But for now, until the rooftops of London appeared in the distance and reminded her that the afternoon—and her public and no doubt long-term shaming—were inescapable, she would enjoy her triumph.
And she did enjoy it, cheeks aching from the pull of her grin, until she became aware of other aches, in her legs and arms.
At first, she ignored them. She was strong enough to manage for the few miles back to Mayfair. The streets of London would require stops and starts and slow going, and all she had to do was keep her head down and hold fast, and she’d be home within the hour.
And then her feet started in, still in their silken slippers, as Matthew’s boots had been too small for her always-too-long “flippers,” as her father referred to them, refusing to accept the fact that the comparison to water creatures was not at all complimentary.
Silk slippers, it turned out, were not made for outriding.
Nor, it turned out, was Sophie.
Indeed, within half an hour, she was having a difficult time of it, her hands now aching as well, under the too-tight grip she had on the back of the carriage. She hadn’t expected her role as outrider to be quite so taxing.
She gritted her teeth, reminding herself that there were more difficult situations than this one in the world. Men had built bridges. Families had fled to the Colonies. She was daughter to a coal miner. Granddaughter to one.
Sophie Talbot could hang on to a carriage for the two miles it took to get home.
The carriage increased its speed, as though the universe itself had heard her words and desired to underscore her idiocy. She looked down and considered leaping to the ground and walking the rest of the way. Watching the road tear past, she unconsidered it.
She’d wished to leave a garden party, not the earth.
“Oh, bollocks.”
Sophie. Language. She heard her mother’s admonition in the minuscule part of her brain that was not currently panicking, but she had no doubt that if there was ever a time for cursing, it was this one—dressed as a servant, clinging to a carriage, certain she was going to die.
And then the coach passed a mail coach laden with people, a small child hanging off the top of it, grinning down at her.
That’s when Sophie realized that, wherever this carriage and the man inside were headed, it was not London.
“Oh, bollocks,” she repeated. Louder.
The child waved.
Sophie did not dare release her grip to return the gesture. Instead, she tightened her hold, pressed her forehead to the cool wood of the carriage, and chanted her litany.
“Bollocksbollocksbollocks,” she said.
As though punishing her for her crassness, a wheel hit a rut in the road, and the vehicle bounced, jarring her spine and nearly tossing her from the back of the coach. She cried out in fear and desperation. Clinging tightly, the ache in her hands sharp now.
There was only one option. She had to get off this carriage. Immediately. It was only two or three miles to the Talbot home. She could walk if she exited this ridiculous situation immediately.
The coachmen called back, “I told you to sit with me!”
Sophie closed her eyes. “When do we stop?”
She waited long seconds for the terrifying reply. “It’s good weather, so I’d say we’ll make it in three hours. Maybe four!”
She groaned, the sound coming on a word far worse than bollocks. Leaping from the carriage was suddenly an entirely viable possibility.
“I suppose you’re changing your mind about riding on the block?” called the coachman.
Of course she was changing her mind. She never should have gone through with such a terrible plan. If she hadn’t vowed to run from the silly garden party, she’d be home now. And not here—minutes away from falling to her death.
“Shall I stop so you can join me?”
She barely heard the part of the question that came after the word stop.
Dear God. Yes. Please stop.
“Yes, please!”
The carriage began to slow, and relief flooded her, replacing everything else, making her forget her panic and pain for a fleeting moment. A very fleeting moment.
“I thought it odd, that you would want to ride on the back of the coach all afternoon.”
Well, the coachman could have said as much. Then they wouldn’t be in this predicament. As Sophie wouldn’t have set foot on the coach if she had known that there was even a hint of possibility that the Marquess of Eversley wasn’t headed to Mayfair. But she was not about to waste time dwelling on her mistake, when she could be spending time rectifying it. She released her grip, shoulders straight and head high, taking a deep breath, preparing to descend from the carriage and announce that Matthew was not joining them for the ride to wherever they were headed. And neither was she.
Freedom was a wonderful thing.
She was half looking forward to the marquess’s shock when he discovered that she’d stowed away. He could do with a surprise now and then to offset his arrogant existence, and she was thrilled to be able to give it to him.
Right up until her legs gave way and she collapsed to the ground in an ungraceful, inglorious heap.
“Bollocks.” It was becoming her very favorite word.
The coachman’s eyes widened from high above, and she couldn’t blame him, as she felt certain that outriders had one, single responsibility—to refrain from falling off the carriage.
“On your feet, you clumsy git,” the coachman called, no doubt thinking he sounded charmingly teasing. “I haven’t all day to wait for you!”
Gone was her triumph.
Gone was her freedom.
She pushed up onto her hands and knees, muscles aching after the strain of hanging on to the carriage along the bumpy roads. She stood slowly, keeping her back to the carriage as she straightened her spine and rolled her shoulders back. “I’m afraid you shall have to wait,” she said, “as I require an audience with the marquess.”
