One for the Rogue

by Charis Michaels

  Not waiting for an answer, she pulled him against her, hugging him as if their lives depended upon it. She clutched the back of his head so tightly he cried out and began to squirm.

  She loosened her hold, and he repeated, “Malie.” Gently, contritely. He leaned awkwardly against her, raising one limp arm to pat her on the elbow. “Lost, Malie.”

  She nodded against him, too tearful to speak. He squirmed again, and she let him go, sitting back on her haunches on the still-made bed.

  “Oh, Teddy,” she said, smiling through her tears. “I’m so sorry I did not look after you more carefully. This has been my fault. Can you forgive me? I will do better in the future. I promise. We will put the note in your coat with our direction and never take it out.”

  “Lost,” he said again, and he looked very young, despite his adult man’s body and five days’ worth of fuzzy beard on his face.

  Emmaline nodded and looked away, wiping the tears from her eyes, seeing the room for the first time. Jocelyn Breedlowe stood by the window, looking out.

  In the doorway, she saw the viscount, watching, with his head ducked. When he caught her gaze, he made a small salute—his hand to his hat—and then he pushed off the wall and slipped away, disappearing down the hall.

  “Rainsleigh, wait!” she called, sliding from the bed. But when she reached the doorway, he was gone.

  She turned to Jocelyn.

  “I don’t believe Lord Rainsleigh has slept or eaten since he returned to London,” Jocelyn said. “Perhaps it’s best to let him go. He insisted upon personally seeing Teddy safely to you.”

  “Yes, of course,” said Emmaline, still a little confused by sleep, overwhelmed with the return of her brother. She looked at the empty doorway, feeling helpless. She looked back at her brother, feeling elated.

  “I’m so very glad you are home, Teddy,” she said gently. She reached for him again. “Let us fetch Mr. Broom to get you into dry clothes, shall we? Wash your hair. Find something warm to eat. Then perhaps we can talk about how you will never, ever wander out of an open garden gate, ever again.”

  “Lost,” said Teddy, his voice still very childlike, and Emmaline nodded, took his hand, kissed it, and led him from the room.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The full weight of four days with virtually no sleep burned behind Beau’s eyelids. He stepped outside, staggered two steps, and squinted against the cold December sun. He was tough, but he also knew his limits, and he’d fall off his horse if he tried to ride for the Paddington in this state.

  Perhaps just one night in any of the twenty lavish beds in his brother’s house, he thought. With the delicious bounty of Bryson’s well-paid chef. And a hot bath, and clean clothes, and servants to wait on him.

  He’d slip in the kitchen door and not be noticed, he thought. He had no wish to intrude on Emma’s reunion with her brother and even less desire to hear her thank him again. Her gratitude was not in question; it would not be prudent for either of them to test how far that gratefulness extended.

  Beau trudged up the kitchen steps and, for once, did not quibble with his brother’s butler. “Bath, then bed,” he told Sewell. “Immediately. In twelve hours, food. The more the better.”

  “Very good, my lord,” the butler said, drawing off his muddy coat and taking his hat and gloves. Beau staggered to his old room without looking back. By the time he’d peeled off his clothes, a tub in the corner had been filled with steaming water. He made quick work of a bath and then dropped into bed, naked and still wet, and was asleep in five minutes.

  “Beau, wake up. Wake up.” Bryson’s voice cut through the deep fog of subversive sleep and jolted him awake. He blinked at the canopy above his head.

  I’m starving. His first useful thought.

  “Put on some clothes, for God’s sake,” his brother said.

  Emmaline. His second.

  “Is the duchess’s brother unharmed?” Beau asked, his voice like gravel in a bucket.

  “Teddy Holt has a sore throat and a cough but is expected to recover. The duchess, however, is overwhelmed with every emotion from relief to guilt. I understand she would see you as soon as you are able. She wishes to express her gratitude.”

  “That won’t happen.” He sat up.

  “Why bloody not? She has been sick with worry and nearly as sick with relief. You torture her by not allowing her to express her thanks. It’s rude and ungracious.”

