The Steel Rogue
A Valor of Vinehill Novel
A Historical Regency Romance
K.J. Jackson
Copyright © K.J. Jackson, 2020
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, Living or dead, is coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any forms, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.
First Edition: January 2020
ISBN: 978-1-940149-42-4
http://www.kjjackson.com
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More of my Books
Historical Romance
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out my other historical romances—each is a stand-alone story and they can be read in any order (here they are in order of publication):
Stone Devil Duke, Hold Your Breath, currently free!
Unmasking the Marquess, Hold Your Breath
My Captain, My Earl, Hold Your Breath
Worth of a Duke, Lords of Fate
Earl of Destiny, Lords of Fate
Marquess of Fortune, Lords of Fate
Vow, Lords of Action
Promise, Lords of Action
Oath, Lords of Action
Of Valor & Vice, Revelry’s Tempest
Of Sin & Sanctuary, Revelry’s Tempest
Of Risk & Redemption, Revelry’s Tempest
To Capture a Rogue, A Logan’s Legends Novella, Revelry’s Tempest
To Capture a Warrior, A Logan’s Legends Novella, Revelry’s Tempest
The Devil in the Duke, Revelry’s Tempest
The Iron Earl, Valor of Vinehill
The Wolf Duke, Valor of Vinehill
The Steel Rogue, Valor of Vinehill
The Heart of an Earl, Box of Draupnir
Paranormal Romance
Flame Moon #1, currently free!
Triple Infinity, Flame Moon #2
Flux Flame, Flame Moon #3
Dedication
—For my favorite Ks
Plus, a special dedication to my friend, K.M., who reminded me in the midst of writing this one that it is oftentimes the little things that make love, love. You spoke right when I needed to hear it. Thank you.
Contents
{ Prologue }
{ Chapter 1 }
{ Chapter 2 }
{ Chapter 3 }
{ Chapter 4 }
{ Chapter 5 }
{ Chapter 6 }
{ Chapter 7 }
{ Chapter 8 }
{ Chapter 9 }
{ Chapter 10 }
{ Chapter 11 }
{ Chapter 12 }
{ Chapter 13 }
{ Chapter 14 }
{ Chapter 15 }
{ Chapter 16 }
{ Chapter 17 }
{ Chapter 18 }
{ Chapter 19 }
{ Chapter 20 }
{ Chapter 21 }
{ Epilogue }
{ Prologue }
Stirlingshire, Scotland, in the scattered lands between the Highlands and the Lowlands
March 1816
The stench of smoke wafted past him, singeing his nostrils.
Smoke that wasn’t right.
Smoke that reeked of scorched brandy and silk and peat. Smoke that reeked of an inferno, not of a cooking fire.
Hell.
Robby set his heels into his horse’s flanks, sending the gelding thundering up the last craggily hill.
If he was too late there’d be hell to pay with Bournestein.
Lifting himself straight up on the stirrups, he peeked over the top edge of the outcropping of stones his horse was navigating.
Bloody Zeus.
His horse jumped over the last cut of rocks and landed on flat ground only to rear at the blast of heat. The beast was going nowhere near the blazes of the buildings going up in smoke and ash.
One, two, three, four, five. Five bloody buildings in flames.
Robby flew off his saddle, running to the man holding a torch at the edge of the glade, the one barking orders at the brutes running about the structures of the farm. All the ruffians held torches. Two were arguing in the midst of the buildings with a man and a woman standing and waving their arms about frantically. The skirts of another woman disappeared beyond the corner of the cottage. The man and woman were both dressed well—not farmers.
He didn’t recognize either of them and Mr. Wilson and his family weren’t to be seen.
The whole bloody farm was being cleared.
“Ye be one of Bournestein’s bastards?”
Robby turned back to the brute in front of him, staring down at the man’s ratty eyes crowding a nose that took up half his face. He’d seen so many rats in his day—scroungers for the most vile, revolting jobs—he could identify one a furlong away.
Fury started pulsating across Robby’s forehead. “What blasted idiocy is this—do you know how many barrels of brandy are in the Godforsaken barn? You torch it and there’ll be no salvaging what’s left.”
The rat smirked. “I ‘eard Bournestein was storing here. But I don’t rightly give a donkey’s ass. That’s not my job.” He spit on the ground next to Robby’s feet, a brown slime that hung onto the blades of grass curled by the heat.
Robby looked over his shoulder at the ruffians running from structure to structure, lighting more corners to flames. The dry thatched roofs caught blaze far too easily. The woman arguing in the middle of the buildings spun and sprinted away from the brute arguing with her companion.
Robby looked to the rat. “What’s your name?”
“Molson.” He said it without pause—no fear of any retribution being attached to his name.
“Molson, it’s going to be your blasted worry when Bournestein finds out his latest shipment went to ashes.”
