Unmistakable Rogue

by Annette Blair

  Luke’s machine landed on the dormer above Reed, nose down and wing torn.

  The boy would have broken his neck. As if to prove Reed’s theory, the wind picked up the bloody machine and tossed it into a downward spiral. Judging from the sound, it must have hit ground and splintered on impact.

  Luke wailed and bemoaned its fate.

  “Lucky that wasn’t you!” Reed shouted as he climbed, desperate to reach them before the boy’s arms gave out. “You’ll be lucky you’re not in as many pieces when I’m done with you.”

  If he did not remain furious, Reed would remember how much he hated heights. He wished he’d never told Luke about DaVinci’s flying machines. And Chastity. If she got hurt— Reed took a deeper breath as he neared the dormer that temporarily held the flying machine. Closing the distance between him and Chastity, he knew it would only be a bit further to Luke. If he got a good foothold, he could grab Chastity by the waist and raise her enough to get her safe inside.

  He’d appreciated the vine he hauled himself up on, until it tore free of its limestone anchor and dropped him.

  He fell half the length of it, clinging for dear life, until it brought him up short so fast, his bones rattled. The screams, Chastity’s and Bekah’s, that accompanied his descent, stopped as well.

  His injured side flamed as he pulled himself back up the vine. A jagged piece of stone cut his cheek. Blood, dripping warm along his neck, helped him identify the sensation in his side. He had opened his wound.

  After what seemed like an eternity, he joined Chastity, teetering on her perch, aimed her toward the window, and gave her bottom a shove to get her through it.

  “Reed Gilbride!”

  “No time, woman. Get the hell inside.”

  Luke giggle had lost its punch.

  “You’re next, Luke. Stay put for one more second. Thanks for holding Chastity,” he added, to distract the boy. He’d beat him later.

  He had to climb farther than he thought to Luke’s perch, and then he could barely reach him. Reed’s side was killing him, and he was running out of strength, but he needed to see Luke safe.

  Chastity stood at the window, thanking him for saving Luke, and by God he would not let her down.

  With a last burst of strength, he pulled himself up to Luke, and his side tore the more. He groaned with pain, surprising them all when he grabbed the boy and shoved him through the window in one swift, ungainly move.

  When they were all three safe inside, Reed looked out the window, down at the others, far below them on the ground, and the world took to spinning. His buckling knees set him on the floor with a decided thud.

  He stayed in that spinning place, head against the wall, trembling like a child, his side throbbing, him fit to pass out or throw up.

  “Reed?”

  He could not open his eyes.

  “Reed, what are you doing?”

  He could not, because he had to keep his breakfast down. He took two deep breaths. “Just wondering who to beat first.”

  “Oh.”

  Luke’s sobs penetrated his fog; the boy must be feeling better. He heard what was going on around him. Chastity consoled him with words, and Reed didn’t need to look to know she held him as he cried.

  Fear had nearly stopped his heart, and now it was past, he found he was angry and proud of them. Luke bore a thirst for knowledge that rivaled his own—except Luke’s was open and joyful. Reed hated to discourage him. Chastity loved so well, she would risk her neck, without question, for any of them. What child could want for more?

  He did not know which reaction to their foolhardy bravado bothered him most. His rage at their stupidity? Or his raw terror that one or both might have been killed.

  He opened his eyes to find them watching and fought an urge to take them over his knee, though he did not have the strength. More shocking: the need to pull them close, and keep them safe, forever.

  Forever? He’d worry about that, later. He hurt too much right now. He touched his face and his hand came away bloody. Then he touched his side and found it worse.

  He looked at Luke and Chastity. “I’m a bloody mess.” Then his breakfast made a return appearance.

  When Chastity urged him to lie on the floor, he appreciated closing his eyes, again.

  She unbuttoned his shirt. “Luke, get a wet towel, soap and bandages.” Her orders slowed his sobs, the sound of him running quieted to silence.

  Eyes closed, stomach calming, Reed let Chastity minister to him.

