The Rogue Not Taken

Sophie Talbot has been publicly snubbed by the aristocracy, and she decides to leave London for good, giving up on society along with the city. She escapes by climbing onto the back of a carriage. The carriage turns out to belong to a man whose own reputation is in ruins.

Kingscote, the Marquess of Eversley, is known as King. He charms every woman he meets, and the gossip that follows him is far worse than what he has actually done. The latest scandal has him seen climbing down a rose trellis, fleeing an angry Earl and the Earl's soon-to-be-former fiancée. His family summons him home, and the trip to the Scottish border looks long and dull.

Then he finds Sophie hidden aboard. King suspects she is trying to trap him into marriage. Sophie would not marry him if he were the last man alive, and she says so.

This is a historical romance built on an enemies-to-lovers dynamic, with most of the action confined to one carriage. Shared space brings secrets into the open and a pull neither of them wants. The tone is playful, with gossip-column headlines in the style of a scandal sheet setting the mood, and the romance moves from bickering to temptation over the course of the journey north.