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.