrible thing for a father to desire.” When he did not reply, she continued, “Why not marry one of the women you’ve ruined?”
None of them had wanted to marry him, but he didn’t tell her that. Instead, he told her the truth. “I’ll never marry.”
“You’re a man with a title. Isn’t that your only purpose?”
He cut her a look. “Is that what women think?”
She smiled, small and clever. “Isn’t that what men think of women?”
“It’s not my purpose. Despite my father’s keen desire. The Dukedom of Lyne has passed from generation to generation of pure, unadulterated aristocracy. Every Duchess of Lyne has been perfectly bred to be just that, a duchess. Blue blood, pristine manners, and beauty beyond the pale.”
“I’ve never heard anything about your mother,” she said. “Not even when we lived in Mossband.”
He looked out the window at that, taking in the sky, streaking pink and red in the west, heralding the night. “That’s because she died in childbirth. It killed my father.”
“Did he love her very much?”
It was so preposterous that King laughed. “No. He was upset because it meant he wouldn’t get his spare.”
“He could have married again,” she said.
“I suppose he could have.”
“But he didn’t. Perhaps he did love her.”
Memories overtook him. “No Duke of Lyne has ever married for love. They’ve married for duty and for offspring. It’s what we’re bred to want.”
“And you? What do you want?”
No one had ever asked him the question. It had been a long time since he’d thought on it. Since it had been possible. And then it hadn’t been possible any longer, because of his father’s arrogance and his own recklessness.
Because of the vow he’d made in the dead of night on a road much like this one.
Later, he would blame it on the darkness when he told her the truth. “I want to look my father in the eye and take away everything he ever wanted.”
The line ends with me.
How many times had he written the words to his father? How many times had he said them to himself? And somehow, now, they ached in a way they hadn’t for years.
“I’m sorry,” she said, softly.
He didn’t want her pity. He drank again. Offering her the bottle, he asked, “Do your parents love each other?”
“Oh, quite desperately,” she said, taking the wine. She looked to the basket on the floor. “Is there a glass?” He shook his head and she wiped the top of the bottle with her skirts. For a moment, King considered reminding her that they’d done a great deal more than share a wine bottle, but he refrained when she resumed speaking. “My father is crass and disinterested in anything but coal, and my mother is—crass in her own way, I suppose—but very eager to be accepted by Society. One without the other, however—it would not be possible. That is why my sisters and I are unmarried. Because we know what we might have.”
Happiness.
He heard the word without her speaking it.
“Except Seraphina . . . she’s different.”
“She caught a duke,” he reminded her as she drank. “Love didn’t seem to be her goal.”
Sophie shook her head and passed the wine back. “I will never understand what happened. Sera, more than any of us . . . she was waiting for love.”
“And you?” He didn’t know why he asked. It didn’t matter.
She opened the book, then closed it. Again and again. “That’s part of the freedom, isn’t it?” He didn’t reply, so she added, “I’ve never imagined anything as freeing as love must be.” She smiled, and he saw the sadness in the fading light. “I hope to experience it, of course. All the bits and pieces.”
“With your baker.” He disliked the taste of the words.
She did not hesitate. “In our bookshop, gifted to us by a losing marquess, who was positively obsequious with his compliments.”
The words made him chuckle. “Do not count your books before they are shelved, my lady.” Silence fell for a long moment before he added, “It is not the stuff of poems and fairy tales.”
“Bookshop owning?”
“Love. Make no mistake. Love has nothing to do with freedom.” Her focus snapped to him as he told her the wicked truth, “It’s the most devastating trap there is.”
Surprise flashed in her eyes. He was surprised himself, he had to admit. What in hell had him saying such a thing?
“And you would know?” she asked.
“I would, as a matter of fact,” he said, wondering if the waning light was addling him to the point of confession.
“I thought the Dukes of Lyne did not marry for love.”
“I am not married, am I?”
“Are you in love?” she asked, the words coming on a shocked whisper. “With Marcella?”
“Who is Marcella?”
“Lady Marcella Latham.”
“Ah.” Memory returned. Lady Marcella from the Liverpool party. “No.”
She scowled at him then. “You really should remember the women you ruin, you know.”
He drank. “If anything worthy of ruination had happened between Lady Marcella and me, I would remember her.”
“You escaped her via rose trellis!”
“Precisely as she asked me to.”
“I highly doubt that’s the case.”
“It’s true. The lady and I had an arrangement.”
“All the more reason for you to remember her. It’s common courtesy.” She reached into the basket. “There are pasties in here!” Extracting a pasty, she tore it in half and offered it to him. “Pasties are a glorious food. One I never get in London.”
“Why not? You have a cook, don’t you?”
She nodded and spoke around her food. King resisted the urge to smile. Her manners had fled as the sun had set. “But she’s French. And pasties aren’t good for the waistline.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your waistline,” he replied without thinking. She paused mid-chew. He likely should not have an opinion on her waistline. He shrugged a shoulder. “It’s perfectly ordinary.”
She began chewing again. Swallowed. “Thank you? I suppose?”
“You are welcome.”
She washed down her pasty with more wine. “So, you do not love Lady Marcella.”
/> She’d had enough wine to be nosy, and not nearly enough to forget the conversations they’d been having. “I do not.”
“But you are aware of the emotion. In a personal sense.”
Enough to know I never want it again.
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you marry the poor girl?”
He’d tried. He’d wanted to.
He remembered bringing her to meet his father. To show her off. To prove to the great Duke of Lyne that love was not an impossibility. He’d been young and stupid. And his father had ruined it.
I’d rather you never marry at all than marry some cheap trollop in it only for the title, the duke had sneered. And Lorna had run.
He remembered the way his heart had pounded as he’d chased after her, to find her, to marry her. To love her enough to spit in his father’s face. And then he stopped remembering, before he could remember the rest. He looked up at Sophie, fairly invisible. Night had fully fallen. “I can’t marry her.”
“Why not?” It was strange, the way her voice curled around him in the darkness. Curious. Comforting.
“Because she is dead.”
She shot forward at the words, and though it was too dark to see, he could hear the movement of her skirts against her legs, feel the heat of her in the small space. “Dear God,” she whispered, and then her hands were on him, clumsily searching in the darkness. Landing on his thigh before she snatched them back, as though she’d been burned. He caught them, wishing he could see her face. Grateful that he could not see her face when she repeated the words. “Dear God. King. I am so sorry.”
She is dead, and my father killed her.
She is dead, and I killed her.
He shook his head, the darkness making the story easier to tell. “Don’t be. It was a long time ago. Truthfully, the only reason why I told you was because you asked why I’d never returned.”
“But you return now.”
“My father—” he started, then stopped. Instead, he laughed humorlessly. “Suffice to say, I want him to know that his precious line died with her.”
There was silence. “Did he—” She did not finish the question.
He answered it anyway. “As though he’d put a pistol to her head.”
She paused, considering the horrifying words. “And your happiness? You shall never take it?”
She was a fool, Sophie Talbot. A beautiful fool. A man could have money, a title, or happiness. Never all three. “There is no happiness for men like me,” he said.