The Rogue Not Taken

SAD SOPHIE SEEKS SOLACE IN SWEETS

Sophie was turning out to be very good at making scandalous exits and absolute rubbish at knowing what to do next.

She couldn’t return to her rooms, as she did not wish to be found, and she couldn’t leave the house, because it was the dead of night and she had nowhere to go. She did not think the Duke of Lyne would take well to her appropriating one of his carriages, either way. He’d likely consider it stealing.

And so Sophie followed her nose and her appetite, and went to the only place she ever felt comfortable in massive houses like this one. The kitchens.

The room was warm and well-lit and welcoming, just as all kitchens seemed to be. There were two large tables at its center, one set with massive platters of beautiful food: a perfectly golden roast goose, a platter of young asparagus greener than she’d ever seen, a towering pyramid of perfectly matched rosemary potatoes, a rack of lamb on a bed of herbs, a pot of mint jelly, and a tower of strawberry tarts that she was fairly certain she could smell from the doorway.

As it had been days since she’d had a proper meal, the food should have captured all her attention, but in these kitchens, the heavy-laden table was not the most compelling feature. No, it was the second table that drew her attention, filled with servants all eating their own evening meal—a meal that looked nothing like the elaborate plates waiting to be served to the now and future dukes she’d left behind.

The servants’ laughter drew her through the doorway, the smell of the warm food making her mouth water. She edged up onto her toes to see what they were eating, envy flaring when she identified the food. Pasties.

The little pouches of meat and vegetable and potato were piled high on several platters at the center of the servants’ table, and the chatter reached a fever pitch as they ate. She heard the gossip, about the angry duke, about the returned marquess, about the girl who had arrived with him. About her.

“Are they very much in love?”

“He must be. He’s come home with her. As though it’s done.”

“She doesn’t even have a chaperone,” someone whispered.

“I’ve no doubt they’re in love.”

Sophie hoped the young woman was not planning to wager on it.

“And you are such an expert, Katie.” The last was spoken by the woman who had been in the dining room, as she set a pitcher of ale on the table. Agnes.

Katie shrugged. “That’s what I’m told.” She turned to the housekeeper. “You’ve been here for a lifetime, Mrs. Graycote, has there ever even been a peep about a wife for the marquess?”

“Never,” a girl who was not Agnes replied.

“Only what we see in the gossip pages,” a third piped in. “He’s more likely to end a marriage than to start one.”

Laughter rang around the table, and Agnes shook her head as a footman entered the kitchens from the opposite end of the room. The housekeeper lifted her chin in his direction. “Are they ready for the next course?”

He nodded. “The lady left, and the men aren’t speaking.”

Agnes pointed to the goose. “Silence makes eating easier.”

“Eating makes not murdering each other easier, I think you mean.”

Sophie thought he made an excellent point, but Agnes, apparently, did not. The housekeeper looked sharply at the footman. “When I wish to know what you think I mean, I shall ask, Peter.”

The footman put his head down and went for the goose, as told. When he lifted the heavy platter to his shoulder and left, Agnes’s gaze found Sophie, shrouded in the dim light of the doorway. Sophie made to leave, but was stayed when the older woman noticed her, her eyes going wide in surprise before she offered a kind smile.

The conversation at the table continued, unaware of the silent exchange. “She left the table?”

“You wouldn’t want to do just that?”

Sophie nearly laughed. Most assuredly, anyone in their right mind would want to leave the table. “Of course I would,” came the reply, “But even I know you don’t leave a meal with a duke.”

“Two dukes, technically.”

There was a quiet pause, and then “Who is she?”

A young man replied. “The marquess introduced her as his future wife. Some lady nob.”

Of course, she was neither of those things. Not really.

“I helped her dress for dinner,” Sophie heard the maid whom she’d met earlier. “She don’t seem a nob. She’s wounded in the shoulder. And very tall.”

“Being tall don’t mean anything,” someone else piped up.

“Being wounded in the shoulder does, though. Does she have a name?”

Sophie had spent much of the last decade being disdainfully discussed as though she were an insect under glass, but always by aristocrats. It was a new experience entirely to be discussed by servants, and she was immediately aware that she belonged neither above nor below-stairs.

Her stomach growled.

Here, at least, she could eat pasties while being gossiped about.

