by Lauren Smith
“Charles! I want a private word with you immediately.” The Duchess of Essex tapped her foot and pointed to the door. Charles rose from his chair, and the others at the table looked away in various directions. No one would save him from Emily’s wrath, it seemed. Cowards.
He shouldn’t have challenged Anne. He realized his mistake now. But if Emily was going to lecture him, he’d not make it easy for her.
“Today, if you please,” Emily commanded.
With an exaggerated sigh, Charles followed her into the hallway, where she turned and punched him in the chest with a little balled fist. She moved to strike him again, but Charles blocked the blow with his forearm, acting so instinctively that he didn’t even realize he’d moved. The pugilist in him always managed to rise to the surface, it seemed. He grabbed her delicate wrist before she could assault him a third time. He was so annoyed that she’d resorted to striking him that he kept her wrist locked in his grasp.
“What is it that has upset you, m’dear?” He tried to sound patient, but his voice was low in warning.
“You! Your behavior! How dare you say such things to Anne? She is my friend, and you are a guest in this household. I will not tolerate you threatening her, or holding my arm against my will like this!”
Charles uncurled his fingers and Emily snatched her wrist back, rubbing the reddened marks on her fair skin with a scowl.
“Apologies,” he muttered. “But I did not threaten her.”
“It certainly sounded as though you did. You challenged her about her choice to marry Cedric. To a woman in love, that is a threat.”
“And how do you know she is in fact in love with him? I’ve seen no proof.”
“Why do you care if she loves him or not?” Emily asked. Charles turned his face away, studying the blue and white patterned wallpaper as though the answer to her question lay there.
“Why do you care?” Emily repeated.
“Why? Damn it all, Emily, it’s because of you.” He regretted the words the moment he said them. Now he’d never hear the end of it.
Emily’s eyes went wide. “What do you mean?”
“You changed everything, don’t you see? Ever since we abducted, you nothing has been the same. We’ve lost what made us strong. You’ve singlehandedly crippled the League of Rogues. Godric is a fool for love, Lucien and Cedric fought a duel over a woman, Cedric is blind, Ashton is more melancholy than I’ve ever seen him, bloody Hugo Waverly seems to lurk behind every dark shadow trying to ruin us, and I…I can’t seem to wake from this living nightmare of perpetual fear. We’ve been ruined…ruined by you!” He punctuated these sharp words by driving his fist against the wall.
Emily stepped back in alarm. Charles stopped and bent his forehead to the wall as he drew in a deep, steadying breath. He’d never hit a woman, would never a hit a woman, but sometimes punching a wall eased the tension in him.
“I’ve ruined you?” Emily’s voice trembled, but Charles would not look her way, not for all the tea in China. He could not bear to see her cry, which was exactly the point he’d tried to make. The League of Rogues shouldn’t be capable of being felled by a young woman’s tears. They couldn’t afford to have that weakness, not if they were to survive. The events that led to Cedric’s blindness had been but a warning of what was yet to come. If only she knew Hugo the way he did…
“Everything is different. I expect things now, things I’d never dared to dream about before. What if my dreams fail? What if I do not deserve what I hunger for? Yes, I blame you for that.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw Emily’s hands move about her face, as though to dispel any evidence of her tears. Damnation. He didn’t want to be talking to her about this—he didn’t even want to be thinking about this.
Emily put her hand on his shoulder. “What do you dream about? What do you fear you’ll never have?”
Charles shut his eyes. For a long moment, he considered not answering her and keeping his thoughts private, but Emily had this awful way of getting inside his head and making him want to bare his soul to her. “I want an end to my nightmares, and a woman who loves me so deeply that my heart will be fit to burst. Godric and Lucien have that…but what if I cannot? What if I don’t deserve such a thing?” There it was. He wanted love. He was a fool and the angels would mock him for it.
“How could you ever think you don’t deserve to be loved, Charles?”
“There are things about us even you don’t know, Emily.”
She waved the notion away. “Nonsense. Your heart is loyal and true, as are those of your friends. And if I have to take Ashton’s fleet of ships and sail them to the ends of the earth to find someone who loves you, I will. You will have such joy that your heart won’t be able to contain it, so it will overflow into everything and everyone around you. I know that this dream can become a reality, but it requires patience. Can you be patient for me?” Emily asked.
Charles’s answer was to turn and pull her into him, hugging her tight. It never ceased to amaze him how she could turn him into a child. She made him feel safe, cared for, and yet she was a full decade younger than he was. Godric was a lucky man.
Drawing in a deep breath, he answered. “I can be patient…I can.”
Emily tried to speak, but her voice was muffled by his waistcoat.
“Pardon?” he asked her as he pulled back.
With a little dramatic inhale of breath, she looked up at him. “Are you still angry with me?”
“I never could stay mad at you for long, m’dear,” Charles said before he kissed her cheek and released her. “You go back into dinner. I’ll be along shortly. I just need a minute.”
She focused on the worried expression he wore on his face. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. On with you now.” He shooed her away.
