The Rogue Not Taken

LYNE LABYRINTH LOVERS!

He knew it was a mistake, that he was the worst kind of scoundrel, taking what she offered. He didn’t deserve her. And she deserved infinitely better.

But the knowledge didn’t stop him.

Instead, it pushed him forward, the knowing that he shouldn’t touch her. The wanting her in spite of his keen awareness that he couldn’t have her. His path had been set out for him, a long, straight road without room for diversion. No place for the emotions she tempted, no place for the beauty she brought with her, for the promises she made.

She called to him from beyond his labyrinth, tempting him with the promise of something more, making him forget—almost—what his life was to be.

What is my life if I stay?

The question had been rhetorical when she’d asked it; she’d known the truth, that he couldn’t give her what she wished.

He couldn’t give her love.

And Sophie would want love. She’d want it pure and unfettered, given freely, along with all its trappings. She’d want the marriage and children and happiness and promise that came with it.

He could see it, the life she wanted. The line of little girls, blue-eyed and brown-haired, in love with books and strawberry tarts. For a moment, he imagined them smiling at him the way their mother did, filled with happiness and hope.

For a moment, he let himself believe he might be able to give it to her.

But she would want love, and he would never be able to give it.

He didn’t have it to give anymore. And those children, they would never be his.

He set her down on the edge of the fountain, coming to his knees, as though she was Ariadne and he the Minotaur, worshipping at her feet, adoring her even as he knew she could not survive in the labyrinth, and he could not survive beyond it.

“Tell me about last night,” he said softly, looking up at her, his hands at the hem of her skirts.

“What—” She caught her breath as his fingers explored the skin of her ankles. “What about it?”

“I hated it,” he said. “I hated stopping.”

She pressed her lips into a thin, straight line. “I hated that you stopped.”

His hands were beneath her skirts, pushing them back, farther and farther, up and over her knees. He pressed his lips to the inside of her knee, swirling his tongue there, loving the little gasp of surprised pleasure that came at the touch. “I hate that I will have to stop today, as well,” he whispered at her skin.

One of her hands came to his head, fingers threading into his hair as he began to kiss over her thighs, pushing her skirts higher, bunching the fabric on her lap as he bent over her, pressing long, hot kisses to soft, undiscovered skin—skin no one but he had ever touched. “King.” She sighed. “I won’t stop you.”

He closed his eyes at the words even as he pressed her thighs apart, making room for himself between them. He pressed a long, lingering kiss to the soft skin of her inner thigh, drawing a little cry from her as her fingers clenched in his hair and held him to her.

She was perfect.

He smiled against her skin, scraping his teeth there at that private, untouched place. “You won’t stop me from kissing you here?”

She opened her thighs wider, gloriously. “No,” she whispered.

He stroked higher with one hand, his fingers finding soft curls that he’d touched before but never seen. “Wider,” he said, and the word came like a demand. “I want you open to this place.”

She did as she was told, opening herself to his touch and his gaze, and he sat back on his heels, unable to stop himself from marveling at her, perfect and pink and his for the taking.

His, full stop.

He looked up at her, loving the flames in her cheeks—loving that even embarrassment was not enough to keep her from him. “Wider,” he said, letting the demand curl between them.

Damned if she didn’t obey, making his mouth water.

“Christ,” he whispered, reaching for her, running his fingers softly through those curls until they found the wet heat of her. “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

She looked away. “It’s not true.”

He hated that she didn’t believe him.

“I know I said I wouldn’t tell you that. I know I said I would do as you asked, and find another way to compliment you, but I can’t.” He came up on his knees again, reaching for her, lifting her gaze to his. “You are beautiful, Sophie. More beautiful than you can imagine.”

Before she could deny it, he took her mouth in a long, wicked kiss, as though they had an eternity to explore each other. As though time did not pass in the labyrinth. And it was an exploration, a long, lingering journey of tongue and teeth and lips, of sighs and cries and growls that promised more than they could ever deliver.

Because he would not ruin her.

If it killed him, he would not ruin her.

He broke the kiss and ran his lips over her cheek, finding the soft skin beneath her ear, where he lingered before saying, “It’s true.”

