The Rogue Not Taken (Scandal & Scoundrel #1)(87)

“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.”

She 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.