He exhaled on a long breath and leaned back against the seat, wishing she were n
ext to him again. He’d liked that, the time when she’d been next to him, her thigh against his, as she’d read her excruciating book on stones. “I don’t wish to see him.”
“Was he very cruel?”
He did not answer, and she eventually added, “I apologize. I should not have asked such a thing.”
Silence fell once more, and he reached down to the basket he’d placed on the floor of the carriage when they’d stopped to change the horses. Opening it, he extracted a bottle of wine, bread, and cheese. He tore her a piece of bread and offered it with some of the cheese. She took it with a quiet “Thank you.”
The Duke of Lyne had been as good a father as an aristocrat could be. Where other fathers had spent their time in London, machinating at their clubs and pretending their families did not exist, King’s had prioritized the country estate and his time with King.
“He was not cruel. Not with me.”
“Then why—?” She stopped, clearly aware that she trod a strange, fine line.
King drank deep of the wine, willing it to stay the memories she awakened. “How is your shoulder?”
“Tolerably sore,” she said before taking a deep breath and diving in. “Why don’t you wish to see him?”
He should have known she wouldn’t be able to stop herself. “You’re like a dog with a bone.”
“You’re calling me a dog again?”
He smiled, but with little humor. “Cruelty is not the only way fathers ruin their sons. Expectations can do the same damage.”
“What did yours expect?”
“For me to marry well.”
She cut him a look and spoke dryly. “What a horrible thing for a father to desire.” When he did not reply, she continued, “Why not marry one of the women you’ve ruined?”
None of them had wanted to marry him, but he didn’t tell her that. Instead, he told her the truth. “I’ll never marry.”
“You’re a man with a title. Isn’t that your only purpose?”
He cut her a look. “Is that what women think?”
She smiled, small and clever. “Isn’t that what men think of women?”
“It’s not my purpose. Despite my father’s keen desire. The Dukedom of Lyne has passed from generation to generation of pure, unadulterated aristocracy. Every Duchess of Lyne has been perfectly bred to be just that, a duchess. Blue blood, pristine manners, and beauty beyond the pale.”
“I’ve never heard anything about your mother,” she said. “Not even when we lived in Mossband.”
He looked out the window at that, taking in the sky, streaking pink and red in the west, heralding the night. “That’s because she died in childbirth. It killed my father.”
“Did he love her very much?”
It was so preposterous that King laughed. “No. He was upset because it meant he wouldn’t get his spare.”
“He could have married again,” she said.
“I suppose he could have.”
“But he didn’t. Perhaps he did love her.”
Memories overtook him. “No Duke of Lyne has ever married for love. They’ve married for duty and for offspring. It’s what we’re bred to want.”
“And you? What do you want?”
No one had ever asked him the question. It had been a long time since he’d thought on it. Since it had been possible. And then it hadn’t been possible any longer, because of his father’s arrogance and his own recklessness.
Because of the vow he’d made in the dead of night on a road much like this one.
Later, he would blame it on the darkness when he told her the truth. “I want to look my father in the eye and take away everything he ever wanted.”
The line ends with me.
How many times had he written the words to his father? How many times had he said them to himself? And somehow, now, they ached in a way they hadn’t for years.
“I’m sorry,” she said, softly.
He didn’t want her pity. He drank again. Offering her the bottle, he asked, “Do your parents love each other?”
“Oh, quite desperately,” she said, taking the wine. She looked to the basket on the floor. “Is there a glass?” He shook his head and she wiped the top of the bottle with her skirts. For a moment, King considered reminding her that they’d done a great deal more than share a wine bottle, but he refrained when she resumed speaking. “My father is crass and disinterested in anything but coal, and my mother is—crass in her own way, I suppose—but very eager to be accepted by Society. One without the other, however—it would not be possible. That is why my sisters and I are unmarried. Because we know what we might have.”
Happiness.
He heard the word without her speaking it.
“Except Seraphina . . . she’s different.”
“She caught a duke,” he reminded her as she drank. “Love didn’t seem to be her goal.”
Sophie shook her head and passed the wine back. “I will never understand what happened. Sera, more than any of us . . . she was waiting for love.”
“And you?” He didn’t know why he asked. It didn’t matter.
