The Rogue Not Taken (Scandal & Scoundrel #1)(2)

Sophie closed her eyes at the words, willing them away. Willing their speaker away with them. She whirled around to stop her sister’s advance. “No, Sera—”

“Oh.” Seraphina, Duchess of Haven, née Talbot, came up short as she turned the corner into the copse of potted plants, taking in the scene, her hands flying to her ever-so-slightly-protruding stomach, where the future Duke of Haven grew. “Oh.” Sophie saw shock flash in her sister’s eyes as she took in the scene, followed quickly by sadness, and then cool calm. “Oh,” the Duchess of Haven repeated.

The duke did not move. Did not look at his wife, the mother of his future child. Instead, he pushed one hand into those blond curls and spoke to the crook of his paramour’s neck. “I said, leave us.”

Sophie looked to Seraphina, tall and strong and hiding all the emotions that she must have been feeling. That Sophie couldn’t help but feel with her. She willed her sister to speak. To stand for herself. For her unborn child.

Seraphina turned away.

Sophie couldn’t help herself. “Sera! Will you not say something?” The eldest Talbot sister shook her head, and the resignation in the movement sent anger and indignation rioting through Sophie. She turned on her brother-in-law. “If she won’t, I certainly will. You are disgusting. Pompous, hateful, and loathsome.”

The duke turned a disdainful gaze on her.

“Shall I go on?” Sophie prompted.

The blond in his arms gasped. “Really! Speaking to a duke that way. It’s terribly disrespectful.”

Sophie resisted the urge to tear the stupid hat from the woman’s head and club them both with it. “You’re right. I am the disrespectful one in this situation.”

“Sophie,” Seraphina said softly, and Sophie heard the urgency in the word, the way it urged her away from the scene.

The duke heaved a long-suffering sigh, extricating himself from the lady in question, lowering her skirts and lifting her down from the table where she was perched. “Run along.”

“But—”

“I said, go.”

The woman knew when she was forgotten and she did as she was told, straightening her tassels and smoothing her skirts before taking her leave.

The duke turned, still buttoning the falls of his trousers. His duchess looked away. Sophie did not, moving in front of her sister, as though she could protect Seraphina from this horrible man she’d married. “If you think to frighten us off with your crassness, it won’t work.”

He raised a brow. “Of course it won’t. Your family thrives on crassness.”

The words were meant to sting, and they did.

The Talbot family was the scandal of the aristocracy. Sophie’s father was a newly minted earl, having received his title a decade earlier from the then King. Though her father had never confirmed the gossip, it was generally accepted that Jack Talbot’s fortune—made in coal—had purchased his title. Some said it was won in a round of faro; some said it was payment for the earl assuming a particularly embarrassing debt belonging to the King.

Sophie did not know, and she did not much care. After all, her father’s title had nothing to do with her, and this aristocratic world was not one she would have chosen for herself.

Indeed, she would have chosen any world but this one, where people so misjudged and mistreated her sisters. She lifted her chin and faced her brother-in-law. “You don’t seem to mind spending our money.”

“Sophie,” her sister said again, and this time, she heard the censure in the word.

She turned on Seraphina. “You cannot mean to protect him. It’s true, isn’t it? Before you, he was impoverished. What good is a dukedom if it’s in shambles? He should be on his knees in gratitude that you came along and saved his name.”

“Saved my name, did she?” The duke straightened one coat sleeve. “You’re addled if you think that’s how it happened. I landed your father every aristocratic investor he has. He exists because of my goodwill. And I spend the money with pleasure,” he spat, “because being trapped into marriage by your whore of a sister has made me a laughingstock.”

Sophie bit back her gasp at the insult. She knew the stories about her sister landing the duke, knew that her mother had crowed far and wide when her eldest had become a duchess. But it did not make his insults fair. “She’s to bear your child.”

“So she says.” He pushed past them, making for the exit of the greenhouse.

“You doubt she increases?” she called after him, shocked, turning wide eyes on Seraphina, looking down at her hands clasped over the swell of her growing body. As though she could keep her child from the knowledge that his father was a monster of a man.

And then Sophie realized what he really meant. She chased after the duke. “You cannot doubt that it is your child?”

He swung around, gaze cold and filled with disdain. He did not look at Sophie, though. Instead, he looked at his wife. “I doubt every word that drips from her lying lips.” He turned away, and Sophie looked to her sister, tall and proud and filled with cool reserve. Except for the single tear that spilled down her cheek as she watched her husband leave.

And in that moment, Sophie could no longer bear it, this world of rules and hierarchy and disdain. This world into which she had not been born. This world she had never chosen.