She sighed, but he could tell she did not believe him. “I want you naked here, in this place, on this grass open to nothing but the sun and the sky and this statue and my mouth. I want to explore every inch of you, and learn the sounds you make when you come, hard and fast and yes, love, beautiful.”

He sucked on the lobe of one ear, long and lingering until she groaned her pleasure, her hands stroking across his chest, down his torso. “King,” she whispered.

He grasped one of her hands and guided it to where he strained, hard and desperate, against the fabric of his trousers. “Feel what you do to me,” he whispered. “You make me ache for you. You make me want to lay you down and take you until there is nothing left but us and the labyrinth.”

Her eager fingers explored. “Yes,” she said without hesitation, flattening her palm against him and making him want to show her precisely how to make him wild.

Instead, he shook his head and pulled her away from him. “No. I won’t ruin you, Sophie.”

Her brow furrowed. “But . . .”

“This is not for me, love. This is for you.”

She shook her head. “I want it to be for us both.”

He couldn’t let it be for them both. If he did, he might never let her leave.

Hating the thought, King returned his touch to her core, parting the folds there, baring her to the sun and air, loving her heat, her softness, her scent. “You’re so wet,” he marveled, dipping a single finger inside her, adoring the way she responded, rocking toward him, eager for more of him. And he was so eager to give her more.

“I can’t,” he said. “I can’t not taste you.”

He pressed her thighs wide and leaned in, painting her pretty pink center with his tongue, adoring the feel of her against him, the way she sighed and moved and guided him without even knowing what she did. He lifted his lips from her and blew a long stream of air directly on the center of her, adoring her cry of pleasure.

Her fingers slid into his hair, clutching him close, pressing him to the open, aching center of her, using him as he tasted her again and again, losing himself in her. He licked and sucked and stroked with tongue and fingers until she rocked against him, her breath coming faster and faster, her hips working to find that magnificent purchase that would give her release.

And just before she found it, he stopped, lifting his mouth from her, knowing he was the worst kind of ass when she cried his name in frustration. He pressed his lips to the silk of her inner thigh once, twice, as she settled before looking up at her, finding her blue eyes glittering with desire and something more primitive. Something like need.

“Poor love,” he said, the taste of her on his lips, teasing him as much as the feel of his words against the hot center of her teased her.

“King,” she groaned. “What are you doing?”

“I want you to talk.”

Her eyes went wide. “Talk?”

“I want you to tell me all the things you desire.”

“I desire . . .”

“What?”

She shook her head. “I can’t.”

He leaned in and licked, long and slow, and she sighed her pleasure. “Please.”

He lingered over the place where she strained for his touch. “I like it when you beg, love. What more do you desire?”

“That.”

He blew a long stream of air across her aching skin. “What, precisely?”

“Don’t make me say it,” she said.

“Why?” he teased. “Because ladies don’t say such things?”

She laughed at that, a little huff of air that made him adore her even more. “Ladies most definitely do not say such things.”

“Try.”

“I desire—” For a long moment, he thought she might not say anything, even as he hovered there, a hairsbreadth from where she wanted him. From where he wanted to be. And then she did speak, and in four words, she destroyed him. “I desire your pleasure.”

He pulled back, meeting her gaze at the words, seeing the truth there. He couldn’t find the words to speak.

She reached for him, lifting his face to hers. “Whatever you want, King. I want it, as well.” She pressed her lips to his, long and lingering, before lifting her head and saying, “Don’t you see? My pleasure is yours. I am yours.”

And that was it.

The kiss they shared then was nothing short of a claiming, wicked and full of promise. “You’re mine,” he said, as though her words had unlocked him, and perhaps they had. They’d certainly threatened his control. His desire. His need. “You’re mine,” he repeated, taking her mouth even as she took his. “You’re mine.”

“Yours,” she whispered as he released her lips and returned his attention to the core of her.

“You gave yourself to me,” he whispered, desperate for her.

Her fingers guided him to her. “I did,” she whispered. “I am yours.”

And then his mouth was on her, his tongue working at her, and he was pouring everything into the caress—desire and need and frustration and adoration and yes, anger. Anger that he couldn’t have her like this forever, here, open to him. Anger that he hadn’t met her years earlier. Anger that her love was not enough to heal him now.

