The Rogue Not Taken (8 page)

A muffled conversation came from outside as the other woman checked the opposite window before turning to Sophie. “Is it possible someone is looking for you?”

Considering she’d borrowed a significant sum from him without his knowing, Sophie imagined that the Marquess of Eversley would, indeed, be looking. She sat forward. “I hope not.”

“Out of the carriage!” a man’s voice boomed.

“Christ,” the other woman muttered.

“I know you can hear me!”

Dread pooled in Sophie’s chest. Eversley had found her. And once he had his hands on her, he would collect his money and march her back to London without hesitation. If he was feeling magnanimous there would be marching to London, she realized. If he was furious, he could easily leave her on the side of the road to fend for herself. Again.

And he hadn’t seemed overly magnanimous at their last meeting.

Of course, she had called him arrogant, vapid, and unintelligent. That did not engender magnanimity, to be honest.

“Let’s go, girl! We haven’t got all day!”

Sophie thought the “girl” was rather rude and unnecessary, but Eversley didn’t exactly eschew rudeness, in her experience.

Around the coach, women and children were stirring, asking questions about who was outside and what was happening. There would be no hiding for Sophie. She might as well not be a coward about the whole thing. Squaring her shoulders, she came off the seat, stepping
gingerly around the little girl on the floor and reaching for the door handle.

“Wait!” Mary called out.

Sophie turned back. “There’s nothing to be done. He’s here for me.”

“Don’t open that door,” the young woman said ominously. “Once it’s open, it can’t be shut.”

Sophie nodded, sadness creeping through her at the thought that this woman, whom she’d known for no more than a quarter of an hour, was attempting to protect her. “I understand that. But I wronged him. Several times. And he wants his revenge.”

And then she opened the door to reveal Eversley.

Except the man outside wasn’t Eversley.

The
men
outside weren’t Eversley.

Relief was quickly replaced by trepidation. While the trio were not her pursuer, these men were decidedly less well dressed than the marquess, and decidedly more nefarious-looking than he. She blinked. “Who are you?”

“I’ll be askin’ the questions, boy,” the one farthest away announced. “It’s nice you’re willing to be all hero-like, but just step aside and give us what we want.”

Understanding dawned. “You’re highwaymen.”

“Not exactly,” he said.

“You stopped a mail coach on its journey north with the intent of robbing us and, I can only imagine, leaving us for dead,” she pointed out, ignoring the gasps and shrieks that came from inside the conveyance at the words. “You’re highwaymen.” She looked up at the driving block. “What have you done with the driver?”

“He ran like the coward drivers always are.”

Oh, dear. That was not ideal.

“Don’t let them kill us!” came a little cry from inside the coach.

The leader stepped forward. “I didn’t have plans to kill you. But now you’re irritatin’ me. And I don’t like being irritated.” He met her gaze, his eyes cruel and ice blue. “I ain’t lettin’ some nob’s errand boy stand between me and what I want. Get out of the way before I decide to kill you to get to it.”

Sophie did not know where her bravery came from. “What is it you want?”

“He wants me.” The answer came from inside the coach, from Mary. She looked past Sophie to the man outside, her voice even as she said, “Don’t hurt anyone, Bear.” But Sophie saw the fear in the woman’s eyes.

“I don’t want you,” the man called Bear said, disgust in his voice. “I want the boy.”

John
.

Sophie’s gaze flickered past the woman to where the child had been. The seat next to hers was now empty—the boy nowhere to be found. Mary descended from the carriage. “He’s not here.”

“Bullshit,” Bear spat, and Sophie inhaled deeply at the foul language. “You took him. And I’m still using him. He’s my best drunk blade.”

“I’m telling you, he’s not with me.”

The man got close. “But the little one is.”

Sophie heard the threat in the words, the cool implication that if he did not get what he wanted, he was not above hurting Bess. She descended the carriage, coming to stand next to Mary and face the monster. “I suggest you step back.”

He turned to Sophie, eyes wide. “Or what?”

Sophie was in over her head, but her father’s voice echoed through her—
Bluster until it’s real.
She squared her shoulders. “Or else you shall regret it.”

Bear smiled, looking up and away before he turned
back, all anger. “I think you shall be the one who regrets it.”

The blow came fast and furious and unexpected, stars and pain exploding at her temple. She was flat on the ground before she could think. Mary retreated, pressing herself against the open doorway of the carriage. “Dammit, Bear, I said don’t hurt anyone.”

“Next time, find a protector who’s strong enough to take a punch,” came the reply. “I told you. I’ll be havin’ my cutpurse.”