The rat chuckled, his eyes aglow as they watched the flames lick higher. Not just a rat. A sadistic rat. “I answer to a ‘igher authority than Bournestein, boy. This land been needed to be cleared for two years now. If ye knew what was good for ye, ye might try switching loyalties. ”
He looked at Robby, his ratty eyes squinting for a full second before he thrust his torch into Robby’s palm.
Without thinking, Robby grasped the rough wood of the torch to keep it from burning his jacket, yet sparks still splattered onto his arm, singeing tiny holes into the dark wool.
“Ye need to go help the boys—they can’t light this place fast enough fer my liking. I’m sure yer good at torchin’, what with Bournestein’s way of business.”
Robby froze. Molson knew far too much about Bournestein and his business. Or was it that Robby knew too little about who Bournestein was dealing with these days?
Robby had been up in the Highlands too long, shepherding the smuggled shipments of spirits and silk and whatever else Bournestein could make a profit from into the land. Arranging places to hide the bounty as it moved along the countryside. Mr. Wilson’s farm was just one cog in the great wheel of Bournestein’s smuggling operation—an operation that had apparently grossly expanded in the last year if this random brute knew of Bournestein.
Robby looked to the barn again. Flames licked high on the sides of it. This cog would need to be replaced.
But maybe. Maybe he could go in and rescue a few casks.
Just as he sized up the door to the barn—his distance from it and the fire quic
kly eating the walls—the roof of the barn collapsed inward in a brutal, deafening roar. It sent quakes through the air, a rush of heat and embers rushing across his face. He took a step back, his eyes squinting against the searing air.
A clank of steel. And another.
Robby searched through the blast of smoke and embers to find the man that had been arguing with one of the brutes. He spotted the two of them just as the man sent his sword into the ruffian’s gut, slicing him through.
The man yanked his sword free, threw it to the ground, and bolted into the flaming cottage.
Shit.
There were people in there. That was where the two women had disappeared to. That was where Mr. Wilson was. Mrs. Wilson. Their boy.
Robby took a step forward.
An instant clamp on his upper arm dug into his flesh. “I wouldn’t do that, boy.”
Robby jerked his arm free. “There are people in there?”
“Just the halfwits that live here. And those idiots that came to save them.”
Robby looked to the rat. “Save them—what—how many?”
Molson shrugged his shoulders. “Two, three, maybe more. I wasn’t countin’.”
Blast.
Robby started forward.
The barrel of a pistol jutted into his back, jabbing between his spine and shoulder blade. “Yer not to intervene, boy. Not if ye know what’s good fer ye.”
Robby's eyes scanned the smoke and flames searching for anyone moving—anyone exiting the cottage—anyone other than the brutes still setting torches to the buildings. Mr. Wilson or his wife or his boy. Or that man or woman.
Nothing but ashes floating between the buildings. Snapping of wood and timber. Smoke suffocating the ground.
A crack—the screech of a main timber splitting—pierced the air. The end of the cottage’s roof started to collapse inward.
They were in there. All of them. Innocents.
In there and done for.
And he was standing there, doing nothing.
Like a coward.
He hadn’t taken one step to help them.
A coward.
He’d been called it before. It was the one thing that he despised above all others. He fought that word. Fought it until his bones broke. Fought it until he was knocked unconscious.
But once it had been uttered, he could never escape it.
The door of the cottage slammed open and the well-dressed man burst into the clearing in the middle of the buildings in a distorted vision of wild, flailing arms and legs.
A gust of wind cleared the smoke between Robby and the people.
No—not wild—he was carrying a girl and the girl was dragging another girl behind them. The man dropped the girl he was carrying.
No, not girls. Women. Two of them. Neither was Mrs. Wilson.
One of the women was in flames—her skirts lit up. Robbie stepped forward again.
The hand clamped onto his arm yanked him back, the barrel of the pistol jamming deep into his back. “I told ye not to try anything, boy. I'll not tell ye again—yer blood ain’t no bother to me.”
The flames of the torch he still held crackled next to his head and Robby shifted his arm, trying to ease loose of Molson’s grip while ignoring the round barrel of the gun stuck into his back.
Take another step and he was a dead man, depending on how slippery Molson’s trigger finger was.
Dammit to Hades.
The woman writhing on the ground was in flames. Screaming. She needed help.
All of them needed help.
And Molson’s brutes were bearing down upon them, torches in hand, ready to finish the job.
The woman that had just been carried from the cottage jumped onto the skirts of the other girl and tried to dampen the flames. Both of their screams cut through the crackling air as their flesh charred—the agony of it sending wails of unearthly proportions into the air.
The world slowed before Robby, the ash and glowing embers floating through the air pausing, barely moving.
The face of the woman in flames on the ground turned to him, stilling.
A sweet, innocent face contorted into the most tortured agony.