He kissed her again and again, making wild love to her with his mouth, wanting to reward her for her honesty and punish her for it, as well—for the way she seemed to know that what he wanted was in concert with her own desire. For the way she used him.

For the way he loved it.

His tongue and fingers played over her and she cried out gloriously to the fountain and the labyrinth and the sun and the sky, first his name, and then a single word, again and again, like a litany and a weapon, at once blessing him and destroying him.

“Yours.”

His.

He gave her no purchase, remaining there at the throbbing, aching place where she wanted him most, making love to her until she came apart, crying her pleasure on that one word.

Yours.

He stayed with her until she returned to earth, to the labyrinth, Ariadne to his Minotaur, somehow able to destroy him with her touch.

Yours.

He would hear that word, spoken in her voice, for the rest of his life.

Yours.

Truth and utter lie all at once.

She couldn’t be his, of course. She couldn’t be his, because it would require him to be hers. It would require him to love her the way she deserved. And that would never happen. It was impossible.

He lifted his head to tell her so, finding her sleepy, sated smile above him, tempting him more than he could ever imagine. And then she spoke, shattering his intentions. “What of your pleasure?” she said, the soft words a blow as hard and harsh as anything he’d ever received in the boxing ring. A blow he’d never wanted so much in his life. “Don’t you wish to take it?”

He did, of course. Rather more desperately than he ever had. But he couldn’t. He wouldn’t.

She deserved better.

“No,” he lied, working hard to keep his words calm and collected, hating himself for saying them. “I don’t.”

If she’d had all the money in Britain, Sophie would have wagered it on his laying her down and taking her there, at the base of the fountain, with only the Cumbria sky to witness it.

She would have lost the wager.

The disappointment that rioted through her was to be expected, of course. She’d been hoping he would agree to make love to her fully, and his refusal was no kind of positive experience. She’d found a magnificent pleasure in his arms, and she wanted more. She wanted to share it with him.

What she had not expected was the desolation. The sense that without him, she was alone in the world. That without his touch, without his companionship, she might not survive the day.

The sense that without him, she might not exist.

The thought terrified her.

She had not planned for this moment. Ever. She’d never planned to want someone so much, or to wish that her future entwined with his, or to wish to see his face every day, for the rest of time.

She’d planned to be happy, yes. To marry, to have a family, to live a quiet, peaceful life. But she’d never planned to want someone so much that his refusal actually pained her.

She’d never planned for a single, inaccessible path to be the only one she could imagine having.

She’d never planned to love.

Vaguely, it occurred to her that other people found love to be a pleasurable experience, filled with roses and doves and sweets and whatever else. Those people were obviously cabbageheads. Because she loved the Marquess of Eversley quite desperately, and there wasn’t anything remotely pleasurable about it.

She cleared her throat and straightened, pushing her skirts down her legs, trapping his hands beneath them for one excruciating moment as she tried to escape his touch. “I see.”

His fingers trailed along her ankle and she shot to her feet at the sensation, the touch breaking something inside her, making her at once wish to leap into the fountain to wash it from her and toss herself into his arms and beg him to continue. She did neither, thankfully, stepping away from him as though the events of the afternoon were perfectly ordinary. As though she weren’t rushing to protect herself from the pain he seemed to be able to exact without so much as a thought. “I see,” she said again, hating the repetition. Willing herself to remain silent.

She backed away from him. Why was he still kneeling on the ground? Why wasn’t he on his feet? Why was he still here?

Why hadn’t the statue of the Minotaur sprung to life and gobbled them both up?

He rose, spreading his hands wide and coming toward her. She put one hand up. Oh, dear. He on his feet was worse by far. “Sophie, let me explain.”

Dear God. The very last thing she wanted him to do was explain why he did not wish to make love to her. She backed away from him, eyeing the exit to the maze, beyond his shoulder.

And then he was close enough to block it from her view, forcing her to consider that shoulder in entirety. That broad, beautiful shoulder.

Enough, she admonished herself. Normal women do not care about gentlemen’s shoulders.

Normal women were in the wrong.

“Sophie, I won’t ruin you,” he said, approaching, giving her nowhere to go but backward.