  “You’ll be fine,” she said, wiping his face with his shirt. He enjoyed her attention, especially her hands running over him to find his injuries. He considered sending her on a mock search, but he was too sick to play doctor.

  He started to chuckle at that but he hurt too much to laugh.

  When Chastity’s hands left him for too long, he opened his eyes to see her toss his shirt out the window. If his head were not so badly spinning, he would tease her about her foray down his body.

  Tear streaks shown on Luke’s face when he returned. He should reprimand the boy, but he did not have it in him. He still felt might pass out, though it mattered little, with him flat on his back. Chastity tended his wounds, bathed his brow and side, and applied bandages.

  “You’re a good nurse,” he said.

  Luke sat cross-legged beside him, wiping Reed’s face with a wet cloth, his tears still hovering. Reed guessed guilt was enough. Silence often said more than words.

  After his dizziness passed, he took it slowly down the stairs, almost on his own.

  “Thea, wait until you hear about the exciting adventure we just had,” Matt said as he entered the kitchen.

  He stepped forward so fast, Matt backed up, and he damned near blacked out. “It was not exciting!” Reed snapped. “But frightening. Dangerous.”

  Reed turned to Luke. “You climbed out a window to fly a machine made of twigs and put others in danger.” But Luke was too young to carry the guilt of knowing they might have been killed. “Enough said. It is finished. We will not speak of it, again. The next time you want to build something from DaVinci’s drawings, we’ll do it together. Is that understood?”

  Luke tried to look contrite. “Yes, sir.”

  Reed grimaced. Probably a bad time offer a boon.

  “Sounds frightening,” Thea said.

  “I saw you in the other window,” Matt said, “trying to pull Reed up by that vine.” He turned to Reed. “That was when it broke loose, and you fell.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Thea blushed crimson. “Trying to do my ... part. No thanks necessary.”

  “Nevertheless, we thank you,” Chastity said, with less gratitude than Reed would have expected.

  “What do you know, Thea?” Reed asked. “About the tower you can see from outside? I seem to remember one of the locals mentioning it.”

  Thea’s eyes fairly danced with excitement. Seeming to forget her place, she sat at the table with him. “You’ve heard the stories, then, of the ghost searching for her missing babes. That’s the tower where the woman Edward was forced to marry gave birth. Twins, my brother said. He prayed that night at her bedside.”

  The children were entranced, Reed saw. Chastity’s look said she remembered Thea’s set-down yesterday, but gossip or not, Reed needed to learn all he could about the St. Yves family and their offspring. “I saw no tower when I explored the house,” he said. “Today, I walked the outside perimeter. How do we get to it from in here?”

  Thea rose awkwardly. “You cannot. Edward had the entrance bricked up the day they buried that woman.”

  Chastity’s brow furrowed in confusion. “What woman?”

  “The one he was forced to marry.”

  “That he was forced seems important to you.”

  When Thea’s eyes narrowed on Chastity, Reed got the impression of having met her, before.

  “Edward loved elsewhere,” she said, “but he had no choice in his wife.”

  Though Chastity seemed less tha
n sympathetic, she shook her head. “How sad. Who did he love?”

  Thea nearly dropped a teacup, and she turned her back on Chastity—no doubt about it—to give him her full attention. “On the fourth floor of the east wing,” she said very softly, as if others should not hear. “At the far end of the hall, hidden by a window curtain, you will find a brick wall. “The stairs to the tower is behind it. If you pull it down, I will be pleased to take you up to the tower, but it would be best if we go alone.”

  Reed thanked Thea, and to try and smooth Chastity’s ruffled feathers, he herded her and the children from the kitchen.

  Chastity ranted all the way up the stairs, but Reed received the sharp edge of her tongue. “I do not appreciate the way she looks at you, as if you are a prime bit of roast and might be her first meal in years.”

  Reed chuckled.

  “Laugh if you will. That I care naught for her is of no importance, but it worries me that the children do not.”

  “I have to agree with you, there. But we must give her a chance. If she leaves, Sennett will send me away faster than you can replace me.”