“As a matter of fact, she does have a name,” she said, stepping into the light. Silence immediately fell and she would have laughed at the wide eyes around the table if she weren’t so hopeful that she would be welcome here, in this kitchen, with these people, who seemed more honest than anyone she’d known in recent years. “And since she left dinner without even finishing her soup, she’ll share it for the price of a pasty.”

There was a beat, during which the whole kitchen seemed to still, as though the words had come from up on high instead of from a woman wearing an ill-fitting dress. And then, they came unstuck en masse, moving and shuffling left and right, making room for her. She took her seat, a plate appearing before her, a warm pastry at its center. “It’s chicken and veg,” the maid to her right explained. “There’s also pork and veg.”

“This is lovely,” Sophie said, tearing the pasty in two, releasing a lovely whisper of steam alongside the magnificent scent of pie. Her mouth began to water, but she resisted taking a bite just long enough to say to the assembly, “I am Sophie Talbot.”

She almost did not hear the gasp of recognition from a collection of girls at the end of the table over her own sigh of enjoyment once the food was on her tongue. But she couldn’t not hear the excited “You’re a Soiled S!”

She stopped chewing.

“Ginny, you don’t just call her that,” another girl said. “It’s not flattering.”

The girl called Ginny had the grace to look mortified.

Sophie swallowed and pointed to the cask of ale at the end of the table. “May I?”

A gentleman nearby immediately filled a pewter mug and slid it toward her, golden liquid sloshing over the edge when she caught it. She drank. And brazened it through. “Some do refer to me as a Soiled S.”

“For your father,” said Ginny. “In coal.”

“How do you know that?” a young man across from her asked.

Ginny blushed. “I read the papers.”

“The scandal sheets are not the papers,” Agnes said.

The table laughed and Ginny dipped her head in embarrassment. Sophie took pity on the girl, taking another bite of pasty. “They’re more interesting than the papers, aren’t they, though?” She smiled when Ginny’s head snapped up. “I’m the youngest of the five.”

“The young ladies Talbot,” the girl explained to the table. “Daughters of Jack Talbot, who grew up ’ere, in Cumbria. Like us!”

“Except she’s a lady, so not at all like us,” the man at the end of the table said. What a strange world this was, where in one moment she could be too cheap for a duke, and in the next, too expensive for anyone else.

Without home.

She ignored the thought. “Actually,” Sophie said, “I am not very different. My father knows his way around a coal mine, as did my grandfather, and my great-grandfather.”

“My brother works in the mines,” someone piped up.

Sophie nodded. “Just like your brother, then. The only difference is that my father was lucky and bought a plot of land that eventually became the mouth to one of the richest mines in Britain.” Eyes widened around the table, as her carefully bred London accent gave way to her North Country brogue, and she relaxed into the tale, having heard it a thousand times as a child. “He dug and struck for days before he hit on something he could use. Something nobs in London could use.”

“See? She ain’t a nob!” crowed the maid from earlier that day.

Sophie shook her head. “I’m not. I spent my childhood in Mossband.”

“Except ye are,” the man at the end of the table said. “Because we’re callin’ you milady and yer to marry the duke’s son.”

Not really. She pushed the disappointment aside and drank before smiling down the table at him. “My father isn’t only good at coal; he’s good at cards, too.”

“They say Prinny lost a round of faro and gained himself an earl!” Ginny whispered loudly enough for the whole castle to hear.

Sophie winked, feeling more the Soiled S than ever before here, at this table. Enjoying it. Just as her sisters would. “That is, indeed, what they say.”

The questions came quickly then, questions about her life, and her sisters, and their suitors, and her father and how they’d become aristocrats. And she answered them all, her plate and tankard always full. The food and the ale made her warm and chatty, and she realized that for the first time in what felt like years, she felt free to respond to questions with the truth instead of carefully crafted replies.

And then the next question came, from Ginny, who seemed to know everything about her sisters and their lives. “So you pushed the Duke of Haven into the Countess of Liverpool’s pond, and now you’re being courted by the Marquess of Eversley—you’re so very lucky to be so very famous!”

Sophie’s brow furrowed. “That paper arrived quickly.”

Ginny smiled. “Today. I read it before supper.”

“It wasn’t a pond. It was a pool. Barely reached his knees.”

“Still! You’re the star of the scandal sheets!” Ginny sighed. “You’re so very lucky.”

She didn’t feel lucky. She felt as though she could never go home. She didn’t even know where home was.

If it was.

“How does it feel to be a girl from Mossband, now courted by a marquess?”

“A handsome marquess,” one of the other girls piped in, setting them to tittering and the men at the table to groaning.

