“Don’t leave the poor girl wondering, Aloysius,” the Duke of Lyne fairly drawled.

King looked to her and time seemed to slow. Sophie could hear her heart beating, knowing that she could not believe the words he said, whatever they might be. She did not want him to say he loved her. She didn’t think she could bear hearing the words for the first time and know they weren’t true.

And, somehow, strangely, she did not want him to not say that he loved her.

She didn’t wish to be the means to his end.

She wanted to be more than that.

She wanted to be more than he offered.

“Lady Sophie knows precisely how I feel about her.”

It was the faintest praise she’d ever received, and it stung more harshly than all the aristocratic scorn she’d ever heard. With those simple words, Sophie was through. She no longer cared about the agreement—not in the face of this moment. Not in the face of her desire for something else. For more.

She didn’t want to be a part of this back-and-forth, this battle between powerful men who didn’t know a thing about what was really important in the world.

And so it was that Sophie Talbot lived up to her reputation as a Talbot sister, ignoring what was correct, and instead doing what was right.

She folded her napkin into a perfect square and stood. Both men stood with her, their ridiculous manners seeming to somehow matter in this, but not in the rest of the evening. Sophie bit back a laugh at that, instead turning to the Duke of Lyne and inclining her head. “I find I’ve lost my appetite, Your Grace.”

“No doubt,” he replied in a voice devoid of surprise.

“I shall take my leave,” she replied.

“I shall come with you,” King said, already moving around the table. “We needn’t dine with the duke. Not if he cannot accept you.”

Of course, he must be positively gleeful that his father could not accept her. That was the entire point.

She wasn’t acceptable. Not to father or son.

“No,” she said, the single word sounding like gunshot in the room.

King stopped, halfway around the foot of the table.

“I shall take my leave,” she repeated. “Alone.”

He moved once more, his long legs disappearing the distance between them with speed and purpose. “You needn’t be alone,” he said, the words firm and strangely forthright before he added, softly, “He needn’t come between us, love.”

The endearment did her in.

What a terrible lie he told.

What a terrible mistake she’d made.

She lifted one hand, staying him again. “He’s not between us,” she said, her voice calm and cool and filled with truth. “He is not the problem.”

“It certainly isn’t you who is the problem.”

“I’m quite aware of who the problem is.”

He looked as though he’d been struck with a soup ladle, just on top of his handsome head, but she took no pleasure in the moment. She was too busy keeping her back straight and her tears at bay as she turned and left the room.

Chapter 15

SAD SOPHIE SEEKS

SOLACE IN SWEETS

Sophie was turning out to be very good at making scandalous exits and absolute rubbish at knowing what to do next.

She couldn’t return to her rooms, as she did not wish to be found, and she couldn’t leave the house, because it was the dead of night and she had nowhere to go. She did not think the Duke of Lyne would take well to her appropriating one of his carriages, either way. He’d likely consider it stealing.

And so Sophie followed her nose and her appetite, and went to the only place she ever felt comfortable in massive houses like this one. The kitchens.

The room was warm and well-lit and welcoming, just as all kitchens seemed to be. There were two large tables at its center, one set with massive platters of beautiful food: a perfectly golden roast goose, a platter of young asparagus greener than she’d ever seen, a towering pyramid of perfectly matched rosemary potatoes, a rack of lamb on a bed of herbs, a pot of mint jelly, and a tower of strawberry tarts that she was fairly certain she could smell from the doorway.

As it had been days since she’d had a proper meal, the food should have captured all her attention, but in these kitchens, the heavy-laden table was not the most compelling feature. No, it was the second table that drew her attention, filled with servants all eating their own evening meal—a meal that looked nothing like the elaborate plates waiting to be served to the now and future dukes she’d left behind.

The servants’ laughter drew her through the doorway, the smell of the warm food making her mouth water. She edged up onto her toes to see what they were eating, envy flaring when she identified the food. Pasties.

The little pouches of meat and vegetable and potato were piled high on several platters at the center of the servants’ table, and the chatter reached a fever pitch as they ate. She heard the gossip, about the angry duke, about the returned marquess, about the girl who had arrived with him. About her.

“Are they very much in love?”

“He must be. He’s come home with her. As though it’s done.”

“She doesn’t even have a chaperone,” someone whispered.

“I’ve no doubt they’re in love.”

Sophie hoped the young woman was not planning to wager on it.

“And you are such an expert, Katie.” The last was spoken by the woman who had been in the dining room, as she set a pitcher of ale on the table. Agnes.

Katie shrugged. “That’s what I’m told.” She turned to the housekeeper. “You’ve been here for a lifetime, Mrs. Graycote, has there ever even been a peep about a wife for the marquess?”