Willoughby 03 - A Rogue's Deadly Redemption

by Jeannie Ruesch

  Wisps of her dark curls waved in the breeze Aria made with speedy steps. “We weren’t expecting you.”

  “So I was told,” Lily said with a smile. “It is all right, isn’t it? I…Well, I suppose I should tell you.”

  Aria waved a hand. “Fine, fine, whatever it is. Let’s go upstairs. I see luggage; you intend to stay. Let’s get you right to your room, shall we?”

  Aria placed a hand on Lily’s back and near shoved her forward. Lily stumbled and caught pace, then glanced over her shoulder. “Are you certain this is all right? You seem quite—”

  “Don’t be silly. This is your home, always.” She gave a not-so-gentle push again. “But you must be ready to retire.”

  Lily stopped. “What is going on?”

  “How about a nice, long relaxing bath? Maybe—”

  “Aria.” Lily put a hand out to stop her sister-in-law from herding her up the stairs. “A bath sounds glorious, but what is it you are trying to avoid?”

  Resignation set in the scrunch of Aria’s face. “I had planned to send a note around tomorrow. I didn’t know you would be here, at the house. But you are and therefore—”

  “Stop prevaricating. There isn’t much that could worsen this day for me, so you might as well share.”

  “You say that now, but—”

  “Is it Mother?” Lily interrupted. “Or Georgie? Has something happened to them?” Their mother, Hypatia, and Lily’s youngest sister, Georgiana, had moved to America with Hypatia’s husband Franklin after Lily’s marriage.

  Now Lily would build her own future there.

  “No, all is well. We have heard nothing else.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “I imagine,” came another voice, a female’s voice with a sharper edge, “it is my arrival our sister finds so disconcerting.”

  Lily froze. Her hands fisted at her side, while she struggled to capture the breath that had fled her lungs. Her gaze met Aria’s, who offered quiet courage.

  It wasn’t as though Lily had never expected to see her again. She just hadn’t expected it would be today, of all days.

  Lily took small steps to slowly turn and face the one person she least wanted to see.

  “Cordelia.”

  Her sister.

  Chapter Two

  “Will you be wanting dinner this evening, Mr. Melrose?”

  Robert looked up from the stack of letters that remained unopened to peer at his valet, Edwin. “Dinner?”

  “Yes, sir,” Edwin replied. “With Lady Melrose gone, Mrs. Tandy wishes to know if she should have Cook prepare anything for this evening.”

  “No, but in fact, I will be removing my—” He paused. Lily had moved from the house. He no longer needed to.

  But the house echoed emptier than a tomb. Even with the small amount of time he had spent inside its walls, the idea of returning at the end of the day was distasteful. “You and I have a meeting to set. We won’t be back until late.”

  Edwin leaned a shoulder against the wall, his muscular frame blocking the doorway. “So today is the day then.”

  It was less a question and more a statement, and Robert gave a short nod in reply. There was no more reason to delay.

  Edwin didn’t move.

  “What?” Robert snapped.

  “I must question why today, given you’ve had months to make this move. With Lady Melrose’s departure, are you sure the timing is best?”

  “I don’t need you to question me.” Robert’s surly tone had no effect on the man who had been by his side for years. They were of an age, but where Robert stood a solid height and weight, Edwin was a head taller and near rivaled the width of a carriage. One of these days, he should show Edwin the sketch he’d done of him. A caricature of a young, eager man with bulging muscles gallantly holding up a carriage to allow a young woman to walk past it. Edwin would hate it.

  Edwin stood in the same place, so Robert waved him off. “Go. Do your job.”

  Edwin shook his head, accustomed to and unaffected by Robert’s attempts at acting his lord. “If you say so.”

  As soon as he left, Robert followed out into the hallway.

  The house felt quiet.

  But that was foolish, for it wasn’t as though Lily had gone through the hallways dancing an Irish jig. She could be found more often reading in a corner than holding court in their parlor. Many times Robert had walked into the room and not realized her presence for minutes afterward. She sat in the same place, curled into her favorite chair.