But Sophie was stuck on the question. How did it feel? It didn’t feel like anything, because it wasn’t really courting. Because it was nothing but an arrangement. Not even a fantasy. She’d never really been headed to live out her days in Mossband. She’d never really expected Robbie to be waiting for her, and if he had, she wouldn’t have wanted him to marry her. And King . . . he’d never been her husband. Never her betrothed. And now, after the disastrous meal they’d barely had . . .

They didn’t even like each other.

How many times had they said the words to each other?

How many times had she tried to convince herself it was true?

It didn’t matter that there were moments when she came very close to liking him. It didn’t matter that she liked him when he kissed her. When he stood by her side and defended her, even when she knew it was for his own gain. Or that she liked him very much when he’d held her, bleeding, in his carriage. Or when he’d ferreted her away from her father’s men. Or when he’d come through the door at the bakery.

What mattered was that they weren’t betrothed, and they’d never be married.

No matter how much she might wish it.

The thought startled her. She didn’t wish it. Did she? She looked up, grasping on to the part of the question she could answer with certainty. “He is very handsome.”

“Well, at least I have that.”

Sophie closed her eyes at the words, wishing that the floor of the Lyne kitchens would open wide and swallow her whole. Of course he was there. Of course he had heard her. She looked down at her lap, embarrassed beyond measure.

“I’m sorry to interrupt what looks like a lovely meal,” King said to the assembly, who immediately leapt to their feet, reassuring him that no, he hadn’t interrupted at all, and could they fetch him anything at all? Ale? Food?

“No, thank you,” he said, all grace. “I’m simply hoping for some time with Lady Sophie. May I?”

She looked up then, finding his handsome face open and amused. She wasn’t certain she should give him time. He certainly didn’t deserve it. He must have sensed her trepidation, because instead of saying more, he turned away to investigate the table of food nearby. He selected two tarts from the top of the tower and set them on a little plate, topping them with fresh cream before turning back, licking his thumb and forefinger.

“That’s not really behavior befitting an aristocrat,” she said, immediately wondering if, perhaps, the ale was talking.

One side of his mouth lifted in a small, sheepish smile. “Neither was my behavior earlier in the evening. Forgive me?”

As apologies went, it wasn’t perfect.

Nevertheless, her cheeks warmed at the words, even before he extended the plate to her. “These people are not the only ones who can feed you. I have tarts. Can I tempt you to come with me?”

One of the maids behind her sighed.

Sophie resisted the urge to do the same.

She watched the plate of tarts for a long moment. They looked glorious. “I suppose.” She stood and smoothed her skirts. “For the tarts.”

He smiled and placed a hand to his chest. “Of course. I would imagine nothing more.”

She took the plate as he guided her to the door, where she remembered to turn back. “Thank you all for a lovely dinner.”

The servants were surprised by her gratitude, but Agnes replied, “Thank you, my lady. You are welcome at our table any time you like.”

She followed King through the door. “I like you smiling,” he said quietly, when they were outside the room in the dimly lit corridor. “You don’t do it enough with me.”

She looked up at him, “I haven’t had much reason to smile since we met.”

“I should like to change that.”

She lifted the plate. “Strawberry tarts are a good beginning.”

His gaze did not leave hers. “I think I can do better.” He turned on one heel and was off, through the darkened maze of hallways, up a flight of stairs and through the massive doors to one of the wings of the castle.

She followed him, despite not wishing to.

Or possibly wishing to very much.

Everything about this man was a confusion.

“Where are we going?”

He paused in front of a great set of doors, his back to them. “To have dessert.”

There was something in the words, in the look in his eyes as he said them, that had Sophie’s heart pounding. This was not the King she’d known.

“There’s a library here. Would you let me show it to you?”

She scowled. “You’re bribing me with books.”

“Is it working?”

She let her gaze linger on the door behind his shoulder. “Perhaps.”

His lips lifted in a crooked smile, the dimple in his cheek showing. “Let’s see, shall we?” And he opened the door to reveal the largest, most beautiful library she’d ever seen. The room was cavernous, taking up two stories on all sides, with a glorious wrought-iron balcony that ran the perimeter of the room. In front of them, there were several chaise longues and a massive fireplace a dozen feet high by two dozen wide.

And all that before the books, stretching for what seemed like miles, shelves and shelves from floor to ceiling, in deep reds and greens and browns and blues. More books than a person could read in a lifetime.