  “Yes, well, no surprise there. You hired her to remedy that very affliction. The failure is all mine, by the way. My rudeness is ingrained, apparently. Pity.”

  “I didn’t hire her. We casually discussed something that she required and I wanted. I left the discussion and didn’t give it a second thought, while she took every word to heart. I’m sorry if you were caught in the middle.”

  I’m not sorry. Beau thought of the kiss in the carriage. He thought about the look on her face when she’d seen him in the hallway after he’d delivered Teddy Holt. “Tell Her Grace she may thank me via letter.” He fell back in bed. “I could sleep another week, at least.”

  “At the moment, you’re needed downstairs,” Bryson said. “Two street boys who claim to be in your acquaintance are at the kitchen door. With a dog. Sewell tells me they refuse to leave until they speak with you.”

  Beau grunted, rubbing his jaw. “Mercenary little bastards. I left them money to feed and water my dog until I returned from Essex. I’m sure they’ve spent the lot.”

  “What were you doing in Essex?”

  Of course his brother would not allow the comment to go unnoticed.

  “Tell the boys to wait in the mews,” Beau said, ignoring the question. “I need ten minutes to get dressed.” His clothes had been freshly laundered and folded on a chest nearby, and he plodded to them.

  His brother did not leave.

  “Your dog is welcome here, obviously,” Bryson said. “And so are you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I could learn the nature of your business in Essex if I wanted to. I hope you know this.”

  Beau pulled on his boots without an answer. The unexplained trips to Essex had tortured his brother for years, but not as much as Beau’s history with the Barnes family would do, if he knew about the fire.

  Bryson said, “I have wanted to respect your privacy.”

  “Thank you,” Beau repeated. He was dressed now, balancing the endurance of this conversation with the extreme demands of his stomach. He had hoped to eat before he left. “What time is it?” he asked.

  “Nearly one o’clock. You’ve just missed luncheon, but Sewell will see it laid out again if you are hungry.”

  Beau frowned. “I only slept five hours?”

  “Nearly one o’clock on Thursday. You slept a day and a half. I instructed the staff not to disturb you. God knows you needed your sleep. I only awakened you now—”

  “To sort out my dog,” Beau finished, but he thought, to wheedle me with questions.

  “I don’t care about the dog. The grooms will mind her if you like—although the river boys must go or make themselves useful.” He paused a moment. “If you must know, I awakened you because the Duchess of Ticking is due here at a quarter past one to discuss her journey to New York. Forgive me if I presume too much, but I thought for some reason that you would like to know.”

  Beau froze for half a beat. Right, he thought. No meal. He forced himself to move again, faster now. The knife slid into the leather sheath on his belt, and he ran a hand through his hair. He needed a shave, but it would have to wait. Before he could stop himself, he asked, “What about the journey to New York?”

  “Something about the duke. Her situation under the care of the Duke of Ticking is far direr than I allowed myself to believe. Her brother’s disappearance only made matters worse.”

  “In what way?” Beau followed Bryson into the hall.

  “The Duke of Ticking was livid when Emmaline returned to Portman Square with Teddy. He didn’t even feign relief that t
he boy had been found. He threw a tantrum worthy of a two-year-old. Elisabeth and I accompanied them there, and I was honestly afraid to leave her.”

  “Well I hope you did not. She was exhausted, and the boy was frozen through. The last thing either of them needed was the temper fit of a bloody . . . vulture . . . prince.”

  Bryson had gone on walking, but now he turned. “We weren’t given much choice, were we? I’d had cross words with the duke the day before. You’d spirited the dowager duchess away without a backward glance, remember?”

  Beau opened his mouth to protest, but Bryson stopped him. “I realize you were given little choice, but my relationship with the dowager duchess can only be described in the most convoluted terms—and yours can’t be explained at all. The Duke of Ticking is her guardian, for all practical purposes. It is his right to know where she goes or who minds her brother.”

  “How is it his right? Who has given him this right?”

