The Rogue Not Taken (28 page)

It was as though he heard her thoughts. “I was young and I’d never in my life been told no.”

Her brows rose. “And the name to prove it.”

He did laugh then, a little chuckle that reminded her that, however tragic the tale became, he was here now. Hale and healthy and hers.

Not hers.

Hers for now, she qualified. Hers for this moment.

“No one tells a King no.”

Silence fell between them, and she grew cold, knowing instinctively that the tale was about to turn.

“I marched her in here, into that ridiculous dining room, my father at one end of that insanely massive table, Agnes serving her famed roast goose. I presented Lorna to my father like the petulant child I was. I can still feel the tremor in my voice. My heart beating in my chest.”

Sophie’s heart matched his. It had never occurred to her that he’d recreated the events tonight. That the entire experience had been designed to punish his father for not simply past sins, but past sins in that very room.

“I stood her in front of my father and I introduced her as my future bride.”

Good Lord.

At least when he’d done it to Sophie, she’d been prepared for it to turn sour. But poor Lorna. That poor young girl who knew nothing better. Who had no doubt been quaking in her slippers at meeting the imposing duke Sophie had met earlier.

Sophie’s hand flew to her chest, as though she could protect herself from the rest. “What happened?”

“He eviscerated her. I’ve never seen a man treat a woman so poorly, milkmaid or otherwise.” King shook his head, his eyes unfocused, staring into the past. “He drove her away, insisting that he’d never approve, that she would never be a duchess, that she was cheap and scraping and willing to do anything to climb.”

He has a knack for climbing
, the duke had said earlier, about Sophie’s father.

“Climbing is his worst sin.”

“Unforgivable,” King agreed. “A special place in hell for those who do it.”

Sophie couldn’t stop herself from returning him to the story. “So you left.”

“I should have. I should have grabbed Lorna’s hand and run. Immediately. Should have taken her across the border and done just what she wished. Gretna Green is
right there
,” he said. “But I didn’t. I took her home. I left her to sleep in her bed. I wanted a night to gather funds and prepare for a journey that would keep us away from Lyne Castle until my father was dead and I was duke. I needed a plan, and I was going to return to her in the morning with one.”

She nodded. “That was sound logic.”

He looked to her at the words, and she saw the sadness
in his gaze. The remorse. The regret. “It wasn’t, though. I didn’t think he’d go to her father.”

Sophie’s eyes went wide. “What happened?”

“The Duke of Lyne visited his first dairy that night. Told Lorna’s father what had happened. Made it clear that if she set foot on Lyne land again, he’d see them both punished for trespassing.”

Her mouth fell open. “What did her father do?”

King shook his head. “She arrived, gown torn, lip bleeding. She came to me, terrified.” He paused. “Threw herself into my arms and begged me to save her. I can still feel her quaking. I packed her into a coach, her father on our heels. My father at his back, the greatest threat of all.”

Dread pooled in Sophie’s stomach as she began to see the way the story ended. She captured his hands in hers, clutching him tightly, wishing she could take away what he was about to say.

“I drove the coach. She was inside. It was dark and rainy and the roads . . .” He hesitated. “Well, after this week, you know the roads.”

“King,” she whispered, clutching his hand.

“I took a corner too fast.”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“The horses were unmatched. I’d hitched them too quickly, without enough care.”

That was why he spent so much time checking the hitches on the carriage. “You were a child,” she said, holding his hands tighter and tighter, until her knuckles were white.

It was his turn to shake his head. “I wasn’t a child, though. I was eighteen, old enough to inherit an estate. To sit in Parliament. She relied on me. And I did the last thing in the world that would protect her.”

She lifted his hands to her lips, raining kisses down
upon them. “No,” she whispered between the caresses. “No. No. No.”

“The coach toppled, bringing all of us down—the coach, the horses, me—into a ditch not a mile from here. I’m not even certain if we made it over the border.” He shook his head. “I don’t think we did.”

“Were you—”

He looked to her. “I was fine. A few bruises. Nothing to speak of.”