But she could try.

She stepped into the room, turning in a slow circle, already wondering how long he would require her attention before he would release her into the room, free to explore. “This is . . .” She trailed off, astounded.

After a long moment, he prodded. “It is . . . ?”

She looked to him and grinned. “It is working.”

He laughed. “Excellent.” He pulled the door closed behind them and moved to sit in a large leather chair at the center of the room, next to a pile of oversized books. Balancing the plate of strawberry tarts on one wide arm of the chair, he waved a hand to indicate the room. “I know you are desperate to explore, love. Feel free.”

She was off like a shot, climbing the iron staircase without hesitation. “I’ve always wanted a library,” she said, fingers itching to touch the unblemished spines of the books far above.

“I thought you wanted a bookshop,” he said from below.

“That, as well. I could imagine my father supporting a bookshop,” she said. “After all, they are an investment.”

“But a library is not?”

She shook her head, running her finger over the gold, embossed volume of Milton she’d found. “A library is a luxury,”

“Your father is rich beyond measure. I should think he could spare you the bookshop and the library.”

“He’s always happily bought me books, but my mother . . .” She trailed off, then finished with a little shrug. “She doesn’t care for them.”

“What does that mean?”

She looked down at him, and for a moment she forgot about the library, drawn to the way his green eyes focused on her, unwavering. “She made me hide them.”

“Why?”

“No one likes a female with ideas,” she replied, echoing the words she’d heard dozens of times from her mother. “I suppose she imagined books make for thoughts.”

“They do. Intelligent ones.”

“I’m not sure she’d agree with you. Despite all the books I’ve read, I am the only one of her daughters stranded in the North Country with an unmarried marquess, bullet wound in my shoulder.”

“Nothing about your current circumstance has to do with reading about henges.”

Sophie laughed, trailing one hand along the long line of leather bindings. “Are you sure about that?”

“Absolutely. You are better for every book you’ve read.”

She curled her hands around the lintel of the iron balustrade, leaning over to look down at him. “If you were a Dangerous Daughter, my mother would despair of you. It would be a miracle if we ever saw you married.”

“What nonsense,” he said, looking up at her. “You’re easily the most marriageable female I’ve ever met.”

She stilled. “You think so?”

“Certainly.” He took a bite of tart, as though the statement were utterly normal.

“Once one learns that I’m not attempting to dupe him into marriage, you mean.”

“Once that happens, yes,” he said with a smile.

Something had her feeling slightly light-headed. The ale.

Most definitely the ale.

Not him.

“Why?”

And it was the ale that had her asking that, the ale and the distance between them, which somehow made her more courageous than she had ever been.

“Why aren’t you marriageable?” She didn’t reply. “You’re intelligent, clever, brave, and honorable.”

Excellent, Sophie thought. Like a horse. Or a dog.

And then he said it. “Not to mention beautiful.”

“I’m not beautiful,” she said before she could take it back, instead wishing that she could disappear, simply fade into the books behind her and never be seen again.

No luck. “Yes, you are.”

She shook her head, hating the way her chest tightened with hot embarrassment at the question. She didn’t want to discuss her beauty or lack thereof. No plain woman wanted to, especially not with a man who was so very handsome.

Dear God. He’d heard her call him handsome.

She swallowed, desperate for an end to the moment.

“Sophie?”

She looked to him.

Don’t make me answer.

Don’t make me think about why you would never be for me.

It was the ale that had her thinking that. She didn’t care to have him.

Except, now and then, she thought about it. When he offered her strawberry tarts. And showed her his magical library. And called her beautiful.

And made her want to believe it.

Then she cared very much.

“These tarts are getting eaten. I feel honor-bound to tell you as much.”

Relief flared, replaced quickly with something much more dangerous. Something that made her wish that they were somewhere else. That they were someone else. That jests about strawberry tarts were all they had to think on.

She looked down at him sprawled in the leather armchair, lifting the plate up to her like an offering.

Perhaps tonight strawberry tarts could be enough.

Her eyes went wide. “You’ve eaten mine!”

“You didn’t seem to want it.”

“Of course I wanted it, you tart thief!”

He smirked. “Then why are you all the way up there?”

Why indeed.

She was down the steps in seconds, snatching the plate from his hand. “This is a half-eaten tart.”

“Better than all-eaten,” he said, making a show of opening the book on the table next to him.

“Stop!” she gasped.

He did, turning shocked eyes on her. “What is it?”

