The Rogue Not Taken (6 page)

“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.”

“Well, you lack a knowledge of direction, it appears, so one does wonder.” She did not waver from her purpose. They walked for several minutes in silence, until they were once more in the lights of the Fox and Falcon.

King couldn’t help himself. “If not London, where is home?”

“Cumbria.”

He stilled. What was she playing at?
He
was headed to Cumbria. To
his
home
.

The Dangerous Daughters.

The nickname whispered through him with a keen awareness of the rumors about the Talbot daughters—rich, but not nearly quality. They’d need to purchase their aristocratic marriages or steal them, and the fastest way to steal a title was to ruin oneself in the arms of a peer.

A carriage ride to Cumbria would easily result in ruination.

Dangerous, indeed.

Christ. He’d been right earlier that evening. The girl was after him. The guilt he’d felt at leaving her to the men in the stables disappeared, replaced by hot anger. “So it was a plan. To trap me.”

Her brows snapped together. “I beg your pardon?”

“How did you know I was headed to Cumbria? Did the footman give up that information as well?”

“You’re headed to Cumbria?” she asked, all surprise.

He narrowed his gaze on her. “Coy isn’t attractive on you, Sophie.” He deliberately left the title she was due off her name.

“And I am so very desperate for you to find me attractive.”

He raised a brow. “Tell me the truth.”

“It’s quite simple. I’m headed to Cumbria. I spent the first ten years of my life in Mossband.”

He laughed without humor. “I’ve never in my life heard such a terrible lie.”

“It’s true. Not that I can understand why you would care.”

“Fine. I shall play,” he spat. “Because I spent my childhood in Longwood. But you knew that.”

She shook her head. “There’s no Eversley estate there.”

He smirked. “No. But there is Lyne Castle.”

She was doing an excellent job of looking surprised. “What’s that to do with the price of wheat?”

“A pity you’re leaving London. You should try the theater.” He paused, then said, “Is this the bit where I tell you my father is the Duke of Lyne?”

“What?” She really was excellent at feigned ignorance.

“Yes. What a surprise,” he drawled. He’d had enough of her. “You think I’m stupid enough to believe that a Dangerous Daughter doesn’t know that the Marquess of Eversley is a courtesy title?”

“Stupid or no, it’s the truth. I had no idea that you were to be a duke.”

“Every unmarried lady in London knows I’m to be a duke.”

“I guarantee that’s only true of the unmarried ladies who give a fig.”

He ignored her sharp retort. “I’m widely believed to be the
ton
’s best catch.”

She snorted a laugh. “No doubt, what with your minuscule sense of self-importance. Let me assure you, my lord, you’re a horrid catch.”

“And you’re a horrid liar. I assume your pronouncement of your North Country destination was intended to spur me to offer you passage, as we are both headed in that direction?

“Your assumption is incorrect.”

“Don’t play the innocent with me,” he said, waving a finger in her face. “I see right through your outlandish plans. You were fully intending for us to play.”

She blinked. “Play? At what?”

He smirked. “I’m sure you can put it together. The women in your family seem more than willing.”

Understanding dawned. “As though I would let you near me. I don’t even like you.”

“Who said anything about liking one another?” He stayed the vision of how they might pass the time on the journey north. “No matter. I don’t care for the destination you have in mind. You shan’t trap me into marriage. I’m smarter than the rest of the men in London, darling. And you’re not nearly as tempting as your sisters.”

The words hung in the late-night air, the only indication that she’d heard them a slight straightening of her spine.

He exhaled harshly and resisted the urge to curse roundly. The last bit was cruel. He knew it the moment the words were out of his mouth. She was the plainest of the Talbot sisters, yes. And that made her the least marriageable. She had fortune, and nothing else.

And the surprise of it was . . . she didn’t seem at all plain right now, dressed in ill-fitting livery and ridiculous footwear, standing on the Great North Road, moonlight in her hair.

There was a long silence, during which King grew more and more uncomfortable, the words echoing through his head. He should apologize before she did something horrible, like cry.

He should have known better. Because Lady Sophie Talbot did not cry there, on the Great North Road in the dead of night, miles from anywhere or anyone who would help her, faced with a man who disliked her and an insult she did not deserve.

Instead, she laughed.

Uproariously.

King blinked. Well. That was unexpected.

He did not care for the edge of disdain in the laughter, and cared for it even less when she said, “The only thing I have ever wished from you was transport to Mayfair,” she said, slowly, as though she were speaking to a child. “But since you refused me that, I had to take matters into my own hands, which I appreciate”—she raised her voice slightly to stop him from interjecting—“did not work in my favor for much of the day. But things are looking up now, no thanks to you. I’ve a plan now. A plan that does not include you, your assistance, or your kindness. Thankfully, as you haven’t offered assistance and I have seen no evidence of your kindness.”

He opened his mouth to reply, and she stayed him again. “Let me be very clear. I am headed north to escape everything you are, and everything you represent. You are all I loathe about the aristocracy—arrogant, vapid, without purpose, and altogether too reliant on your title and your fortune, which you have come by without any effort of your own. You haven’t a thought in your head worth thinking—as all of your intelligence is used up in planning seductions and winning silly carriage races. In case you have not noticed, I was perfectly fine in the stables until you came along and revealed me to be a woman. And when I left, with every intention of finding my own way north, it was
you
who followed
me
! And somehow I am looking to trap you into marriage?” She paused. “I do not know how I can put it more plainly. Go away.”

He knew his reputation. He’d worked hard to cultivate it—the Royal Rogue, with altogether too much charm and not nearly enough ambition, a man who thrived on scandal and brought gossip with him wherever he went.
It made it easier to keep his distance from women whom he could never promise more than a night, as he had no intention of ever marrying.

Even so, as he stood there, in the drive of a posting inn, and listened to Sophie Talbot rail against his carefully constructed legend, the words stung more than they should.