The duke turned on his heel and took the seat at the head of the table, his cool gaze falling to Sophie. “Talbot. I suppose I knew your father.”
“Many in Cumbria did,” she said.
The woman had made her way to the other side of the table, where she served King.
“Hello, Agnes,” he said to her.
She smiled warmly at him. “Welcome home, my lord.”
King matched the smile, the expression one of the few honest ones Sophie had seen in the last day. “You, at least, have the feel of home.”
She put her hand to his shoulder so quickly that Sophie wasn’t entirely certain the touch had happened.
“He has a knack for finding coal,” the duke said sharply, drawing Sophie’s attention. He spoke of her father still.
“I’m not certain it is a knack,” she said. “He simply works harder than most men I have known.”
Not that hard work was a worthy endeavor for aristocrats—something she’d witnessed again and again as a child. A memory flashed, of her father at a ball several years earlier, a group of aristocratic ladies tittering at his “crass hands,” weathered and calloused. “He should wear gloves when in London,” one woman had protested. “He shouldn’t be anywhere near London, with or without gloves,” someone had replied, and the whole group had laughed.
Sophie had hated them for the words. For their insult. For the way they valued appearance over work. For the way they valued snobbery over honor.
“He has a knack for coal,” the duke repeated. “And a knack for climbing.” He paused. “As do his daughters, apparently.” Sophie looked to King, finding his gaze on her as the duke added, “You could have sent word that you were not coming alone.”
King drank deep from his wineglass. “You could have sent word that you weren’t dying.”
The duke turned a cool gaze on him. “And disappoint you?”
Sophie looked from one man to the other, noting the resemblance in the stubborn set of their jaws as King gave a little huff of laughter. “I should have known, of course. Disappointment has ever been part and parcel of being heir to your throne.”
Sophie’s gaze widened at the stinging words.
The duke remained unmoved. “I imagined that if you were told I was near the end, you would return. We’ve things to discuss. It’s time for that, at least.”
King toasted his father. “Well, I have returned. Prodigal son.” He looked to Sophie. “And daughter.”
A gasp sounded in the darkness behind Sophie, and she looked back to find the housekeeper watching the meal wide-eyed.
The duke sat back in his chair. “So you are married.”
“Betrothed,” Sophie corrected immediately. There was no way she would allow these two men to send her farther down this garden path.
King turned a winning smile on Sophie. “For now.”
The duke drank, savoring the wine for a long moment. “So this is your plan, is it? To return home with a Soiled S in tow?”
Sophie set down her soup spoon. She should not have been surprised by the words, by the moniker, and still she was. This duke seemed not to stand on the same ceremony as the rest of the aristocracy. And despite her loathing the man’s words, and the man himself, she had to admit that there was something rather refreshing about them spoken aloud, in public, without shame.
Or, rather, with shame, but lacking in the secret pleasure that so often accompanied the name.
King stiffened on the other side of the table, no doubt surprised and irritated that his idiot plan was discovered within minutes of his return. Sophie would be lying if she were to say she did not find a modicum of pleasure in his failure, for certainly someone with as much arrogance as the Marquess of Eversley deserved to be taken down a notch now and then. If they were discovered, she’d no longer be beholden to their agreement, and she could go on her way. She’d happily bear the weight of her sisters and their reputation if it meant being able to witness the demise of King’s plan.
He slammed one hand onto the table, the force of it sending the plates rattling. Her attention flew to him, unprepared for him to redouble his efforts to present her as a woman for whom he cared. “Call her that again and I will not be responsible for what I do.” She certainly had not been prepared for that. “I won’t let you do it again,” he said. “I won’t let you drive another away.”
Another.
Sophie inhaled sharply.
“And we get to the heart of it,” the duke said, waving a footman forward for more wine. “Your precious love.” He turned to her. “Not you, of course.”
She did not look away from King who, despite his silence, revealed more than he should have. She wondered at the way he’d spoken of love a few evenings earlier: It is not the stuff of poems and fairy tales.
And while she’d kept from asking if the duke had hurt the girl he’d once loved, he’d answered her nonetheless. As though he’d held a pistol to her head.
Good Lord.
Oblivious to her thoughts, the duke continued, goading his son. “And this one?” he prompted, waving a hand in Sophie’s direction, “Do you love her as well?”
This was a mistake.
She stiffened with silent realization. She didn’t want this. Any of it. She didn’t want him to fabricate a love, didn’t want to playact it. She looked to King, recognizing the silent fury on his face, knowing that he cared not a bit for her. Knowing that this entire journey, all the little moments of laughter and caring and strange, undeniable interest, paled in comparison to his interest in another, long gone.
Knowing that his desire for Sophie paled in comparison to his desire for vengeance.
She willed him to tell the truth.
To release them both from the lies that bound them.
To let her free.
Perhaps if he let her go, she might still find happiness.
But she knew he would not and, somehow, she couldn’t entirely blame him. This place must be filled with memories of that horrible past. She hated him for what he’d done to her, for forcing her to be a part of this mad play, but at the same time . . . she understood him.
