Silence echoed her admission.
‘I cannot pretend to agree with your measure of Stratham, but I am glad of your happiness,’ Devlin finally said.
They looked at one another for a moment.
‘You should go to him.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I should. I will.’
‘I wish you all the best,’ he said and bowed.
Emma pulled up the deep hood of her cloak and, with her identity hidden from any early morning prying eyes, she slipped away from the St James’s town house.
* * *
She did not go home, but went instead to another man’s house in a respectable street not so very far away.
‘Mrs Stratham.’ Rob Finchley received her as uneasily as the last time.
‘Mr Finchley. Ned said I was to come to you, if I had a problem.’
‘How may I be of help?’ He gestured to the red-covered sofas in the neat and tidy drawing room.
But Emma shook her head and stayed where she was.
‘You can tell me where Ned is.’
‘I’ve already told you, Mrs Stratham, I don’t know where he is.’
Silence.
‘You were there that night in Old Moll’s Den.’
‘I was there.’ His expression was cool, his jaw stiff and tight.
‘Ned did not tell me that my brother was a cheat.’
His eyes moved to hers. ‘Who told you?’
‘Devlin let it slip. He thought Ned had already told me.’
‘Ned would never have told you.’
‘I know.’ And she knew, too, why. ‘I love him, Mr Finchley. I want him to come home. So you see why I need to find him.’
An uncomfortable expression crossed Rob Finchley’s face. He looked away.
‘Please, sir. I am begging you. Please tell me where he is.’
Rob Finchley swallowed. She heard him blow out a breath. He raked a hand through his hair before finally meeting her gaze once more; and when it did she saw compassion in his eyes.
‘I really don’t know the answer to your question, Mrs Stratham.’
‘But he must have left a means for you to contact him.’
Rob Finchley shook his head.
She stared at him, feeling her hope shrink and diminish with what she saw in his face.
‘Loving you, knowing who you were...it tore him apart.’
Just as she was tearing apart. She had spoken such cruel words to him. She had let him walk away when he had looked at her for one single word to stay.
‘I have to find him, Mr Finchley.’
‘I wish you luck, truly I do, ma’am. But if Ned doesn’t want to be found, I don’t think that you will find him.’
* * *
Panic was rising in Emma, and cold dread. Back in Ned’s study in Cavendish Square she pulled open every drawer, rummaging through them, emptying the neat piles of legal papers that Mr Kerr had left on to the surface of the desk. There was nothing else there. She opened cupboards and checked the shelves of the library with their blue leather-bound books.
She searched his bedchamber and dressing room, went through the pockets of every tailcoat in his wardrobe. But there was nothing.
She worked her way through his clothes’ chest, through each pair of breeches and every waistcoat folded neatly within, and found not a single clue as to where he might have gone.
She pressed the waistcoat to her nose, inhaling the scent of him. She would not let herself weep, just pressed on with an utter determination to find him.
She moved to the wardrobe. Inside hung the shabby leather jacket and trousers he had worn in Whitechapel. Once they had been brown, now they had faded to a soft silvered birch. She traced her fingers against the jacket, remembering the very first time she had seen him, remembering the first moment those blue, blue eyes had looked into hers and tilted the axis of her world, and made beautiful butterflies flutter in her stomach.
Just as with everything else, the pockets were empty. But these clothes were not like all the others. Because they whispered to her another place she might seek him.
* * *
‘Emma.’ Nancy glanced up from behind the bar of the Red Lion Chop-House. ‘Didn’t expect to see you back here, girl.’ The older woman’s eyes darted over Emma’s fine clothes, over her face, taking it all in in an instant.
The hour was still relatively early. Three diehard regulars sat at a table, eyeing Emma with curiosity. Other than them the place was empty.
There was the sound of the cleaver chopping against the wooden block and Tom’s cheery whistling coming from the kitchen. A new girl was mopping a spill from the floor without enthusiasm.
Paulette wandered over from where she was scraping wax from a table in the corner. ‘All right, Em? Look at you! Ain’t you the fancy lady!’
Emma gave both Paulette and Nancy a hug.
‘I’m looking for Ned Stratham.’
‘All right.’ Nancy raised her brows. ‘You and him still walking out?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘Is it serious?’ asked Paulette.
