The Rogue Not Taken (27 page)

She stilled, not quite understanding, but wanting it, whatever he offered. And then he was there, his lips on hers, his tongue licking out to taste the errant cream.

She’d never in her life experienced anything so scandalous.

Anything so . . .

“Mmm,” he murmured, the sound low and soft as he lifted his head. “Exquisite.”

He hadn’t been talking about the tart earlier.

She couldn’t stop herself from lifting her hand to his neck, holding him the way he held her, her fingers tangling in his dark hair. “Show me,” she repeated, only this time, she didn’t want him to talk. She wanted him to take.

Or perhaps it was she who did the taking, turning her face up to his, and capturing his lips with hers.

S
he kissed him.

He might have been able to stop himself from anything more than the single kiss, just enough to remind him of her taste without causing more scandal, if she hadn’t kissed him, lifting her face, drawing his head down, tempting him with her little, quiet whisper.

But he was a man, after all.

And no man on earth could resist this woman.

And so he’d kissed her back, deepening the caress, his arms coming around her, lifting her high against him, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned into the caress.

The first time he’d kissed her, it had been with one ear on the damn taproom at the Warbling Wren. The second time, he hadn’t been able to see her.

He’d be damned if he was going to miss a moment of the third time.

She was soft and sweet and she gasped against him, eyes wide, when he lifted her in his arms without breaking the kiss and returned to the large leather chair where he’d been sitting earlier, watching her high above, trying not to catch a glimpse up her too-short skirts. Trying des
perately to catch a glimpse. Trying not to notice her too much, unable to resist noticing her as he told her she was beautiful and she— Christ. She didn’t believe him.

Suddenly, it was critical she believe him. He sat, gathering her in his lap, and broke the kiss. Sophie sighed her disappointment, and King stole another kiss. She matched him perfectly, following his lead, opening for him, sliding and stroking and proving that she wanted this as much as he did.

He wanted this with everything he had.

But there was something else. Something more important than what he wanted. He tore his lips from hers. “Sophie . . .”

She opened her eyes, their blue deeper and darker than it had been earlier in the evening. Changed by his touch. His kiss.
Him
.

She made him feel more powerful than he’d ever felt, no longer a title, a fortune, an heir. She made him feel more. He wasn’t gong to make love to her. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t ruin her. She deserved a better man. A man who could love. A man who would marry her.

For once in his life, King would do the right thing.

For this woman who had done so many right things herself.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said, knowing the words revealed too much. That they were too reverent. He sounded like a schoolboy. He felt like one. She made him feel that way.

What was she doing to him?

She stiffened in his arms, pulling away from him, and he captured her, blocking her escape. “Where are you going, love? We’re not done here.”

She shook her head and pushed him away. “Stop.”

He released her, and she stood. He captured her hand,
and she let him, despite keeping her head down, averting her gaze. “Sophie—” he started, wanting to say the right thing.

“I’m not one of the other women you’ve had. I’m not like them,” she said.

“The other women?” He didn’t like those words. Not at all.

She stared down at their hands, fingers entwined. “You needn’t lie to me.”

Except it hadn’t been a lie. He didn’t want to lie to her. He wanted her to hear the truth. “It’s not—”

She sighed. “Stop. King. You think I do not hear the things they say about me? That the beauty ran out by the time I was born? That my sisters are the pretty ones? The pleasant ones? The talented ones?” She looked to him. “I’m not beautiful. You know it. You’ve said it before.”

What an ass he’d been then. What a blind, horrid ass.

She continued. “You’re kind to say so now, and I suppose I understand the impulse, but lying about it won’t make me enjoy”—she waved one hand between them—“this more. In fact, it will make me enjoy it less.” She released his hand. “It makes me enjoy it less.”

He didn’t know what to say. It wasn’t an impulse designed to make her more likely to climb into his bed. It was the truth. He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake sense into her. He wanted to tell her again and again, until she believed him. Until she saw it herself. But it wasn’t what she wanted.

And he wanted her to have everything she wanted. Forever.

Good God.
Forever
.

The word curled around him, settling strangely in his chest as he watched her, and he reached for her hand, taking it once more. She allowed it. “Look at me, Sophie.”

She did, and he could see the wariness in her eyes.

One day, he’d have the head of the person who made her feel anything less than the beauty she was. “I’m not going to tell you you’re beautiful.”

Wariness turned to relief and something else that looked like sadness; there, then gone so quickly that he couldn’t be sure.

He lifted her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “Let me be clear. That doesn’t mean that I don’t fully intend for you to leave Lyne Castle believing that you are quite beautiful.”

She blushed and looked away.

“There will come a day when I tell you that and you don’t look away.”

She looked back. “You plan to do quick work, then?”

“Why quick?”

“I am leaving when my father arrives,” she replied, and the words had more impact than he would have imagined. “You should be happy with that, frankly, as they’d have you at the altar faster than you could imagine if they knew our arrangement.”

He didn’t want her leaving. He wanted her here.

Forever.

Not forever. Forever was impossible. Forever with Sophie would mean love. She wouldn’t be happy without it. Without all its bits and pieces. And love was not in his cards.

Not ever.

Not even with this woman, who somehow grew more perfect each day with her smart mouth and her smarter mind and her laugh that made him want to spend the rest of his life hearing it. More perfect, despite his being an utter ass around her.

“I’ve treated you abominably,” he said.

She shook her head, and he pulled her back to his lap. “You saved my life,” she said softly, letting him gather her close.

“I made you sad,” he whispered at her temple, to the wisps of brown hair that had come loose there.
Sad
was such a simple, damaging word. It meant so much more than its elaborate cousins. He’d hurt her, and she’d soldiered through.

