In the win, he forgot what he had lost.
And he had won the curricle race, roundly beating the half-dozen other men, each a better driver than the next, careening up the Great North Road with breathless speed, horses tearing up the hard pack of the road, exhilaration and thrill coursing through him, clearing his mind of this northward journey’s purpose. Of what would greet him when he reached his final destination.
Of the past.
The win had been hard-fought. The other men had driven with impressive skill, threatening his victory, teasing him with the possibility of loss. But King had won, and it had been sweet and deeply satisfying. It was the taste of freedom, elusive and fleeting.
As he’d caught his breath high atop the curricle that would require new wheels before he started again the next day, he had experienced the keen pleasure of knowing that he’d sleep well that evening, before the light of day reminded him of truth and duty.
Except he did not get the evening.
He did not even get the hour.
Because the first thing he’d seen after coming to a stop in the drive of the Fox and Falcon was Lady Sophie Talbot, pressed up against his coach, looking ridiculous in Eversley livery.
And, like that, she’d ruined his win.
At first, he told himself it couldn’t be. After all, of all the outrageously foolish things he’d seen women do in his life, this one had to be the most foolish. But he knew better. He knew how desperate girls could get. The lengths to which they would go for what they wanted.
He knew it better than anyone.
So, of course, it was she. Lady Sophie, youngest of the Soiled S’s, to whom he had expressly refused conveyance, had refused to leave well enough alone.
And she’d stowed away.
As she was dressed as a footman, he imagined that she had not ridden inside the carriage, where she would have been safest. Instead, she’d likely ridden atop the vehicle, next to the driver. Christ. She could have fallen off.
She could have been killed, and it would have been on his head.
He closed his eyes, and an image flashed, a girl, broken and lifeless, flaxen hair spread out in a halo against the packed dirt of the road.
Except, it wasn’t Sophie Talbot he saw lifeless and broken. It was another girl, another time.
He cursed, low and dark in the quiet room, and threw the heavy duvet back, coming to his feet and crossing the room to find something to drink, to push the memory away. He poured his scotch, ignoring the tremor in his hands, and drank deep, turning to the window, looking down at the inn’s courtyard, empty.
Unlike earlier, when he’d found his footman missing and Sophie Talbot in his place, eyes wide, shocked that he’d recognized her. He’d have to be dead not to recognize her.
Christ. How had no one else recognized her?
And where had she gone?
He didn’t care. Sophie Talbot wasn’t his problem. He’d told her as much.
And she’d cried.
He ignored the thought. The way the tears had somehow made the blue of her eyes, lined with those thick, sooty lashes, even more blue in the yellow lantern light outside the inn. She’d done it to manipulate him. After all, wasn’t that what the Talbot sisters did? Trap unsuspecting aristocrats into marriage?
It had made a duchess of the eldest, why not a future duchess of the youngest?
Well, she had chosen the wrong mark.
She’d landed herself here, buying off a footman, surviving the carriage ride. Sophie Talbot was no simpering wallflower, whatever her reputation. He knew little about the girl—only that she was the most serious of the five Talbot sisters—not a difficult task considering the tittering vanity and disdain for propriety that marked the others in the family.
Her actions did not bear out her seriousness, however. Indeed, they made her seem positively foolish.
Well. She might be a fool, but he wasn’t.
He wasn’t getting anywhere near her.
She wasn’t his problem.
She’d found her way here; she could find her way home.
He had other things to worry about. Like finding his way back to Cumbria before his father made good on his promise and died. King drank again, unable to wrap his head around the idea of his father dying. Dying was for creatures with beating hearts, after all, and the Duke of Lyne was too stern and unmoving to have blood in his veins. Surely.
Come quickly. Your father ails.
A simple missive, in the neat script of Agnes Graycote, housekeeper of Lyne Castle since King was a child. The woman had served the duke for decades without hesitation. She’d stayed on after King left, after the duke had stopped traveling to London, after he’d given up his attempts to reconcile with King.
As though reconciliation might ever be possible. As though he hadn’t ruined King’s life with his bitter aristocratic pride. As though King hadn’t replied to every request for audience with the same five words—the only honest punishment he could mete out.
King almost hadn’t heeded Agnes’s call.
Almost.
But here he was, at an inn on the Great North Road, thirty miles from London, headed to the Scottish border, to look his dying father in the eye and say the words aloud.
The line ends with me.
He cursed again in the darkness before finishing the scotch, setting the glass on the windowsill and returning to bed, closing his eyes and willing himself to sleep. Instead of heavy slumber; however, King found the cacophony of his mind. He resisted thoughts of his childhood and his father, knowing that they would take him down a dark path he had no interest in exploring, and instead turned to a safer memory. The day. The race. His win. And the ruination of that win.
No.
He tried not to think of her. Of her request earlier in the day, of her appearance. Of the way she filled out the livery in all the wrong ways—trousers too tight, the buttons on her jacket pulling tight across her ample breasts, and the lovely swell of her midriff. Christ. She was still wearing silk slippers.