  Chastity sighed. “I suppose.”

  Seeing the children far ahead of them, Reed took Chastity’s arm. “Tell me I’m irreplaceable.” He crossed her lips with a finger when she made to protest. “Do you know how worried I was about you today?” If words could describe his fear, Reed did not know them, so he kissed her, as if she were made of porcelain, never to be replaced if broken or lost.

  He’d wanted her from the first, but his need had turned reckless, like longing run amok. Physical desire, he understood, but worry that marched with panic ... that gave him pause.

  Nevertheless, Reed deepened the kiss to meet his desire, in so many ways. He kissed her until he burned. Then in self-preservation, he pulled away, and Chastity’s smile said he succeeded with the kiss where his words had not.

  It was enough. It was frightening.

  Their time could run out, he reminded himself. And once they parted, he would probably see that his desire for the vixen had overshadowed his common sense, yet when he looked into her eyes ... time seemed to stand still.

  He kissed her, again, harder, longer, almost forgetting the world around them.

  On the landing above them, four small matchmakers cheered, and he broke the kiss, and shook his head. “Time to find my heritage.”

  Chastity relived Reed’s kisses in her mind. They made her feel ... cherished, a new and wondrous experience.

  “Over here,” Luke said. “The bricks behind this curtain are different. I been wondering about them for weeks.”

  Reed shook his head. “Right, you were hanging off the roof when I asked your brothers about the tower.” In moving the curtain, the fabric turned to dust and revealed a wall ravaged by neglect and shoddy craftsmanship. Reed removed pieces of crumbling mortar and loose bricks with his hands. He peered inside and whistled. “I’m going to see what the farm sheds will give up, in the way of tools,” he said. “Boys, follow me.”

  It did not surprise Chastity at all, that they did, without question.

  Taking down the wall took hours. Reed’s wound slowed his pace. He loosened mortar while the boys removed and stacked bricks. Chastity and Bekah swept. The boys wanted to squeeze through the minute the opening was large enough, but Reed ordered every brick removed first, so none could fall on them, later. The boys’ moans were laughable when Reed called a halt for lunch, just when they were free to ascend the old stairs.

  With a hearty laugh at his joke, he relented and insisted on going first.

  Her heart beating doubly fast, Chastity realized she wanted Reed to discover his heritage, to have Sunnyledge, if it belonged to him, even if that meant she and the children must find another place for their home.

  Guided by slits of daylight and Reed’s single candle, Chastity took Bekah’s hand and followed him and the boys up the tower’s circular stairs, one worn stone step after another, a cold draft swirling about them. Damp and dust made breathing difficult.

  Reed spoke of ghosts and frights, and the boys ate it up, but the higher they climbed, the more silent they became. They found another curtain hung at the top, and Chastity feared another wall, but behind it, they found a door that opened on screaming hinges.

  Candlelight caught rats skittering from nests in a four-poster, and cradle, scurrying through holes gnawed between walls and floor.

  Chastity screamed and Bekah clambered into Reed’s arms so fast, Chastity didn’t know how he caught her and kept his candle. Matt flanked Reed and took Bekah’s hand. Mark and Luke closed in, nearly knocking Chastity over, but truth to tell, she felt safer with them around her.

  The dank in the stairs was nothing to the stench in the room. Dark stains on what remained of rotted bed linens suggested blood. A wooden cradle told its own story. The grotesque childbed death scene revealed so much, yet nothing at all. No sign of Reed’s past.

  Matt shivered and startled them all.

  Bekah screeched and Luke laughed.

  “You alright Poppet?” Reed kissed Bekah’s cheek.

  She hid her face in his neck.

  Matt took a bible from the bed-table. “To Lady Clarissa St. Yves born this day,” He looked from Chastity to Reed. “It doesn’t have names and dates like Mum’s bible. It just says ‘baby boy, born dead,’ and, ‘baby boy, born dead’ again. Why is it written twice?

  “Two baby boys died,” Luke said. “This is where the Sunnyledge ghost lives, memba the woman searching for her missing babes? The lady in the village said so.”