“I see,” she said, fairly tripping over herself to get away from him. “I see.”

Good Lord. Could she say nothing else?

“I don’t think you do see,” he said. “You don’t see that you deserve more.” Her back came up against the hedge, prickly and uncomfortable and damn inconvenient. And still he drew closer. Close enough to raise his hand and tuck a lock of her hair behind her ear and make her quite desperate for him when he spoke, soft and lovely. “You don’t see that you deserve someone who will marry you.”

She closed her eyes at the words, as though if she couldn’t see him, he hadn’t said them. She’d known he wouldn’t marry her. She wasn’t a fool. But still, the words smarted.

He didn’t have to point it out. Did he?

“I see,” she said.

Apparently, that was all she would ever say again. Excellent. He’d turned her into an imbecile.

He swore roundly, making her wish that she’d been left with a fouler phrase than the one she seemed doomed to repeat for eternity. “Christ, Sophie. Stop saying that. You deserve someone who can love you.”

She had to leave this labyrinth. This estate. This man.

Now.

Before she said, “I see” one more time.

Or worse, before she couldn’t even say that anymore.

She nodded, crossing her arms, and pushed past him, heading for the path of the maze without a word. At another time, she might have been proud of her straight shoulders and purposeful walk. At this time, however, she couldn’t see past the tears to think about such trivial matters as posture.

He swore again, this time at her back.

She stopped, but did not turn back. She couldn’t. Not without risking telling him everything and making a wretched fool of herself. So she gathered the last shred of her pride and said, “I should like to return to Mossband.”

There was a long pause before he spoke. “When?”

“As soon as possible,” she said.

He nodded. “We shall purchase your bookshop tomorrow. I’ll connect you with my father’s solicitor. You’ll have all the money you require to live happily here.”

She didn’t care about the bookshop. She didn’t care about Mossband. Indeed, Mossband was absolutely not her future. She couldn’t be so near to this place and its memories. She couldn’t be so near to him. She took a deep breath. “I don’t think I can wait until tomorrow.”

“Sophie,” he said softly, closer than she would like, and she hated the sound of her name on his lips. “Look at me.”

She turned to face him, unable to deny him. He was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen, his dark hair and his green eyes and his lips, firm and magnificent. He was far too beautiful for her. Far too perfect.

She swallowed around the thought. “I must leave. Now,” she said. “Today.”

He watched her for a long moment, and she thought he might kiss her again. She wanted him to kiss her again. She loathed the idea of him kissing her again.

Instead, he reached out, offering her his hand, warm and bronzed from the sun.

She stared at that hand for a long moment, unable to keep the tears from brimming over, hating them and then somehow loving them when he lifted that strong, perfect hand to brush them away. She let him touch her, adoring the feel of him, memorizing it until she couldn’t bear it and she moved to push him away.

The moment she touched him, however, he captured her, threading her fingers in his. She tugged at her hand, quite desperate for him to release her even as she reveled in the feel of him.

He refused to give her up, instead leading her through the maze, his warm hand wrapped around hers. They walked in silence, through the twists and turns, to the exit, where he stopped, just inside the hedge, and turned to her, pulling her close, holding her face in his hands. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry I cannot be the man you wish me to be.”

Tears threatened again and she shook her head. No more of that. “It’s you who don’t see. I only ever wished you to be the man you are.”

He did kiss her then, one final, lush moment, and she clung to him, pouring all her emotion into the caress. Desire, sorrow, passion.

Love.

But he’d never know that.

He lifted his lips from hers and gestured to the exit, letting her leave the maze first. Letting her choose real life instead of this magic, mythic place.

She did, stepping out into the world once more, King at her back, already threatening to become a long-ago memory.

The only memory that would matter.

She heard the horses almost immediately, the wicked thunder that came from a coach and six tearing up the main drive to the castle at full gallop. Together, she and King turned to face the new arrivals, hands shielding their eyes from the gleam of the late-afternoon sun on the carriage.

On the gilded carriage.

On the gilded carriage with cherub outriders.

“Bollocks,” Sophie whispered, filled with desolation and no small amount of uncertainty.

The conveyance stopped in the round drive of Lyne Castle, and an outrider immediately leapt down to open the door and release the inhabitants, who piled out like lambs released into pasture.

