“It’s true. The lady and I had an arrangement.”
“All the more reason for you to remember her. It’s common courtesy.” She reached into the basket. “There are pasties in here!” Extracting a pasty, she tore it in half and offered it to him. “Pasties are a glorious food. One I never get in London.”
“Why not? You have a cook, don’t you?”
She nodded and spoke around her food. King resisted the urge to smile. Her manners had fled as the sun had set. “But she’s French. And pasties aren’t good for the waistline.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your waistline,” he replied without thinking. She paused mid-chew. He likely should not have an opinion on her waistline. He shrugged a shoulder. “It’s perfectly ordinary.”
She began chewing again. Swallowed. “Thank you? I suppose?”
“You are welcome.”
She washed down her pasty with more wine. “So, you do not love Lady Marcella.”
She’d had enough wine to be nosy, and not nearly enough to forget the conversations they’d been having. “I do not.”
“But you are aware of the emotion. In a personal sense.”
Enough to know I never want it again.
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you marry the poor girl?”
He’d tried. He’d wanted to.
He remembered bringing her to meet his father. To show her off. To prove to the great Duke of Lyne that love was not an impossibility. He’d been young and stupid. And his father had ruined it.
I’d rather you never marry at all than marry some cheap trollop in it only for the title, the duke had sneered. And Lorna had run.
He remembered the way his heart had pounded as he’d chased after her, to find her, to marry her. To love her enough to spit in his father’s face. And then he stopped remembering, before he could remember the rest. He looked up at Sophie, fairly invisible. Night had fully fallen. “I can’t marry her.”
“Why not?” It was strange, the way her voice curled around him in the darkness. Curious. Comforting.
“Because she is dead.”
She shot forward at the words, and though it was too dark to see, he could hear the movement of her skirts against her legs, feel the heat of her in the small space. “Dear God,” she whispered, and then her hands were on him, clumsily searching in the darkness. Landing on his thigh before she snatched them back, as though she’d been burned. He caught them, wishing he could see her face. Grateful that he could not see her face when she repeated the words. “Dear God. King. I am so sorry.”
She is dead, and my father killed her.
She is dead, and I killed her.
He shook his head, the darkness making the story easier to tell. “Don’t be. It was a long time ago. Truthfully, the only reason why I told you was because you asked why I’d never returned.”
“But you return now.”
“My father—” he started, then stopped. Instead, he laughed humorlessly. “Suffice to say, I want him to know that his precious line died with her.”
There was silence. “Did he—” She did not finish the question.
He answered it anyway. “As though he’d put a pistol to her head.”
She paused, considering the horrifying words. “And your happiness? You shall never take it?”
She was a fool, Sophie Talbot. A beautiful fool. A man could have money, a title, or happiness. Never all three. “There is no happiness for men like me,” he said.
“Were you ever happy?” she whispered.
Memory flashed, summoned from God knew where by this woman who had a remarkable way of winning his secrets. “I remember a day when I was a child—I’d just been given my first mount, and my father and I rode out to visit the blacksmith.” He could have stopped there, but somehow, it was easy to tell the story in the darkness, and once it had begun, he couldn’t stop it. “He was hammering out horseshoes in his little workshop, which was hot as hell.
“My father talked to him for a long while—longer than any young man wants to listen—and I wandered out into the yard, to discover a metal stake in the ground and a half-dozen horseshoes wrapped around it.”
“It’s a game,” she said.
“I knew instinctively that whatever it was, it was not for future dukes.”
“I shall show you how it is done,” she said fervently in the darkness, making him want to pull her onto his lap and kiss her mad. “Hang rules for future dukes.”
“No need. I know how to play.”
A pause. “The blacksmith taught you?”
“My father did.” Silence followed the pronouncement, until King added, “I was happy that day.”
She shifted, and the sound of her skirts brought him out of the memory, back to this place, no longer the boy at the blacksmith’s. Now a man who had seen the truth of what his father could do if his expectations weren’t met.
Another image flashed, a carriage much like this one, on its side, in the road, and King wanted desperately to be on his curricle, careening up the road with wind whipping around him, drowning out the thoughts that seemed to grow louder as he drew north.
As though she heard the thoughts, Sophie moved again, leaning forward, her hand coming to his knee in a thoroughly inappropriate gesture. Inappropriate, and desperately welcome, as it chased the thoughts away.
He wanted her to chase everything away.
Everything but this moment. Her. Them.
He moved, crossing the dark carriage, filling the bench next to her and threading his fingers through hers, something about the simple touch tempting him more than anything had ever tempted him.
Something about her tempting him.
Her breath caught in her throat at the touch, and pleasure shot through him. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. “Sophie,” he whispered, her name echoing around them.
“Yes?” she asked, so quietly he barely heard her.
“You said you wished to experience the bits and pieces of it.” He spoke close to her ear, where she smelled of honey and spice.
“The bits and pieces of love.”
One of his hands slid up to her jaw, his fingers threading into her hair. “Would you like me to show you this bit?” He nipped at the skin on her opposite jaw, scraping his teeth there until she gasped at the pleasure of it. “This piece?”
The darkness made it all better.
His lips found hers, stealing a heartbeat of a kiss before he moved to worship at her throat. “We aren’t supposed to like each other.” Her words came on a sigh.
“Don’t worry. We don’t.”
What a lie that was.
Chapter 12
ROGUE’S REIGN
OF RAVISHMENT RESURGES
She shouldn’t allow it.
The man was a legendary scoundrel. An expert ruiner of young ladies. And he’d never once been punished for it. Perhaps because he was so very good at it. It seemed a shame to punish someone for what was clearly a remarkable skill.
But still, she shouldn’t allow it. She should tell him to stop . . . stop the way his fingers threaded through her hair . . . the way they played gently over her skin and the too-tight fabric of her dress . . . the way his lips pressed soft, lingering kisses along her neck as he made his wicked promises to show her the bits and pieces of love.