There was a beat as the words settled with the driver, along with a fair amount of shock, no doubt, that a footman would deign to demand to speak with his master.
Wouldn’t he be surprised when he realized that the Marquess of Eversley was not her master after all. And that she was not his footman.
She felt a slight twinge of remorse when she considered that the coachman would have to retrace their path to London once she revealed herself—his body was no doubt protesting their travels as much as hers was.
“Are you mad?” he asked, all incredulity.
She looked up at him. “Not at all.” She approached the carriage and banged on the door. “Open, my lord.”
There was no movement from inside the vehicle. The door remained firmly shut.
“You are mad!” the coachman announced.
“I swear to you, I am not,” she said. “Eversley!” she called, ignoring the twinge of pain that came as she rapped smartly on the great black coach. He was probably asleep, as one would expect from a lazy aristocrat. “Open this door!”
He was going to be furious when he saw her, but she did not care. Indeed, Sophie had a keen, unyielding desire to teach the outrageous, unbearable aristocrat a lesson. She was certain that no one had ever done such a thing—no one had ever crossed the Marquess of Eversley, known in private conversations as King. As though he weren’t pompous enough, he assumed the highest title in Britain as his name.
And all of London simply accepted it. They called him by the ridiculous moniker. Or the other one—the Royal Rogue—as though it were a compliment and not complete blasphemy.
And she’d been exiled for telling the truth about a duke.
Anger flared, threaded with something else—something she did not enjoy and which she would not name.
Sophie scowled at the carriage, as though it were the manifestation of the man inside. Of the world that created him, empty and aristocratic, imperious and infuriating.
As though nothing ever defied him.
Until now. Until he
r.
“He’s not in there.”
She looked up to the coachman. “What did you say?”
He was exasperated—that much was clear—becoming less and less forgiving of her perceived madness. “The marquess isn’t inside and the ride has addled you. Get up on the block. We’re miles from anywhere, and you’re wasting the daylight, you mad git.”
She looked to the door, refusing to believe the words. “What do you mean, he isn’t inside?”
The coachman stared down at her, unamused. “He. Ain’t. Inside. Which part of it is confusing?”
“I saw him get in!”
The driver spoke as though she was a child. “We’re to meet him there.”
She blinked. “Where?”
Exasperation won the day, and the driver turned back to the road with a sigh. “I told them not to saddle me with a boy I didn’t know. Suit yourself. I haven’t the time to wait for your senses to return from wherever they’ve run off.”
With a flick of his wrists, the horses were moving, along with the carriage.
Leaving her stranded on the road.
Alone.
To be set upon by whomever happened by.
Bollocks.
She cried out, “No! Wait!”
The carriage stopped, barely long enough for her to scramble up onto the driver’s block before it moved again.
For a moment, she considered telling the coachman everything. Revealing herself. Throwing herself at his mercy and hoping that he would take her home.
Home. A vision flashed, lush green land that ran for miles, hills and dales and wild northern sunsets. Not London. Certainly not Mayfair, where the only thing lush were the silk skirts she was forced to wear every day, in case someone came for tea.
And her father had enough money that someone always came for tea.
London wasn’t home. It never had been—not for a decade. Not in all the time that she’d lived in that perfect Mayfair town house that her mother and sisters adored, as though they didn’t miss the past. As though they’d hated the life they’d lived all those years ago. As though they would forget it if they needed to. As though they had forgotten it.
Tears came, surprising and unbidden, and she blinked them away, blaming the summer wind and the speed of the carriage.
She was alone on the driving block of a carriage, dressed as a footman, headed God knew where.
And somehow, it was the thought of returning to London that made her sad.
So she stayed quiet, knowing it was mad, willing the coachman not to notice her, listening to the sound of the wheels and the horses’ hooves as the coach moved north.
Hours later, when the sun had set, it had become clear that Sophie was out of her element. She’d thought that wearing a footman’s livery, masquerading as a boy, and riding on the outside of a coach would be the most difficult parts of the charade, only to realize that those bits were, in fact, nothing in comparison to the arrival at the posting inn.
She watched from the driver’s block as the coachman climbed down to arrange space in the stables for the horses and, ostensibly, for storage of the carriage itself.
The thought gave her pause. Where did carriages go when they weren’t in use? It was a question she’d never had cause to consider.
“Are you going to sit up there like a lord? Or are you planning to come down and do some work?”
The words startled her from her thoughts, and she looked down to find the coachman staring up at her, his earlier exasperation edging into something else entirely. Suspicion.
Well. She couldn’t have that. Not now, at least, before she’d decided the next steps of her plan.
Plan was something of a misnomer for this outrageous situation. Disaster was a better descriptor.
“Where are we?” she asked, deliberately lowering the tenor of her voice—she couldn’t have him realizing that she was a woman now—and scurrying down from the carriage, willing to wager that, while she did not know what a footman did at this exact moment, descending to earth was an excellent first step. Once on the ground, she bowed her head and just barely caught herself before she sank into a curtsy. Footmen did not curtsy. That part, she knew.