She opened the book, then closed it. Again and again. “That’s part of the freedom, isn’t it?” He didn’t reply, so she added, “I’ve never imagined anything as freeing as love must be.” She smiled, and he saw the sadness in the fading light. “I hope to experience it, of course. All the bits and pieces.”
“With your baker.” He disliked the taste of the words.
She did not hesitate. “In our bookshop, gifted to us by a losing marquess, who was positively obsequious with his compliments.”
The words made him chuckle. “Do not count your books before they are shelved, my lady.” Silence fell for a long moment before he added, “It is not the stuff of poems and fairy tales.”
“Bookshop owning?”
“Love. Make no mistake. Love has nothing to do with freedom.” Her focus snapped to him as he told her the wicked truth, “It’s the most devastating trap there is.”
Surprise flashed in her eyes. He was surprised himself, he had to admit. What in hell had him saying such a thing?
“And you would know?” she asked.
“I would, as a matter of fact,” he said, wondering if the waning light was addling him to the point of confession.
“I thought the Dukes of Lyne did not marry for love.”
“I am not married, am I?”
“Are you in love?” she asked, the words coming on a shocked whisper. “With Marcella?”
“Who is Marcella?”
“Lady Marcella Latham.”
“Ah.” Memory returned. Lady Marcella from the Liverpool party. “No.”
She scowled at him then. “You really should remember the women you ruin, you know.”
He drank. “If anything worthy of ruination had happened between Lady Marcella and me, I would remember her.”
“You escaped her via rose trellis!”
“Precisely as she asked me to.”
“I highly doubt that’s the case.”
“It’s true. The lady and I had an arrangement.”
“All the more reason for you to remember her. It’s common courtesy.” She reached into the basket. “There are pasties in here!” Extracting a pasty, she tore it in half and offered it to him. “Pasties are a glorious food. One I never get in London.”
“Why not? You have a cook, don’t you?”
She nodded and spoke around her food. King resisted the urge to smile. Her manners had fled as the sun had set. “But she’s French. And pasties aren’t good for the waistline.”
“There’s nothing wrong with your waistline,” he replied without thinking. She paused mid-chew. He likely should not have an opinion on her waistline. He shrugged a shoulder. “It’s perfectly ordinary.”
She began chewing again. Swallowed. “Thank you? I suppose?”
“You are welcome.”
She washed down her pasty with more wine. “So, you do not love Lady Marcella.”
/> She’d had enough wine to be nosy, and not nearly enough to forget the conversations they’d been having. “I do not.”
“But you are aware of the emotion. In a personal sense.”
Enough to know I never want it again.
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you marry the poor girl?”
He’d tried. He’d wanted to.
He remembered bringing her to meet his father. To show her off. To prove to the great Duke of Lyne that love was not an impossibility. He’d been young and stupid. And his father had ruined it.
I’d rather you never marry at all than marry some cheap trollop in it only for the title, the duke had sneered. And Lorna had run.
He remembered the way his heart had pounded as he’d chased after her, to find her, to marry her. To love her enough to spit in his father’s face. And then he stopped remembering, before he could remember the rest. He looked up at Sophie, fairly invisible. Night had fully fallen. “I can’t marry her.”
“Why not?” It was strange, the way her voice curled around him in the darkness. Curious. Comforting.
“Because she is dead.”
She shot forward at the words, and though it was too dark to see, he could hear the movement of her skirts against her legs, feel the heat of her in the small space. “Dear God,” she whispered, and then her hands were on him, clumsily searching in the darkness. Landing on his thigh before she snatched them back, as though she’d been burned. He caught them, wishing he could see her face. Grateful that he could not see her face when she repeated the words. “Dear God. King. I am so sorry.”
She is dead, and my father killed her.
She is dead, and I killed her.
He shook his head, the darkness making the story easier to tell. “Don’t be. It was a long time ago. Truthfully, the only reason why I told you was because you asked why I’d never returned.”
“But you return now.”
“My father—” he started, then stopped. Instead, he laughed humorlessly. “Suffice to say, I want him to know that his precious line died with her.”
There was silence. “Did he—” She did not finish the question.
He answered it anyway. “As though he’d put a pistol to her head.”
She paused, considering the horrifying words. “And your happiness? You shall never take it?”
She was a fool, Sophie Talbot. A beautiful fool. A man could have money, a title, or happiness. Never all three. “There is no happiness for men like me,” he said.