Willoughby 03 - A Rogue's Deadly Redemption

by Jeannie Ruesch

  Lily did not.

  He had no idea if he did, but rather than feel uncomfortable, something more primal surged through him. His fingers flexed as he narrowed in on the emotions she held in check. The desperate fear in the turn of her brows, the tense way her arms hung at her sides.

  “Is this an alley?” Lily’s words were whispered, as though it would keep them from being true. She glanced left and right. “Where are we?”

  He didn’t know, but he’d be damned if he’d admit that. But as he watched her, he realized she wasn’t asking him. She was intent on answering her own question, to provide her own way. She didn’t expect anything from him.

  Robert had the distinct impression that had nothing to do with his lack of memory.

  Her eyes were wide, uncertain as she looked up and down the street. “I suppose we pick a direction, and we’ll come upon a more populated street at some point.” She paused. “Do you remember anything about where we are?”

  “I’d give you the grand tour if I could.” Her lips thinned at his sarcasm. “I’m sorry. I have no idea why my mouth opens at times.”

  “It’s who you are, memory intact or not.” It wasn’t her words that smarted, but the weariness in her tone. The obvious hint that her low expectations had been consistently met.

  “Lily.” Her name was written on his mind. The pull he felt toward her was a physical need. “I’m sorry.”

  “For what?” She waved a hand around. “For this? It doesn’t matter now. All that matters is that we get home.” She let out a breath. “Do you remember how you got here? Anything?”

  He ran a hand through his hair, felt the grime on his fingers. “The last I remember was walking with Cary.” Worry slammed into him again. “I have to find him.”

  “Why? You remember your brothers?”

  The efforts to recall the moments before the men attacked him sent shards of pain through his head. “One of them, Cary, came to see me. I was with him when they attacked. He was hit. I have to make sure he’s all right. He said some things…I need to know what he meant.”

  “About what?”

  He frowned. It was there, on the tip of his tongue. But the thoughts were fleeting, wisps of nothing that disappeared the more he tried to recall them. “How did you get here?”

  “They escorted me here.” The flat tone of her words made it clear that her escort hadn’t been willing.

  Something hot and earthy flared inside of him, and he grabbed her hand. “Did they hurt you? Did they—”

  She gave him an odd look. “No.” She took her hand away and Robert felt the immediate lack of her warmth. Instead, she crossed them over her chest.

  “I wish I could remember you,” he said plainly.

  That desire hit with full force, even though his words didn’t seem very welcome. He wished he could decipher the emotions that ravaged her face, the body language that warded him off, even if he didn’t understand why.

  She turned away, walked a few steps down the alley. “We need to get home. Somehow. Perhaps we can hail a cab.”

  Robert watched a rat scurry from one pile of trash to another. He didn’t think a cab would be waiting for fares in this area. But they did need to move. “Let’s walk. See what we find.”

  Lily stared at him, unmoving, seeming to measure if she could trust him. Or perhaps if he was the lesser of evils. She nodded and moved into step next to him. “Are you all right to walk?”

  He hurt like the devil, but they had no choice. Side by side, they trudged down the alley until they came to a larger street.

  This street bulged with more people, more buildings, but it was painted as gray and hopeless as the others. A group of three young boys, dressed in ratty clothes and defiant airs, walked past them. Their calculated looks were far too adult as they examined Lily, head to toe. One nudged the other, and they snickered.

  Robert summoned what he hoped was a glare, and it proved enough to keep the boys moving but Robert knew not every person they encountered would be so easy. Lily was goodness and light when this side of life was far removed from either.

  Though her shiny, luxurious hair was a little disheveled, she was clean. For that fact, so was he.

  That wouldn’t do.

  He stopped, reached his hand down and dug his fingers into the cold, sticky mud.

  “What are you doing?” She wrinkled her nose.

  He rubbed his hands together and walked over to her. Without warning, he smeared the dirt down her arms.