  “She is a young woman with no husband or father. His Grace sees it as his duty to look after his father’s widow—a view that I believe would be shared by most of the civilized world. The fact that she is so young, not to mention of common birth, only increases his control.”

  “Common birth?” scoffed Beau. “She was rich enough to buy herself a duke for a husband, and her brother is sitting on a pile of money.”

  “Precisely. More motivation for the Duke of Ticking to lock her in and never let her go. As a duke, his influence is vast.”

  Beau was seized by anger. It doused him like a bucket of water had been dumped over his head. “Naturally, you’re just the man to defer to that sort of thinking.”

  His brother stepped up until they were almost nose to nose. Anger flashed in his eyes, and his voice was deadly quiet. “No,” Bryson said, “I’m the man who is stealing her away to another country to escape from it all. In doing so, I risk what very little is left of my reputation, not to mention legal action, my company, and my family. The real question, Lord Rainsleigh, is what are you going to do for her?”

  For this, Beau had no answer, and his anger grew. He’d opened his mouth to shout some inane curse when Sewell stepped through the door and intoned, “Her Grace the Dowager Duchess of Ticking to see you, sir.”

  “In the ballroom, Sewell,” snapped Bryson. “I’ll be there shortly.”

  Beau blinked and took a step back. “The ballroom? Why receive her in the bloody ballroom?”

  “Because,” Bryson said, grinding out the words and turning away, “it’s proven the only room big enough to store two hundred crates of her bloody books.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Emmaline had not expected to encounter Lord Rainsleigh in Mr. Courtland’s ballroom. She’d been standing on a stool, peering into an open crate of books when they came in. The sight of him caused her to go perfectly still. At the same time, she fought the strange urge to give a small jump. What she really wished to do was run to him, but this was easier to curtail. She could not run to him. His brother was there, and servants bustled in and out. It was imprudent to look at him at all, really. One glance and then away, she vowed.

  In that glance, she’d seen enough to set her heart racing. He wore clean, pressed clothes but his hair was tousled, and he had not yet shaved. Seeing him, she thought, was a little like turning the bend on the Ainsdale road in Lancaster and catching the first glimpse of the Irish Sea. It took your breath away.

  But of course he was not the Irish Sea, and she was not in Lancashire. He was merely a man, and she was in London with her mind on the moon when it should have been on evading the Duke of Ticking and starting a new life an ocean away.

  Of all the times to turn fanciful and heartsick, she thought. Now she could see why her mother had kept her so protected as a girl. Awareness and attraction and heart-racing desire were a potent combination. If allowed to bloom, it could easily become, well . . . all.

  She took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. She barely had the time or energy for some. All was entirely out of the question.

  But now she was standing behind the crate like a spy, and she stepped down from the stool and cleared her throat. The men looked up, and Mr. Courtland smiled and signaled to her. The viscount did not smile. His look was hard and urgent and inscrutable. He appeared neither happy nor sad to see her but rather intensely aware of her. The large sun-washed room seemed suddenly more vivid in the thrall of that look—the floor shinier, the colors of drapes brighter. Emmaline held her breath. He was the first to look away.

  I am too inexperienced and green for him, Emmaline reminded herself, walking to them. He does not feel the same way I do. She glanced at him again, but he’d turned away, studying a crate of her books. He is a philanderer and a flirt, and he loves all women, even old Lady Frinfrock, even me perhaps, but not in . . .

  Not in my way.

  I should know better, she finished, stopping in front of Mr. Courtland. Perhaps she would do better not to look at him at all. Not even one glance.

  “Good afternoon, Your Grace,” Mr. Courtland said. “We were pleased to get your note. We have been anxious for word on Teddy’s recovery.”

  Thank God, she thought, for Mr. Courtland’s reliable manners and concern.

  “Teddy is nearly his old self again,” she said. “Thank you so much for asking. I hope you’ll forgive my intrusion, but I saw the chance to slip away this afternoon, and I seized it. There has been a troubling development. I worry it may complicate our plans.” From the corner of her eye, she saw Rainsleigh pivot in her direction.