His footman’s boots hadn’t been included in his price, clearly.
He rolled to his back, one large hand coming to rest on his bare chest. Why hadn’t she been wearing proper footwear? And how was it that his coachman hadn’t noticed the ridiculous yellow slippers?
His coachman was a fool as well, obviously.
Not that King cared about the improper footwear. Indeed, she deserved that, didn’t she? She was the one who had left him with only one boot.
Her feet must hurt.
Her feet, like the woman herself, were not his problem.
Neither was the bed where she slept.
Not his problem.
If she was sleeping. In a hayloft. Surrounded by all manner of men, at least some of who would notice immediately that their companion was decidedly not a man.
If the men were sleeping.
Emotion threaded through him, sharp and unwelcome.
Guilt. Fear. Panic.
“Goddammit.” He came to his feet, reaching for his leather breeches before the echo of the curse disappeared from the room.
She might not be his problem, but he couldn’t stand by and allow her to suffer God knew what at the hands of God knew whom. He pulled his shirt on, leaving the hem untucked and the laces untied as he tore open the door to the chamber and went searching for the girl.
The inn was quiet, kitchens dark, taps dry, fires in the main room banked. His gaze fell on a clock at the far end of the room. Two in the morning—an hour that brought nothing but trouble for those awake to witness it.
He exited the inn, the eerie silence of the English countryside at night unsettling him as he made his way to the nearby stables, imagining all the ways the hour could be bringing trouble down upon Sophie Talbot.
He entered the building at a near run when he heard the men. A half dozen of them, if the myriad voices were any indication, laughter and shouting and jeers—he stopped just beyond a fall of golden light, listening, att
empting to get his bearings and make out the words.
As though the universe knew just what he was listening for, he heard her first, the words clear and curious over the cacophony of sound. “I just, take it down?”
King went utterly still as a man replied. “Exactly.”
“It doesn’t look like it would taste very good.”
Christ.
“You’d be surprised,” the man coaxed. “Take all of it. All at once. You’ll like it.”
“If you say so,” she said, and the skepticism in her voice was drowned out by a chorus of raucous cheers that set King in motion, no longer caring that one-on-six were terrible odds, particularly when the six in question were drunk and sex-starved.
“Step away from the lady,” he instructed, all menacing, as he stepped into the main room of the stables, shocking the hell out of not only the group of drunk but hardly nefarious-looking men sitting at a table at the center of the long corridor between the stalls, but also the lady in question, who was still wearing her livery.
At least, he assumed it was shock that made her choke on the pint of ale she was in the process of drinking in one long series of gulps. She pulled the mug from her lips, sloshing ale down her front as she set it to the table with enough force to knock it over and spill the rest of the drink across the tabletop, where piles of playing cards were spread out, as though a round of faro had just been finished.
She stood quickly, two other men shooting out of their chairs to avoid the liquid as a small glass rolled out of the mug and fell off the table, miraculously not breaking as it continued on its journey along the boards of the stable floor to stop, quite theatrically, at King’s foot.
He looked up from the glass, her earlier words echoing through him. It doesn’t seem like it would taste very good.
They’d been teaching her how to drink—a shot of whiskey in a mug of ale—the drink of men who wished to sleep well, and quickly.
It hadn’t been the other thing at all.
King cleared his throat.
“I’m sure we didn’t hear you correctly, King,” the Duke of Warnick rumbled in his Scottish brogue. “I could have sworn you called the boy a lady.”
Of course Warnick was in the stables. The man had spent a lifetime away from polite company. If ever there were someone for whom a title was a burden, it was the duke. But, disdainful of Society or no, a duke was not the ideal witness of Lady Sophie’s mad disguise and misguided plan.
Why in hell hadn’t she found her bed as soon as she realized the duke was in the stables?
Sophie’s gaze snapped to his, cheeks already flush from her alcoholic experience turning red with obvious embarrassment. He could read the pleading in her wide blue eyes and ignored it. He’d had enough of this woman and her trouble. He wanted her far, far away from him. “You didn’t mishear. She’s a woman. Anyone with eyes can see it.”
From the jaws gaping around the table, it seemed that anyone with eyes could not, in fact, see such a thing.
But they heard it, he had no doubt, when she opened her mouth and tore into him. “How could you?” she said, frustration edging into fury as her hands fisted at her sides and she faced him, stiff as a board. “You’ve ruined everything!”
“I’ve ruined everything?” he repeated, more than a bit outraged himself. “You’re the one who thought you could get away with this idiocy.”
“Wait. He’s a girl?” one of the other men at the table asked.
“Good that you’re catching up,” the duke drawled, all amusement.
“But he’s wearing livery,” the drunken man insisted.
“Indeed he is,” Warnick said with a lingering inspection. “However, now that I take a good long look . . .”
“Enough!” Sophie cried, lifting a burlap bag from the floor, slinging it over her shoulder, and storming past King to the exit.
King turned to the duke. “No more long looks.”
“But I’ve only had the one.”
“You’ve had hours to look. You didn’t even realize she wasn’t wearing boots.”