  And when she ventured out, his wife always left behind a reminder—a blanket tossed over the chair, a book, a forgotten cup of tea at the table beside it.

  Now that he thought of it, he wondered how often he’d walked into and out of a room without noticing her at all. A twinge of sadness tightened his chest. How far they’d come from the day they’d met, when she’d commanded his attention from her quiet perch in the corner of the room.

  He’d been calling upon her sister, Cordelia, that day.

  Lily had been curled up in a chair, reading, watching, observing.

  He would never walk into a room and find her again.

  Startled by the regret that choked him, he turned back to the large stack of letters in his hand. Hers sat on top, opened by her hand, with unfamiliar words. He set it aside, not willing to face the guilt that would rise upon seeing her delicate handwriting.

  Flipping through the remaining letters, his lips pressed together as he noticed three, four—no, five missives from his eldest brother, the relatively new Marquess of Wayfair. Their father had passed on a year prior, in the middle of the night with no warning barely thirteen months after their mother had died, and Marcus had taken to the role as though he’d been born into it.

  The heir, the spare and…oh yes, there is a third son, too. What was his name?

  Robert’s lip curled. Each of these missives contained some level of criticism and a demand for an audience. Both of which Robert intended to ignore.

  He dropped the notes onto a table, and turned out of the room. Before he realized it, Robert stood at the entry to her door, just one door down from his and yet in another world altogether. He pushed the door open, but the room was dark. No fire to warm it with light. No candles.

  So that was it.

  Do you hate me so much then?

  Her mournful words haunted the room, and Robert’s anger rose. He didn’t want her damn words in his ear.

  The blame for the state of their marriage was his. He accepted that, but they had long since passed the point where it could be any different. Some choices, some decisions, could not be undone.

  He couldn’t change his direction now even if he wanted to.

  She was better off without him.

  He turned on a heel, closing the door behind him with a firm hand. He made a brief stop to his office to grab the items he needed to take with him. His sketchbook lay open on his desk, showing his most recent drawing. Lily. Robert slammed the book shut and shoved it in a drawer. Now was not the time.

  In minutes, he and Edwin were on the road again, putting distance between him and the empty house.

  “Lebrawn Street,” he told Edwin and the driver, though there was little need. They had traveled the distance many times over.

  They turned onto Piccadilly Street, and Robert peered out the window as they drove past the street that would take him to Lily. Her brother’s home.

  He felt the tug somewhere deep inside, the tug to be closer to her, not farther. But he’d spent years ignoring that same pull.

  He recalled Lily’s words. Cordelia’s husband, Halton, was dead. Not a surprise. The duke had been old enough to be her grandfather.

  What would the duchess do now? Where would she go? He hadn’t seen her in years.

  Not that it mattered. He’d made his bed when he married her sister. Lily’s move to America changed nothing.

  The rain tread a solid pattern on the rooftop and the carriage settled into a rhythm, the street
below providing few potholes or lurches to start. That would change.

  He pressed his coat closer about him to ward off the damp chill in the air. The air had turned ghostlike, making everything sort of hazy and unclear, as though just out of one’s sight awaited something untoward, and the carriage slowed to a crawl. Visibility was growing thinner every evening, it seemed. Some of the worst fog London had ever seen.

  It didn’t take long for the road to grab at the carriage with wide potholes, talons that tilted and lurched the carriage around. Robert held fast to his case. He had spent far too long on the work to have it be anything less than perfect.

  The carriage came to a halt and without waiting for the footman, Robert grabbed the handle and pushed the door open.

  That smell he’d never quite adjusted to assailed him, of sorrow, of death, and of desperation. This part of town wasn’t about lazy mornings and bright futures.

  It was about survival.

  It was a frank realization that he felt more comfortable within the grimness.