A face he would never forget. Eyes he would never forget. Eyes that pinned him, skewering him with the torture of burning flesh on her legs.
And he couldn't move a muscle. The pistol in his back. The slightest twitch would mean a bullet through his lung.
The man that had just dragged the women out of the cottage turned and ran back into the house.
He was inside for only a second when the roof fully collapsed, sending a deafening roar echoing across the land.
Robby’s look jerked back over his shoulder to Molson. “Tell me Mr. Wilson and his family weren’t in there.”
“They are. Were.” Molson said the words without the slightest bit of remorse.
“You bastard.”
Molson chuckled, the edge of his lip sneering upward. “Ye be looking in the mirror, boy.”
Robby stared at Molson, the horrifying realization settling in.
He was a coward.
A bastard of inaction.
He’d had hundreds of pistols pointed at him over the years, and it’d never stopped him before.
So he was left with this.
He was a coward.
He stepped away from Molson, dropping the torch as he walked in the direction his horse had skittered away to. He didn’t look to his right, didn’t look at the fire, at the women writhing in agony on the ground. Eyes forward, step after step, he left the purgatory of fire and smoke and ash.
He was a coward.
He'd always wanted to be more. But it wasn't to be.
And he'd best come to terms with that fact.
{ Chapter 1 }
Truro, Cornwall, England
June 1825
Torrie moved past the three-story building, her kidskin-gloved hand trailing on the rough of the pitted brick. She ducked between the buildings as men shuffled by in front of her. Tall men. Small men. Lanky men. Portly men.
All of them haggard, dirty. All of them busy, on missions. Hauling goods, pulling rope, dragging livestock.
The putrid smell of fish rotting on the edges of the port hung in the air about her. Or was that the odor from the masses of sailors? So many of them crossing back and forth in front of her it made her head spin.
She leaned to the left, her head bobbing up as far as she could to see further down the wharf.
Buggers. She couldn’t have lost him now. Not in the last crowd that had swept between them, a wave of bedraggled humanity.
She’d followed him all the way from the livery stable by the coaching inn and then down the six streets leading to the waterfront. Followed him without issue, ignoring the leering looks of toothless sailors and the hips thrusting toward her with indecent proposals. And now, she’d looked to her right for one tiny second, taking in the scope of the ships in port, and when she’d looked ahead to find him again, his height easy to spot amongst the sailors, he was gone.
Lost in the masses.
No. The bastard wasn't going to lose her that easily.
Ever since she’d found out he’d been let out of Newgate prison, she’d been tracking him. After traveling north to Northumberland soon after his release, he had veered to the coast and had boarded a ship and disappeared for the last two years.
That ship, the Firehawk, had been elusive to track. She’d heard snippets of sightings of it throughout the years, but never any solid news from her investigator.
So when the Firehawk had finally come into port in London, she should have been ready. Instead, the news came to her too late. The man had disembarked and been in London for two days before traveling directly to Scotland.
Two days.
Two blasted days.
She had been in London—been in the same city as him for as many as two days, and she hadn’t a clue.
That had been her best chance. For by the time word of the Fi
rehawk’s arrival had reached her at her Mayfair townhouse, the bastard had already been on his way to Scotland. To Vinehill castle—to her cousin, Lachlan. To her childhood home.
And then he had moved on to Wolfbridge Castle. To the home of her other cousin, Sloane, and her husband, the Duke of Wolfbridge.
The bastard had gotten off that ship and went directly to her family. Her family.
Yet he never approached them. Never dropped either of them a missive. He just appeared in their vicinities.
It wouldn’t do.
She needed to know exactly what he was about. And why.
The man was a threat. He had been since the day of the fire nine years ago.
And now he had just traveled from one end of England to the other to haunt her family—an action far beyond the pale. She needed to know why. Exactly why.
Quickly moving past another building in the direction he had been walking, Torrie ducked into a lane between two warehouses and leaned her head out carefully so as to not draw attention to herself. She was at the docks—and the docks were no place for a lone woman.
But there was nothing for it. Her maid, Hilde, hadn't been dressed and ready when she had seen the bastard leave the coaching inn where he had gotten a room once he’d arrived in Truro.
Her investigator had tracked him to Cornwall, and he had still been in Truro when she had arrived. She had secured a room for her and Hilde at the coaching inn he stayed at—with the request it was directly above his—and had spent three nights mostly awake, her ears trained to the floor. Wondering in the long dark hours about what he was doing below her. And plotting.
Plotting the thousands of ways she could make him pay.
When she had glanced out of the window this morning and seen him striding away from the coaching inn with a man by his side and a satchel slung over his shoulder, she had reacted and run.
He was leaving.
So she had sprinted down the stairs with no thought as to where she was going or why. She just knew she had to follow him and there hadn’t been time to wait for Hilde.
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