One for the Rogue

by Charis Michaels

  “And the houses and the child who was burned?” she guessed again.

  He spun back to her, arms outstretched. “Oh, no, these were left entirely untended. Not the houses or the child. The lot of them—these wealthy noblemen, chosen by God to lead us all—left this family to fend for themselves. Including the care for the boy. And a new house. And all of it. They provided nothing.”

  “Oh, Beau,” she said, wrapping the sheet around herself and slipping from the bed. “I can see your agony and regret, but this is not your fault.”

  “Do not say this. It was entirely my fault. It was the fault of all of us. It was not intentional, but it was reckless and indulgent and stupid. And we should have admitted our carelessness and provided restitution for the destruction. Instead, their noble parents used their influence to make the problem—”

  “Disappear,” she finished for him.

  “Well, the problem was still very much present. Houses were lost. A boy suffered—he still suffers.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Lord Laramie threatened to tell my brother that I’d done all of it—in his mind, the revised story was now a fact—if I dared suggest to anyone that his son and the other boys were involved. Bryson had worked so hard to see me brought up away from the shadow of our parents’ notoriety. I could not bear for him to hear this. It would crush him to know that I had disappointed him in this way. If I could save him from this, I wanted to do it. If I could, somehow I’d manage the magistrate and help the tenants rebuild on my own.”

  “And that is what you did?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “That is what I have been trying to do for the last ten years. I have long since paid back the price of the barn and restored the houses, and I look in on the family in Essex and provide for them whenever I can. But how can I restore the life of a boy who will be forever scarred? How?”

  “You cannot,” she whispered, “but you can help them in every other way. One repentant man can only do so much.”

  He nodded. “Yes, I believe this to be true. And the family has been so forgiving and lovely to me, all these years. I have not forgiven myself, but they have, and it has given me sort of a peace. But I can never go along with the notion that some men deserve to be treated with undue respect simply because they were born into this family or that. And certainly I can never go along with the notion that I should be regarded this way.”

  Emmaline nodded and took a step toward him. She wanted to reach for him, but she was unsure. He remembered now why he never volunteered this story to anyone.

  “I complain about society and the ton and their frivolity and pointless customs,” he said, “but I don’t discuss the fire. It’s my own private struggle. I don’t expect you to understand, but I will implore you to not, at the very least, flaunt your new title. If you can help it. It is very important to me. I will never be one of them.”

  “Of course,” she said simply. “And I understand.”

  He studied her. She raised her eyebrows. No excuses for him. No trying to explain it away. Simply, I understand.

  Maybe he deceived himself, maybe he wanted it too badly, but he felt that in that moment, she did understand. He reached out. She padded to him in her sheet, and he tucked her close.

  After a moment, she mused, “It’s ironic. I married the old Duke of Ticking and earned the title of duchess, yet no one, especially him, believed I really deserved the distinction. I was always the daughter of a tradesman to him. But now I’ve married you, and you believe no one deserves the title.”

  He pulled her closer. “Irony, indeed. You married two titled men—and for what?”

  “Oh,” she said, “that is easy to answer. I married Ticking because my parents gave me no choice, and I married you because I fell in love.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Beau had neither answered her declaration of love nor denied it. They stood in the middle of the room, locked in an embrace. Soon the embrace was a kiss, and the kiss was like making love standing up. He’d widened his stance and kissed her while slowly unwinding the sheet wrapped around her body. After the last corner unfurled, he’d stepped back and watched with relish as she affected a spin of her own and then stood, naked, before him.

  They fell to the bed a moment later, and Beau had allowed her eagerness and love to fade his bitterness of the fire into the background of his mind.

  “Do you think,” Emmaline asked when they lay, panting, back on their pillows, “that Bryson would mind if we went downstairs for a proper breakfast? I haven’t really eaten since I woke up yesterday.”