  “Wait.” She tried to jump back, but he wrapped his fingers around her arms and held her in place. Her chest lifted as her breath caught.

  “We stand out too much.” His words were slow and measured, so as not to call attention and to calm her. “This will help.”

  “By being filthy?” she asked, then frowned. “How do you know this?” Her eyes held an innocent curiosity that would have long been stamped out by those boys they’d passed and many others. If they’d ever been innocent or curious to begin with.

  Robert frowned.

  How did he know? He couldn’t recall a single bloody personal detail, yet he could size up this situation with the wisdom of a man who knew in his gut what life was like for those boys.

  How was it he was married to a woman as beautiful, as regal, as…shiny as his wife? He had begun to feel he was barely worthy to shine her boots.

  Who the hell was he?

  He lifted his dirty hands to her face and gently rubbed the mud onto her cheeks, enough to dull the freshness of her skin.

  “I don’t want to know what that smell is, do I?”

  His mouth twitched. “Probably not.”

  She took in a deep breath, and promptly closed her mouth. With a wrinkled nose, she asked, “Which way do we go?”

  Robert pointed right. He wasn’t sure why. “That way.”

  She didn’t question, she just moved with him. He stopped to grab another handful of dirt and applied it to himself. It did little good. Even with the dirt, they stood apart as people who didn’t belong and had rolled in the mud. But it was better than nothing, when he wasn’t armed to protect them.

  In silence they walked, and with every step, Lily seemed to move closer to him until the heat from their bodies melded together. They moved as one unit, enough to send others marching past around them.

  Robert noted enough of those others took measured awareness of them both, but Lily drew the lion’s share of attention. Without a word, he slipped his arm down and moved it until it rested on her back.

  She startled, glanced at him. “Are you hurt? Feeling sick?”

  Her eyes captured him. They were such a deep, rich tone. Like a glass of warm burgundy.

  A flash of those eyes, staring up at him with adoration, startled him. He stopped. Blinked. Where had that come from?

  “Robert? What is it?” Those same eyes stared at him now, concern filling them.

  That warmed him from the inside. “Nothing.” He didn’t know why he didn’t tell her. It was such a fleeting moment, nothing really. But enough to pull a longing up from the dregs of his gut. A reminder of how he’d felt when he met her? A shock of need, of desire? Had it been like that between them? She ducked her head down. And on they continued.

  “Is anything familiar?” he asked after they’d turned more streets than he could count and nothing sparked his memory. How long had they been walking? Though the pounding in his head had subsided, exhaustion weighted his limbs and every step depleted reserves of energy he didn’t know he had.

  She shook her head. “No. But something must soon, I imagine.”

  They continued to walk, noting as they did that the crowds grew thicker, louder. A buzz in the air indicated a large crowd and though Robert’s instincts might have been to go away from the crowd, they needed to find something familiar.

  He steered them in the direction that others flocked toward. The noise grew louder and louder, until they could separate the sounds of angry voices.

  He paused
. “Maybe we shouldn’t…”

  “No, I think we’re near Old Bailey.”

  It didn’t sound familiar. That sharp pang of disappointment was becoming familiar, however.

  She must have seen something in his face, for she stopped. “The courthouse. The gallows. Is any of this familiar?”

  “Should it be?” The wry humor came from nowhere, but the admonishment in her expression made it clear Lily did not find the humor.

  “How could you?” Her voice was achingly small, and the plaintive tone shamed him. “How could you be involved with those people?”

  “I don’t know.” He was starting to hate those words. He hated the disappointment that darkened her face, held her even farther away from him. His throat constricted. At the same time, he couldn’t imagine leaving her side.

  Lily had said he was the same, with or without his memories. “Do you believe that?”

  “Believe you were involved with them? It would be hard to deny at this point.”

  “No. Earlier. You said my memory loss wouldn’t change who I am. Am I the same man as before?