The duke’s brows shot up as the other men in the stable offered a chorus of disbelief.
“We would have noticed that!” one of them said with a laugh.
“Clearly not,” King pointed out. “It seems you lot see what you wish to see.” Though he couldn’t for the life of him imagine how they’d missed the fact that Lady Sophie Talbot was just that . . . a lady.
“Who is she?” Warnick asked.
King wasn’t about to tell him. “She’s no one of consequence.”
The duke smirked. “I doubt that.”
“Well, you shall have to accept it as fact nonetheless.” King didn’t have time for verbal sparring with a Scot. He turned on his heel and left the stables, heading in search of the girl.
He caught up with her on the road, a dozen yards from the entrance to the inn. She did not hesitate in her march, shoulders straight, head high. “Go away.”
“It’s the dead of night. Where do you think you’re going?”
“I should think it would be obvious,” she said. “Away from you.”
“And you’re going to walk there?”
“My feet are in fine working order.”
“They shan’t be after a quarter of an hour on this road. Why didn’t you take the boots, too?”
She did not reply.
“Not enough money?”
“I had enough money,” she grumbled.
“So?”
He would not discover the answer, as she chose that moment to step on a rock and gasp her discomfort.
“You see?” he said, unable to keep the smugness from his tone. Or, perhaps, uninterested in doing so.
Either way, she turned on him then. “In the span of twelve hours, you’ve called me unintelligent and insane, suggested that I am trying to trap you into marriage, declared me uninteresting, and pointed out the flaws of my physique.”
What? “I never pointed out your flaws.”
She crossed her arms. “The livery, my lord. It doesn’t fit.”
He blinked. “It doesn’t fit.”
She let out a frustrated sound and slashed a hand in the air. “It doesn’t matter. All of that said, I cannot imagine why it is you feel it necessary to follow me as I do the one thing you’ve been asking me to do from the beginning of our acquaintance—leave you.”
Honestly, he couldn’t imagine why it was necessary, either. But it was, somehow. “Also, I never declared you uninteresting.”
“No. I believe you used the term unfun, which is even more unflattering, as it appears that I am so deeply boring that I require a word that, prior to today, did not exist.”
“It’s not the same thing at all.” He was hard-pressed to think of an adjective less suited to Lady Sophie Talbot than uninteresting.
“And we’re back to my being unintelligent, I see.” She turned her back on him and continued her walk. He noticed that she was limping, which was unsurprising—the roads were barely conducive to carriage wheels and horseshoes.
The limp bothered him, a sliver of weakness that left him aware of her in a way he preferred not to be, making it impossible to leave her to the wolves here on the road. No matter how much he had sworn to himself that she was not his problem.
He’d pack her into the next stagecoach home the moment the sun rose. Surely there was a frock to be purchased from a maid at the inn. He’d have to pay handsomely, no doubt, but it would be worth it to send the troublesome woman back to London.
“Come back to the inn,” he said. “We’ll find you a bed, and tomorrow we’ll get you home.”
“I can find my own way home,” she said. “You needn’t worry about me.”
He sighed, letting his exasperation show in the sound. “You could be gracious and accept my offer of help.”
“Forgive me if I am not in the mood to scrape and bow because an aristocrat has condescended to tolerate me only after his reputation is at risk.”
He’d struck an interesting chord, it seemed. He plucked at it again, unable to resist. “Someone has to take responsibility for you. You can’t be trusted not to cause a scene.”
She stopped at that. Turned to him. “I don’t cause scenes.”
His brows shot up. “All you do is cause scenes, love.”
“I’m not your love,” she said, her hands fisted at her sides.
“You most certainly are not,” he agreed without thinking. “I am drawn to more feminine specimens.”
Her shoulders drooped for a moment—barely long enough to be called such—and King wanted to take the words back. They weren’t accurate. She was perfectly feminine. Indeed, as she accepted the blow of his words, there was something exceedingly feminine about her, something that one did not immediately notice.
Not that he cared. He wasn’t interested in her femininity.
She was obstinate as hell and more trouble than she was worth. And if there was one thing he did not care for, it was women who were troublesome.
But he’d hurt her feelings. And it was unsettling, as she didn’t seem the type whose feelings were easily hurt. Indeed, she was walking again, all straight spine and stiff shoulders, guard up.
It was a ruse. Designed to keep him from seeing the truth.
He knew it, because he’d used a similar one himself.
There was nothing at all uninteresting about her.
He called after her. “You can’t walk all the way back to London.”
“That shows what you know,” she said without breaking her stride. “I’m not going back to London. I’m headed north.”
“Not if you’re walking in this direction, you’re not,” he said, before the full meaning of her words sank in. “Wait. North? Why?”
She stopped. “This is north.”
“No,” he said. “It’s south.”
She peered down the dark road. “You’re certain?”
“Quite. Why are you heading north?”
She pivoted and began her march in the opposite direction. “Because I’m going home.”
She was perhaps the most frustrating woman he’d ever met. “London is south.”
“Yes. I do have a general knowledge of geography.”