The Rogue Not Taken (Scandal & Scoundrel 1)

Her head spun with the change of topic. “I—”

He reached for her slippered feet, running his fingers over the ruined, threadbare silk. “You shouldn’t have left without boots. You should have taken the footman’s.”

She shook her head, looking down at the dirty yellow silk slippers. “I didn’t fit. My feet. They’re too big.”

He pulled her tighter to him. “We’ll find you a pair when we get there.”

“Did you find one for yourself?”

“Luckily, my valet is exceedingly conscientious.”

“Why isn’t he here?”

He looked out the window. “I don’t like traveling companions. He was to meet us at the next inn.”

“Oh.” She supposed he quite disliked this, then. “Where is Sprotbrough?”

He took her change of topic in stride. “The middle of nowhere.”

“It sounds just the place to find a team of qualified surgeons languishing.”

He looked down at her, and at another time, she might have been proud of herself at the surprise on his face. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a sharp tongue?”

She offered a little smile. “Not so boring after all, am I?”

He was all seriousness. “No. I wouldn’t call you boring. At all.”

Something flickered in her chest, something aside from the pain of the bullet lodged deep in her shoulder, something aside from the fear that—despite his brash assurances—she might, in fact, die. Something she did not understand.

“What would you call me?”

Time seemed to slow in the carriage, a path of red-gold sunlight casting his face into brightness and shadow, and suddenly, Sophie wanted desperately to hear his answer. His lips pressed into a straight line as he considered his reply. When he finally spoke, the word was firm and unyielding. “Stupid.”

She gasped. She hadn’t known what to expect, but it certainly hadn’t been that. “I beg your pardon. That horrible man was going to take that boy and do God knows what to him. I did what was right.”

“I did not say you were not also exceedingly brave,” he said.

The words warmed her as exhaustion came on an unexpected wave. She took a deep breath, finding it difficult to fill her lungs. She couldn’t stop herself from resting her head on his shoulder, where it had been before she’d regained consciousness. “Do I detect a note of respect?”

His chest rose and fell in a tempting rhythm before he said, softly. “A very, very soft note of it. Perhaps.”

Darkness had fallen before the carriage arrived in Sprotbrough, which could barely be called a town considering it consisted of a half-dozen clapboard buildings and a town square that was smaller than the kitchens in his Mayfair town house.

They would have a surgeon, though. If he had to summon the man from nothingness, this ridiculous, barely there town would have a damn surgeon.

He cursed, the word harsh and ragged in the blackness as he threw open the door and tossed the step out of the conveyance. John Coachman materialized in the space, lantern in hand, the yellow light revealing Sophie’s utterly still, unsettlingly pale figure.

“I still don’t believe she’s a girl.”

King had held her for more than an hour, staying the blood from her wound, staring down at her long lashes and full lips and the curves and valleys of her body. He couldn’t believe anyone wouldn’t see that she was a girl immediately. But he said nothing, rearranging her on his lap for the next leg of their journey.

“Is she—” the coachman continued, hesitating on the word they both knew finished the sentence.

King wouldn’t hear it spoken. “No.”

He’d promised her she wouldn’t die. And this time, it would be the truth. He would not have another girl die in the dark, on his watch, because he wasn’t able to save her. Because he was too reckless with her.

Because he couldn’t protect her.

He gathered her close and moved to exit the coach, her weight putting him slightly off balance. The coachman reached to help him. To take her from his arms. “No,” he said again. He didn’t want anyone touching her. He couldn’t risk it. “I have her.”

Once on the ground, he straightened, finding the curious gaze of a young man several yards away, no doubt surprised that anyone had found this place, let alone a peer and an unconscious lady. “We require a surgeon,” he said.

The boy nodded once and pointed down the row. “Round the corner. Thatched cottage on the left.”

They had a surgeon. King was moving before the directions were finished, not hesitating as he looked to the coachman. “Find an inn. Let rooms.”

“Rooms?” the servant repeated.

King did not mistake the question. The other man doubted that a second room would be necessary. He doubted Sophie would survive the night. King shot him a look. “Rooms. Two of them.”

And then he was turning the corner and putting everything out of his mind—everything but getting the woman in his arms to a doctor.

Sophie made knocking impossible, so he announced his arrival with his booted foot—kicking the door of the cottage, not caring that the movement was loud and crass and utterly inappropriate considering he was looking to secure the help of the doctor. Money would make amends. It always did.

When no one replied to his knocking, he tried again, harder this time, and by the third kick, his anger and frustration brought enough force to do what such blows were often intended to do—the door came out of its moorings, collapsing into the house.

King added the damage to his bill and stepped through the now-open doorway as a tall, bespectacled man came into view. The man was younger than King would have imagined, barely five and twenty, if he had to guess. And exceedingly handsome.

“I require the doctor.”

Wasting precious time, the young man removed his spectacles and cleaned them. “You’ve broken my door.”

He wasn’t old enough to have hair on his face, let alone save lives.

“I shall pay for it,” King replied, moving closer. “She’s hurt.”

The doctor barely looked at her. “I’d rather you’d not broken it in the first place.” He indicated the wooden dining table in the next room. “Put her there.”

King did as he was told, ignoring the twinge of discomfort he felt when he released Sophie from his grasp. Ignoring the fact that as he moved down the table, from her head to her feet to give the other man access to her wound, he couldn’t help but trail his fingers along her leg, as though, somehow, touching her could keep her alive.

The doctor replaced his spectacles and leaned over her. “There’s a great deal of blood. What happened?”

“She was shot.”

The surgeon nodded, rolling Sophie to one side, inspecting her back. When he returned her to the table, Sophie’s head lolled. “The bullet remains inside.” He moved to a large leather bag nearby and extracted a bottle and a long, thin instrument that King did not like the look of. “I don’t like that she’s unconscious.”

“Neither do I,” King replied, watching as the doctor peeled away the fabric to inspect the wound.

The young man waved a hand to a nearby cupboard. “There’s a collection of linen in there. And a bowl of water on top. Fetch it. She’s going to bleed quite a bit when I’ve extracted the bullet.”

King didn’t like the sound of that. He retrieved the cloth and the basin and, once he returned, asked, “Are you the only doctor in the town?”

The man looked up at that. “I’m the only doctor for twenty miles.”

King scowled. “Where did you learn your trade?”

“You broke down my door, sir. I don’t believe you are in a position to question my skills.”

King swallowed, knowing the man was correct. “You’re very young.”

“Not too young to know that your . . .” He paused, his gaze tracing Sophie’s outrageous clothing. “Footman?”

“Wife,” King said without hesitation.

?

??Of course.” The doctor pushed his spectacles up his nose. “—that your wife has a bullet lodged in her shoulder that needs to come out. Would you like to wait outside for a more seasoned doctor to happen by?”

The point did not require a response.

“Will she die?” He hated the question and the edge of uncertainty in his tone when he spoke it. She would not die. Would she?

“The shoulder is not a vital locale,” the doctor said. “She’s lucky in that regard.”

“Then she won’t die,” King said.

“Not from the gunshot. But as I said, I don’t like that she’s unconscious.” The doctor raised the bottle over Sophie’s shoulder, “This should help.”

“What is it?”

“Gin.”

King stepped forward. “What in hell kind of medicine is that?”

“The kind that hurts like a son of a bitch.” Before King could stop him, the doctor poured half the liquid in the bottle onto Sophie’s shoulder.

Her eyes shot open and she sat straight up on the table with a wild scream. “Bollocks!”

The doctor smiled at that. “Well. That is quite a greeting.”

Sophie’s eyes were wild and unfocused. “It stings.”