Exceedingly well-appointed lambs. In lovely silk dresses and outrageous coifs festooned with arrows and feathers and—was that a birdcage? The last of them cried out, “Let me through!” and rushed to a nearby rosebush to promptly cast up her accounts.

“Let me guess,” he said, in a tone dry as sand. Only a fool would see the outrageous carriage and not divine its inhabitants. “That one is Sesily.”

“It’s all ruined!”

Sophie had barely closed the door to the receiving room at Lyne Castle when her mother’s dramatic pronouncement loosed a tide of panicked cries.

“Every invitation to the country has been rescinded!” the countess announced.

“Derek won’t even speak to me,” Sesily said matter-of-factly, opening her reticule and extracting a tube of smelling salts. “He disappeared before the end of the Liverpool garden party, the bastard.”

“Sesily! Language! You see? Everything is ruined!” the Countess of Wight cried, falling into a chair. Sesily passed the salts to the countess, who inhaled deeply. “Literally everything!”

“We’ve been exiled!” Seleste collapsed into a nearby chair, her elaborate pink skirts cascading over the arms. “We’re in Cumbria, for heaven’s sake! Could there be anything worse?” She leaned back, only to catch one of the arrows in her coif in the gold brocade of the seat. She snapped forward with a little squeak, and yanked the arrow out of her hair, tossing it to her feet.

Remarkably, not even stowing away in a footman’s livery, being shot on the Great North Road, and faking an engagement with a man who would never marry her was as fraught with difficulty as an afternoon with the Talbot ladies.

And it hadn’t even been an afternoon. It had been thirty seconds.

“And let’s not even discuss what’s happened to Seraphina,” Sesily said, unstrapping her birdcage hat from atop her head.

Sophie might have questioned the millinery if not for the pronouncement, and instead turned to her older sister, the only arrival who had remained silent. Seraphina stood by the large window, staring out at the estate beyond. “What’s happened with you?”

Sera waved a hand. “Nothing more than you already know.”

“Of course more!” their mother cried, standing once more. “The duke won’t even allow her in the house! He says that after your actions, he wants nothing to do with her or with any of us! And she’s to have his child!”

Sophie did not look away from her sister. “Is this true? Bollocks.”

“Sophie, language!”

Sera waved that hand again. “It’s not you, Sophie. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been something else.” She met Sophie’s gaze. “What of you? Are you well?”

“I am,” she lied. She might be heartbroken, but she was not exiled by her husband and increasing, so there was that, was there not?

Sera watched her for a long moment, seeing more than the others did. She always could see Sophie’s truth. “You mustn’t worry, Sophie. This is not on you.”

“It damn well is,” Sesily protested.

“Sesily,” their mother spoke up. “Language.”

“If ever there was a time to curse, Mother, it’s this!” She turned on Sophie. “You certainly should worry about the rest of us. Derek won’t even speak to me! He says he requires the support of the aristocracy. And thanks to you, now he won’t get it.” She sighed. “He’ll never marry me.”

Sophie didn’t think a missed marriage to Derek Hawkins was such a trial, but she was attempting to be supportive.

“The same is true of Lord Clare—he hasn’t called in a week,” Seleste said, sounding quite desolate at the loss of her earl, reaching into her bosom to extract a well-folded square of paper. “We’ve resorted to love letters.” She paused. “It’s quite romantic, actually, assuming the situation will be rectified.”

“Consider the silver lining,” Seline teased. “It’s difficult for you to argue in print.”

Sesily snorted a laugh. “If anyone can find a way to argue in print, it’s Seleste and Clare.” She looked to their sister. “Have you ever gone more than twenty-four hours without an argument?”

“Of course,” Seleste said. “This week.”

Seline smirked. “And there is the proof. Perhaps you ought to avoid each other as a matter of course.”

“We can’t all have Landry scaling our trellises like weeds,” Seleste retorted.

Seline laughed at the mention of her paramour. “That’s Mark being careful,” she explained to Sophie, pouring scotch from a bottle on a nearby sideboard and passing the glasses around. “He won’t use the front door.”