“And—” She couldn’t say the name.

“She screamed,” he said quietly, and she could tell that he was no longer here, in the library, but there, on the rainy road. “I could hear her as we flipped, but by the time we’d stopped, it was silent. She was silent. I climbed back, tore at the coach doors, but—” Sophie pressed a hand to her lips, tears coming as she imagined him screaming for the woman he loved. “—the way the coach fell, the doors were bent shut. There was no way in. She was stuck in there. I couldn’t hear her. I broke a window, finally.” He looked down at his knuckles, flexing his fingers, as though the wounds from the glass were still there.

Sophie had never heard anything so horrible in her life. Tears streamed down her face as she watched him, as he finished his story.

“She died inside the damn coach, at my hand.”

No wonder he hated riding in coaches. “That’s why you race the curricles,” she said. “You pay your penance. You risk yourself.”

He didn’t reply to the words, instead saying, “I told you that my father killed her. As though he put a pistol to her head.”

She nodded, not knowing what to say.

“It wasn’t his hate that put the pistol to her head. It was my love.”

She reached for him then, taking his handsome, shadowed face in her hands and turning him to face her, waiting until he met her gaze, until she was certain he was paying attention. “It was an accident.”

“I shouldn’t have—”

“You were a child, and you were doing what you thought best. What you thought right. You didn’t kill her.”

“I did.” The confession devastated her, and suddenly she understood so much about him. She did the only thing she could think to do ease the ache in her heart. In his.

She drew his face to hers, and kissed him, at first soft and tentative, as though he might push her away at any moment, as though she was intruding. She lifted her lips once, twice, a third time before she deepened the caress, letting her tongue slide over his bottom lip, loving the way he inhaled at the sensation, his mouth opening, his hands coming around her.

And then he was kissing her back, taking and giving, stroking and sampling, groaning as he took over, turning what had begun as a tentative caress into a wicked, wonderful claiming. It was glorious.

He released her lips, pressing warm, wet kisses down the column of her neck as her fingers found purchase in his hair, guiding him to places she did not even know were kissable. He licked at the place where her neck met her shoulder, his hands coming around to the front of her dress, fast and furious, working at the laces there. There was nothing controlled about this moment, nothing thought out. His hands and lips tempted and touched and promised, sending shivers of pleasure through her without thought. Without hesitation.

It was sheer, unadulterated desire.

Desire for another person who understood.

Who did not judge.

Who wanted.

Sophie understood that better than anyone.

And then the laces on her dress were free, and her breasts were spilling into his palms, and his thumbs were sliding over the tips as he lifted them up and he stared down at them. “You’re magnificent.”

She believed him as he leaned down and sucked one rosy, pebbled tip into his mouth, working with lips and tongue around and around until she was squirming on his lap and he was lifting her to rearrange her until she was on her knees, above him, and he was worshipping her.

It felt like worship every time his tongue worked its slow orbit.

It felt like worship every time his fingers stroked across her skin.

It felt like worship when he opened his green eyes and stared up at her, as though she were his anchor in the storm.

She wanted to be that. Now.

Forever.

“Yes,” she whispered.

He released her. “Yes what?”

“Yes anything. Whatever you want.”

He blew a long, wonderful line of air over the place where she wanted him. “But what do you want, Sophie?”

She put her fingers in his hair, marveling at its softness. “I want your tongue.” Later, she would be shocked and a little embarrassed by the words, ladies did not say
tongue
, she was sure. But now, she didn’t care.

He groaned and gave it to her, long, lingering licks that threatened her sanity. “You are dangerous for me.”

She smiled. “Dangerous how?”

His fingers slid into her hair, her pins scattering across
the chair, across the floor of the library, her curls falling down around them. He stared deep into her eyes. “You make me want . . .”

She lowered herself to his lap, feeling him hard and strong beneath her. He growled low in his throat, and power thrummed through her. “What do you want?” she asked, repeating his words, shocked at the sound of them on her lips, low and full of desire.

She was a different woman when she was with him.