Once Charles was alone, he crept toward the partially open library door. Inside he saw Anne with her back to him. She was politely directing Cedric as to where to find his spoon. Their conversation was awkward for a time before she asked about Cedric’s horses and his famous wager. Cedric grinned, happy to tell the story, and she leaned toward him with open curiosity. Charles saw no love yet between his friend and Anne, but he did see hope. Perhaps for the first time since Cedric had lost his sight.
Charles swallowed the tight lump in his throat, then backed away to avoid disturbing the occupants of the library.
He did not return to the dining hall, but instead sat down on the second-to-last step of the main staircase. Elbows on his knees, he buried his face in the shelter of his palms.
He did not look up immediately at the sound of boots coming down the stairs. A hand rested lightly on his right shoulder, and only then did he face the person who had stumbled upon him in his emotionally ravaged state. It was his newest servant, the lad Tom Linley.
“Everything all right, my lord?” Linley’s eyes were filled with concern, his blond hair a mess of tangles beneath his flat cap.
Linley was an odd boy, quiet to the point of being timid. Charles suspected that the boy had seen serious abuse at the hands of a former master. But Linley always turned up whenever Charles felt the most alone. It was as though the lad had a sixth sense for when his master needed companionship.
Though he claimed he was twenty, Charles suspected he was much younger. Linley had been decently educated because his mother had been a lady’s maid to the mother of an earl, and he raised his baby sister all on his own since his mother’s death. With half the League either married or engaged, Linley had become indispensable to him, a companion so crucial to his daily life that he felt like a part of Charles’s family, as much as any servant could.
“I’m fine, lad, truly. It has been a long day, that is all.” Charles raked a hand through his hair and let out a shaky breath.
“It is true, my lord,” Linley said after a quiet moment.
“What is?” he asked, perplexed
.
“That you have a heart worthy of love. Her Grace is right. Someday a woman will love you, and you will be happy. It’s the way of things.”
“Don’t tell me you are the romantic sort?” Charles teased and shoved the boy’s shoulder. The boy flashed a rare grin, and Charles marveled at the change such a smile had on the boy’s face. The worry and fear that often lurked there simply vanished.
“You ought to smile more, Linley. The ladies will be beating down your door,” Charles advised. Linley blushed.
“No time for that, my lord. I already get far too much exercise chasing after you, if you take my meaning. That is a most grueling and consuming task in itself.”
“Why, you cheeky little…” Charles reached over, feigning to strangle the lad, but they both burst into laughter. “I suppose it is. I can’t seem to sit still for more than an hour’s time. There’s too much to do—women to bed, horses to race, men to box. Sleeping is for the dead.”
Linley smiled again and a pleasant silence settled between them.
“I suppose I ought to return to dinner, otherwise Emily will send a search party for me, and I’ll have to bear her scorn a second time.” Charles got to his feet. “I shall send a footman to collect you when I wish to have the carriage pulled around.”
As Charles walked back toward the dining hall, Tom Linley remained seated on the stairs. A smile, unguarded, curved his lips, then slowly dropped into a frown.
* * * * *
“You wagered your freedom against the sheik’s horses?” Anne asked as Cedric paused to finish the last bit of his dinner.
He moved to stand. “Indeed.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“It does not require your belief to be true,” he said, passing her by.
“Aren’t you going to tell me what really happened?”
“If you would join me on the settee, then I shall.”
Anne rose to her feet as well and moved toward him. “And if I don’t?” Anne returned cautiously. She had every intention of joining him, but wanted to see just how much he was up to the challenge of wooing her. Emily was right—Cedric needed a challenge to keep him interested.
“Then your curiosity must forever go unsatisfied.” Cedric felt his way over to the settee and then seated himself. Anne was on the verge of smiling or snorting at his arrogance, she wasn’t sure which.
“You believe my curiosity is that strong? Do you claim to know me so well?”
Cedric smirked. “Only a dimwitted fool would not desperately want to know how I escaped the clutches of an evil slave trader and returned victorious with a pair of the man’s best horses. And you, my lovely diamond, are anything but a fool. You cannot resist knowing how I avoided a nasty fate, such as a eunuch for an Arab’s harem.”
As Cedric spoke, Anne drifted closer and closer to the settee until she surprised herself by sliding into the space left open next to him. Like a foal lured with the promise of sugar cubes, she waited eagerly for him to share the rest of his tale.
“A eunuch? Oh please, tell me the rest!” She didn’t even realize she was tugging his sleeve like a spoiled child until he seized her. Cedric wrapped a possessive arm around her waist and dragged her onto his lap. Anne fought off the panic at their sudden proximity, but when his muscles tensed around her she ceased, giving up the fight.
“You really do love to humiliate me, don’t you, Lord Sheridan?” She settled herself on his lap, then jerked violently after feeling a particularly stiff part of his anatomy directly beneath her.
“Christ, woman! Easy or I won’t be able to demand my marital rights.” Cedric eyed her askance before adding, “Maybe that’s what you want, you little hellion.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m just not used to…” She waved a hand helplessly at his lap. “That thing making an appearance.”
“You’ve a lot to learn about men. That thing, as you call it, will be making many appearances. And as my wife you’ll be attending to it, just as I will be attending to your needs.” He leaned close to her, his long brown eyelashes fanning out as his sightless eyes seemed to search in vain for a glimpse of her lips.