‘Very,’ said Emma. ‘I need to find him. Urgently.’
She saw Nancy and Paulette exchange a look.
‘Like that, is it?’ Nancy set the cloth she had been wiping the ale taps with down on the counter.
‘Has he been in?’ Emma asked.
‘We’ve had neither sight nor sound of Ned Stratham in months,’ Nancy replied.
‘Since I told him you’d gone for a lady’s maid, he ain’t been back,’ said Paulette.
Emma closed her eyes and took a breath. She knew both women were staring at her. ‘If he does come in...if you see him at all, will you tell him I am looking for him? Will you ask him to come to me?’
‘Does he know where to find you?’ asked Nancy.
‘He knows.’ She paused and then added, ‘Will you tell him that I love him?’
They looked at her with eyes agog and nodded.
* * *
Emma did not go to bed that night. She sat in Ned’s chair in his study. The drawers all still hung open from her earlier frantic search, the legal papers still lay scattered across the desk. She made no effort to tidy them.
All the accusations she had thrown at Ned. All that she had believed of him. When all along her heart had known the truth of him, if only she had listened to it.
Ned had gone because of her and he was not coming back. And she would have to live with that knowledge for the rest of her life.
She had blamed Devlin and Hunter.
She had blamed Ned.
She had blamed Kit.
But when she stripped everything away and looked at the bones of what lay beneath, there was only one person she could blame and that was herself.
She had as good as sent him away; the man whom she loved, the man who had saved her brother’s life and protected her honour. The man who loved her and had given her every last thing that he could.
The knowledge cut deep in her soul. She knew she never would forgive herself.
Her gaze moved over the documents that covered the desk’s surface, documents that made her one of the wealthiest women in the country. She had every material thing. All that her family had lost and far more. And it was all as dust. Because the only thing that mattered was who one loved.
She loved Ned and she had as good as sent him away. He could be anywhere, anywhere in the world. And she did not know how to find him. Rob Finchley’s words echoed through her mind. If Ned doesn’t want to be found, I don’t think you will find him.
On the desk lay the deeds from the house in Berkeley Street that he had bought back for her, the details of manufactories that he had built to give men in the East End work, the returns from the
London Dockyards where he had given her father back his dignity. And the plans for the children’s home in Whitechapel—the most important deal of his life. All the money he had made and all the good he had done with it.
She closed her eyes, but the tears still leaked down her cheeks. She rummaged in her pocket for her handkerchief and as she pulled it out Ned’s lucky token came with it and fell on to the mess of papers on the desk.
She picked the little battered token up, rubbing it between her fingers as she had seen him do so many times. But it would not bring him back, no matter how much she wished.
Emma let it fall from her fingers back down on to the papers.
Her eyes lingered on where it lay, then shifted to the paper beneath—the plans for the children’s home. She looked a little closer. Moved the token aside and opened out the folded paper to reveal the plan in full.
It was a technical drawing, detailed and carefully executed by a draftsman. It showed what the building would look like when finished. It showed the layout of the rooms and corridors and their scaled dimensions. It showed the playgrounds and the gardens—and the note for the planting to contain violets. It showed, too, the precise location in Whitechapel where it was to be built.
I grew up here. It reminds me of my childhood. The words he had spoken on a summer morning echoed in her mind. Now she understood what he had told her in a way she had not at the time.
A hand squeezed around Emma’s heart. The tears flowed all the more down her cheeks as the tiny spark of hope kindled in the dark despair of her soul. She did not fan it. Dared not allow herself to hope too much. But the beat of her heart was strong and in her bones was a knowledge that she was afraid to admit. That she knew where he was. That she should always have known. For where else did a man go other than the only place he felt his home?
He had told her with his own lips and she knew now, in truth, that Ned Stratham was a man who had never lied to her.
She lifted the gaming token and pressed a kiss to it. Then she slipped it in her pocket and went to ready herself.
* * *
The morning bell sounded from the distant view. From his stone bench Ned watched the men moving about like ants in the dockyard below. The sky was a clear blue, the sun warming something of the autumn chill from the air. Overhead the leaves hung like red-and-gold pennants fluttering in the breeze.
He heard the carriage before he saw it. There were not many fine town coaches in this part of London. He recognised it before it came to a halt at the end of the road. Knew that she had come before the footman opened the door and she climbed down.