He took her mouth again, in a deep, shattering kiss, and when he released her, they were both panting. “You make me want,” he said simply. “Christ, Sophie. You make me want.”

The words shattered her as much as the kiss had.

She nodded. “I want, as well.”

Everything he could give her.

All the bits and pieces. Even if they were just bits and pieces. She would take them.

He closed his eyes. “Fuck.” The curse came soft and shocking, and Sophie stilled as he sat up, his hands no longer lingering, no longer holding, now pulling her bodice up around her.

What had she done?

“King?” she asked, his hands at the laces of her gown, pulling them tight, making her panic. Had she done something wrong? “What’s happened?” Once it was done and she was dressed, he lifted his eyes to hers, and she relaxed, recognizing the desire there, restrained, but clear as the North Country sky. “Why did you stop?”

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice low and dark and full of want.

“For stopping?” She stared down at him, more confused than she’d ever been in her life. “You don’t owe me an apology.”

“But I do. For all of it,” he said. “For the things I’ve done and said to you. For bringing you here. For this.”

“I was quite enjoying it.”

He exhaled, the sound harsh in their close quarters. “That’s the problem.”

Her eyes widened. “It is?”

He stood, guiding her feet to the floor. “No. Of course I want you to enjoy it. But this . . .” He paused and cursed again, low and wicked in the quiet library. “Christ. I was enjoying it, too. Too much. I can’t enjoy it, Sophie. I can’t enjoy you. And you shouldn’t enjoy me.”

Too late.

Her brow furrowed. “Why not?” She cast about for a way to protect herself. “You promised you’d ruin me, didn’t you? This is it, isn’t it?”

He looked at her then, his green eyes glittering with anger and frustration and something near sorrow. And then he broke her heart.

“I’ve no intention of making love to you, Sophie. Not tonight. Not ever.”

H
e spent the next day roaming about the castle, half avoiding Sophie and half hoping he’d find her. Half hoping that seeing her might restore the incredible relief he’d felt once he’d told her the truth about Lorna and she hadn’t run screaming from the room—a relief that had been consumed by guilt at her disappointment when he’d told her he wouldn’t make love to her.

By afternoon, he’d found himself in the library once more, deep into the scotch, seated in the chair where he’d had her the night before, torturing himself with the memory of her exploring the massive room with exhilarating pleasure, eating her tart with the same. It occurred to him that he would think of her that way now, laughing with the servants, sighing over pasties, facing him in the dining room.

He’d think of her with passion.

She was all passion and strength and perfection, and stopping himself from taking her there, in that chair, on the floor, against the shelves of the library, again and again until neither of them remembered anything but each other, had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done.

But leaving her had been far more difficult.

And that terrified him.

As a gentleman, he should not have felt guilt. He did not ruin her, despite their idiotic agreement. That was the point of it, no? It was his role as a decent man to protect her virtue, was it not? But guilty he was, and it had nothing to do with not taking her to bed.

It had to do with the fact that he could not be what she wanted.

He could not give her the love she desired. The love she deserved. And the best thing in the world he could do for her at this point was to pack her back to the inn in Mossband and pretend as though they’d never met.

As though he would forget her.

He drank deep, guilt turning to frustration. What a damn fool he was to have brought Sophie here, to have introduced her to his demons. To have tempted them both with what could never be.

Because even if he did marry her—he could never love her.

He’d done that once. And look where it had landed him. Alone. Drunk. In the library.

“My lord?”

King turned his attention to the door, where Agnes stood. Agnes, who had been by his side from childhood, more mother than housekeeper, more friend than servant. She was the only person in the world who could look at him with such equal parts adoration and disdain. “Come in, Agnes,” he said, waving a hand to the chair opposite. “Sit and tell me tales of the last decade.”

She drew closer, but did not sit. “Are you drunk?”

He looked up at her. “I’m working on it.”

She considered him for a long moment and then said, “Your father wishes to see you.”

“I do not wish to see him.”

“You don’t have a choice, Aloysius.”

