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.
“Nearly where?” she asked after the pain had passed enough to find words.
“Sprotbrough.”
She had no idea what Sprotbrough was, but it didn’t seem to matter. They fell silent again, and she searched for something to discuss, to keep her mind from her certain death. “Is it true you deflowered Lady Grace Masterston in a carriage?”
He cut her a look. “I thought you did not read the scandal sheets.”
“I have sisters,” she said. “They keep me apprised.”
“If I remember correctly, Lady Grace Masterson is now Lady Grace, Marchioness of Wile.”
“Yes,” she said. “But she was to be Lady Grace, Duchess of North.”
“The Duke of North is old enough to be the woman’s grandfather.”
“And the Marquess of Wile is poor as a church mouse.”
He tilted his head and considered her for a long moment. “She cared for him nonetheless.”
“I don’t think her father cared for his lack of funds.”
“I don’t think her father should have a say in the matter.”
Several seconds passed, and Sophie said, “You ruined her for the duke.”
“Isn’t it possible that I ruined her for the marquess?” There was something in the words that she should understand, but the pain in her shoulder kept her from it. She tried to sit up, putting a hand to his thigh, momentarily distracted by the leather that encased it.
She looked down at the slick fabric. “Your breeches.” His brows rose and she blushed. “I’m sorry. I’m not supposed to notice breeches.”
“No?”
“It’s not proper.”
He cut her a look. “You’re in my lap, bleeding from a gunshot wound. Let’s dispense with propriety for the moment.”
“They’re leather,” she said.
“Indeed they are.”
“That seems scandalous.”
“In all the best ways, darling,” he drawled, the words eliciting a blush as he continued. “You need boots.”
Her head spun with the change of topic. “I—”
He reached for her slippered feet, running his fingers over the ruined, threadbare silk. “You shouldn’t have left without boots. You should have taken the footman’s.”
She shook her head, looking down at the dirty yellow silk slippers. “I didn’t fit. My feet. They’re too big.”
He pulled her tighter to him. “We’ll find you a pair when we get there.”
“Did you find one for yourself?”
“Luckily, my valet is exceedingly conscientious.”
“Why isn’t he here?”
He looked out the window. “I don’t like traveling companions. He was to meet us at the next inn.”
“Oh.” She supposed he quite disliked this, then. “Where is Sprotbrough?”
He took her change of topic in stride. “The middle of nowhere.”
“It sounds just the place to find a team of qualified surgeons languishing.”
He looked down at her, and at another time, she might have been proud of herself at the surprise on his face. “Has anyone ever told you that you have a sharp tongue?”
She offered a little smile. “Not so boring after all, am I?”
He was all seriousness. “No. I wouldn’t call you boring. At all.”
Something flickered in her chest, something aside from the pain of the bullet lodged deep in her shoulder, something aside from the fear that—despite his brash assurances—she might, in fact, die. Something she did not understand.
“What would you call me?”
Time seemed to slow in the carriage, a path of red-gold sunlight casting his face into brightness and shadow, and suddenly, Sophie wanted desperately to hear his answer. His lips pressed into a straight line as he considered his reply. When he finally spoke, the word was firm and unyielding. “Stupid.”
She gasped. She hadn’t known what to expect, but it certainly hadn’t been that. “I beg your pardon. That horrible man was going to take that boy and do God knows what to him. I did what was right.”