“Would you do something for me, Anne, darling?” he asked. He’d called her many endearments, but Anne, darling seemed to stir something deep inside her.
“That depends. Will it involve something I shall regret?”
“Just nibble your bottom lip for a brief moment.”
“What? Why?”
“Please.” His hands on her back moved slowly up and down in a soothing motion.
“Very well.” Anne found herself doing as he asked, nibbling her lower lip and watching his responding smile, his blind gaze still lowered.
“Now, why did I just do that?” she asked as Cedric shut his eyes, an expression of pain and bliss all at once on his face.
“I wanted to picture you with pink, swollen lips, as though I’d just kissed you until you couldn’t breathe. I could see it so clearly when I closed my eyes. Most women have faded in my mind, but not you. Never you.”
Goosebumps broke out over Anne’s skin. She bit her lip to stifle a wistful sigh that his words could ever be true. She was the only woman who wouldn’t fade in this blind man’s mind? It couldn’t be possible, yet she wished it was.
Trying to change the subject, she spoke again. “Was this a ruse to lure me onto your lap, or will you tell me the story? Perhaps there is no story to tell.”
“Of course there is a story, my heart. I assure you that my desire to lure you into my embrace was entirely secondary in importance to satisfying your curiosity.”
Anne’s heart’s tempo shot up when he called her my heart. She knew logically that he, like any rake, threw such sweet endearments out frequently and meant nothing by them. She couldn’t help but wonder if each pet name he came up with would continue to move her until she was half in love with him.
Cedric nuzzled her cheek, moving down to her throat. Anne shifted on his lap as a wave of lust uncoiled in her belly. She could not give in to his seduction or lose her heart to him. It would devastate her when he would not be willing or able to love her back as she feared.
“So what happened?” she persisted.
Cedric sighed in disappointment. “You are very determined this evening, aren’t you?” He moved his face back, his unseeing eyes aimed several inches to the left of her face.
“I am when you tease me with a tale of Arab slave traders, horses and harems.”
“Very well, I shall satisfy your curiosity. But know this, you will satisfy me when I come to you with my own desires.”
Anne said nothing, forcing herself to regain control before any unbidden images of Cedric and his desires took hold of her focus.
“It was a warm evening in March of last year. Ashton and I were at Berkeley’s for the night playing cards with a friend…”
Chapter Seven
London, March 1820
Cigar smoke hung in hazy clouds near the ceiling of Berkeley’s dimly lit card room. The majority of the men lounging in chairs about the card tables were in their mid to late thirties. The young sensible bucks of marrying age were enslaved at the dances of Almack’s that evening. Only the most dangerous of men were left free to prowl tonight and seek their pleasures without worry of crossing the paths of society mamas and their marriage-minded daughters. Cedric, Ashton, and their friend James Fordyce, the Earl of Pembroke, chose a table near the main fireplace to play a few games of whist before heading to a pleasure haunt in a few hours.
Ashton spread the deck of cards out and shuffled them while Cedric and James flagged down a club servant to bring three glasses of port.
“Thank God Letty did not expect me to accompany her to Almack’s,” James confessed to Cedric. James blew out a sigh of relief. Cedric chuckled at the relieved expression in the earl’s eyes.
“Not a lover of the quadrilles, Pembroke?” Ashton asked.
James laughed. “When a man reaches twenty-eight, he shouldn’t have to suffer escorting his sister to such events. I argue that it is a matter of principle to excuse myself from such abominable dances and pointless flirtations.”
“Isn’t your mother expecting you to choose a bride soon?” Cedric asked.
“Yes, but I don’t want to marry just any chit. Any woman at Almack’s tonight is not a woman I want to marry.”
Cedric snorted. “Then my sisters are safe! What a relief that is.”
“I would not wish to be there either,” Ashton mused. “In fact, I feel quite guilty because I forced my brother into taking Joanna tonight. Rafe was not pleased, but when Thomasina and I pushed on him, he caved.”
“It’s been a few years since Joanna came out, hasn’t it?” James asked, sipping his brandy.
“Yes, bless her heart, she’ll be twenty-two in a month and no man has come around asking for her. I can’t understand why. I’ve been most encouraging to any man who has even so much as asked for her to pass the salt at dinner engagements. But it’s no use, not one man has shown he’s even remotely interested.” Ashton sighed and thumbed through his cards.
Cedric was only half listening to this—talk of marriage and sisters always put him on edge. He didn’t like thinking of his own sisters marrying. Ashton’s older sister, Thomasina, was already married with a passel of children, but Joanna was the baby of Ashton’s family and her brother was apparently determined to see her wed.
“What? No suitors?” James exclaimed in surprise. “Joanna is such a lovely girl!”
Ashton shrugged. “Thomasina believes that she’s too likeable, as a companion, not a woman. She has many men who admire her wit and humor, yet none of them so much as send a bouquet of flowers. Damned if I can figure out why. She has a sizeable dowry, and I’ve not hidden that fact from any man.”
“Men are fools,” Cedric announced grimly.
“So how is Letty?” Ashton inquired as he began to deal the deck between the three of them.