  Wariness narrowed her eyes. “This is hardly the time or place.”

  “It’s exactly the time and place. I don’t know who I was. I am beginning to have an idea but I need to know, am I the same man? I can’t answer that, but you can.”

  “No. I can’t.” Lily angled her body away from him, so he couldn’t see her face. “You brought them into our lives, and you kept all of this from me. You kept me from so much of your life. I am so angry, and I want to scream at you, but I can’t because you don’t recall any of it.” She crossed her arms. “It would be like yelling at a puppy.”

  ”A puppy?”

  “Do you know how aggravating that is?”

  “Not yelling at a puppy?”

  She glared at him. “Not being able to be angry at you. Because what is the point? You’re as helpless as a babe.”

  He bristled at that. “I am not helpless. I—”

  She didn’t let him finish, just turned and walked down the street, shifting sideways around people.

  “Lily, wait.”

  He followed after her, sidestepping around people walking the other direction or stopping on the street.

  The size of the crowd was growing, as they headed deeper into it. The streets buzzed with a tension that made him uneasy. For such a tiny thing, Lily moved with amazing ease, slipping through the crowd. He caught up to her and wrapped his hand around her wrist.

  “Slow down a moment,” he yelled at her, to be heard over the loud din, like the buzzing of a thousand angry bees.

  “We need…through…crowd. We’ll never…a cab here.” She ducked her head, never quite meeting his gaze, so he lost half of the words she said to the shouts around them. The mood of the crowd was shifting, and Robert’s entire body felt at the ready. He might not know where the hell they were, but he knew how this crowd made him feel.

  “Fine. But I don’t want to lose you.” He captured her hand and gripped it. “This crowd could prove dangerous.”

  Her gaze slid to their intertwined hands, and then moved downward. She crouched to the ground.

  “Lily, what—” Before he could ask, she straightened back up, this time with a muddied, half torn sheet of paper in her free hand. Robert refused to let go of her other one.

  “There was a hanging today,” she said.

  Her words hung in the air with a sadness that pressed against his chest. He wanted her to never be sad. The fierce desire to see her smile, to take her out of all of this, floored him.

  Where had these emotions come from? They were so fierce, so deep in his core.

  How he must have loved her.

  The desire to feel that love, as though it were a tangible piece he could hold, touch, smell…he wanted that desperately.

  He wanted her desperately.

  Every minute, he felt like a man drowning, until she stood by his side.

  “Today’s broadsheet,” she said, far from carefree.

  “What is a broadsheet?”

  Her lips pinched together, and her brows flattened. “The report of who was hung today. They put these into the Newgate calendar each year, tell them as bedtime stories to frighten children into behaving. I find it appalling.” She glanced down at the paper in her hand, scanned it, and her color paled. “This man was eighteen, hung for forgery. It’s awful how many people die. I know they are criminals, and I know they deserve punishment, but—” She looked at him, and the depth of her anger, her fear flashed and exploded like lightning in her eyes. “You asked me if you are the same man but you weren’t even the man I believed you were. God, Robert, what have you done? Could it land you here?”

  Panic, or something akin to it, flared inside of him.

  “I don’t know.” It was a recurring phrase he was deucedly tired of repeating.

  “But they did.” She gestured the way they’d come. “They commissioned you for something. They called you an artist, and you have work they are waiting for. What happens if you don’t provide that work? If you can’t remember what it is you owe them? What then?”

  “I am going to find out.” The blasted headaches had subsided and it had been a long while since his memory had slipped. That had to be a sign he was improving.

  He could find out what he’d gotten into.

  Though he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  She held up the broadsheet. “It happened this morning, the hanging, and the crowd is still roused by it.”

  The fear it lit in Lily surrounded them like a tattered blanket that couldn’t provide an ounce of warmth or comfort.

  Robert surveyed the rowdy strangers around them. Young, old, mothers with children, children without mothers. There were generations represented who had come to watch something horrific and cheer for more.