“Why does he care what people think?” Sophie asked. Mark Landry had more money than most of London combined, and not an ounce of interest in Society. She would never have imagined he’d worry about reputation.

“Haven has power,” Sesily said, accepting the drink from Seline. “More than we would have imagined. And he’s furious. The aristocracy is shunning Landry’s for Tattersall’s. They won’t buy horseflesh from anyone close to you. Presumably, Derek had similar threats, but unlike Landry, he’s a goddamn coward.”

“Sesily!” the countess barked.

“Well, he is,” Sesily said. “See if he gets back into my graces after this. What a betrayal.” She toasted Seline. “You should keep Mark, though. He’s a poppet.”

“I should like to,” Seline said before turning to Sophie, “but he’s waiting for you to fix it.”

“You must fix it!” their mother cried.

Sophie looked from one to the next. “How am I to do that?”

No one seemed to have an immediate answer.

“Who would have imagined that you would be the scandal?” Sesily opined, taking the chair by the fireplace, “Landing Haven in a fishpond and running off with Eversley?”

“I did not run off with Eversley,” Sophie said.

“You most certainly did,” their mother cried.

“It wasn’t running off! I landed myself in the wrong carriage!”

“Oh, well, let’s tell the scandal sheets. I’m sure they’ll scramble to get it right,” Sesily said. “They do work so terribly hard to check their facts.”

“You needn’t be unkind, Sesily,” Seraphina said.

“We’re all in a state,” Sesily replied. “None more so than you. Or must we remind you that you and your child are currently without a home?”

“Of course that’s not true,” Sophie interjected.

“No?” Seline asked, “Then you’ve a plan to marry the marquess and rescue us all?”

The casual question reminded Sophie of earlier in the afternoon, when she’d faced the truth about King—that he’d never love her. That he was never to be hers. That she was going to leave him, and spend the rest of her life wishing that their future would be different.

She shook her head, swallowing around the knot in her throat. “I’m not marrying him.”

“Then why are you here?” Seleste asked. “Are you taking up residence as his mistress?”

“That won’t help at all,” Seline pointed out.

“We need discretion!” the countess cried.

Sophie ignored the willingness that flared at the suggestion. If he’d offered her the role of mistress, she would take it. She would take whatever she could get of him. Whatever time he might give her.

She’d take him here or in London, forever or for an afternoon.

She loved him.

Surely, of all the emotions the human heart could explore, love was the worst.

She looked away from her family. “I was returning to Mossband when you arrived. He was returning me to the inn.”

Sesily groaned. “We’re ruined!”

The countess collapsed to her settee once more, dramatic as ever. “I knew all those books would eventually do you in!”

None of the other Talbot girls appeared to mind the accusation in the countess’s words, so Sophie did not linger on it, either. “To be fair, our reputations weren’t the most welcome to begin with.”

“At least we received invitations!” the countess protested. “Your sisters were all being courted!”

Seline’s brow furrowed for the first time since they arrived. “Mark won’t have me, will he?”

Sophie’s frustration could not be kept at bay. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “It’s not as though I did anything truly scandalous. The Duchess of Lamont faked her death and married the man thought to have killed her, and the ton can’t get enough of her.”

“She didn’t publicly malign the aristocracy!”

“Oh, yes. That’s quite worse than ruining a man’s life. Whatever will the rich and titled do now that I’ve insulted them?”

“They will ruin our lives!” Sesily said firmly, her trademark dry wit replaced with cool honesty. “Why do you think we’re here? Every one of us has lost our suitor! Because of you!”

“Every one of you has been mistreated by men who could not find their spine if they were kicked directly in it!”

“Those men were willing to have them!” her mother cried. “And they were willing to take you on, as well, Sophie, a welcome spinster!”

“That’s what I was? A future old aunt? Destined to rooms in the castle turret? Hidden away from life?”

“What kind of life could you have possibly planned on?” Sesily asked.

“Well. That was unkind,” Sophie replied.

The room grew quiet. “I apologize. But you must understand, Sophie, this is painful for everyone.”

“I didn’t mean for you all to suffer the residual effects of my . . .”

“Mistake.” Seleste again.

