A Rogue About Town (London League, Book 2)

by Rebecca Connolly

  Amelia brushed off her skirts, the burning in her eyes intensifying. “I hate you,” she hissed.

  “That’s all right,” Rogue replied, putting a surprisingly gentle hand on her back and pushing her forward. “I’ll get over it.”

  If he hadn’t sounded so unaffected by it, she wouldn’t have laughed. She’d have been well enough off with a callous “I hate you, too,” or a “Thank you”. Even a blunt “I know,” would have been safe. But the complete lack of concern or emotion was unexpected, and laugh she did.

  It gave her a little satisfaction to see Rogue looking at her as if she had taken leave of her senses, despite wondering what he must think of her. There was something to be said for taking people by surprise and finding new ways to do so.

  “Are you done?” Rogue asked mildly when her laughter subsided.

  She nodded, placing a hand on her chest. “Forgive me.”

  “For laughing?” He snorted. “If that requires forgiveness, the entire world is damned to hell.”

  Amelia smiled a little at him, then took in the sight of the house again. “I don’t want to be here, Rogue.”

  He exhaled noisily beside her, clasping his hands behind his back as he walked. “And if we cared about what you want in this venture, that would be taken into consideration. As it is, here we are.”

  She gave him a rough scowl, even though she appreciated his response. It was oddly comforting to have him return to his usual nature. She knew how to combat this version of him.

  “Then explain to me why I must endure this,” she muttered stubbornly. “What can we possibly gain from a place that I have not lived in for close to fifteen years?”

  “Can you think of anything but your own discomfort right now?” he asked in return, stepping around a puddle and finding the almost indistinguishable stone path.

  Amelia growled and followed, shaking her head. “Why are you answering my question with a question?”

  He looked over his shoulder at her. “Why are you?”

  There were not enough obscenities in existence to adequately bombard him with, but she ran through all the ones she knew in her mind, and when she had exhausted her list, she felt marginally better.

  Rogue pushed open the rickety door and stepped into the dim and dusty building, coughing a little as he did so.

  Amelia hung back, looking into the cottage but keeping her feet firmly planted on the path outside. She glanced at the ground beneath her, images of a small girl sitting just there with her dolls flashing through her mind.

  And that bush, now wild and taking over the place, used to be a perfect hiding spot.

  And there, she had buried treasures beneath the front window just behind her mother’s flowers.

  “Amelia.”

  She looked up and into the cottage again. Rogue stood in the middle of the room, hands on his hips, tilting his head at her.

  “What?” she eventually said after several swallows.

  He took two steps in her direction, his mouth twisting in thought. “I need you to get out of yourself right now. I realize this is difficult, but we need answers, and this place could give them to us. Can you set aside your personal feelings and investigate with me?”

  She pressed her tongue to her teeth hard, thinking over his words. Then she wet her lips and said, “Are you saying you need my help to do your job?”

  Rogue smirked a little and folded his arms. “Not at all. I need you to get into the small and dusty places that I am too delicate to venture into. And if we stay too long, this drafty place is going to give me a cold, and I am rather peevish when ill.”

  She nodded soberly, wrapping the borrowed shawl around her tightly, despite the warmth of the morning. “I can only imagine. Well, I do aim to be of service. Where would you like me to begin crawling?”

  For some inexplicable reason, his almost smile nearly set her to tears. “Over there,” he indicated with a faint flick of his hand. “You should be able to find all sorts of cobwebs and dust and dead insects in that area.”

  Amelia snorted, took a short breath, and stepped into the cottage purposefully, striding over to her assigned portion without thinking about it. “For heaven’s sake, Rogue, I’m not a dog.”

  “Of course not. Dogs are pleasant.”

  “Clearly you have been associating with the wrong sorts of dogs.”

  “I have never met a dog I do not like.”

  “As I said…”

  “Dogs also do not talk.”

  Amelia glanced over at him as he ventured into another room, shaking her head. “They do talk,” she said to herself. “You just don’t know what they are saying, you dolt.”

  “Don’t talk to yourself,” Rogue called from wherever he was. “I refuse to work with a madwoman.”

  She sighed as she walked around the tiny kitchen, everything encased in dust, but just as they had left it fifteen years before. “At least you’re admitting that you work with me, now!” she called back, her voice wavering as she spotted an old apron.

  She picked it up and shook it out, wincing and sneezing as the dust flew everywhere.

  “Against my will, I can assure you!” he responded, more faintly than before to her ears.

  The apron was filled with holes, faded and filthy with age and neglect, but she could still see it around her mother’s waist, sprinkled with the same flour that would also be on the floor. Her mother had never been particularly skilled in the kitchen, and never clean about it.

  Amelia shook her head, forcing the memories and emotions back. She wadded up the apron and tossed it into the corner. She needed to focus, not dwell where she ought not. There wasn’t time for this.

  “Did you fall into a hole?” Rogue bellowed. “I haven’t heard you say anything in minutes.”

  She closed her eyes with a weak smile. “No, just waiting for something intelligent to respond to!”