  He squeezed Lily’s hand, grabbed the broadsheet from her other one and dropped it on the ground. He pulled her hands together in his. “Whatever I’ve done, it will be all right.”

  “How can you promise that?” The disbelief in her voice was palpable, dampened by the plaintive thread of grief.

  “Because of this, right here.” He pushed back against someone who shoved at his back. “You. Me. This is worth fighting for.” Her gaze snapped to his. “I am not giving up, and you can’t either.”

  He was jostled again, and Robert whipped around. As a crowd of young, belligerent men strode past them, Robert caught sight of a young mother and her young child. The men paid no heed and plowed through the crowd. Their laughs were intoxicated, buoyant and they shoved anyone who walked in their path. Robert squeezed Lily’s hands tighter so they wouldn’t get separated.

  A soft cry rose through the noise, and from the corner of his eye, Robert saw the child yanked from his mother. The mother reached forward and cried out, but the mass of bodies aiming in the same direction enveloped the tiny child.

  Robert lunged forward, his heart racing as his grip on Lily’s hand slipped free. He threw himself into the fray of people, shoving past anyone, keeping his gaze low to look for the child.

  A terrified scream sounded to his left and he turned toward it, not caring who bumped into him. Then he spotted the child, curled on the ground.

  Panic spurred him forward, and he crouched down. At the sight of him, the child screamed, shoving hands at him to push him away.

  “I’m here to help,” he told him. The child was too terrified to think straight, so Robert didn’t argue the point. He shoved his hands under the boy and lifted him to his chest.

  He moved upstream from the crowd, holding the young boy with a firm grip. Where was Lily?

  He glanced around. She wasn’t behind him. Or anywhere.

  The boy’s mother launched herself at him. “My boy!”

  Robert brushed past her in order to get to the side of the buildings, where there was a break in the chaos. There, he set the boy down and held a hand on his shoulder until he was steady.

  Large,
brown eyes peered up at him, wide with tears and shock. “Th-thank you, mistah.”

  Robert’s body hummed with need to find Lily. His fingers dug into his palms. He nodded at the boy and then his mother. “You’d do well to get off the streets.”

  She gave him a look, one that wasn’t quite gratitude. “He wanted to see it.”

  By it, she meant the hanging, Robert was certain. The thought of that boy watching…Robert shook his head. That wasn’t his concern.

  Lily was.

  And she was nowhere to be found.

  His heart slammed against his chest as he thought of those men. Where had they gone? He straightened so he could see over the bobbing heads of the crowd. There.

  He moved toward them, rage curling up from inside of him at the thought that they might have done anything to her. If they had touched one hair on her head, he— “Robert!”

  He stopped. A warm hand curled around his arm. Relief sagged his shoulders, and he didn’t think. Just grabbed her shoulders and pulled her close to him.

  One hand against her hair, he held her to his chest. “Thank God. You have no idea what I thought.”

  Her response was muffled, so he lifted his hand and she leaned back to look up at him. “I tried to follow you, but you moved so fast.” Wonder filled her eyes. “You saved that little boy’s life.”

  He didn’t care about that. His heart hadn’t slowed its terrified beat, and he couldn’t shake the need to pummel someone.

  “What is it?” Lily asked, almost squirming under his gaze.

  The need inside him was hot, sticky. It pulsed under his skin, until he itched. His gaze lowered to her lips, an urgency inside pushing him to lean in, to feel those lips under his. To wrap himself in her warmth. “I must have loved you a tremendous amount.”

  She laughed, but it was a sad, little mirthless sound. “You really do not remember a thing.”

  “I want to remember.” He reveled in the softness of her against him, but he was afraid if he made the wrong move—though he had no idea what that might be—she might flit away. His fingers landed on her arm, the warmth of her skin providing a spark that surged through him, emboldened him to let his fingers caress down the side.