  He dropped down to the street, landing in an inch of mud and feeling the ground turn to quicksand at his feet. The building before him barely earned the name. The flash house was ramshackle at best, with dirty windows smudged with God only knew what and walls held up by shadows that slithered. Robert waited for his manservant to take his place at his side, for Edwin provided more than just accompaniment.

  He provided armed escort.

  They skirted around the building into a dark alleyway, littered with trash and sounds of lives long since deadened by a world that had tossed them away. Robert ignored it all, knowing that his modest clothing was considered finery, and that without the tested-and-proven-deadly Edwin by his side, he would be easy pickings.

  His blood surged forward as the doorway appeared, a dim light casting shadows on the worn, splinter-filled door. Outside in the muck, he was nobody.

  But not inside.

  Today, he would become more.

  He tucked the box closer to his side and rapped on the door, once, twice, and a quick double knock to end. The door creaked open a small sliver.

  “Seven hills of gold.”

  The familiar, nonsensical words gained him entry into a world most would refuse to enter. The man at the door, a bulk of a man with no neck and a grin filled of missing teeth slammed the door behind them.

  “’E’s waitin’ fer ye.”

  Without a by your leave, he moved past the man and into the room, ignoring the prostitutes with bared breasts heaved over willing, but drunken guttersnipes and wove through the motley mix of tables toward the back room.

  There, a man loomed sentry at the door. Upon sight of Robert, he gave a short nod and slid over to allow Robert to pass.

  That quick pulse of pleasure ran through him. It was a weakness, one of many.

  He liked being someone to whom mountains acquiesced.

  The small room inside was familiar, matched in candlelight and shadows that turned the bare, stark room into something more sinister, more oppressive.

  “Yer late.”

  The words were low, like the hum of something unwelcome coming your way.

  “I was detained,” Robert replied. He thrust the stricken look on Lily’s face from his mind. There was no place for her in this filth. Taking steps forward, he dropped the box he’d brought onto the table with a thud. “Here you are. The best yet.”

  “I’ll be the judge of that.” A scrape sounded along the floor, followed by the thud of boots landing on the wood. In moments, a man stepped out of the long cast of the shadows. He was known as Kane, nothing more. He was unimpressive by any standards, not large, or lean or much of anything.

  And yet, the cold emptiness in his eyes, the way the air stirred around him and moved to get out of his way permeated Robert with the usual tension. It tightened along his shoulders, his neck.

  Kane opened the box and pulled out a single copperplate from inside. With his free hand, he snapped his fingers.

  A candle was brought to his side. Kane took it and held the plate up for inspection.

  Robert could close his eyes and envision every swirl, every line, every angle he’d etched onto the malleable copper. Still, his hands clenched and his throat grew tight at the thought of some imperfection, some flaw he’d overlooked.

  To demand what he intended, his work needed to be the best.

  He was the best. No one could duplicate what he could do. No one.

  Minutes passed in silence, until Kane lifted his head. He peered inside the box. “Where are the rest? Ye owe us ten, Melrose.”

  “I want a meeting.”

  Kane’s hand descended almost in slow motion. “A meetin’.”

  “I’ve earned my place.” His place in the criminal class was far more advantageous than the one he could barely lay claim to in the highborn class. For all his noble blood, he was a cast-off. Unwanted. Now that his wife had left, he had no ties. No illusions.

  This was where he belonged.

  As he took in his next breath, a knife appeared under his chin.

  “If I weren’t under orders, I’d kill ye where ye stand,” Kane said next to his face. His sour breath blew into Robert’s face.

  Robert saw Edwin moving toward them and gave a quick shake of his head. “Under orders?”

  “Ye might have curried favor with the captain, but this is my crew. Ye best not think to betray me.”

  He shoved Robert away, and Robert slammed a hand on the table to steady himself. He’d curried favor with the captain? Triumph surged through him. “No betrayal. Get me a meeting with the captain, and you’ll have your copperplates.”