“No one calls me that,” he said.

“Well, I am most definitely not going to call you King,” Agnes said, dry and certain. “I already have one of them.”

“And a monarch in London, as well,” King quipped.

“That’s the drink talking, or I’d take a switch to you for rudeness.”

He looked up into her pretty face. The years had been kind to her, despite the fact that he imagined his father was anything but. “I’m too old for switches, Nessie. And I’m well past the age where I mustn’t disrespect the pater.”

She narrowed her brown eyes on him. “You may disrespect your father all you like. I won’t have you disrespecting me. Drunk or otherwise.”

The words set him back. For a boy who had grown up without a mother, Agnes had been the best possible companion, always forthright, always caring, always there. She’d been young and pretty when King was a child, always willing to play. It had been Agnes who had shown King the secret nooks and crannies of the castle, always finding time for him. When King had broken his wrist after tripping down the castle stairs, it had been Agnes who had gathered him in her arms and promised him he would be well. And it had been Agnes who had always told King the truth, even when it made him feel like an ass.

Like now.

“I apologize.”

The housekeeper nodded. “And while we’re at it, why not try your hand at not disrespecting your future wife, either?”

It was too late for that.

“She’s not my future wife.”

Agnes raised a brow. “Has she come to her senses and left you, then?”

Somehow, she hadn’t. But he was through keeping her here, against her wishes, forcing her to tell a story that she didn’t want to tell. He was releasing her from their agreement as soon as possible. This afternoon. The moment he next saw her.

And she would leave him.

“She will,” he replied, hating the words.

“You know that will be entirely your fault.”

He nodded. “I know.”

And he did. He’d drive her away, just as he did with every other woman who had ever shown a modicum of interest in him since Lorna. Except, all the other times, it had been easy . . . a smile, a stolen kiss, a promise that they’d find someone even better. More ideal. Perfect for them.

But he didn’t want Sophie finding someone more perfect.

He wanted to be someone more perfect for her.

Except he didn’t know how to be.

Goddammit.

“I hate this place.”

“Why?”

He sighed, leaning his head back on the chair and closing his eyes. “Because it makes me feel like a child. It makes me feel like the child I was when I lived here, clinging to your skirts, uncertain of what to do next. The only difference is that now I could not care less about his opinion of my actions.”

She watched him carefully. “I’m not certain that’s true.”

She was right, of course. He cared deeply about his father’s opinion of his actions. He wanted him to loathe them. He stood, irritated by the revelation. “When I inherit, I’m razing the place and its memories.” He moved to a low table nearby and filled his glass once more. “Lead on. Take me to the king of the castle, so I may receive my
instructions and leave him in peace. If all goes well, we can have it out, and we’ll never see each other again.”

He would have left already, if not for Sophie.

“He is not the villain you think he is, you know.”

He cut her a look. “With due respect, you are not his son.”

“No,” she said, “but I have run his house since you were born. I was here the night you left. I’ve been here all the nights since.”

“Since he forced my hand and left me to kill the woman I loved.”

Agnes stopped short. King had never said the words aloud, and in the last twenty-four hours, he’d said them twice. It was as though telling Sophie had unlocked something in him.

“What is it?” he asked.

She shook her head and began to move again. “I promised your father I’d fetch you.”

“I am fetched, Agnes,” he said. “I do not require escort.”

“I think he is afraid you will leave if you are left to your own devices.”

If not for Sophie, he would have already left.

“He isn’t wrong. I only came to tell him that the line dies with me.”

“You don’t think that lovely girl will want children?”

Of course she would. And she’d make a wonderful mother.

But not to his children.

To someone else’s children. Someone who loved her as she deserved, her and her damn bookshop stocked with texts no one but she would ever want. That would be his gift to her. The freedom to have that bookshop. To find that happiness. That love.

Just as it had been his gift to all the other women
whose marriages he’d stopped before they happened. The chance to find love.

The chance Lorna had never had.

Sophie would have it.

That he hated the idea of her in love with another man was irrelevant.