Except it wasn’t a mistake. For all the emotion since the Liverpool summer soiree, Sophie had lived more in the past ten days than ever before. She looked from one sister to the next. “I didn’t ever wish to be your burden. Not before this, and certainly not now.”

“You must have seen that it was a possibility, though,” said the countess, her tone softening the sting of the words. “You’re not the most . . .”

Sesily picked up where she left off. “Marketable.”

“Of us.” Seline finished.

Not beautiful. Not charming. Not exciting.

Unfun.

Except, in these recent days, she’d been all those things. And not because she’d been shot. Not because she’d dressed as a footman. Not because she’d sold away a carriage full of curricle wheels and run from her father’s henchmen. Not even because she’d nearly lost her virtue in a hedge maze.

Because she’d fallen in love with King.

Because he’d fed her strawberry tarts and kissed her senseless and tempted her with a glimpse of a life that was more than she’d ever imagined. Because he’d teased her with the idea that she was more than Sophie Talbot, the youngest and least interesting of the Soiled S’s.

And then her family had arrived, and reality threatened. But she would not return to it without telling them the truth. She looked from one sister to the next. “If they will not have you because of me, they were not worth having.”

“Oh?” Seline said, quick to defend her suitor, “And your Eversley—who will not have you—he’s worth nothing, I assume?”

It wasn’t the same thing at all. He wasn’t turning her out because she’d knocked the Duke of Haven into a fishpond. Indeed, he’d remained at her side after discovering what she’d done.

He was worth everything.

“You did this on purpose,” Sesily was saying. “You never wanted to be an aristocrat. And now you’ve dragged the rest of us back into the muck with you. Look at us, faded and wrinkled after days in a carriage. In Cumbria.”

“It’s beautiful here,” Sophie said.

“If you like sheep,” replied Sesily.

“And green,” added Seleste.

“It’s not London.” Seline sighed.

“Honestly, we should be called the Spoiled S’s.”

“None more than you, Sophie.” The retort was from Seraphina, and Sophie turned to her, shocked by the words. Her eldest sister spoke quietly, the words somehow firm and kind. “Do you know how we responded when we returned home after the Liverpool party to discover that you’d left with nothing more than the word of an alleged footman dressed in stableboy’s clothing? We were so proud of you. You’d turned your back on a world for which you’d never cared. I thought it was quite wonderful.” She tilted her chin toward the other Talbot sisters. “As did they, though they won’t admit it.”

“I’ll admit it,” Sesily said. “You’ve always been the first to defend us. I was very happy to defend you.”

“And I,” Seline said. “Mark thought you were damn fantastic.”

“Seline, language.”

“It was Mark’s language, Mother.”

“Well, I am unable to admonish him.”

Sophie smiled. She’d missed her sisters. Her mother. The whole wild family.

“But it wasn’t so easy to be proud of you when London turned on us. We didn’t expect the aristocracy to simply exile us,” Seline added. “Which I’m sure sounds like heaven to you, Sophie. But . . .”

“It’s not for us,” Seleste finished.

Of course, Sophie knew that. She didn’t wish them the life she wanted. She wished them all the life they wanted for themselves. Happiness in the shape of garden parties and titles and invitations to Windsor Castle.

She sighed. “I am sorry that I have caused such trouble,” she began. “But if the scandal sheets have taught us anything, it is this: when the summer is over and you’ve all returned to London—without me—Society will forget you ever had a youngest sister, and your gentlemen will return. And, if they do not, you’re all young, beautiful, and outrageously wealthy,” she pointed out. “The three most important qualities in a future bride. You’ll find other gentlemen. Who deserve you more.”

Silence fell.

“You deny it?” she said, looking from one to the next. “I assure you, you all remain beautiful, despite my scandalous behavior. I shall ask Papa for my dowry, and fade away. All will be well.” She turned to Seline. “It’s you who always says we’re like cats. You’ll survive this. Easily.”

“Even cats have a limit on their lives,” the Countess said, the sad words strangely familiar. An echo of the Liverpool Summer Soiree.

When everything had changed.

“It’s not beauty that’s the problem,” Sera spoke quietly from her place on the edge of the tableau. “Sophie—”

“It’s the blunt.” The words came from the door, which Sophie hadn’t heard open. Her breath caught as she turned to her father, crop still in hand, trousers still covered in dust and horse sweat.

