There was a great deal of blood for someone who was fine.

Christ.

This was his problem.

She was his problem.

“She can’t die!” the girl cried.

She would not die.

“She’s not dying,” King said, pulling her into his arms, gathering her to him, marching her back to his coach, calculating the distance to the nearest town. The nearest surgeon.

“Oi!” the young woman called after him. He did not look back. She followed, her footsteps audible on the packed dirt road. “Where are you taking her?”

“She needs a doctor.”

“She’s our friend. We’ll take her.”

He turned to look at the girl, who had caught up with him at this point. “You don’t know this woman.”

“I know her well enough to know that she saved John’s life. Mine, too.”

“Don’t worry, I’m going to keep her safe.”

“How do we know she’s safe with you?”

There was no time to be offended by the suggestion that he was a criminal. That he was not to be trusted. Sophie required medical attention. “She’s safe with me.”

“Yes. But how do we know?”

He looked down at the unconscious woman in his arms, who had been trouble since the moment he’d met her, and said the only thing he knew would end the conversation. The only thing that would pacify them. It didn’t matter that it was a lie, or that it would come back to destroy them both.

“Because she’s my wife.”

Chapter 6

SOPHIE SHOT.

SEARCH FOR SURGEON STARTS

She woke half naked in a carriage careening hell-for-leather down what had to have been the worst road in Christendom.

The coach hit a particularly unpleasant patch in the road, and the whole thing bounced, sending a wicked pain through her shoulder. She opened her eyes, a squeak of discomfort turning quickly into one of shock.

She was in the Marquess of Eversley’s arms. In his lap. In a dark carriage.

She scrambled to sit up.

He held her with arms of steel. “Don’t move.”

She tried to move again. “This isn’t exactly . . .” Another pain hit, and she gasped the rest of the sentence. “. . . proper.”

He cursed in the dim light. “I told you not to move.” He pressed a bottle to her lips. “Drink.”

She drank the water without hesitation, until she realized it wasn’t water. She spat out the liquid that threatened to set her throat aflame. “It’s spirits.”

“It’s the finest scotch in Britain,” he said. “Stop wasting it.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want it.”

“You’ll be grateful for it when the surgeon is digging about in your shoulder in search of a bullet.”

The words brought memory with them. The mail coach. The children. The brute who came looking for them. The pistol. Eversley, tearing her clothes from her.

She looked down to find his hand against the bare skin of her shoulder, covered in blood.

Oh, dear.

She took the bottle and drank deep until he removed it from her grasp.

“Am I dying?”

“No.” There was no hesitation in the word. Not a breath of doubt.

She returned her attention to the place where his hand stayed firm, covered in her blood. “It looks as though I am dying.”

“You’re not dying.” She read the words on his lips as they echoed around her in the enormous carriage. Everything about him underscored their certainty. Squared jaw, firm lips, unyielding touch. As though she wouldn’t dare die because he had willed it.

“Just because you call yourself King does not make you my ruler.”

“In this, I’m your ruler,” he said.

“You’re so arrogant. I have half a mind to die just to prove you wrong.”

He met her gaze then, his green eyes snapping to hers in surprise and what one might define as horror. He watched her for a long moment before replying, soft and threatening, “If you’re trying to prove that you don’t require a ruler, you’re not doing a very good job of it.”

The carriage fell silent, and she considered her future. Possibly short. Possibly long. She might not see her sisters again. She might die, here, in the carriage, in the arms of this man, who did not care for her.

At least he hadn’t left her alone.

Tears threatened to spill over, and she sniffed, hoping to keep them at bay.

“What’s north?” he said, clearly attempting to distract her.

It took a moment for her to focus. “North?”

“Yes. Why are you headed to Cumbria?”

A future. Far from her past. “London doesn’t wish to have me any longer.”

He looked out the window. “I don’t believe that.”

“I don’t wish to have London any longer.”

“That sounds much more likely,” he said. “Is there a reason for your rather urgent timing?”

She imagined that it didn’t matter if she confessed the events of the garden party to him, as she was likely to die anyway. “I called the Duke of Haven a whore. In front of the entire assembly.”

He did not reply with the grave concern she expected. Instead, he laughed, the sound rumbling beneath her. “Oh, I imagine he was furious.”

She considered telling him about the rest of the events of the afternoon, but the universe intervened, sending the carriage into a tremendous rut, launching it into the air for a moment before crashing back onto the road. Wicked pain shot through her—bright and sharp enough for her to cry out. Eversley cursed in the darkness and gathered her to him, pulling her tight against him. “We’re nearly there,” he promised through clenched teeth, as though he were in pain himself, and their conversation was over, reality returned.