“Can I trust you not to attempt an escape?” he countered.
“Certainly not.”
“Then I will have to stand guard outside the room.”
Sophie’s lovely mouth tightened. “I wonder if your sister and cousin would be pleased to learn how low you have sunk, abducting helpless women.”
Jack heaved an exasperated sigh. “You are hardly helpless.”
“No? I am in a strange country, in the middle of nowhere, being held prisoner, completely defenseless.”
“Here, you may have my dagger.”
Again she looked taken aback when he pulled the knife from his coat and handed it to her.
“You should be gratified. I rarely let that knife out of my sight.”
She recovered from her momentary speechlessness in short order. “The only thing that will gratify me is being set free and driven back to Paris. But evidently there is no point in trying to appeal to your better nature, since you haven’t one.”
Jack ignored her gibe and crossed the bedchamber to the door. “You may lock the door behind me.”
“Most assuredly I shall.”
She had the last word. And when Jack let himself out, he heard the bolt shoot home with decided force.
He gave So
phie the privacy she’d asked for and took the opportunity to use the outdoor privy before returning upstairs to wait in the corridor. Some ten minutes later, the innkeeper and his wife delivered trays with their supper of hot mutton stew and thick brown bread.
When Jack knocked on the door, he was rather surprised that Sophie not only opened it to him but willingly allowed him back inside.
She had removed her cloak, he noted. She also voluntarily sat at the small table across from him and picked up her fork.
Her ire evidently had calmed a measure, for she attempted a civil conversation. “I still see no reason for my presence in Navartania, Jack. You could go on your own just as well.”
“There are very good reasons. The decision to claim the throne will affect you as much as me. I also require someone to prevent me from throttling my father.”
She sent him a penetrating glance. “Are you likely to come to blows?”
Jack shrugged. There was sure to be bitterness and antagonism between them, if not actual violence.
Strangely, Sophie’s expression softened, whether out of curiosity or sympathy, he wasn’t certain. “Surely you could have asked one of your family to go with you.”
Indeed, he could have, Jack knew, thinking back to the days following the house party, directly after learning of Sophie’s betrothal. Skye had insisted on calling a family council in London in hopes of salvaging his legendary lovers romance. She, Quinn, and Kate had all volunteered to make the visit to Navartania with him, but Jack had declined their offers of help. He didn’t want his intrusive family tagging along on so private a mission.
Besides, it was much more important to have Sophie accompany him. Even though he despised the necessity of facing his father, and every fiber in his being screamed out against accepting Prince Raoul’s offer of a princedom, he might be willing to endure it as the price of claiming Sophie for his bride. But she was the most crucial part of the decision.
“I told you, there is no point in my going without you,” he reminded her. “You are the sole reason I would even consider becoming his heir.”
Her brow furrowed. “You could still accept the crown without marrying me.”
“Why would I want to?” Jack countered. “I don’t relish living in Europe, away from all I hold dear. I don’t wish to leave my family behind. And I most certainly don’t want to be compelled to live with the bloody coward who sired me.”
Sophie’s frown suggested she was thinking hard about what he’d just admitted, but she didn’t comment as she picked at her plate of stew.
“So you see,” he repeated, “I have no cause to go unless you are with me.”
At his assertion, her gaze abruptly lifted to his. “What would be the point, Jack? I will never marry you, especially now. How could I when we have no love or even the barest measure of trust between us?”