“Papa.” She paused. “You came.”

And that’s when she knew that something terrible must have happened. Jack Talbot did not hie across Britain with his wife and four daughters for a lark. A sense of wild foreboding threaded through Sophie, and she had the keen realization that this day would be the most important of her life. It was the day she said good-bye to King. And the day that her father changed everything.

Her father looked to the rest of the girls. “Find your rooms, girlies.”

They did as they were told, leaving in a squawking gaggle, along with the countess, to find rooms that were no doubt being aired for the first time in an age. If she weren’t so shocked by her father’s arrival, she would have been amused by the idea of the Duke of Lyne coming face-to-face with the Dangerous Daughters.

Once alone with her father, she asked, “Why are you here, Papa?”

“I came,” he said, “because I can’t take care of this.”

She blinked. “Papa, you know as well as I do, Society will find another thing to loathe in less than a week. It likely has already.”

“But Haven won’t.”

“Haven is an ass,” she said.

“That’s never been more true, kitten, but he’s a duke. He holds the purse strings.”

Her brows snapped together. “You’re Jack Talbot. You’re richer than all of them combined.”

Her father went silent. “Not without them, Sophie. That was the deal I struck for the title your mother wanted so badly. They invest, I mine. And you all become ladies. I can’t make money without the nobs. And you’ve done an excellent job of running them off. Calling Haven a whore did it better than I ever could’ve.”

Fear gripped her at the words. It made sense, of course. Titles weren’t simply doled out, not without requirements. “I thought it was a wager?”

He smiled. “It was. But Prinny made the terms. And I accepted them.”

“They’ve stopped investing?”

“Pulled their funds to a man. Haven took great glee in making it so. I received notice from thirteen of them by sundown after your excitement. The rest came in the morning.” He paused for a long moment before he approached her, and for the first time in her life, she saw Jack Talbot’s age. His worry. “You want your dowry? Your freedom?” He shook his head. “I want to give it to you. But there ain’t no dowry to be had, kitten. I can’t keep your mother and sisters in new clothes and gilded carriages and—” He looked to a nearby table. “Now why in hell do they need birdcages on their heads?”

She smiled, halfheartedly. “At least there’s no bird in it.”

“Don’t say that in front of Sesily, or I’ll have to find funds for birdfeed.”

She shook her head. “Papa. I thought we were—”

“You’d be surprised how quickly blunt flows out the door, kitten. Especially when the nobs want you gone.” He reached for her, and she went into the embrace. He smelled of leather and horseflesh, the scent wrapping her in memories of her childhood, when what was right was all that mattered. Jack Talbot had always been larger than life—a hero in every sense. He’d fostered Sophie’s love of books, embraced her desire for more than the aristocracy. And in all her life, he’d never once asked her for help. Perhaps she could have found a way to deny her sisters what they wished, but her father—he hadn’t an ounce of the dramatic in him. And if he was concerned for their future, so, too, was she.

He kissed the top of her head. “I was so proud of you for standing up for your sister. For yourself,” he whispered there. “But now . . . they have us by the bollocks.”

She pulled back, staring into his clear brown eyes. “Haven behaved abominably.”

“And I’d have beaten him blue, love. Don’t you doubt it. But the world was watching you. His world. You embarrassed him in front of it.”

I shall destroy you.

Her brother-in-law’s words, from the Liverpool greenhouse, echoed through her. And she’d taunted him for them.

I’d like to see you try.

He’d done it. Without hesitation. His name and title making him more powerful than they would ever be.

She shook her head. “I didn’t think.”

“You think now,” he said.

Jack Talbot might have been given the Earldom of Wight, but he’d never been given a son, and therefore, his five daughters had no future without marriage. They had no future. Not now that Sophie had ruined it.

She blinked up at her father. “What have I done?”

He offered her a little smile. “You acted rashly, my girl. You defended your sister in the moment without thinking of the long game. And we pay the price.”

She knew what came next before he suggested it. And later, when she faced the dark truth of what she had to do, she would admit her most private secret.

That she’d never in her life wanted anything more.

“How do we survive it?” she asked.

There was a long silence before her father answered. “Eversley.”