“I have been sad before, my lord. I will be sad again.”

He hated that. “I wish I could take it all back.”

She smiled. “You cannot. We are here. Your father and the staff believe we are betrothed, as does the entire population of Mossband. And that does not include the people strewn about the countryside who believe we are married. And named Matthew.”

He’d made a hash of it, hadn’t he?

“If you think on it,” she continued, “if I
were
attempting to land you in the parson’s noose, I’ve done a remarkable job of it.”

He laughed at the old-fashioned phrase. “The parson’s noose?”

“Very ominous.”

“Not ominous,” he said. “Simply not for me.”

His words shifted the mood, and they both grew serious. He could see the question in her eyes, unspoken.
Why?

Show me
, she’d asked him earlier, when he’d told her she was too good for this place. And he ached to do just that. To tell someone why he was the man he was. To share his past.

He could tell her.

He could show her.

He tangled his fingers in hers, his thumb stroking across her soft skin, his gaze on a collection of little
brown freckles that marked the base of her hand. “I left when I was eighteen.”

S
he stilled in his lap, but did not speak. Did not rush him for fear that he would change his mind, and there was nothing in the world she wanted more in that moment than for him to continue.

He did. “I was home from school for the summer. Like any boy of my age, I hated being here in the quiet. I wanted to spend the summer drinking and—”

She smiled. “You don’t need to hide what eighteen-year-old boys wish they were doing.”

The dimple in his right cheek flashed. “What do you know about eighteen-year-old boys?”

“Enough to know that drinking isn’t the worst thing you wished to do that summer.”

“I was too old to fish in the river and while away the days.”

She imagined him younger, leaner, his long body not quite what it was now, his face freer of the character it held now. Handsome, but nothing like he was now. The bones of the man he would become. Her smile widened as she settled into his arms. “I should like to have fished with you.”

He looked at her, surprised. “I’ll take you.”

“Aren’t you too old for it, now?” she teased.

He shook his head. “Now I’m old enough to know that whiling away the days is not such a horrible way to spend one’s time.” He paused. “Particularly with the right companion.”

Did he refer to her? She’d like to fish with him. She’d like him to build a fire on the banks of the river and spend the evening telling her about his life as it grew dark around them.

She warmed at the impossible thought.

“She was a milkmaid,” he said with a little disbelieving laugh, lost in thought. “A
milkmaid
. As though we all lived in a painting by a Dutch master. Her father ran the dairy on the estate to the east, and she worked with the cows.”

Sophie didn’t laugh. “How old was she?”

“Sixteen.”

“And how did you . . .”

She trailed off, but he knew her question. He brought her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles, sending little shocking threads of pleasure through her. When he stopped, he held her hand to his mouth and answered, “One of the cows escaped. Ended up on Lyne land. She came looking for it.” He paused, then said, quietly, “It was Shakespearean. She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”

Sophie inhaled at the words. It was amazing how easy it was to believe them when it was so difficult to believe them when he spoke them about her. “What did she look like?”

“Blond, with perfect pink skin as smooth as cream,” he replied, and Sophie could see the woman, young and doe-eyed. “The moment she looked up at me, dirt on her face, skirts muddy from her search, I wanted to protect her.”

She believed that, as well, thinking back on his attacking the man who’d shot her, the way he immediately threw himself into the fray. “Did she require protecting?”

“It felt that way,” he said, lost in the memory. “There was something precious about her. Something that felt nearly breakable.” He met her gaze. “I wanted to marry her from the start.”

She wasn’t prepared for the hot thread of jealousy that
wove through her at the words. Nor was she prepared for the flood of questions that came on their heels. “And?”

“We spent the summer together, meeting in secret, hiding everything from our respective fathers. We passed messages through the stable boys, one in particular, whom I paid handsomely for his trouble. She was terrified her father would discover us.” Sophie nodded, but did not speak. “Terrified enough that she began to beg me to marry her in secret. She wanted us to run, over the border, to find the nearest blacksmith and have an anvil marriage. Get it done.” He stopped. “I should have.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I didn’t want it to be secret. When I took a wife, I wanted it to be in front of all the world. All of Britain. I’d make her a marchioness. She’d be a duchess. There was no shame in that, and I wouldn’t allow us to be a scandal. I loved her.”

“You’d make her your wife,” Sophie said softly. The titles were nothing of import compared to that. Compared to the idea of living with him, as his partner, forever.

Forever.

Sophie’s heart ached at the words, with sorrow for what she knew was to come, and with jealousy of this girl who had stolen his heart so long ago, making it impossible for Sophie to do it now.

Not that she had the skill to do it, anyway.

He laughed humorlessly. “Of course, I was young and stupid. And tilting at windmills.”

Sophie could feel the frustration in him, in the stiffness of his chest and the quickness of his breath, in the way the cords of his neck stood prominently, revealing a clenched jaw, a grim mouth. She did the only thing she could think of—she set her palm to his face, her thumb stroking over his high, angled cheekbone.

For a moment it seemed like he didn’t notice her touch, and then his eyes met hers, glittering green and so focused, and he lifted his hand to hold hers to him. He turned his face and pressed a kiss to her palm before he continued. “It was 1818 and the King was mad, and the Regent was drinking and gaming and throwing elaborate, scandalous parties, and the war was over, and it was time for my father to put away his stupid thoughts on title and blue blood, and accept that there was a place for love in the world.”

Sophie couldn’t help her little sad smile at the words, her heart in her throat. Of course there was a place for love in the world. But the aristocracy was a world far beyond normal, and there, milkmaids didn’t become duchesses.