The Rogue Not Taken (Scandal & Scoundrel 1)

As though the universe knew just what he was listening for, he heard her first, the words clear and curious over the cacophony of sound. “I just, take it down?”

King went utterly still as a man replied. “Exactly.”

“It doesn’t look like it would taste very good.”

Christ.

“You’d be surprised,” the man coaxed. “Take all of it. All at once. You’ll like it.”

“If you say so,” she said, and the skepticism in her voice was drowned out by a chorus of raucous cheers that set King in motion, no longer caring that one-on-six were terrible odds, particularly when the six in question were drunk and sex-starved.

“Step away from the lady,” he instructed, all menacing, as he stepped into the main room of the stables, shocking the hell out of not only the group of drunk but hardly nefarious-looking men sitting at a table at the center of the long corridor between the stalls, but also the lady in question, who was still wearing her livery.

At least, he assumed it was shock that made her choke on the pint of ale she was in the process of drinking in one long series of gulps. She pulled the mug from her lips, sloshing ale down her front as she set it to the table with enough force to knock it over and spill the rest of the drink across the tabletop, where piles of playing cards were spread out, as though a round of faro had just been finished.

She stood quickly, two other men shooting out of their chairs to avoid the liquid as a small glass rolled out of the mug and fell off the table, miraculously not breaking as it continued on its journey along the boards of the stable floor to stop, quite theatrically, at King’s foot.

He looked up from the glass, her earlier words echoing through him. It doesn’t seem like it would taste very good.

They’d been teaching her how to drink—a shot of whiskey in a mug of ale—the drink of men who wished to sleep well, and quickly.

It hadn’t been the other thing at all.

King cleared his throat.

“I’m sure we didn’t hear you correctly, King,” the Duke of Warnick rumbled in his Scottish brogue. “I could have sworn you called the boy a lady.”

Of course Warnick was in the stables. The man had spent a lifetime away from polite company. If ever there were someone for whom a title was a burden, it was the duke. But, disdainful of Society or no, a duke was not the ideal witness of Lady Sophie’s mad disguise and misguided plan.

Why in hell hadn’t she found her bed as soon as she realized the duke was in the stables?

Sophie’s gaze snapped to his, cheeks already flush from her alcoholic experience turning red with obvious embarrassment. He could read the pleading in her wide blue eyes and ignored it. He’d had enough of this woman and her trouble. He wanted her far, far away from him. “You didn’t mishear. She’s a woman. Anyone with eyes can see it.”

From the jaws gaping around the table, it seemed that anyone with eyes could not, in fact, see such a thing.

But they heard it, he had no doubt, when she opened her mouth and tore into him. “How could you?” she said, frustration edging into fury as her hands fisted at her sides and she faced him, stiff as a board. “You’ve ruined everything!”

“I’ve ruined everything?” he repeated, more than a bit outraged himself. “You’re the one who thought you could get away with this idiocy.”

“Wait. He’s a girl?” one of the other men at the table asked.

“Good that you’re catching up,” the duke drawled, all amusement.

“But he’s wearing livery,” the drunken man insisted.

“Indeed he is,” Warnick said with a lingering inspection. “However, now that I take a good long look . . .”

“Enough!” Sophie cried, lifting a burlap bag from the floor, slinging it over her shoulder, and storming past King to the exit.

King turned to the duke. “No more long looks.”

“But I’ve only had the one.”

“You’ve had hours to look. You didn’t even realize she wasn’t wearing boots.”

The duke’s brows shot up as the other men in the stable offered a chorus of disbelief.

“We would have noticed that!” one of them said with a laugh.

“Clearly not,” King pointed out. “It seems you lot see what you wish to see.” Though he couldn’t for the life of him imagine how they’d missed the fact that Lady Sophie Talbot was just that . . . a lady.

“Who is she?” Warnick asked.

King wasn’t about to tell him. “She’s no one of consequence.”

The duke smirked. “I doubt that.”

“Well, you shall have to accept it as fact nonetheless.” King didn’t have time for verbal sparring with a Scot. He turned on his heel and left the stables, heading in search of the girl.

He caught up with her on the road, a dozen yards from the entrance to the inn. She did not hesitate in her march, shoulders straight, head high. “Go away.”

