Surprise flared. “As a matter of fact—”
King was in motion before the driver could finish his sentence. She had annoyed the hell out of him, that much was true, but he couldn’t leave her to the nefarious doings of highwaymen on the Great North Road. Dammit, she was a lady of breeding. Of questionable breeding, certainly, but ladies of any kind of breeding did not take well to highwaymen, he imagined. She had probably begun shrieking like a lunatic the moment the coach had been stopped. That was if she hadn’t fainted dead away from the shock of the situation.
With any luck, she’d fainted.
That would keep her out of trouble.
Criminals were less likely to murder unconscious females than they were to murder difficult, meddling ones.
But if any woman was skilled at being difficult and meddling . . .
King began to run faster.
He’d get to her, he promised himself. He’d get to her, and he’d get her to safety. And once he got her out of there, she’d be begging him to return her to London. He supposed that was the silver lining in this damn inconvenient cloud.
When he rounded the bend in the road to find the mail coach stopped dead in its center, however, it was to find that there were no silver linings whatsoever. Indeed, the cloud became a hurricane.
Lady Sophie Talbot was neither unconscious inside the northbound mail coach, nor a source of shrieking from within. She wasn’t inside the mail coach at all.
Lady Sophie Talbot stood at the center of a criminal tableau, wearing Eversley livery and her ridiculous yellow slippers, hands on her hips as though it was a perfectly ordinary afternoon.
As though a man was not calmly lifting a pistol and pointing it at her head.
Goddammit.
King increased his speed, no thought in his head save one—he had to get to her.
“No!” he shouted, hoping for nothing other than to distract the villain long enough for Sophie to escape, but before the man with the weapon could turn to face him, a small creature launched itself from under the coach toward Sophie.
King thought he heard a child’s “No!” echoing his own, but he would never be certain, as it was difficult to hear much over the pounding of his heart and the rushing of blood in his ears.
It was also possible that he heard Sophie’s “No!” as she immediately turned, ignoring the fact that there was a pistol pointed at her head, and captured the living projectile, turning to put herself between the little thing and the weapon, as though she were impermeable to bullets.
King’s exclamation became an incoherent roar as he pushed himself closer. Faster. But he couldn’t get there in time. He knew as much the moment the barrel of the gun tracked her to the ground. Things slowed, and he would imagine later that he could see the hammer on the weapon cock, move in slow motion over what would seem like minutes or hours before the pistol’s report sounded, tearing through the English countryside and taking the air with it.
And still, he could not reach her.
Someone screamed. Perhaps more than one person. He’d never know, as he arrived at the scene of the crime a heartbeat too late, tackling the large man to the ground with a mighty roar, coming down on top of him with several quick blows to the face before rendering him unconscious.
Standing up, he turned on his victim’s compatriots, making quick work of one before the other turned tail. King considered going after him, wanting nothing more than to brutalize each of the three men for what they had done. Threatening women and children. Shooting at them.
Dear God.
Shooting them.
Had she been shot? King turned back to the scene playing out at the foot of the carriage, ignoring the half-dozen faces peering out the door now that the immediate danger had passed. He raced toward the collection of bodies there—a prone female who appeared to be regaining consciousness and two additional figures fully entangled.
Sophie crouched low at the base of the conveyance, clutching what King now recognized as a young boy who could not be more than seven or eight. “Are you hurt?” he heard her ask as he closed in on them, and Sophie’s words—the fact that Sophie could speak words—was enough to send relief threading through him with staggering power. Relief was quickly replaced by fury.
He paused, attempting to control the irrational anger that coursed through him as she ran her hands along the boy’s arms and legs. “Are you certain? He did not shoot you?”
The boy shook his head.
“You aren’t hurt?” she repeated, and King understood why. He was repeating a similar litany in his own mind. She was worried for the boy, which meant she hadn’t been shot, either.
Breathing restored, King made quick work of instructing his coachman and the driver of the mail coach to tie up the two men he’d rendered unconscious before turning back to Sophie as her charge squirmed in her arms, embarrassed by the attention. “Stop!” the boy cried, pulling away from her touch. “I’m unharmed!”
“Don’t you dare take a tone, Jonathan Morton,” the woman on the ground said smartly, sitting up. “She saved your life.”
The boy blinked up at Sophie. “She?”
Sophie smiled. “You saved my life, too. Now that we are friends, I suppose it is only fair that you know my secret.”
The boy’s brow furrowed. “You’re a girl.”
She nodded. “I am, indeed.”
Respect chased away confusion. “You stood up to Bear,” he said, looking to the still unconscious man on the ground by King. “To protect us.”
She followed the direction of his attention, until she found King’s boots and looked up to meet his gaze. The skin around her right eye was swelling, already turning black and blue, already forcing her eye closed. She’d been struck. Fury came again, this time directed at another. He wanted to knock the blighter unconscious again.
He took a step toward her. She turned from him, returning her focus to the boy. “I suppose I did.”
“But you don’t even know us.”