Sophie opened her eyes at that, her location making it impossible to miss the little body curled beneath the coach.
John
. His eyes were wide and full of fear and tears, his gaze locked on Mary’s feet.

“And I told you,” Mary said, “he’s not here.”

Sophie heard the blow Bear delivered; it landed with a wicked crack against Mary’s cheek, and though the young woman cried out in pain, she did not lose her footing. Bess screamed from inside the coach, and John closed his eyes at the sound. “I told you, you bastard,” Mary repeated, protecting the boy. “He’s not here.”

The beast called Bear hit Mary again, harder, and this time, she did fall.

At the edge of Sophie’s vision, John moved, and she knew what he was up to. He was going to show himself, to turn himself in to save Mary. Sophie wasn’t about to allow that. “Wait!” she called out.

John stopped. Thankfully.

Sophie pushed herself up to her feet before the man could climb over Mary to search the carriage.

He turned back to her. “Stop playing the hero, boy. You won’t win.”

She approached, putting herself between the villain and the unconscious Mary, arms akimbo, not knowing
how she would stop him, knowing only that she couldn’t let him hurt another. “I shall stop playing the hero when you stop playing the monster.” She paused, lifting her chin. “But that won’t happen anytime soon, will it?”

He laughed again. “You’ve a death wish, it seems.”

She allowed her hatred into her gaze. “Only if it is your death of which we speak.”

He turned away from her, arms spread wide, meeting the gazes of his two companions with a quiet chuckle before reaching into his waistband to extract his pistol and returning his attention to her.

Sophie went utterly still.

“I’ve had enough of you,” he said before raising his arm and taking perfect aim at her head.

She closed her eyes, expecting terror to overpower her. But the terror never came. Instead, she was flooded with a single, calm thought.

If only the Countess of Liverpool hadn’t liked fish so much.

T
here was nothing in the world that King loathed more than coaches.

He tugged at his cravat, desperate for air in the enclosed space, and added this ride to the long list of things for which Lady Sophie Talbot should be punished. As it was, she had thrown a serious complication into his plan—a race to Cumbria with his curricle-driving mates, followed by a short, final audience with the father who had ruined his life. He had visions of approaching the duke’s deathbed, of leaning down and taking the final victory in their decade-long battle.
The line ends with m
e.

And he would bury his demons. Finally.

Instead, thanks to Lady Sophie Talbot, troublesome scandal and thief, he was not racing north. He was inside
a massive, empty coach that had a distinctly coffinlike feel. If it weren’t for the clattering of wheels on the terrible road, King might not have been able to hold the panic at bay.

Instead, he leaned back against the plush cushion of the carriage and released a long breath, hating the way the small space closed in on him.

He should have saddled a horse and ridden. Yes, he would have had to change horses constantly, and risked the English weather, but at least he would have had fresh air. Growing more uncomfortable by the minute, King shucked his coat and removed his cravat altogether. Closing his eyes, he took several deep breaths, leaning into the sway of the vehicle. “It’s a carriage, you idiot,” he muttered into the darkness. “It’s moving.”

For a heartbeat, he thought it might work, thought that if he kept his eyes closed, he might be able to keep his sanity. And then the coach hit a particularly deep rut in the road, and he was tossed to one side, and his eyes opened to a small, dim space.

It was going to crash.

She was going to die.

And it would be his fault.

Panic consumed him and he moved to bang on the roof, unable to stop himself. Before he could make contact, however, the carriage slowed, as though the great, hulking mass of wood and metal understood his madness.

He had the door open and was on the ground before it stopped.

The coachman looked down at him, curiosity turning quickly to surprise, and King hated the wash of warmth that flooded his cheeks. He didn’t want the man witnessing his discomfort and panic. “Why are we stopped?” he snapped, eager to redirect any attention from his madness.

The driver did not flinch. “There’s someone in the road, m’lord.”

King turned in the direction of the coachman’s gaze to find a man, out of breath and waving his hands madly in the air. “My lord, please! We’ve been set upon by highwaymen!”

King hesitated at the words—knowing that this precise turn of events had fleeced any number of travelers on this road. Trick a man with a false sense of heroism into hieing off to save the day, and empty his carriage of his belongings. Not that there was anything in King’s carriage worth stealing. Sophie Talbot had made sure of that.

Either way, the man in front of him was either a tremendous actor, or legitimately concerned. “The mail coach is filled with women and children,” he panted. “They’ll be hurt. Worse.”

The mail coach.

Christ.

Even if he could have ignored the impending doom of a collection of women and children, he’d be willing to wager half his fortune that Sophie Talbot was on that exact mail coach. He met the heaving man’s eyes. “Is there a servant riding with you? Wearing livery?”

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.