Earl of Newsom’s fiancée—now former fiancée, Sophie would wager—waved happily. “Thank you, Eversley!”
He turned up and winked. “My pleasure, darling. Enjoy.”
“I hope you don’t mind my telling my friends?”
“I look forward to hearing from them.”
Lady Marcella disappeared into the window. Sophie thought the entire exchange rather bizarre and . . . collegial . . . for two people caught in a compromising situation by her rich, titled future husband.
“My lady,” the Marquess of Eversley prompted.
Sophie looked to him. “You ended their marriage.”
“Their engagement, really.” He extended his hand. “I require footwear, poppet. Please.”
She ignored the gesture. “So, you only touch betrothed women.”
“Precisely.”
“Very different, I suppose.” Was there not a single member of the aristocracy worthy of knowing? “You’re a scoundrel.”
“So I am told.”
“A rogue.”
“That’s what they say,” he said, watching over her shoulder intently.
“Unscrupulous in every way.”
An idea began to form.
He focused on her, seeming to notice her for the first time. His brows rose. “You look as though you’ve come nose to antennae with a large insect.”
She became aware of her wrinkled nose. Consciously unwrinkled it. “Apologies,” she lied.
“Think nothing of it.”
And there, as she considered him, dressed in his summer finery, missing a boot, she realized that, horrid or not, in that moment, he was precisely what she required. If she could stomach him for the three quarters of an hour it would take to get home. “You are going to have to leave here rather quickly if you don’t want a run-in with Lord Newsom.”
“I’m so happy that you understand. If you’d give me my boot, I could make some haste.” He reached for the footwear. She stepped backward once more, remaining out of reach. “My lady,” he said firmly.
“It seems that you are in a particular position.” She paused. “Or, perhaps it is I who am in a particular position.”
His gaze narrowed. “And what position is that?”
“A position to negotiate.” He was her transport home.
A shout came from around the corner of the house, and his attention slid past her, to where his enemy was no doubt about to appear. She took the opportunity to escape, boot in hand, toward the back of the house, where a line of trees and underbrush hid a low stone wall and, beyond it, a line of carriages waiting for their owners to leave the revelry and head home.
He followed her. He had to. After all, she had his boot.
And he had a carriage.
It was an ideal trade. Once protected from view by the trees, she turned to him. “I have a proposition for you, Lord Eversley.”
His brows rose. “I’m afraid I’m through with propositions for the day, Lady Sophie. And even I know better than to engage in a public assignation with one of the Dangerous Daughters.”
He knew who she was. She blushed at the words, anger and embarrassment warring on her cheeks. Anger won out. “You realize that if you were female, you would have been exiled from Society years ago.”
He lifted one shoulder. Dropped it. “Ah, but I am not female. And thank God for that.”
“Yes, well, some of us are not so lucky. Some of us don’t have your freedom.”
He met her gaze, suddenly very serious. “You don’t know the first thing about freedom.”
She did not back down. “I know you have more of it than I will ever be allowed. And I know that without it, I must resort to—” She searched for the word.
“Nefariousness?” he supplied, his seriousness gone once more, so quickly that Sophie almost paused to consider it. Until she remembered that he was far too irritating for thoughtful speculation.
“There is nothing nefarious about this.”
“We are together in a secluded area, my lady. If you intend for it to end in the same manner your sister’s assignation with her former lover and now husband famously ended, it’s quite nefarious.”
Of all the infuriating things the man could say. She stamped her foot on the thick spread of ground cover. “I am really quite tired of hearing about poor maligned Haven and how my sister trapped him into marriage.”
“He didn’t sign up for marrying your sister,” Eversley said.
“Then he should not have been fiddling about with her ink!” she pronounced.
When he laughed, Sophie changed her mind about him being infuriating.
The man was horrible.
“You think it amusing?”
He pressed a hand to his chest. “I apologize.” The snicker became a laugh again. “Fiddling about with her ink!”
She scowled. “It was your figure of speech.”
“But you made it really, tremendously perfect. I assure you, if you understood