Emma stood there for a moment and looked at him. Just as she had done on that summer’s morning. She even wore the same sprig muslin and shawl she had worn then, the same faded straw bonnet trimmed with the matching ribbon. The sight of her squeezed tight at his heart. Made him think that she was a vision and this was a dream.
He got to his feet. Stood there. Everything else around him faded to nothing. There was only Emma.
She walked towards him, never taking her eyes from his, and he could not look away even had he wanted to.
She walked and everything seemed to slow and quiet so that all he could hear was the beat of his own heart.
She walked right up to him. Stood there two feet before him. Her soft brown eyes striped golden in the dappled light of the sun.
‘You found me,’ he said.
Her mouth did not smile, but her eyes...her eyes held things he dared not hope for. ‘I would have searched a lifetime to find you, Ned Stratham.’
He swallowed.
She moved to the bench, sat down next to where he had sat.
He resumed his seat by her side.
‘The old vinegar manufactory.’ She looked across the road to the tumbling derelict walls. ‘It was where you lived as a boy, when you ran away from the Foundling Hospital to come back here to Whitechapel, was it not?’
‘It was,’ he admitted.
‘And it is the site of the children’s home you are funding and organising.’
‘There are too many homeless children in Whitechapel.’
‘There are.’
They sat in silence for a little while, looking out over the scene.
A gentle breeze blew, rustling the leaves above their heads. From the dockyard came the sounds of hammering and the creaking of cranes and the sound of men at work.
‘You should have told me about Kit, Ned. That he cheated that night.’
‘You love your brother. I did not want to hurt you. I would have given anything that you were any other woman than Kit Northcote’s sister.’
‘I would not.’
He looked at her. ‘I took his money. I bankrupted his family. I sent you to a life of poverty and hardship, while I pretended to be a gentleman.’
‘You saved his life. We both know what happens to men who cheat at the card tables in Whitechapel.’
He did not deny it.
‘And as for pretending to be a gentleman... My father told me that what makes a man a gentleman is not his birth or right, not his money or wealth or abode, but the way he lives his life. And you, Ned Stratham, are more of a gentleman than any other man I know.’
He looked into her eyes. Felt her hand move to cover his where it lay upon the stone bench between them. He took her hand, entwined their fingers together.
‘I regret my cruel words to you, Ned. I never meant for you to go, but my foolish pride would not let me tell you. I came here to ask your forgiveness.’
He stared at her in amazement. ‘I am the one who should be down on my knees begging before you.’
‘My brother made the decision to go to Old Moll’s. He made the decision to cheat. My family suffered because of the decisions he made that night, not yours. And we would have chosen the same path a hundred times over to save Kit’s life.’
He could feel the pulse of her blood where their hands held, feel the warmth of this woman whom he loved so much.
‘I love you, Ned. Please come home.’
He reached a hand to cradle the softness of her cheek. ‘I love you, Emma Stratham.’ He slid his hand beneath her bonnet to the nape of her neck and his mouth moved to hers and he kissed her, sitting there on the quiet stone bench beneath the flaming spread of the old beech trees.
He kissed her with all the love that was in his heart. And then he scooped her up into his arms and he carried her down the road to the waiting carriage.
* * *
Later, when day had faded to night and the moon glowed like a giant opal in the sky, Emma and Ned made love with a tenderness and understanding beyond anything else. And afterwards as the moon bathed them in its soft silver light Emma lay in the warm protection of her husband’s arms, her face resting upon his chest, listening to the strong steady beat of his heart.
He stroked her hair and kissed the top of her head.
‘How did you know where to find me today?’ he asked.
She reached her arm across to the bedside cabinet, felt with her fingers until they closed upon the small battered token. As he watched she looked up into his eyes and pressed it to her lips. ‘Just a lucky guess,’ she said and tossed the token to spin in the air above them.
Ned reached up and caught it.
‘With maybe a little help from destiny,’ she added.
They laughed together.
And then they kissed, and showed each other how very much they loved one another all over again.
* * * * *
If you enjoyed this story,
look out for Kit Northcote’s,
coming soon!
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ISBN-13: 9781460338926
The Gentleman Rogue
Copyright © 2014 by Margaret McPhee
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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