She stopped chewing.

“Ginny, you don’t just call her that,” another girl said. “It’s not flattering.”

The girl called Ginny had the grace to look mortified.

Sophie swallowed and pointed to the cask of ale at the end of the table. “May I?”

A gentleman nearby immediately filled a pewter mug and slid it toward her, golden liquid sloshing over the edge when she caught it. She drank. And brazened it through. “Some do refer to me as a Soiled S.”

“For your father,” said Ginny. “In coal.”

“How do you know that?” a young man across from her asked.

Ginny blushed. “I read the papers.”

“The scandal sheets are not the papers,” Agnes said.

The table laughed and Ginny dipped her head in embarrassment. Sophie took pity on the girl, taking another bite of pasty. “They’re more interesting than the papers, aren’t they, though?” She smiled when Ginny’s head snapped up. “I’m the youngest of the five.”

“The young ladies Talbot,” the girl explained to the table. “Daughters of Jack Talbot, who grew up ’ere, in Cumbria. Like us!”

“Except she’s a lady, so not at all like us,” the man at the end of the table said. What a strange world this was, where in one moment she could be too cheap for a duke, and in the next, too expensive for anyone else.

Without home.

She ignored the thought. “Actually,” Sophie said, “I am not very different. My father knows his way around a coal mine, as did my grandfather, and my great-grandfather.”

“My brother works in the mines,” someone piped up.

Sophie nodded. “Just like your brother, then. The only difference is that my father was lucky and bought a plot of land that eventually became the mouth to one of the richest mines in Britain.” Eyes widened around the table, as her carefully bred London accent gave way to her North Country brogue, and she relaxed into the tale, having heard it a thousand times as a child. “He dug and struck for days before he hit on something he could use. Something nobs in London could use.”

“See? She ain’t a nob!” crowed the maid from earlier that day.

Sophie shook her head. “I’m not. I spent my childhood in Mossband.”

“Except ye are,” the man at the end of the table said. “Because we’re callin’ you milady and yer to marry the duke’s son.”

Not really. She pushed the disappointment aside and drank before smiling down the table at him. “My father isn’t only good at coal; he’s good at cards, too.”

“They say Prinny lost a round of faro and gained himself an earl!” Ginny whispered loudly enough for the whole castle to hear.

Sophie winked, feeling more the Soiled S than ever before here, at this table. Enjoying it. Just as her sisters would. “That is, indeed, what they say.”

The questions came quickly then, questions about her life, and her sisters, and their suitors, and her father and how they’d become aristocrats. And she answered them all, her plate and tankard always full. The food and the ale made her warm and chatty, and she realized that for the first time in what felt like years, she felt free to respond to questions with the truth instead of carefully crafted replies.

And then the next question came, from Ginny, who seemed to know everything about her sisters and their lives. “So you pushed the Duke of Haven into the Countess of Liverpool’s pond, and now you’re being courted by the Marquess of Eversley—you’re so very lucky to be so very famous!”

Sophie’s brow furrowed. “That paper arrived quickly.”

Ginny smiled. “Today. I read it before supper.”

“It wasn’t a pond. It was a pool. Barely reached his knees.”

“Still! You’re the star of the scandal sheets!” Ginny sighed. “You’re so very lucky.”

She didn’t feel lucky. She felt as though she could never go home. She didn’t even know where home was.

If it was.

“How does it feel to be a girl from Mossband, now courted by a marquess?”

“A handsome marquess,” one of the other girls piped in, setting them to tittering and the men at the table to groaning.

But Sophie was stuck on the question. How did it feel? It didn’t feel like anything, because it wasn’t really courting. Because it was nothing but an arrangement. Not even a fantasy. She’d never really been headed to live out her days in Mossband. She’d never really expected Robbie to be waiting for her, and if he had, she wouldn’t have wanted him to marry her. And King . . . he’d never been her husband. Never her betrothed. And now, after the disastrous meal they’d barely had . . .

They didn’t even like each other.

How many times had they said the words to each other?

How many times had she tried to convince herself it was true?

It didn’t matter that there were moments when she came very close to liking him. It didn’t matter that she liked him when he kissed her. When he stood by her side and defended her, even when she knew it was for his own gain. Or that she liked him very much when he’d held her, bleeding, in his carriage. Or when he’d ferreted her away from her father’s men. Or when he’d come through the door at the bakery.

What mattered was that they weren’t betrothed, and they’d never be married.

No matter how much she might wish it.

The thought startled her. She didn’t wish it. Did she? She looked up, grasping on to the part of the question she could answer with certainty. “He is very handsome.”

“Well, at least I have that.”

Sophie closed her eyes at the words, wishing that the floor of the Lyne kitchens would open wide and swallow her whole. Of course he was there. Of course he had heard her. She looked down at her lap, embarrassed beyond measure.

“I’m sorry to interrupt what looks like a lovely meal,” King said to the assembly, who immediately leapt to their feet, reassuring him that no, he hadn’t interrupted at all, and could they fetch him anything at all? Ale? Food?

“No, thank you,” he said, all grace. “I’m simply hoping for some time with Lady Sophie. May I?”

She looked up then, finding his handsome face open and amused. She wasn’t certain she should give him time. He certainly didn’t deserve it. He must have sensed her trepidation, because instead of saying more, he turned away to investigate the table of food nearby. He selected two tarts from the top of the tower and set them on a little plate, topping them with fresh cream before turning back, licking his thumb and forefinger.

“That’s not really behavior befitting an aristocrat,” she said, immediately wondering if, perhaps, the ale was talking.

One side of his mouth lifted in a small, sheepish smile. “Neither was my behavior earlier in the evening. Forgive me?”

As apologies went, it wasn’t perfect.

Nevertheless, her cheeks warmed at the words, even before he extended the plate to her. “These people are not the only ones who can feed you. I have tarts. Can I tempt you to come with me?”

One of the maids behind her sighed.

Sophie resisted the urge to do the same.

She watched the plate of tarts for a long moment. They looked glorious. “I suppose.” She stood and smoothed her skirts. “For the tarts.”