There was a pause as she drifted into slumber, when she was awake enough to hear him. “Why do you travel north? What’s there?”

“My bookshop,” she replied, thoughts barely taking hold before they poured from her lips. “Mossband . . . sticky buns . . . Robbie.”

“Robbie?”

“Hmm?” It was difficult to keep up with the conversation.

“Who is Robbie?”

Memory came, hazy and welcome, blond hair and ruddy cheeks. Her friend. The only friend she’d ever really had. “We’ll marry,” he’d promised once long ago.

She smiled. It would be nice to marry a friend. Perhaps he’d love her. It would be nice to be loved. Perhaps they’d marry. Perhaps they’d be happy.

After all, they’d promised it all those years ago. She’d said it, too. “We’ll marry.”

She repeated the words now, aloud, the Marquess of Eversley watching over her.

Chapter 8

SOILED S SCHEDULE:

WAKE . . . WASH . . . WOO?

Night fell, and King let her sleep for several hours before summoning a bathtub and cold water, and then, once she grew restless beneath the sheets, hot water. Once steam rose from the copper tub and the women who’d carried the pails had been paid, he waited for Sophie to wake.

He watched her from his place leaning against the wall of the small room, his focus on her face in the candlelight as she came out of her deep sleep, the comfort of slumber giving way to the pain of her shoulder. The pain of reality.

He wondered if his father was dead yet.

Agnes’s missive had been urgent. It was possible King was already the Duke of Lyne. Possible that he’d lost his final chance to have the last, punishing word with the man who had so roundly punished him.

Who had ruined his chance for family. For happiness. For love.

A memory came, unbidden, King in the Lyne hedge maze, his father behind him, revealing its code. “Two lefts and a right, then one left and a right. Until the center,” the duke had said, urging him forward. “Go on then. To the center.”

King had led the way, and at the center, his father had told him the story of Theseus and the Minotaur. “Who are we?” King had asked.

“Theseus, of course!” the duke had crowed. “Great heroes.”

King came off the wall at the memory.

Heroes. What a fucking lie.

He moved to stand over Sophie. He could not spare time for this girl, who was turning out to be a cyclone of scandal. London called her the plain, boring Talbot girl. He huffed a little laugh at the thought. If they could see her now, bullet wound in her shoulder, sleeping under an assumed identity in a pub in the middle of nowhere.

There was nothing boring about Sophie Talbot.

She was to be married.

Why in hell hadn’t she told him that from the beginning?

King knew about women who wished to marry for love.

He’d been the love in question, once.

Who was Sophie’s love? If she was escaping London in exile, with specific plans for a future with this Robbie fellow—though King questioned the precise manliness of a grown man who used the name Robbie—why hadn’t she said so?

Robert was a better name for her husband. More forthright. More likely to care for her.

Not that King minded one way or the other.

At the thought, her brow furrowed and her breath quickened. She would wake soon, and she would hate what consciousness brought with it.

King sat beside her on the bed. Telling himself he was checking for fever, he placed the back of his hand on her cool forehead, relief spreading through him at the temperature. The furrow deepened and, unable to stop himself, he smoothed his thumb over the little ridge between her brows.

She settled at the touch, and he ignored the pride that threaded through him as he moved to cup her cheek. He did not wish to be her comfort. She was trouble, and he had enough of that without her.

But he did not remove his hand.

“Sophie,” he said her name softly, telling himself he was waking her for the bath she’d seemed to desperately want, and not to see her deep blue eyes.

She sighed and turned into his touch, but did not wake.

“Sophie,” he repeated, ignoring the fact that he liked the sound of the name on his lips, ignoring the fact that he should not continue the caress, even as he did just that. Instead, he marveled over the softness of her skin, the silky threads of her eyebrows, the dark wash of her lashes against her pale cheeks, the pink of her lips—

He lifted his hand as though it had been burned, and shot to his feet.

The color of her lips was not for him to notice.

She’d asked for a bath, and he’d fetched her one. That was the extent of their interaction in this moment. He’d keep his hands—and his observations—to himself. “Sophie,” he said more firmly, louder.

Her eyes flew open, finding him instantly.

“Your bath,” he said.

Her gaze flew to the other end of the room as she clutched the bedclothes to her chin. “They brought it in while I slept?”

“They did.”

Her voice lowered to a whisper. “Did they see me?”

He smiled at that. “Would it matter?”

Her eyes went wide. “Of course!”

“They did not. I set the dressing screen by the bed.”

She nodded. “Thank you.”

“But I saw you,” he said, unable to resist teasing her. “Doesn’t that bother you?”

“You don’t count,” she replied.

The words did not sit well. “I beg your pardon?”

“You don’t like me.”