gaze. “Only if it is your death of which we speak.”
He turned away from her, arms spread wide, meeting the gazes of his two companions with a quiet chuckle before reaching into his waistband to extract his pistol and returning his attention to her.
Sophie went utterly still.
“I’ve had enough of you,” he said before raising his arm and taking perfect aim at her head.
She closed her eyes, expecting terror to overpower her. But the terror never came. Instead, she was flooded with a single, calm thought.
If only the Countess of Liverpool hadn’t liked fish so much.
There was nothing in the world that King loathed more than coaches.
He tugged at his cravat, desperate for air in the enclosed space, and added this ride to the long list of things for which Lady Sophie Talbot should be punished. As it was, she had thrown a serious complication into his plan—a race to Cumbria with his curricle-driving mates, followed by a short, final audience with the father who had ruined his life. He had visions of approaching the duke’s deathbed, of leaning down and taking the final victory in their decade-long battle. The line ends with me.
And he would bury his demons. Finally.
Instead, thanks to Lady Sophie Talbot, troublesome scandal and thief, he was not racing north. He was inside a massive, empty coach that had a distinctly coffinlike feel. If it weren’t for the clattering of wheels on the terrible road, King might not have been able to hold the panic at bay.
Instead, he leaned back against the plush cushion of the carriage and released a long breath, hating the way the small space closed in on him.
He should have saddled a horse and ridden. Yes, he would have had to change horses constantly, and risked the English weather, but at least he would have had fresh air. Growing more uncomfortable by the minute, King shucked his coat and removed his cravat altogether. Closing his eyes, he took several deep breaths, leaning into the sway of the vehicle. “It’s a carriage, you idiot,” he muttered into the darkness. “It’s moving.”
For a heartbeat, he thought it might work, thought that if he kept his eyes closed, he might be able to keep his sanity. And then the coach hit a particularly deep rut in the road, and he was tossed to one side, and his eyes opened to a small, dim space.
It was going to crash.
She was going to die.
And it would be his fault.
Panic consumed him and he moved to bang on the roof, unable to stop himself. Before he could make contact, however, the carriage slowed, as though the great, hulking mass of wood and metal understood his madness.
He had the door open and was on the ground before it stopped.
The coachman looked down at him, curiosity turning quickly to surprise, and King hated the wash of warmth that flooded his cheeks. He didn’t want the man witnessing his discomfort and panic. “Why are we stopped?” he snapped, eager to redirect any attention from his madness.
The driver did not flinch. “There’s someone in the road, m’lord.”
King turned in the direction of the coachman’s gaze to find a man, out of breath and waving his hands madly in the air. “My lord, please! We’ve been set upon by highwaymen!”
King hesitated at the words—knowing that this precise turn of events had fleeced any number of travelers on this road. Trick a man with a false sense of heroism into hieing off to save the day, and empty his carriage of his belongings. Not that there was anything in King’s carriage worth stealing. Sophie Talbot had made sure of that.
Either way, the man in front of him was either a tremendous actor, or legitimately concerned. “The mail coach is filled with women and children,” he panted. “They’ll be hurt. Worse.”
The mail coach.
Christ.
Even if he could have ignored the impending doom of a collection of women and children, he’d be willing to wager half his fortune that Sophie Talbot was on that exact mail coach. He met the heaving man’s eyes. “Is there a servant riding with you? Wearing livery?”
Surprise flared. “As a matter of fact—”
King was in motion before the driver could finish his sentence. She had annoyed the hell out of him, that much was true, but he couldn’t leave her to the nefarious doings of highwaymen on the Great North Road. Dammit, she was a lady of breeding. Of questionable breeding, certainly, but ladies of any kind of breeding did not take