  “What’s happened?” the viscount snapped.

  “Good morning to you too, my lord,” Emmaline said, examining the button on her glove.

  “Forgive my brother,” said Mr. Courtland. “He slept through luncheon.”

  “Forgive me,” she said, “for not impressing upon him how to say a proper hello.”

  “You are aware that I’m standing right here?” asked the viscount. “What troubling development?”

  Emmaline told Mr. Courtland, “The Duke of Ticking feels it is best if Teddy and I vacate the dower house and move into the family townhome with him and the duchess and their children.” It knotted her stomach to say the words.

  “What?” demanded the viscount. Now he was beside her. “Tell him no. Tell him not a bloody chance. Tell him you have no wish to move into his overpopulated and undersupervised brat factory. He cannot force you.”

  “In fact, he can,” said Emmaline, finally looking at him. “If I am to enjoy any freedom, any at all, I must consent to the things about which he is most adamant. And he is very adamant about having us out of the dower house. In the wake of Teddy’s disappearance, he feels our life there is not secure enough to keep Teddy safe.”

  Beau hissed out a breath.

  His brother glared at him. “Beau, please.” To Emmaline, Mr. Courtland said, “Your Grace, did you suggest a larger staff in the dower house to assist you in Teddy’s care?”

  Emmaline shook her head. “He denied my request for more staff, even before Teddy went missing. In fact . . . ” She looked away now, tears forming in her eyes. “In fact, he wishes to let go of Teddy’s valet, Mr. Broom, a man who has carefully tended Teddy since he was a boy. His Grace plans to assign one of his own footmen to wash and dress him.”

  She took a deep breath, reaching for composure. “I’m not sure what we’ll do without dear Mr. Broom. Teddy will be devastated to lose him. We all will. If I can argue only one point, it will be this. I am prepared to, quite literally, beg the duke to allow us to retain the man. I’ll promise anything.”

  Beau turned away now, swearing again, and she allowed herself to watch. He made no effort to hide his outrage. How good it felt to see someone was as angry as she was.

  Emmaline went on. “I am telling you this simply to reiterate my determination to sail as soon as your ship can be made ready. I will do whatever it takes to steal away, even if it means that Teddy and I climb out the window in the middle of th
e night and run through the streets of London to Southwark.”

  Mr. Courtland opened his mouth to speak, but she rushed to finish. “Until then, I may not have the freedom to meet with your or even to send word by letter. His Grace is highly suspicious of my relationship with Elisabeth and you and”—she looked at the viscount—“Lord Rainsleigh. But please do not take my silence for lack of heart. We will make our way to New York. I will sell these books. I will repay you for your kindness and the passage.” Cringing, she glanced at the viscount. He was just as rough and untamed as when she’d first met him. She looked back to Mr. Courtland. “In actual money, that is.”

  “You cleared your debt when you took my brother on,” said Mr. Courtland. “He is impossible to teach—even the king’s own herald could not have done better—and I blame myself for suggesting it.”

  “Well, I do not,” she said, her voice going suddenly serious and urgent. She would say this now. “In fact, I could not be more grateful. He restored my brother to me, finding a helpless boy in all of teeming London.” She glanced at the viscount’s averted profile. “If I had not worked with him on the . . . er, lessons, then he would not have known. I would have never met him at all.”

  “Yes, I will give him that,” said Mr. Courtland. “He is handy in a fight—or a rescue, if you will. There are worse things.”

  “We owe our lives to the viscount,” Emmaline said, her voice tearful. She’d been given no opportunity to thank him, a breach that never left her mind, despite her relief and every other pressing concern. How strange it felt now, strange and insufficient, to say the words in relay, telling his brother while he stood not three feet apart. But he would not look at her.

  But perhaps it was for the best, she thought, because deep down, she worried the thank-you was merely an excuse. She was grateful, but her compulsion to express it was all tangled up with her compulsion to simply see him again. To touch him, if she could.

  Was she grateful, or was she falling in love?

  Would she have wanted so badly to kiss him if he hadn’t saved Teddy’s life?