  There was nothing else to find in the kitchen, and she dared not venture into the bedrooms, where memory would be strongest, so she turned her attention to the parlor. It had always been shabby, and time, not to mention the roof falling in, had only highlighted that.

  “Was your mother always this terrible at keeping house, or only for special occasions?”

  Amelia threw a hard look towards the sound of Rogue’s voice. “I’d hate to see what the state of your home would look like after fifteen years of neglect.”

  “My home has had twenty-five years of neglect, thank you very much,” came the response from the bedrooms. “It still has a roof that functions as such. And I cannot write my name in the dust on furniture there.”

  She frowned and exhaled shortly through her nose. “Well, if you had the ability to write your name at all, perhaps you could!”

  She might have imagined it, but she thought she heard him chuckle, which surely had to be impossible.

  A worn chest to one side of the room caught her eye, and she went to it, sinking to the stained and warped floors. The lid lifted easily, and the contents within were relatively clean and dust free, considering the disastrous state of the exterior. There was a shawl that Amelia couldn’t place, some mending that had never been finished, and stacks of old letters.

  She picked up the letters and found them to be mostly business-related, and the signature was impossible to make out. No help there, but perhaps Rogue would find them useful anyway.

  Setting them aside, she went back to the chest, ignoring laundry lists, mercantile orders from the village, and sketches of various household articles. She had forgotten that her mother had tried to improve her artistic talents. They had been poor to begin with and had only gotten worse with practice. Even as a child, Amelia had been able to see that. She pulled all the papers out and set them aside, wondering just what Rogue would find useful in all of this.

  At the bottom of the chest lay a stack of books, all bound in the same black cloth, and well worn. Amelia reached for the top two and flipped one open, then gasped.

  It was her mothe
r’s handwriting. Pages and pages of it, detailing her activities and her thoughts from day to day, and even cataloguing Amelia’s accomplishments in childhood. The date at the top of the page dated this one as being when Amelia was four, and she had just informed her mother that she wished to dance so she might be as pretty and talented as the blacksmith’s daughters.

  Amelia had no memory of any of the people in this village, save for the landowner who had forced them out.

  Dancing? She blanched at the thought. She certainly had learned to dance since then, but hardly for entertainment. It was a matter of survival and finding out information, all in the pursuit of answers to the questions in her life.

  She turned a few more pages in the journal and found a new entry.

  “Dearest love,” she read aloud, frowning. Why would her mother begin an entry in such a way?

  “Did you say something, Amelia?” Rogue called from somewhere behind her.

  “Not to you!” she responded, her face flushing. Imagine if he’d heard her! She returned to the book and turned to more entries, finding them all addressed to “my love” or “dearest love” or something of the sort.

  She put that volume aside and took the other, opening it and scanning quickly. More of the same headings to each entry, and there was an entry for nearly every day. Inside the chest, there were at least six more volumes, and Amelia pulled them all out and into her lap, staring at them.

  Her mother had been writing to the same man Amelia had been seeking. Her father. These journals were for him, letters detailing the parts of his life that he was not witnessing.

  What sort of answers and memories would lie within them?

  For the first time in her life, Amelia wasn’t sure this was what she wanted at all.

  “What did you find?”

  She spun in her place, gasping a little.

  Rogue raised a questioning brow. “You forgot I was here? I’ve been bellowing at you all afternoon, so either you are losing your hearing, or your mental status is far more deteriorated than I expected.”

  Amelia couldn’t manage a quip in response and handed one of the journals to him. He took it gingerly and flipped it open. His eyes widened as he scanned a page, then turned it over to the next.

  “Journals,” he said unnecessarily.

  She nodded. “I had no idea she kept them. I expect she wrote them when I was not about.”

  “Or she did, and you didn’t notice.” He shrugged and handed it back to her. “You were a child, you can hardly expect to remember every detail.”

  Amelia caressed the cover, chewing the inside of her cheek. “But I’ve been over my past several dozen times. It feels like something I ought to have known.”

  “Well,” Rogue sighed, picking up the stack, “perhaps you were hopelessly dim-witted and easily distracted. It is not much of a stretch.”

  She looked up at him, then grabbed a nearby shard of fallen roof and rapped him sharply across the shins, the wood snapping against the leather of his boots.

  He jumped back with a grunt, squinting at her even as his mouth quirked. “Down, girl. Don’t you want to see what I found?”

  “That is a rather difficult question to answer,” Amelia muttered. “Do I? I can hardly say.”

  Rogue snorted and handed her a small doll made of cloth, missing an eye, and somehow dirtier than the rest of the cottage.

  Amelia stared at the toy, her fingers grazing the fabric with familiarity. “Dolly,” she whispered.

  “Oh, that’s original,” Rogue teased, his tone oddly without scorn.

  She smiled at her forgotten friend. “I took her everywhere. Buried her as a treasure more times than I can recall.”

  “I can see that, yes.”

  Amelia shook her head and tucked Dolly into the pocket of her gown, then looked around the room. “Why is this place exactly as we left it?”

  “You left it with a gaping hole in the ceiling? Not very considerate of you, I doubt anyone wanted it in that condition.”

  She gave him a would-be patient look, and he scratched the back of his neck.