“Your fingers. They’re covered in tart. Don’t touch that book.”

“One might have thought I were about to murder someone.”

“Something,” she said. “The book would be tarted forever.”

He held his hands wide. “Fair enough. God forbid we should tart it.”

She sat in the chair across from him and took a bite of her remaining dessert, sighing her pleasure at the delicious fruit, cut perfectly with fresh cream. “This is exquisite,” she said, her gaze riveted on the sweet.

“It is, isn’t it?” His voice was lower than it had been, quieter. Darker.

She looked up to find him staring at her mouth, and gastronomic pleasure turned to a different kind of pleasure entirely. “Would you like it?”

“Very much.”

She was no longer certain that they were discussing dessert. She extended the plate to him, and he shook his head.

“You’re sure?”

“Why books?”

Her brows rose. “I beg your pardon?”

“Why are they your vice?”

She set her plate down and wiped her hand on her skirts before reaching for the top volume on a stack of small, leather-bound books nearby and extending it to him. “Go on.”

He took it. “Now what?”

“Smell it.” He tilted his head. She couldn’t help but smile. “Do it.”

He lifted it to his nose. Inhaled.

“Not like that,” she said. “Really give it a smell.”

He raised one brow, but did as he was told.

“What do you smell?” Sophie asked.

“Leather and ink?”

She shook her head. “Happiness. That’s what books smell like. Happiness. That’s why I always wanted to have a bookshop. What better life than to trade in happiness?”

He watched her for a long moment, longer than she was comfortable, until she returned to her tart. Once she had, he said, quietly, “You didn’t tell me if you forgive me.”

The change in topic startled her. “I—beg your pardon?”

“For the way I treated you. At dinner.”

She picked at the tart, selecting a strawberry and eating it alone, buying herself time to think about her answer.

He continued in the silence. “For the way I’ve treated you since Mossband. Since last night. In the carriage.”

She looked up at him. “You did nothing wrong in the carriage.”

He laughed, the sound humorless. “I did a hundred wrong things in the carriage, Sophie.”

“Yes, but those weren’t the things that made me sad.” The words were out before she could think, before she could alter them. Before she could make herself seem less delicate. She set down her plate and stood. “I’m sorry.”

He shot forward in his chair. “Don’t you dare apologize. I think that’s the first time someone has told me the honest truth in years. I—” He hesitated. “Christ, Sophie. I am sorry.”

“It’s not—” She shook her head.

“Stop. It is.” He stood, approaching her. “I’m an ass. You told me so, remember?”

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Was I an ass?”

She met his eyes, grassy green and focused on her. “You were. Quite.”

He nodded. “I was.”

“And tonight, you were even worse.”

“I know. I wish I wasn’t.”

“I wanted to throw my soup at you.”

He raised a brow. “You’re getting the hang of telling me the truth.”

She smiled. “It’s quite freeing.”

He laughed, then grew serious. “Forgive me?”

She watched him for a long while. “Yes.”

He exhaled, as though he’d been holding his breath for an age, and reached for her surprising them both, his fingertips brushing along her jaw, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear. “I never wanted to hurt you.”

She swallowed at the feel of him, the heat of his touch.

“I should never have brought you here,” he said softly, and she hated the way the words felt until he added, “you’re too good for this place. The men it makes.”

She caught her breath at the words. “I don’t think that’s true.”

“You don’t know who I am,” he said.

“Show me,” she offered, wanting desperately for him to agree, to tell her about this place. About the men it made.

He didn’t, his gaze falling to her mouth instead, his thumb stroking along her jaw. “You’ve cream on your lip.”

From the tarts. She lifted her hand, but he predicted her move, capturing her wrist before she could brush away the remains of the tart. “No,” he whispered, close, the scent of him overwhelming her, soap and spice. “Let me.”

She stilled, not quite understanding, but wanting it, whatever he offered. And then he was there, his lips on hers, his tongue licking out to taste the errant cream.

She’d never in her life experienced anything so scandalous.

Anything so . . .

“Mmm,” he murmured, the sound low and soft as he lifted his head. “Exquisite.”

He hadn’t been talking about the tart earlier.

She couldn’t stop herself from lifting her hand to his neck, holding him the way he held her, her fingers tangling in his dark hair. “Show me,” she repeated, only this time, she didn’t want him to talk. She wanted him to take.

Or perhaps it was she who did the taking, turning her face up to his, and capturing his lips with hers.