“It’s the dead of night. Where do you think you’re going?”

“I should think it would be obvious,” she said. “Away from you.”

“And you’re going to walk there?”

“My feet are in fine working order.”

“They shan’t be after a quarter of an hour on this road. Why didn’t you take the boots, too?”

She did not reply.

“Not enough money?”

“I had enough money,” she grumbled.

“So?”

He would not discover the answer, as she chose that moment to step on a rock and gasp her discomfort.

“You see?” he said, unable to keep the smugness from his tone. Or, perhaps, uninterested in doing so.

Either way, she turned on him then. “In the span of twelve hours, you’ve called me unintelligent and insane, suggested that I am trying to trap you into marriage, declared me uninteresting, and pointed out the flaws of my physique.”

What? “I never pointed out your flaws.”

She crossed her arms. “The livery, my lord. It doesn’t fit.”

He blinked. “It doesn’t fit.”

She let out a frustrated sound and slashed a hand in the air. “It doesn’t matter. All of that said, I cannot imagine why it is you feel it necessary to follow me as I do the one thing you’ve been asking me to do from the beginning of our acquaintance—leave you.”

Honestly, he couldn’t imagine why it was necessary, either. But it was, somehow. “Also, I never declared you uninteresting.”

“No. I believe you used the term unfun, which is even more unflattering, as it appears that I am so deeply boring that I require a word that, prior to today, did not exist.”

“It’s not the same thing at all.” He was hard-pressed to think of an adjective less suited to Lady Sophie Talbot than uninteresting.

“And we’re back to my being unintelligent, I see.” She turned her back on him and continued her walk. He noticed that she was limping, which was unsurprising—the roads were barely conducive to carriage wheels and horseshoes.

The limp bothered him, a sliver of weakness that left him aware of her in a way he preferred not to be, making it impossible to leave her to the wolves here on the road. No matter how much he had sworn to himself that she was not his problem.

He’d pack her into the next stagecoach home the moment the sun rose. Surely there was a frock to be purchased from a maid at the inn. He’d have to pay handsomely, no doubt, but it would be worth it to send the troublesome woman back to London.

“Come back to the inn,” he said. “We’ll find you a bed, and tomorrow we’ll get you home.”

“I can find my own way home,” she said. “You needn’t worry about me.”

He sighed, letting his exasperation show in the sound. “You could be gracious and accept my offer of help.”

“Forgive me if I am not in the mood to scrape and bow because an aristocrat has condescended to tolerate me only after his reputation is at risk.”

He’d struck an interesting chord, it seemed. He plucked at it again, unable to resist. “Someone has to take responsibility for you. You can’t be trusted not to cause a scene.”

She stopped at that. Turned to him. “I don’t cause scenes.”

His brows shot up. “All you do is cause scenes, love.”

“I’m not your love,” she said, her hands fisted at her sides.

“You most certainly are not,” he agreed without thinking. “I am drawn to more feminine specimens.”

Her shoulders drooped for a moment—barely long enough to be called such—and King wanted to take the words back. They weren’t accurate. She was perfectly feminine. Indeed, as she accepted the blow of his words, there was something exceedingly feminine about her, something that one did not immediately notice.

Not that he cared. He wasn’t interested in her femininity.

She was obstinate as hell and more trouble than she was worth. And if there was one thing he did not care for, it was women who were troublesome.

But he’d hurt her feelings. And it was unsettling, as she didn’t seem the type whose feelings were easily hurt. Indeed, she was walking again, all straight spine and stiff shoulders, guard up.

It was a ruse. Designed to keep him from seeing the truth.

He knew it, because he’d used a similar one himself.

There was nothing at all uninteresting about her.

He called after her. “You can’t walk all the way back to London.”

“That shows what you know,” she said without breaking her stride. “I’m not going back to London. I’m headed north.”

“Not if you’re walking in this direction, you’re not,” he said, before the full meaning of her words sank in. “Wait. North? Why?”

She stopped. “This is north.”

“No,” he said. “It’s south.”

She peered down the dark road. “You’re certain?”

“Quite. Why are you heading north?”

She pivoted and began her march in the opposite direction. “Because I’m going home.”

She was perhaps the most frustrating woman he’d ever met. “London is south.”

“Yes. I do have a general knowledge of geography.”