“You’ll hear what he has to say before you leave,” Agnes said, as though it were her bidding that would make him. “You owe it to me.”

“For what?”

She looked to him then, and he realized that, though fifteen years had passed and she remained a beautiful woman, this place had aged her. “For all the years I’ve worried about you.”

He was ever disappointing the women around him.

They were at the door to his father’s study and as he stared at it, he remembered being a child and standing here, heart in his throat, worried about what the man on the other side would say.

There was none of that youthful trepidation in him now.

Agnes lifted her hand to knock, to announce their arrival.

King stayed her. “No.”

He turned the handle, and stepped inside.

The Duke of Lyne was standing at the far end of the study, at the oriel windows that looked out on the vast estate lands. He turned at the sound of the door. His father was impeccably turned out in navy topcoat and buckskin, boots to the knee, and perfectly pressed cravat.

“One would think that you would eschew formal attire this far from London in both distance and time,” King said.

The duke leveled him with a long, thorough, disdainful gaze. “One would think you would remember your man
ners in spite of the distance, and not turn up drunk in the middle of the day.”

King did not wait to be told to sit, instead sprawling into a chair nearby, enjoying the way one of his father’s grey brows rose in irritation. “I find that alcohol helps with my great distaste for this place.”

“You didn’t hate it when you were a child.”

“I didn’t see its truth.”

“And what is that?”

King drank. “That it turns us into monsters.”

The duke approached and sat in the chair opposite him. King considered his father, still tall and trim, the kind of man women would find handsome even as he aged. And he had aged in the last decade, the silver that had once been the purview of his temples now spread throughout all his hair, lines at his mouth and eyes that King had once heard referred to as signs of good humor.

It was humorous indeed to think of his father as the kind of man who was known for such a thing.

“You look well,” the duke said. “Older.”

King drank. “Why am I here?”

“It is time we speak.”

“You sent word you were dying.”

Lyne waved a hand. “We are all dying, are we not?”

King cut him a look. “Some of us not quickly enough.”

The duke sat back in his chair. “I suppose you think I deserve that.”

“I know you deserve more,” King said. There was a pause, and he said, “I won’t ask again, Your Grace. You either tell me why I’ve been summoned here or I leave, and the next time I see this place, I shall bear its name.”

“I could follow you to London.”

“I have avoided you for fifteen years, your grace. London is a very big city.”

“It will be difficult for you to do so if I resume my role as duke.”

“To do that, you’d have to take your seat in Parliament. I’m sure the rest of the House of Lords would be thrilled you were at last treating your title with respect.” He considered his father. “In fact, for a man who so thoroughly respected the title that he went to such lengths to protect it from being damaged by bad blood, it is a shock that you have eschewed such an important duty. You’ve been in London, what, a half-dozen times in fifteen years?”

“I had my reasons for staying away.”

“I’m sure they were excellent,” King scoffed.

“Some better than others.” The duke inhaled. “I should never have left you alone for so long.”

King raised a brow. “Left me?”

The duke fisted his hands on his knees. “You were young and insolent and you knew nothing of the world. Every time I returned, you refused to see me. A single, petulant message.
The line ends with me.
I should never have allowed it.”

“I enjoy the way you think you have
allowed
me to do anything I’ve done since the night you exiled me.”

Lyne leveled him with a cool green gaze that King had used on countless others. He did not like being in its path. “I have allowed you everything. I filled your coffers with funds, I gave you horses, the Mayfair town house, the curricle you drove hell-for-leather for a year before you crashed it, the coach you never used.”

King sat forward, loathing the way his father seemed to claim his successes for himself. “That money is now worth twelve times its original value. The house sits empty, right there on Park Lane, entailed to you. The horses are dead. And yes, the carriage is crashed. Just as the coach here was.” He narrowed his gaze on his father.
“I lived by your hand until I could live by my own. And I have never asked you for another shilling. One would think you would not have kept such a ledger. One would have thought you would count those funds as penance for killing a girl so far beneath you that you thought her expendable.”

“And so we get to it.”