  “My brother would be thrilled to have you do whatever you please in this house,” Beau said. “You could reschedule breakfast for the middle of the afternoon, as long as we—and by ‘we,’ I mean ‘you’—showed some interest. In his mind, this house and the staff have belonged to me since I was made viscount. He’s been waiting for the moment I would do anything so domestic as order breakfast.”

  “Well, he won’t move out now, I hope,” she said. “I cannot say how long we’ll be in America.”

  “For once, we actually haven’t discussed the future of this house,” he said. “You could not know this, but it’s not easy to procure a special marriage license in only six days. It was essential that our marriage was legal and binding, and I called on your young lawyer, Mr. Wick, to learn more about your late husband’s will. What a tedious document that is. Bryson and I spent hours discovering to whom the late Duke of Ticking left his saddles and golden spittoons. There was no time to speculate on how long we would remain in America.”

  “You called Mr. Wick?” said Emmaline, amazed at his resourcefulness.

  “Charming fellow. Clearly, he’s very fond of you.”

  “He’s very fond of the percentage he hopes to earn when I manage to sell the books in New York.”

  “Bryson’s secretary did most of the work. I was determined to extract you without implicating Bryson or his shipyard.”

  “I would never forgive myself if the Courtlands suffered because of my predicament.”

  “Really, there was nothing to deconstruct. Our marriage would have been more complicated if the duke had left you any money or property, but . . . ”

  Emmaline was braiding her hair, and she paused, turning to him. “Oh, the duke left me nothing.”

  “This was our conclusion. No provision for you. It’s a wonder the new Duke of Ticking did not set you free to go home to Liverpool before he had the bright idea of keeping Teddy close by and stealing his money.”

  Emmaline nodded. “I remember, clear as day, the conversation in which he discovered our potential to him. I was made a little ill and a little courageous all in the same moment. My gumption took root and began to grow that day, and I began to explore the idea of selling Papa’s old books.”

  “Ha! Your gumption took root while Ticking’s greed bloomed. You acquired the far more useful sentiment. You know, Emma, that the duke assumes I am just as greedy, that I have married you for Teddy’s money. We have not discussed this, but please tell me that you know I’ve no interest in the money. It is Teddy’s to keep and yours to manage.”

  “Hmm,” mused Emmaline, winking at him. “The life you led on the canal did not suggest an aspirational grab for money. Nothing about you, in fact, suggests you give much thought to money at all. But that does not mean we should not discuss how we will provision ourselves. The duke provided my meals and clothing when I lived under his roof, obviously, but my plan was to live off what is left of the allowance my parents left for Teddy—that is, until I begin to show a profit from the books.”

  She crossed to the desk by the door and rifled in the drawers until she found ink and pen and paper. “But we should begin making lists and tallies, now that you will travel to New York with us. I had only accounted for Teddy; his valet, Mr. Broom; and me. I shall figure you in.” She began to scribble notes to this effect.

  “I have my own money, Emma. You needn’t feed and clothe me.
”

  “Well, we may pool our resources,” she said thoughtfully, “but we do not have to. Will the money you bring be in the form of bank notes? Or English currency? Do you travel with gold, like a pirate? Your brother said the ship’s food will be simple but sufficient on the Atlantic crossing, but I will hire a small staff when we get settled in New York. Kitchen help and a few maids. I will do the marketing myself, for a time.” She made a note of this on the paper.

  “If you help me with the work of distributing the books to the booksellers in New York,” she went on, warming to the topic, “which would be lovely, but I do not expect it, mind you—then I believe we may both draw a salary from the money we make. Mr. Wick has made this suggestion. But if you do not wish to work with me, selling the books, you may . . . ”

  She could not finish this sentence and looked up, chewing her bottom lip. She stroked her chin with the feather of the pen. “You’ve already said you will not live as a, er, viscount in New York. But that does not mean . . . ” She turned to him.

  The look on his face stopped the question on her lips. He looked stricken. Trapped and tested and a little exhausted. He’d raised his hands to the ceiling and then settled them behind his head, half stretch, half surrender.