Sophie knew better than most what desperation drove one to do.
“Don’t leave the poor girl wondering, Aloysius,” the Duke of Lyne fairly drawled.
King looked to her and time seemed to slow. Sophie could hear her heart beating, knowing that she could not believe the words he said, whatever they might be. She did not want him to say he loved her. She didn’t think she could bear hearing the words for the first time and know they weren’t true.
And, somehow, strangely, she did not want him to not say that he loved her.
She didn’t wish to be the means to his end.
She wanted to be more than that.
She wanted to be more than he offered.
“Lady Sophie knows precisely how I feel about her.”
It was the faintest praise she’d ever received, and it stung more harshly than all the aristocratic scorn she’d ever heard. With those simple words, Sophie was through. She no longer cared about the agreement—not in the face of this moment. Not in the face of her desire for something else. For more.
She didn’t want to be a part of this back-and-forth, this battle between powerful men who didn’t know a thing about what was really important in the world.
And so it was that Sophie Talbot lived up to her reputation as a Talbot sister, ignoring what was correct, and instead doing what was right.
She folded her napkin into a perfect square and stood. Both men stood with her, their ridiculous manners seeming to somehow matter in this, but not in the rest of the evening. Sophie bit back a laugh at that, instead turning to the Duke of Lyne and inclining her head. “I find I’ve lost my appetite, Your Grace.”
“No doubt,” he replied in a voice devoid of surprise.
“I shall take my leave,” she replied.
“I shall come with you,” King said, already moving around the table. “We needn
’t dine with the duke. Not if he cannot accept you.”
Of course, he must be positively gleeful that his father could not accept her. That was the entire point.
She wasn’t acceptable. Not to father or son.
“No,” she said, the single word sounding like gunshot in the room.
King stopped, halfway around the foot of the table.
“I shall take my leave,” she repeated. “Alone.”
He moved once more, his long legs disappearing the distance between them with speed and purpose. “You needn’t be alone,” he said, the words firm and strangely forthright before he added, softly, “He needn’t come between us, love.”
The endearment did her in.
What a terrible lie he told.
What a terrible mistake she’d made.
She lifted one hand, staying him again. “He’s not between us,” she said, her voice calm and cool and filled with truth. “He is not the problem.”
“It certainly isn’t you who is the problem.”
“I’m quite aware of who the problem is.”
He looked as though he’d been struck with a soup ladle, just on top of his handsome head, but she took no pleasure in the moment. She was too busy keeping her back straight and her tears at bay as she turned and left the room.
Chapter 15
SAD SOPHIE SEEKS
SOLACE IN SWEETS
Sophie was turning out to be very good at making scandalous exits and absolute rubbish at knowing what to do next.
She couldn’t return to her rooms, as she did not wish to be found, and she couldn’t leave the house, because it was the dead of night and she had nowhere to go. She did not think the Duke of Lyne would take well to her appropriating one of his carriages, either way. He’d likely consider it stealing.
And so Sophie followed her nose and her appetite, and went to the only place she ever felt comfortable in massive houses like this one. The kitchens.
The room was warm and well-lit and welcoming, just as all kitchens seemed to be. There were two large tables at its center, one set with massive platters of beautiful food: a perfectly golden roast goose, a platter of young asparagus greener than she’d ever seen, a towering pyramid of perfectly matched rosemary potatoes, a rack of lamb on a bed of herbs, a pot of mint jelly, and a tower of strawberry tarts that she was fairly certain she could smell from the doorway.
As it had been days since she’d had a proper meal, the food should have captured all her attention, but in these kitchens, the heavy-laden table was not the most compelling feature. No, it was the second table that drew her attention, filled with servants all eating their own evening meal—a meal that looked nothing like the elaborate plates waiting to be served to the now and future dukes she’d left behind.
The servants’ laughter drew her through the doorway, the smell of the warm food making her mouth water. She edged up onto her toes to see what they were eating, envy flaring when she identified the food. Pasties.
The little pouches of meat and vegetable and potato were piled high on several platters at the center of the servants’ table, and the chatter reached a fever pitch as they ate. She heard the gossip, about the angry duke, about the returned marquess, about the girl who had arrived with him. About her.
“Are they very much in love?”
“He must be. He’s come home with her. As though it’s done.”
“She doesn’t even have a chaperone,” someone whispered.
“I’ve no doubt they’re in love.”
Sophie hoped the young woman was not planning to wager on it.
“And you are such an expert, Katie.” The last was spoken by the woman who had been in the dining room, as she set a pitcher of ale on the table. Agnes.
Katie shrugged. “That’s what I’m told.” She turned to the housekeeper. “You’ve been here for a lifetime, Mrs. Graycote, has there ever even been a peep about a wife for the marquess?”
“Never,” a girl who was not Agnes replied.
“Only what we see in the gossip pages,” a third piped in. “He’s more likely to end a marriage than to start one.”
Laughter rang around the table, and Agnes shook her head as a footman entered the kitchens from the opposite end of the room. The housekeeper lifted her chin in his direction. “Are they ready for the next course?”