“You didn’t know me, and you tried to save me, did you not?” Sophie looked at him for a long while. “We don’t need to know a person to know how to do right by them.”
That seemed to make sense to the boy, and after a pause, he nodded and rose, going to help the young woman who appeared to have received a terrible blow to the head.
King could no longer hold himself back. He stepped forward and said the first thing that came to mind, words fueled by panic and fury. “That was an incredibly stupid thing to do.”
Sophie pushed herself to her feet slowly. “I was feeling nostalgic for your insults.” He ignored the guilt that came unbidden at the words. After a long moment, she sighed. “I suppose you came for your money.”
I came to save you, you madwoman, he suddenly, irrationally wanted to say. I came to keep you safe.
But it wasn’t true. He’d come to get his money back. To exact his revenge for her childish behavior the night before.
He’d come thinking that she was not his problem.
And, thankfully, she was unharmed and remained not his problem. “Among other things.”
She shook her head. “I can’t give it all to you. I need some of it. To get me north. To keep me until my father can send more.” She paused. “I shall pay you back. With interest.”
He crossed his arms. “You shall pay me back right now. And I will pay your passage back to London. Today. No mail coaches. I want you safe in a carriage and I don’t want you setting foot on terra firma until you reach the city limits. Far from me.”
She lifted her chin. “No.”
He shook his head. “You don’t have a choice. You stole from me. We’re going to have to call the magistrate for these idiots,” he said, indicating the men tied up at his feet. “We’ll kill three birds with a single stone, if we need to.” He leaned forward and whispered, “I wonder what they do to thieves out here in the middle of nowhere?”
She stiffened. “You wouldn’t.”
He narro
wed his gaze. “Try me.”
“You’re ruining my plans.”
He spread his arms wide, enjoying the way she paled at his threat. “It’s what I do, darling.”
She stumbled then, and he noticed that she was not simply pale. She was white. Dread pooled as he stepped forward to catch her as her gaze lost focus for a long moment, then returned to him. “Sophie?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t given you . . . permission . . . to be so familiar.”
“You’re definitely not going to like what comes next, then,” He held her in one arm and opened the buttons on her liveried coat.
She batted his hands away. “Are you mad?”
He ignored her, pushing the fabric aside. “Shit.”
“And now you are cursing in front of me.” She closed her eyes again. “I don’t feel well.”
“I imagine you don’t, as you’ve been shot.”
“What? No I haven’t.” She struggled as he guided her to the ground and worked her coat off. She clasped his hand firmly, forcing him to meet her insistent gaze. “I haven’t been shot.”
“All right,” he said, returning his attention to his work. “You haven’t been shot.”
“I would know if I’d been shot.”
“I’m sure you would.” He clasped both edges of the linen shirt beneath, rending the fabric in two to get to the wound.
“Stop!” she shrieked, her hands coming to cover her bare skin. “Scoundrel! You cannot simply access women’s bosoms whenever you please!”
He would have laughed at the words if he hadn’t been so worried. “I assure you that I rarely have to resort to tearing clothing in order to access women’s bosoms.”
She looked down. Paused. “I’m bleeding.”
“That’s because you’ve been shot,” he said, extracting a clean handkerchief from his pocket and pressing it firmly to the wound in her shoulder. He pulled her forward to look at the back of her. “The bullet is still inside. We have to get you to a surgeon.”
She didn’t reply, and he looked up to find her unconscious. “Shit,” he said again. “Goddammit. Sophie.” He tapped her good cheek with his hand. “Sophie. Wake up.”
She opened her eyes for a moment, then let them fall closed.
Goddammit.
“No!” cried the other woman. “She can’t be hurt! She was fine! She was talking!”
There was a great deal of blood for someone who was fine.
Christ.
This was his problem.
She was his problem.
“She can’t die!” the girl cried.
She would not die.
“She’s not dying,” King said, pulling her into his arms, gathering her to him, marching her back to his coach, calculating the distance to the nearest town. The nearest surgeon.
“Oi!” the young woman called after him. He did not look back. She followed, her footsteps audible on the packed dirt road. “Where are you taking her?”
“She needs a doctor.”
“She’s our friend. We’ll take her.”
He turned to look at the girl, who had caught up with him at this point. “You don’t know this woman.”
“I know her well enough to know that she saved John’s life. Mine, too.”
“Don’t worry, I’m going to keep her safe.”
“How do we know she’s safe with you?”
There was no time to be offended by the suggestion that he was a criminal. That he was not to be trusted. Sophie required medical attention. “She’s safe with me.”
“Yes. But how do we know?”
He looked down at the unconscious woman in his arms, who had been trouble since the moment he’d met her, and said the only thing he knew would end the conversation. The only thing that would pacify them. It didn’t matter that it was a lie, or that it would come back to destroy them both.
“Because she’s my wife.”
Chapter 6
SOPHIE SHOT.
SEARCH FOR SURGEON STARTS
She woke half naked in a carriage careening hell-for-leather down what had to have been the worst road in Christendom.