  “But perhaps,” she allowed, “you do not yet know.”

  He laughed, a hoarse, awkward sound. “Perhaps I do not. Look, Duchess, remember last night, when you asked me to not explain what would happen in bed in terms too precise? When you suggested that you simply might follow along?”

  She nodded.

  “I should appreciate the same lack of . . . explanation in these plans of yours.”

  “You don’t want me to explain how we will have money for food and housing? How we will live?”

  “No, of course you may explain it. Only please do not look to me for an answer—at least not yet. It has been many years since I was accountable to anyone. Bryson has insisted that I show my face in England once every eighteen months or so, simply to check in, and he’s forced me to invest in this or that shipbuilding venture. But other than that, I go and do as I please.

  “Raiding brothels for Elisabeth was the longest endeavor in which I’d ever engaged besides my time in the Royal Navy. It is this very . . . itinerate manner that allows me to sail to America with you without a backward glance—and why not? It does not startle me as it might another man. On the same token, the thought of provisioning and money and drawing a salary? This startles me very much. Do you understand?”

  She nodded slowly, trying to balance her own need to sort out their time and money with his very plain request to not sort it out.

  “You’ll forgive my . . . aggressiveness,” she said. “I have not had the freedom to leap first and locate the net on my way down, as you have. I have a brother to provide for. My relationship with my father’s board of trustees is tenuous, at best. Ticking complicated everything.”

  Beau shoved from his chair and crossed to the desk, kneeling before her. “I understand the necessity that compels you. I simply . . . have never been so compelled. I . . . I don’t know how.”

  She dropped the pen and placed her hands on his shoulders. “Well, neither do I, but I have been happy to learn,” she said, feeling the familiar excitement strumming inside her anew. “I was always going to learn.”

  “I wonder? Does it make me less of a man to say that I shall . . . follow along?” He said it like a joke, repeating her words of the night before, but his expression revealed the slightest uncertainty.

  “I’ve not known more of a man than you,” she said.

  Beau laughed, shoving up. He snatched her discarded dress from the back of a chair and held it out. “Thank God your mother did not allow you to know many men,” he said. “But come, let us seek out sustenance before I perish.”

  She rolled her eyes and shook her head and stooped to retrieve her chemise from the floor.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Jocelyn Breedlowe rushed from Cavendish Square to Henrietta Place, tugging Teddy Holt behind her. The walkway was dotted with patches of ice, and she skittered and sidestepped, trying to keep them upright.

  “Faster, Teddy, that’s it,” she said in her calmest possible voice. “Faster, if you can bear it.”

  They slid the last three yards, and she caught the railing with one hand and kept them off the icy steps with the palm of the other. When they reached the door, she pounded, flat-handed, rap-rap-rap-rap, until Sewell, finally, admitted them.

  “Lord and Lady Rainsleigh?” she gasped, bundling Teddy inside. “Have they come down?”

  “In the breakfast room, miss,” the butler said cautiously. Jocelyn yanked the door from his hand and slammed it shut, locking the bolt.

  “Have Stoker or Joseph called today?” she asked, whipping off her coat and scarf and piling them in Sewell’s arms. The boys tended to ramble at night, but they could generally be counted on to return for breakfast.

  “In the mews, I believe,” he said through the heap of her coat.

  Jocelyn thanked God for this small favor. “Take Teddy to them, will you, Mr. Sewell? Tell them not to leave the grounds and not to let Teddy out of their sight.”

  She did not wait for a response but rushed down the hall. Opening and closing her hands, she repeated the incident in her head. Emmaline would want to know every detail, just as it had happened.

  Outside the breakfast room, she paused and took a deep breath. “I beg your pardon, Lady Rainsleigh, Lord Rainsleigh?” She stepped inside.

  “Oh, there you are, Jocelyn,” said Elisabeth, gesturing to the empty chair beside her. “Come and have your breakfast. But where is Teddy? You must tell Emmaline his reaction to his new room here in Henrietta Place.”