  “No such thing as ghosts,” Mark said.

  “No!” Bekah said.

  Reed regarded the room deep in thought. “Why would a wife be relegated to a tower in an abandoned wing to give birth?”

  “Hate, punishment, revenge,” Chastity said. “Bricking it up might have been an attempt to deny loss, pain, regret, or memories, good or bad. Who can say so many years later?”

  The event purported to have taken place in this room seemed to stun Reed as much as it did Chastity, but in him there seemed to dwell anger. He might have been born, here, except the bible said the boys died. “What was the date?” Chastity asked, but Matt only shrugged. “Doesn’t say.”

  “She might have been locked up here and had no choice about what happened to her children,” Reed said to no one in particular.

  Chastity placed a gentle hand on his arm. “This might not be where you were born. She might not have been your mother.” Two babies, two notes, Chastity thought, except that Reed and William looked nothing alike.

  Reed’s eyes turned hard. “Right, though it appears as if someone was born, or died, in that bed. Somehow I—” He shook his head. “Foolishness. Let’s go down.”

  “Good!” Bekah said.

  Reed shivered. “Nothing about anyone’s heritage, here. Wait.” He handed Bekah to Chastity and with distaste, pulled what must once have been a baby blanket from the cradle, tossing a hair nest in the process, and then he turned the cradle over. “Nothing.” When he started pulling away what was left of the four-poster’s mattress, the boys scuttled out the door almost knocking each other over in the process. Bekah squealed and hid her face against Chastity.

  The boys’ echoing steps on the stairs ended with a bloodcurdling scream.

  “We’re all right,” Matt yelled up. “We just scared Thea in the stairs.”

  The call of reassurance echoed and stopped Reed’s rush to the door. “Anybody hurt?”

  “Nobody. Thea went back down and we’re going, too.”

  “Stay out of trouble,” Reed said, but no one answered. He turned back to the room, took the bible and snapped it shut. “Let’s get the devil out of here. As far as I’m concerned, this place can be bricked up again.”

  Chastity tried to console him, but he became distant, though he took Bekah when she reached for him.

  Chastity wanted to help him deal with his disappointment, but for the rest of the day, little che
ered him.

  At bedtime, Bekah coaxed a few smiles from him, before the children fell asleep, though ‘twas a wonder they did not all have nightmares.

  Chastity could not sleep for the sound of Reed pacing next door.

  In his room, Reed called himself ten-times an idiot, grieving for a woman not like to be his mother. He needed—wanted—to speak to Chastity, like a friend.

  Is that what they were? Friends?

  Yes. He sighed. Friends, but sometimes, like now, they seemed more, much more.

  As if she sensed his anguish, the door between their rooms opened and she stepped inside, wearing the violet silk dressing gown—over the modest cotton gown, he now knew buttoned up to her neck. Still and all, he found her captivating, and desirable.

  “Do you not wonder,” she said, leaning against the door frame, crossing her arms over her breasts, too late to hide their pouting anticipation, “how the rumor of the woman searching for her missing babes began? I remembered just now that the villager I spoke to the night we arrived said, ‘their wee bodies were never buried.’”

  Reed sighed, feeling as if a weight had been lifted. “I knew I needed only to talk to you. That’s the most uplifting statement I have heard since Bekah ordered me to spank Luke for teasing her.”

  Still grinning, Reed locked the door to the hall, took Chastity by the shoulders to move her aside, and locked the door between their bedchambers as well. “There, that’s better,” he said, leading her by the hand to his bed.

  Watching her eyes widen, he unfastened her violet sash and slid her dressing gown off her shoulders. Then he tugged on the ribbon at the neck of her nightshift.

  Her hand covered his. “What are you doing?”

  “Trying to make you more comfortable?”

  She took such a deep breath, her breasts pushed against the linen of her gown, reminding Reed of when he was ill. He had not been delirious, he now realized, because he knew exactly how her breast felt swelling against his hand, the nubbin taut and proud. And he remembered the look in her eyes when it did.