The Rogue Not Taken (Scandal & Scoundrel #1)(5)

They had never seen the truth—that the Talbot family could marry into royalty, and they’d never be welcome in Society. That Society suffered their presence because they couldn’t risk losing the advice and intelligence of the new earl, or the funds that came with each of the daughters. Marriage was, after all, the most critical business in Britain.

Sophie’s family knew it better than anyone.

And they adored the game. Its machinations.

But Sophie wanted none of it. She never had. For the first decade of her young life, she’d lived in the idyll that came from money without title. She’d played in the green hills of Mossband. She’d learned to make pasties from her grandmother in the kitchens of the Talbot family home, because they were her father’s favorite luncheon treat. She’d ridden her horse to town to fetch beef from the butcher and cheese from the cheesemonger. She’d never dreamed of a titled husband. She’d planned for a sound, reasonable future, married to the baker’s son.

And then her father was made an earl. And everything changed. She hadn’t been to Mossband in ten years, when her mother had closed up the house and happily taken up residence in Mayfair. Her grandmother was gone, died not a year after they’d left the house. Pasties had been deemed too common for earls. The butcher and the cheesemonger now delivered their wares to the back entrance of their impressive Mayfair town house. And the baker’s son . . . he was a distant, foggy memory.

No one else in the family seemed to have any trouble at all adjusting to this world that Sophie had never wanted. For which she’d never asked.

No one else in the family seemed to care that Sophie hated it.

And so it was that there, in the gardens of the Liverpool estate, with all of London looking on, Sophie grew tired of pretending that she was one of these people. That she belonged in this place. That she needed its acceptance.

She had money. And she had legs to carry her.

She looked to her sisters, each beautifully appointed, each certain that she would one day rule this world. And Sophie knew she’d never be them. She’d never enjoy the scandal. She’d never want this world and its trappings.

So why defer to it?

It wasn’t as though the ton would welcome her after today; why not take her scandal and speak the truth for once?

In for a penny, in for a pound, as her father always said.

She turned her gaze on the group of them. “Of course. It is a travesty that poor His Grace so degraded our sister that I had no choice but to play the hero and avenge her honor, as none of the rest of these so-called gentlemen have been willing to do so,” she said, loud enough for all of London to hear. “Poor His Grace, indeed, that he was raised in this world that has deluded both itself and him into thinking that a title makes anything close to a gentleman, when he—along with most of his brethren, if one is honest—is a boor. And something much worse. That rhymes with boor.”

Her mother’s eyes went wide. “Sophie! Ladies do not say such things!”

How many times had she been admonished for not being ladylike enough? How many times had she been molded into the perfect image of this aristocratic world that would never accept her? That would never accept any of them, if not for its need of their money? “I wouldn’t worry,” she replied in front of all of London. “It’s not as though they think us ladies as it is.”

Her sisters stilled.

“Sophie,” Seline said, the word filled with disbelief and not a small amount of respect.

“Well. That was unexpected,” Sesily said.

The countess lowered her voice to a barely-there whisper. “What have I told you about having opinions? You’ll destroy yourself! And your sisters with you! Do not do something that you will regret!”

Sophie did not lower her voice when she said, “My only regret is that the pool was not deeper. And filled with sharks.”

Sophie did not know what it was that she’d expected from the moment. Gasps, perhaps. Or whispers. Or high-pitched ladies’ cries. Or even loud, masculine harrumphs.

She wouldn’t have minded a swoon or two.

But she didn’t expect silence.

She didn’t expect cool, exacting disinterest, or the way the entire garden party simply turned from her and began again, as though she’d never spoken. As though she wasn’t there.

As though she’d never been there to begin with.

Which made it fairly easy to turn her own back, and walk away.

Chapter 2

EVERSLEY ESCAPES;

ILLICIT EXIT INFURIATES EARL

Sophie soon discovered that there was a flaw in turning one’s back on the aristocracy at a garden party in front of all the aristocracy.

Leaving aside the obvious—that is, the actual ruination—there was a much more immediate concern. That is, that once one had roundly rejected the attendees of said party, one could not linger. Indeed, one must find one’s way home, under one’s own steam, as hiding out in the family carriage would dampen the force of one’s exit, truth be told.

That, and she wasn’t certain her mother wouldn’t commit filicide if she came upon Sophie in the family carriage. She needed an escape route that did not involve Talbots. At least until she was ready to apologize.

If she was ever ready to apologize.

She hated this world, these people, and their snide references to the Talbot crassness, to the Talbot money, to her father’s purchased title, to her sister’s allegedly stolen one. She hated every one of their smug faces, the way they sneered at her family and the way they lived. The way they lived their lives as though the rest of the world revolved around them.