He nodded. “The lady left, and the men aren’t speaking.”
Agnes pointed to the goose. “Silence makes eating easier.”
“Eating makes not murdering each other easier, I think you mean.”
Sophie thought he made an excellent point, but Agnes, apparently, did not. The housekeeper looked sharply at the footman. “When I wish to know what you think I mean, I shall ask, Peter.”
The footman put his head down and went for the goose, as told. When he lifted the heavy platter to his shoulder and left, Agnes’s gaze found Sophie, shrouded in the dim light of the doorway. Sophie made to leave, but was stayed when the older woman noticed her, her eyes going wide in surprise before she offered a kind smile.
The conversation at the table continued, unaware of the silent exchange. “She left the table?”
“You wouldn’t want to do just that?”
Sophie nearly laughed. Most assuredly, anyone in their right mind would want to leave the table. “Of course I would,” came the reply, “But even I know you don’t leave a meal with a duke.”
“Two dukes, technically.”
There was a quiet pause, and then “Who is she?”
A young man replied. “The marquess introduced her as his future wife. Some lady nob.”
Of course, she was neither of those things. Not really.
“I helped her dress for dinner,” Sophie heard the maid whom she’d met earlier. “She don’t seem a nob. She’s wounded in the shoulder. And very tall.”
“Being tall don’t mean anything,” someone else piped up.
“Being wounded in the shoulder does, though. Does she have a name?”
Sophie had spent much of the last decade being disdainfully discussed as though she were an insect under glass, but always by aristocrats. It was a new experience entirely to be discussed by servants, and she was immediately aware that she belonged neither above nor below-stairs.
Her stomach growled.
Here, at least, she could eat pasties while being gossiped about.
“As a matter of fact, she does have a name,” she said, stepping into the light. Silence immediately fell and she would have laughed at the wide eyes around the table if she weren’t so hopeful that she would be welcome here, in this kitchen, with these people, who seemed more honest than anyone she’d known in recent years. “And since she left dinner without even finishing her soup, she’ll share it for the price of a pasty.”
There was a beat, during which the whole kitchen seemed to still, as though the words had come from up on high instead of from a woman wearing an ill-fitting dress. And then, they came unstuck en masse, moving and shuffling left and right, making room for her. She took her seat, a plate appearing before her, a warm pastry at its center. “It’s chicken and veg,” the maid to her right explained. “There’s also pork and veg.”
“This is lovely,” Sophie said, tearing the pasty in two, releasing a lovely whisper of steam alongside the magnificent scent of pie. Her mouth began to water, but she resisted taking a bite just long enough to say to the assembly, “I am Sophie Talbot.”
She almost did not hear the gasp of recognition from a collection of girls at the end of the table over her own sigh of enjoyment once the food was on her tongue. But she couldn’t not hear the excited “You’re a Soiled S!”
She stopped chewing.
“Ginny, you don’t just call her that,” another girl said. “It’s not flattering.”
The girl called Ginny had the grace to look mortified.
Sophie swallowed and pointed to the cask of ale at the end of the table. “May I?”
A gentleman nearby immediately filled a p
ewter mug and slid it toward her, golden liquid sloshing over the edge when she caught it. She drank. And brazened it through. “Some do refer to me as a Soiled S.”
“For your father,” said Ginny. “In coal.”
“How do you know that?” a young man across from her asked.
Ginny blushed. “I read the papers.”
“The scandal sheets are not the papers,” Agnes said.
The table laughed and Ginny dipped her head in embarrassment. Sophie took pity on the girl, taking another bite of pasty. “They’re more interesting than the papers, aren’t they, though?” She smiled when Ginny’s head snapped up. “I’m the youngest of the five.”
“The young ladies Talbot,” the girl explained to the table. “Daughters of Jack Talbot, who grew up ’ere, in Cumbria. Like us!”
“Except she’s a lady, so not at all like us,” the man at the end of the table said. What a strange world this was, where in one moment she could be too cheap for a duke, and in the next, too expensive for anyone else.
Without home.
She ignored the thought. “Actually,” Sophie said, “I am not very different. My father knows his way around a coal mine, as did my grandfather, and my great-grandfather.”
“My brother works in the mines,” someone piped up.
Sophie nodded. “Just like your brother, then. The only difference is that my father was lucky and bought a plot of land that eventually became the mouth to one of the richest mines in Britain.” Eyes widened around the table, as her carefully bred London accent gave way to her North Country brogue, and she relaxed into the tale, having heard it a thousand times as a child. “He dug and struck for days before he hit on something he could use. Something nobs in London could use.”
“See? She ain’t a nob!” crowed the maid from earlier that day.
Sophie shook her head. “I’m not. I spent my childhood in Mossband.”
“Except ye are,” the man at the end of the table said. “Because we’re callin’ you milady and yer to marry the duke’s son.”
Not really. She pushed the disappointment aside and drank before smiling down the table at him. “My father isn’t only good at coal; he’s good at cards, too.”