  “Not sure,” he admitted. “If it was seized, by rights the landowner could have taken another tenant. My man is checking with him while we are here, so we should have answers soon. It does seem a bit odd, doesn’t it?”

  Amelia nodded, picking herself up off the floor. “The village is not a prosperous one. Perhaps he could not find anyone who wished to take it.”

  Rogue shook his head in thought. “There are always those who are looking for a place like this, especially if the owner is in a bargaining mood.” He shrugged again and pulled an old book from the back of his trousers. “Here, this was in the bedroom. The only book here, I’m afraid.”

  “We didn’t have many.” She opened it and smiled at the ink splotches inside the cover. “I tried to write my own story in this one. Mother was not at all pleased.”

  “Please tell me you were walloped.”

  She chuckled and adjusted her hold on the book, whose spine was falling apart. “I believe I was, but not very forcefully.”

  “Which explains your lack of stamina and discipline.” He shook his head with a frown. “No wonder you are so unruly.”

  “One more word out of you, Rogue,” she said as menacingly as she could while smiling. But the threat went unfinished as she found a corner of the paper inside the cover to be loose. That could merely indicate a poor attempt at rebinding… But why? She pulled it back gently and found another beneath.

  It was inscribed.

  “Rogue…” Amelia breathed, holding it out for him to see, though he had stepped closer as soon as he had seen her pull the paper.

  Mary Clairbourne.

  “Does that name mean anything to you?” he asked, all teasing and lightness gone.

  Amelia shook her head slowly, her heart sinking into her stomach. “No, not a thing. I don’t know anything about this.” She swallowed harshly, her throat tight. “But that is my mother’s handwriting.” She looked up at him, hardly able to breathe. “What does this mean?”

  He did not speak for a long moment. “It means, Amelia,” Rogue said slowly, seeming to choose his words with care, “that we have more questions, and more chance for answers, some of which you may not like, and all of which you will be unprepared for. This is no longer straightforward and simple, and everything we know is now useless. I am willing to keep going, to pursue this to the end, as promised, no matter how convoluted this past of yours is. The question is do you still want to know everything?”

  His look was penetrating and intense, and Amelia suddenly had the sense that he was asking a more profound question than what it seemed. There was an energy to him now that was missing before, and she could now see exactly why he was rumored to be so skilled. He was focused and determined and ready to proceed down a now-wildly unknown path if she was.

  “Are you asking in sincerity or as a courtesy?” she asked quietly, her voice unsteady.

  “Amelia…”

  He’d never said her name like that. It sent a ripple down her spine with its firmness, its low timbre feeling like a caress despite the serious nature its speaker had. He was not mocking her or teasing her, he was not derogatory or spiteful. This was Rogue in all his sincerity.

  And suddenly his name suited him.

  “Yes,” she replied, trying to make her voice as firm as his had been. “Yes, I want to know everything.”

  Chapter Nine

  Gabe’s mind was whirling with the new revelations as they arrived back in London that evening. He and Amelia had talked almost nonstop on the trip back, exchanging theories and concocting strategies, and he found her insight to be both intelligent and astute. She would have made an excellent spy if she recognized authority at all, and if she weren’t so reckless.

  Then again, he was as reckless as they came. And he was a damned fine spy if he did say so himself.

  He didn’t like the way Amelia’s face had looked when they walked up to the
cottage. She was a vibrant woman, even if she did plague him to death, and no one should have looked so stricken. He’d known it was going to be a struggle for her, but nothing could have prepared him for that.

  Gabe wasn’t usually affected by the emotions and expressions of women, but this time he could not ignore it. He’d done his best to taunt her out of her mood, raise her ire so she would be distracted from memories, and he thought he’d done a decent enough job. She’d given him some biting quips in return, some of which he was rather impressed with, and the hollow look eventually faded into a mild discomfort. Until they’d found the secret of the book, she’d been doing quite well.

  Why that should have satisfied him, why his ability to investigate suddenly hinged on her emotional stability, he was afraid to identify. But he knew himself well enough to not even attempt to deny that was exactly what the stakes had been. He could not have done anything had she been morose and haunted, or, heaven forbid, if she had shed tears.

  He hated tears. There were many things about women that he detested, vocally and privately, and many typical feminine qualities that annoyed the sense out of him. Above everything and anything, tears were the worst. But if Amelia had shed them…

  For some reason that would have been significant.

  It was another reason he had kept her talking the entire ride back and had spent more money than he’d meant to on food for the return trip to London.

  He needed the distraction now.

  And it was leaving him feeling shaken.

  Amelia was still rambling on about something to do with the village that she had remembered, as she had been doing for a while. It seemed that setting foot in her childhood home had unlocked stored-away memories, and he had stopped listening ages ago. They were almost back to the offices, and he needed her gone while he processed everything.

  “Did you want to take the chest with you, or should I keep it?” he asked, interrupting some tale about a dog and a blacksmith.

  She stopped and looked at him, her brow furrowed. “You are… asking me?”

  “Yes…” he drawled slowly, starting to feel hesitation creeping in. “The chest belongs to you, so it only follows to ask what you wish to do with it.”