  The two couples—Elisabeth and Bryson, Emmaline and Rainsleigh—sat around the oval table, smiling at her. Thank God they were all present; Jocelyn would not have to say it twice.

  “Something’s happened, I’m afraid,” she said, coming to stop behind the empty dining chair.

  Emmaline shoved immediately to her feet, compelling the gentlemen to also stand. “Teddy,” Emma said.

  Jocelyn held out a hand. “Teddy is here, and he’s well. For the moment. Sewell has taken him to Joseph and Stoker in the mews.” She took another deep breath. “But he and I have just raced back from Cavendish Square, and he may well be unsettled.”

  “Miss Breedlowe, what happened?” asked the viscount carefully, studying her. “Is someone hurt?”

  “We were approached in the square by the Duke of Ticking.”

  “The duke?” repeated Emmaline. “In the park? But what did he want?”

  “Well,” began Jocelyn, cringing, “he was accompanied by a man. A doctor, he claimed. A Dr. Vickery. Of Egham, in Surrey. Apparently, the doctor specializes in . . . in lunacy and afflictions of the brain.”

  “Oh God,” said Emmaline, closing her eyes.

  Jocelyn pressed on. “The duke and this . . . Dr. Vickery came upon us on a bench. While we sat there—rather, trapped by their proximity—they discussed Teddy at length, discussed him as if neither of us was there. I endeavored to slide away, to lead Teddy over the bench and through the bed of ivy behind us, but they deliberately blocked our progress.”

  “But what did they want?” asked Elisabeth. “What was this discussion?”

  “The duke, it seems, collaborated with the doctor to make some diagnosis of Teddy’s mental state.”

  “Diagnosis?” said Emmaline. “But Teddy is not ill, he is simply . . . Teddy.”

  “He referred to Teddy as a ‘lunatic,’ Emma,” Jocelyn said. “He said it again and again, I’m afraid. He would not, in fact, stop saying it.”

  “A lunatic?” cried Emmaline. Her voice cracked, and her husband put a hand on her shoulder.

  The viscount said, “You’re certain Teddy is here, in this house, at the moment, Miss Breedlowe?”

  Jocelyn nodded. “Quite certain. We’ve just dashed back together. I’ve assumed he would
be safe with Jon Stoker and Joseph. I thought it best not to relay what happened where he might overhear.”

  “He is quite safe with the boys,” confirmed Mr. Courtland. “And you were right to come to us alone. But please, can you begin from the moment you first saw Ticking?”

  This was followed by a chorus of “yes,” and “take a drink of water,” and “sit down and catch your breath.”

  Jocelyn refused it all. She rushed to tell them. “Teddy and I breakfasted early and then agreed to walk to Cavendish Square with yesterday’s bread to feed the birds. From our place on the bench, I saw the Ticking carriage—the ducal crest is impossible to miss—circle the square once, and then once again, and then a third time. Naturally, this gave me pause. I suggested to Teddy that we return home to escape the cold.

  “We had just made the decision to go when the carriage stopped at the nearest corner and the duke himself, accompanied by this doctor, emerged and rushed to us on the bench. The duke greeted me by name and said to the doctor, ‘This is the boy. It’s him.’ ”

  “But for what?” pressed Emmaline, her fists clenched in front of her. “What could Ticking want with a doctor’s care for Teddy? We’ve gone. Teddy and I have gone. He has nothing to gain.”

  “After the duke rattled off a . . . a list of infractions against Teddy, I excused us and forced our way from them.”

  “What infractions?” asked Rainsleigh.

  “Lies, all of them,” said Jocelyn. “That Teddy will not sleep and howls in the night. That we must feed him by hand because he is known to throw his food. That he is prone to undress himself in the middle of the day—”

  “What?” Emmaline’s voice was a tear-choked whisper. The viscount wrapped his arm around her shoulders. She grabbed hold of his arm.