The coach hit a particularly unpleasant patch in the road, and the whole thing bounced, sending a wicked pain through her shoulder. She opened her eyes, a squeak of discomfort turning quickly into one of shock.
She was in the Marquess of Eversley’s arms. In his lap. In a dark carriage.
She scrambled to sit up.
He held her with arms of steel. “Don’t move.”
She tried to move again. “This isn’t exactly . . .” Another pain hit, and she gasped the rest of the sentence. “. . . proper.”
He cursed in the dim light. “I told you not to move.” He pressed a bottle to her lips. “Drink.”
She drank the water without hesitation, until she realized it wasn’t water. She spat out the liquid that threatened to set her throat aflame. “It’s spirits.”
“It’s the finest scotch in Britain,” he said. “Stop wasting it.”
She shook her head. “I don’t want it.”
“You’ll be grateful for it when the surgeon is digging about in your shoulder in search of a bullet.”
The words brought memory with them. The mail coach. The children. The brute who came looking for them. The pistol. Eversley, tearing her clothes from her.
She looked down to find his hand against the bare skin of her shoulder, covered in blood.
Oh, dear.
She took the bottle and drank deep until he removed it from her grasp.
“Am I dying?”
“No.” There was no hesitation in the word. Not a breath of doubt.
She returned her attention to the place where his hand stayed firm, covered in her blood. “It looks as though I am dying.”
“You’re not dying.” She read the words on his lips as they echoed around her in the enormous carriage. Everything about him underscored their certainty. Squared jaw, firm lips, unyielding touch. As though she wouldn’t dare die because he had willed it.
“Just because you call yourself King does not make you my ruler.”
“In this, I’m your ruler,” he said.
“You’re so arrogant. I have half a mind to die just to prove you wrong.”
He met her gaze then, his green eyes snapping to hers in surprise and what one might define as horror. He watched her for a long moment before replying, soft and threatening, “If you’re trying to prove that you don’t require a ruler, you’re not doing a very good job of it.”
The carriage fell silent, and she considered her future. Possibly short. Possibly long. She might not see her sisters again. She might die, here, in the carriage, in the arms of this man, who did not care for her.
At least he hadn’t left her alone.
Tears threatened to spill over, and she sniffed, hoping to keep them at bay.
“What’s north?” he said, clearly attempting to distract her.
It took a moment for her to focus. “North?”
“Yes. Why are you headed to Cumbria?”
A future. Far from her past. “London doesn’t wish to have me any longer.”
He looked out the window. “I don’t believe that.”
“I don’t wish to have London any longer.”
“That sounds much more likely,” he said. “Is there a reason for your rather urgent timing?”
She imagined that it didn’t matter if she confessed the events of the garden party to him, as she was likely to die anyway. “I called the Duke of Haven a whore. In front of the entire assembly.”
He did not reply with the grave concern she expected. Instead, he laughed, the sound rumbling beneath her. “Oh, I imagine he was furious.”
She considered telling him about the rest of the events of the afternoon, but the universe intervened, sending the carriage into a tremendous rut, launching it into the air for a moment before crashing back onto the road. Wicked pain shot through her—bright and sharp enough for her to cry out. Eve
rsley cursed in the darkness and gathered her to him, pulling her tight against him. “We’re nearly there,” he promised through clenched teeth, as though he were in pain himself, and their conversation was over, reality returned.
“Nearly where?” she asked after the pain had passed enough to find words.
“Sprotbrough.”
She had no idea what Sprotbrough was, but it didn’t seem to matter. They fell silent again, and she searched for something to discuss, to keep her mind from her certain death. “Is it true you deflowered Lady Grace Masterston in a carriage?”
He cut her a look. “I thought you did not read the scandal sheets.”
“I have sisters,” she said. “They keep me apprised.”
“If I remember correctly, Lady Grace Masterson is now Lady Grace, Marchioness of Wile.”
“Yes,” she said. “But she was to be Lady Grace, Duchess of North.”
“The Duke of North is old enough to be the woman’s grandfather.”
“And the Marquess of Wile is poor as a church mouse.”
He tilted his head and considered her for a long moment. “She cared for him nonetheless.”
“I don’t think her father cared for his lack of funds.”
“I don’t think her father should have a say in the matter.”
Several seconds passed, and Sophie said, “You ruined her for the duke.”
“Isn’t it possible that I ruined her for the marquess?” There was something in the words that she should understand, but the pain in her shoulder kept her from it. She tried to sit up, putting a hand to his thigh, momentarily distracted by the leather that encased it.
She looked down at the slick fabric. “Your breeches.” His brows rose and she blushed. “I’m sorry. I’m not supposed to notice breeches.”
“No?”
“It’s not proper.”
He cut her a look. “You’re in my lap, bleeding from a gunshot wound. Let’s dispense with propriety for the moment.”
“They’re leather,” she said.
“Indeed they are.”
“That seems scandalous.”
“In all the best ways, darling,” he drawled, the words eliciting a blush as he continued. “You need boots.”