The duke met his gaze, all seriousness. “Since you left.”
Anger flared. And frustration. And not a small amount of jealousy. His father had had Agnes. He’d had no one. “You didn’t marry her.”
“I’ve asked her every day for the lion’s share of that time,” the duke said, looking to Agnes, and damned if King didn’t see the truth in that look. They loved each other. “She won’t say yes.”
King turned to Agnes. “Why in hell not?”
The duke put up his hands. “Perhaps you will understand it.”
Agnes ignored his father. “I’m a housekeeper.”
“Oh, yes. That’s much better than being a duchess,” King said.
“It is, rather,” she said.
And in her words, he heard Sophie, in her slippers, nose to nose with him on the Great North Road, lambasting the aristocracy and him with it. Arrogant, vapid, without purpose, and altogether too reliant on your title and fortune, which you have come by without any effort of your own. And somehow I am looking to trap you into marriage?
Agnes explained. “I don’t want the whole world thinking I trapped him. Thinking he’s saddled with me for some idiotic reason. I don’t want the aristocracy in our business.”
“Hang the aristocracy, Nessie,” his father said, going to her.
“Easier said than done,” Agnes replied, lifting her hand to his face, stroking his cheek. “I don’t wish to marry you. I wish to love you. And that will just have to be enough.”
The words crashed over him. He stilled. “What did you say?”
I didn’t wish to marry you. I only wished to love you.
I don’t wish for you to be saddled with me.
“Aloysius?”
How many times had she said it? That she didn’t want the marriage. That she wouldn’t go through with it.
How many times had he told her she no longer had a choice?
He’d made a terrible mistake.
He looked to his father. “But Lorna. You drove her away. You didn’t wish me to marry for love.”
“I drove her away because she was after your money. Your title.” His father took a deep breath, and said, “I never expected it to go the way it did. I never intended the girl’s death. I never intended your desertion.” Lyne drank deep before looking into his glass. “You had the anger of youth and I had the imperfection of age. I let you go,” he said to the amber liquid. “I never imagined you’d be so . . .” He trailed off.
Agnes finished the sentence. “. . . so like him. The two of you, so proud, so obstinate, so unwilling to listen.”
King watched his father, finally seeing the cracks in the great Duke of Lyne. Recognizing them, the way they broke the cool, unmoved façade, and made a man.
The duke looked to him. “You brought Lady Sophie to anger me. So I gave you what you wished. Because it is easier to be the man you wish me to be than the man I wish to attempt to be.” He looked to Agnes. “But I don’t think she’s after your title.”
Agnes smiled. “I’d wager all I have on her being after something much more valuable.”
I only wished to love you.
And he’d packed her in a carriage and sent her away.
He looked to his father. “I married her.”
His father nodded. “I spoke to the father today. He told me the girl had lost him quite a bit of investment. Something about Haven and a lake?”
“It was a fishpond.”
“Either way. He said he forced the marriage.”
Except he hadn’t. Not really. Sophie had said it herself; King could have refused. They were scandalous enough—she was scandalous enough—for no one to have questioned his decision.
But he’d wanted to marry her.
Even as he’d wanted to punish her, he’d wanted her for himself.
Forever.
“She didn’t want it.”
“Smart girl,” Agnes said, looking to his father.
She was smart. He didn’t deserve her. And she deserved infinitely better. “I forced it.”
“Smart boy,” his father said, meeting her gaze. “Perhaps I should post banns without your approval. Then you’d have to marry me.”
King set his glass down. “Scotland is faster.”
The duke raised a brow. “Gretna Green?”
“Warnick’s drive.” He closed his eyes. “We didn’t even say vows.”
It wasn’t true. She’d said them. She’d looked him straight in the eye, proud and strong and braver than he by half. And she’d said, loud enough for all to hear, “I do.”
And he’d never been so angry in all his life. What an ass he’d been.
His father grew serious. “Have you made a mess of it?”
She was alone in a carriage on her wedding night. When she should be with him. “I have.”
“Does she love you?”
“Yes.” He’d closed the door on the words, too busy pretending he could live a life without her now that he’d lived it with her. Pretending he could live a day without her. He looked to his father, and said the only thing that mattered. “I love her.”
The Duke of Lyne nodded to the door. “Then you’d best go repair what you’ve broken.”
King was already moving.
He tore through the empty night roads, stopping at inn after inn, finding no sign of Sophie. With each successive stop, he grew more frustrated, hope dwindling as he considered the mistakes he had made, desperate to find her and put them right.
How does it end?
I hope it ends happily.
It would. He’d make it end so. He’d find her. He’d sent her away, crying, and he would not stop until he found her, and made certain she never cried again. He’d ride straight to London without stopping if he had to. He’d meet her in Mayfair.
He’d do anything he could to make sure she never cried again.
He leaned into his steed and allowed himself, for the first time since he realized he loved her, to imagine what it would be to have her. Fully.
Forever.
He imagined her in his arms and in his bed and in his home, filling it with books and banter and babies. With babies. The line would not end with him any longer. He’d give her children—sweet-faced little girls with a penchant for adventure, just like their mother, who was the most adventurous woman he’d ever known.
From the moment he’d climbed down the Liverpool trellis, Sophie Talbot had led him on an adventure.
Sophie Talbot no longer.
Sophie, Marchioness of Eversley.
His wife.
His love.
Goddammit, would he never catch up to her?
The thought had barely formed when he came upon a sharp turn in the road and saw a coach several hundred yards ahead, exterior lanterns swinging in the dark. It was large enough to be the one he sought, and as he drew closer, he heard the thundering of hoofbeats, loud enough to be from six matched horses.
It was she.
He nudged his mount on, eager to reach her. To win her back.
To love her.
He’d get her a cat. Black. With white paws and a white nose. Perhaps then she’d forgive him.
Two hundred yards halved, and halved again, and again, and he could see that it was the right carriage as it approached the next turn in the road. Sophie’s carriage, emblazoned with the crest of Warnick’s clan on the back.