He has a knack for climbing, the duke had said earlier, about Sophie’s father.
“Climbing is his worst sin.”
“Unforgivable,” King agreed. “A special place in hell for those who do it.”
Sophie couldn’t stop herself from returning him to the story. “So you left.”
“I should have. I should have grabbed Lorna’s hand and run. Immediately. Should have taken her across the border and done just what she wished. Gretna Green is right there,” he said. “But I didn’t. I took her home. I left her to sleep in her bed. I wanted a night to gather funds and prepare for a journey that would keep us away from Lyne Castle until my father was dead and I was duke. I needed a plan, and I was going to return to her in the morning with one.”
She nodded. “That was sound logic.”
He looked to her at the words, and she saw the sadness in his gaze. The remorse. The regret. “It wasn’t, though. I didn’t think he’d go to her father.”
Sophie’s eyes went wide. “What happened?”
“The Duke of Lyne visited his first dairy that night. Told Lorna’s father what had happened. Made it clear that if she set foot on Lyne land again, he’d see them both punished for trespassing.”
Her mouth fell open. “What did her father do?”
King shook his head. “She arrived, gown torn, lip bleeding. She came to me, terrified.” He paused. “Threw herself into my arms and begged me to save her. I can still feel her quaking. I packed her into a coach, her father on our heels. My father at his back, the greatest threat of all.”
Dread pooled in Sophie’s stomach as she began to see the way the story ended. She captured his hands in hers, clutching him tightly, wishing she could take away what he was about to say.
“I drove the coach. She was inside. It was dark and rainy and the roads . . .” He hesitated. “Well, after this week, you know the roads.”
“King,” she whispered, clutching his hand.
“I took a corner too fast.”
She shook her head. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“The horses were unmatched. I’d hitched them too quickly, without enough care.”
That was why he spent so much time checking the hitches on the carriage. “You were a child,” she said, holding his hands tighter and tighter, until her knuckles were white.
It was his turn to shake his head. “I wasn’t a child, though. I was eighteen, old enough to inherit an estate. To sit in Parliament. She relied on me. And I did the last thing in the world that would protect her.”
She lifted his hands to her lips, raining kisses down upon them. “No,” she whispered between the caresses. “No. No. No.”
“The coach toppled, bringing all of us down—the coach, the horses, me—into a ditch not a mile from here. I’m not even certain if we made it over the border.” He shook his head. “I don’t think we did.”
“Were you—”
He looked to her. “I was fine. A few bruises. Nothing to speak of.”
“And—” She couldn’t say the name.
“She screamed,” he said quietly, and she could tell that he was no longer here, in the library, but there, on the rainy road. “I could hear her as we flipped, but by the time we’d stopped, it was silent. She was silent. I climbed back, tore at the coach doors, but—” Sophie pressed a hand to her lips, tears coming as she imagined him screaming for the woman he loved. “—the way the coach fell, the doors were bent shut. There was no way in. She was stuck in there. I couldn’t hear her. I broke a window, finally.” He looked down at his knuckles, flexing his fingers, as though the wounds from the glass were still there.
Sophie had never heard anything so horrible in her life. Tears streamed down her face as she watched him, as he finished his story.
“She died inside the damn coach, at my hand.”
No wonder he hated riding in coaches. “That’s why you race the curricles,” she said. “You pay your penance. You risk yourself.”
He didn’t reply to the words, instead saying, “I told you that my father killed her. As though he put a pistol to her head.”
She nodded, not knowing what to say.
“It wasn’t his hate that put the pistol to her head. It was my love.”
She reached for him then, taking his handsome, shadowed face in her hands and turning him to face her, waiting until he met her gaze, until she was certain he was paying attention. “It was an accident.”
“I shouldn’t have—”
“You were a child, and you were doing what you thought best. What you thought right. You didn’t kill her.”
“I did.” The confession devastated her, and suddenly she understood so much about him. She did the only thing she could think to do ease the ache in her heart. In his.
She drew his face to hers, and kissed him, at first soft and tentative, as though he might push her away at any moment, as though she was intruding. She lifted her lips once, twice, a third time before she deepened the caress, letting her tongue slide over his bottom lip, loving the way he inhaled at the sensation, his mouth opening, his hands coming around her.
And then he was kissing her back, taking and giving, stroking and sampling, groaning as he took over, turning what had begun as a tentative caress into a wicked, wonderful claiming. It was glorious.
He released her lips, pressing warm, wet kisses down the column of her neck as her fingers found purchase in his hair, guiding him to places she did not even know were kissable. He licked at the place where her neck met her shoulder, his hands coming around to the front of her dress, fast and furious, working at the laces there. There was nothing controlled about this moment, nothing thought out. His hands and lips tempted and touched and promised, sending shivers of pleasure through her without thought. Without hesitation.