  Kane had been the man Robert had dealt with from the beginning—the man Robert had boasted to in a drunken stupor he’d fought hard to achieve that night that he could create a perfect banknote replica. In this hellhole, in fact, two years ago.

  Robert startled and looked at Edwin. “It’s been two years.” His gut dropped out.

  “So it has,” Edwin replied. “You’ve more than proven your worth.”

  Had she known? Had Lily chosen today on purpose?

  He shook his head to erase the ridiculous thought. He might deserve such action, but Lily wasn’t vindictive.

  And why was he thinking of her here, of all places?

  “I am feeling generous today,” Kane said. “So I’ll give ye until tomorrow. An hour after noon. Ye’ll get yer meeting then.”

  “With the captain.” The captain was the man with power, the one Robert needed to gain further entry. Robert nodded and turned away.

  “But if ye don’t bring me my plates, ye’ll find yourself meetin’ with the Thames.”

  Robert motioned to Edwin, and they retraced their steps to the front door.

  The number of people who could fabricate a copperplate to print banknotes numbered less than the fingers on Robert’s hands.

  His work was better than all of them.

  “You got the meeting.” Edwin shoved open the door, and a wall of cold air hit them.

  “So we did.”

  “Are you sure about this? The timing…”

  Robert stopped. “Out with it. If you must act the part of my nanny and not my valet, have your say and let’s be done with it.”

  Edwin had been with him that night. He knew what had sent Robert to that side of town, to get as far away from Lily, his family, his demons as possible. Robert had been in hell, and he’d found a place that fit his mood.

  Then he’d discovered a way to stay there.

  “Your wife has only just left. She might return, she might —”

  “She isn’t coming back. And I’ll not hear another word on it.”

  His carriage hadn’t returned yet, so Robert took to the street toward the direction he knew his driver waited at. It was a solid eight or nine blocks, but enough to take them away from the dregs of society.

  “Aye, mister, I’ll give ye a good tumble, I will.” Across the muddy streets, a prostitute lifted h
er skirts and laughed.

  Lily wasn’t coming back. Robert knew that, and because he knew it, it didn’t matter how deep he moved into the organization. There was no one left to give a damn what he became.

  “You heard Kane—you’ve gained the captain’s favor.”

  In the organization, though, he had value. The lust for that value, for that power, had become a living beast inside of him, churning with dissatisfaction, biting with impatience.

  They turned a corner onto a wider, more open street. A few plain carriages trudged through the dirt roads. About halfway down, they passed a runt of a boy, head down, no coat on his back.

  Robert stopped. “You.”

  “I ain’t done nothing.” The boy looked up at him, and the momentary flash of despair disappeared behind a hard-fought-for face of stone.

  Robert shed his coat. “Here.”

  The boy eyed the coat with wary hunger. “I ain’t gonna do nothin’ for that.”

  Robert shook his head. Tossed the coat toward the boy, who reached out and grabbed it close. “This isn’t a bargain. I don’t expect anything.”

  Wary disbelief narrowed the boy’s eyes. He had no reason to trust anyone. He was young, an orphan or turned out by a family with too many mouths to feed. He had little options, if any at all.

  Often, the only way to survive was to join a crew. The life was harsh, the punishments severe if you failed at your tasks. But if you did well, you could live.

  That was better than starving on the street.

  Robert dug in his pocket and came out with a couple of coins. Not much. Robert dropped them in the cushion of his coat, which the boy had bundled in a ball in his arms.

  The boy stuck his chin up. “I don’t need no charity.”

  That bravado was necessary for survival, and Robert had no intent on challenging it. His fingers itched to capture the boy on paper, though. He’d use his charcoals, yes. That would best reveal the raw need underneath. The boy didn’t toss his precious bundle back.

  “Don’t go to whatever flash house you think is home. Use that and find somewhere warm to stay.”

  The boy flashed him a triumphant look and ran off down the street without a word.

  Robert hadn’t expected thanks, but he found the irony rich that he was offering advice to a child that he himself had ignored completely.