“All that matters is that we are here before the marquess.”
“Where is he?” The question was out before she could stop it. She did not require the cold, critical gaze of the coachman to know that she had overstepped her bounds, but he provided it nonetheless.
“I don’t know what is wrong with you, boy,” he said, “but you had better set yourself straight. Servants don’t question their masters’ whereabouts, nor do they ask questions to which they don’t need answers. Servants serve.”
That was just the problem, of course. Sophie had no idea how to begin doing such a thing. “Yes, sir. I shall do just that.”
He nodded and turned away, tossing over his shoulder, “See that you do.”
She had no choice but to call after him, “That said . . . what . . . what shall I do?”
He stilled, then turned around slowly. Blinked at her. Then spoke as though she was a child. “Begin with your job.”
That wasn’t helpful.
She took a deep breath as he turned back to the horses, considering all the things she’d witnessed footmen doing in the past.
Her gaze flickered to the great black coach, empty. Except, it would not be empty. Eversley wouldn’t have traveled such a distance without having prepared for it. There would be bags. Luggage.
And footmen collected luggage.
With renewed purpose, she opened the door and climbed into the carriage, prepared to collect whatever items the marquess had left for his servants to shuttle into his rooms, before she stilled in the darkness, the sounds of the bustling inn from outside muffled as she considered the inside of the massive coach. Massive, indeed. It was one of the largest private coaches she’d ever seen—bordering on conspicuously enormous—one that might boast three rows of seats without effort. But it didn’t. There was a single row of seats at the back of the conveyance, leaving a great, yawning chasm of space inside, large enough for a man to lie flat. For several men to lie flat.
There were no men in the space, however. Instead, it was filled with great wooden wheels. There were ten of them, perhaps twelve. She couldn’t take an exact count in the dark space, but she paused nonetheless, considering the cargo. Why was the Marquess of Eversley shuttling carriage wheels? Did they lack wheelwrights north of London?
Indeed, the only evidence of the Marquess of Eversley was a pile of formalwear—clothing that she’d watched float down from up on high when he escaped his pursuing earl.
Where had he gone?
“Boy!”
Sophie let out an exasperated sigh. The coachman was quickly becoming an unwelcome companion. Through gritted teeth she called back, “Yes, sir?”
“You’re no more useful inside the coach then you were atop it!”
And then, shockingly, a hand came to her bottom, grasping the waistband of her trousers and yanking her, bodily, from the carriage. She let out a wild squeak as the coachman stood her on her feet and closed the door with a perfunctory click. After all, it was not every day that she was manhandled quite so . . . well . . . handily.
When the coachman rounded on her, she knew she was done for. Indeed, it was best that Matthew was to be employed by her father, as she felt certain that the house of Eversley was about to sack him. Also handily. “Have you lost your—”
The man’s assessment of her mental faculties—or lack thereof—was cut off by the noise—a near-deafening clattering, punctuated by wild hoofbeats, the heavy breathing of horses, and exuberant male shouts. She turned just in time to see the first of the curricles bearing down on her with speed that would break both axles and necks, as though they were on a long stretch of clear road instead of a crowded posting inn drive.
With a cry, Sophie leapt backward, pressing herself to the outer wall of the coach, eyes wide, as the lead curricle tipped
on one wheel, dangerously close to toppling before it slammed down, one wheel spoke flying across the yard as the driver executed a perfect half turn to face the vehicles following behind. The driver stood tall on legs that should have been tired, but instead seemed incredibly strong, towering over horse and vehicle, arms akimbo as he faced his no-doubt maniacal comrades. Much of his face was obscured by the low brim of his hat, but the light from the inn was drawn, nonetheless, to his wide, wicked grin.
Sophie found that she was oddly drawn to that grin herself.
“Looks as though I won, lads.” The others were stopped now, and a chorus of groans rose from myriad curricles when he added, “Again.”
As this was the first time Sophie had been outside a posting inn after dark, she had to imagine that this was an ordinary occurrence—but she’d certainly never thought that men raced their curricles up the Great North Road for fun.
Fun.
The word echoed, reminding her of her earlier conversation with Eversley, in which he’d called her unfun.
Irritation flared. She was perfectly fun.
After all, she was here, wasn’t she? Dressed as a boy in a courtyard filled with men who appeared to have a keen knowledge of fun.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the man’s movement as he leapt down from the carriage and headed to his horses to give the great, matching beasts praise for their work. He swaggered to the animals that huffed and sighed, great ribs heaving from their long run, even as they leaned into the weighty caress of their master.
Sophie was transfixed by him—by the group he seemed to lead. She’d never seen anything like them, clad all in black, and with great informality—black coats over black linen, and not a cravat to be seen among them. Their trousers gleamed in the light from the lanterns posted around the drive—she considered the attire. Was it . . . leather? How odd. And how fascinating.