The Rogue Not Taken (Scandal & Scoundrel #1)(46)

After a pause, he said. “Your father seeks you already, my lady. That’s the wager.”

Triumph flared. Even if her father was looking for her, he would receive her missive tomorrow, and call off any search. She could not lose. She smiled, allowing herself to enjoy the moment. “I assure you, he does not. What do you forfeit when I win?”

“What would you like?”

“My bookshop. On the Mossband High Street.”

“Done. And when I win, I get a forfeit of my choosing.”

Her brows snapped together. “That seems a high price.”

“Higher than the cost of a bookshop?”

She tilted her head to one side. “I suppose not. All right. I agree.”

He smirked and reached over to steal a bit of her biscuit. “I will simply say, you’re a fool if you think your father hasn’t hired two dozen men to comb the English countryside and get you home.”

“I am going home,” she said.

“Home to London.”

“That’s just it. London isn’t my home.”

“And Mossband is?”

“Yes.” It must be. It was her only chance.

“You don’t remember it.”

“I remember it perfectly,” she insisted. “I remember the town square and the baker and the haberdasher and the livery. I remember the Maypole, festooned with ribbons, and the way that the summer days lingered as the sun set over the hills and the river. I remember that it was more beautiful and more interesting and more . . .” She searched for the word. “. . . honest than anything in London.”

“How romantic. Do you speak of the town? Or your betrothed?”

She narrowed her gaze, hating the way he mocked her and made her defensive, as though she didn’t know what she was doing or why.

As though she were being terribly rash.

As though she had a choice.

“In comparison to you and London, both.”

It wasn’t rashness that had her heading home. She had no choice. London would never have her. It never wanted her to begin with. She had to hope that Mossband would.

He finished his tea. “You know, considering you are whiling away your days in comfort abovestairs thanks to my largesse, Lady Sophie, one would think that you would be significantly better behaved in my presence.”

She faked a smile. “Sadly, my lord, I am not like the women with whom you typically consort.”

He reached for his newspaper. “You shan’t have an argument from me on that.”

He was odious. She huffed her irritation. “What’s the third?”

He looked up. “The third?”

“You said you had three questions.”

“Ah,” he said, looking back to the paper. “I do.”

“Well?”

“What the hell did you do to the Duke of Haven?”

Oh, dear. “How did you—” she began before realizing that the question acknowledged her actions. She changed tack. “I told you.”

He shook his head. “No. You told me you insulted him in front of the entire assembly.”

“I did,” she said.

He tossed the newspaper on top of her unpleasant biscuit. “What did you do before that, Sophie?”

She looked down at the paper, her gaze falling to a line of large, bold type. DANGEROUS DAUGHTER DUNKS DUKE!

It was not, as she had expected, an old newspaper. “That newspaper was printed and delivered with uncanny expediency to Sprotbrough.”

“Who would have imagined it was such a metropolis?” he replied.

“The exclamation point seems unnecessary,” she said quietly.

“You should write a letter of complaint to the editor. What did you do?”

She lifted the newspaper and offered it back to him. “I’m certain you can read all about it.”

“It says you nearly drowned him. There’s speculation that you wished to kill him.”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. He was backside first in two feet of fishpond.”

He laughed at that. A warm, rolling laugh that surprised her with its honesty. It made her wish he laughed more. It made her forget what they were discussing, until he recovered his words and asked, incredulous, “At your doing?”

“He deserved it, if that’s worth anything,” she grumbled.

“I have no doubt he did, the pompous ass,” Eversley said. “What did he do to you?”

“It wasn’t me,” she said. “I wouldn’t have done it if it were me.”

He watched her carefully. “For whom, then?”

“He was hidden away in the greenhouse. With a woman.”

“And?”

He was going to make her elaborate. “The woman was not my sister.”

“Ah,” he said.

And that was it. There was no judgment in the word. And at the same time, there was no understanding. “You don’t think he deserved it, after all.”

“I did not say that.”

“You did not not say it, either.” When he did not reply, irritation flared. “I suppose you’re all in some secret club, anyway.”

“We all?” he asked.

She narrowed her gaze on his. “Lotharios who don’t mind ruining marriages.”