One for the Rogue

by Charis Michaels

  “Careful on the stairs,” he called, reaching for her.

  Emma appeared, smiling sadly when she saw him. He took her hand to help her down from the top step, and she fell against him. “Sewell said I’d find you here.”

  Beau scooped her up, reveling in the feel of her against his body. He’d wanted to hold her all day.

  “Where is Teddy?” she asked against his chest.

  Bryson answered this, clipping up the staircase behind them. “In the garden with Stoker and Joseph. I was just going to look in on them. Did the lawyer offer any hope?”

  “Some,” she said. “He is very resourceful. Elisabeth will tell you.”

  “Of this, I have no doubt,” he said, and he disappeared up the stairs, leaving Beau alone with his wife.

  “I’m sorry, Emma.” As much as he’d wanted to hold her, he’d wanted to say this.

  “Sorry for . . . ”

  “Abandoning you to this madness.”

  “I’m sorry that you married a woman with so many . . . complications.”

  He kissed the top of her head. “Do not apologize. You are falsely accused. Or Teddy is. Ticking has victimized you both. Typically, victims are my specialty, just . . . not this type.”

  She chuckled. “I refuse to think of us as victims, but now I must ask. What type is not your type?”

  “The kind that does not need to be rescued but rather”—he searched for the correct word—“needs an advocate.”

  “Stop. What I really need now is your support,” she said, snuggling into him. “I managed the meeting with Mr. Wick quite well on my own. But it’s ridiculous how quickly one becomes accustomed to friends and . . . lovers.” She chuckled.

  “Lover,” he corrected. “Just the one, I hope.”

  “The only one,” she whispered, and he dropped his lips to her neck and kissed her behind the ear. He had the irrational wish that the door to the cellar would slam shut, and lock, and they could safely be held beneath the earth for four or five hours. Or days.

  “Would you like to hear what Mr. Wick said?” she asked.

  No, he thought, but he sighed heavily and said, “All right.”

  The story that followed was long and detailed, not the thematic summary for which he’d hoped. She drifted from his arms as she spoke, walking up and down aisles of the cellar, gesturing and exclaiming. He learned of the asylum, and the way the investigation would go, the threat of Teddy being taken into custody, and the importance of money for bail so he could remain in her care until a proper hearing. It was much of what he had expected until she got to the very end.

  “Mr. Wick believes that we’d do very well to have you, my husband and a viscount, make some testimony before the court.”

  Beau’s skin went cold. He reached for the rack of wine beside him, trying to keep his face neutral.

  Emmaline glanced at him warily but continued to walk and talk. “I made no promises. Of course I would speak to you first. But that’s not the worst of it, unfortunately.”

  Beau followed her nervous prowl around the cellar. The moment she’d uttered the phrase “as my husband and a viscount, make some testimony,” he’d felt himself begin to pull away.

  “The worst part, I’m afraid, is that the hearing itself will likely occur in the House of Lords.” Another glance she could not hold. “Not in the main chambers but in a small courtroom reserved for the conflicts among peers, particularly if they involve a parliamentary committee. In this case, the judges will be members of the Lords who serve on the Royal Commission for Lunacy Care.” She stopped walking and looked at him, really looked at him. “I know this is not what you wanted to hear.”

  Beau wondered how he could hear anything over the roar of blood in his ears. He felt, rather than heard, the clink, clink, clink of wine bottles rattling beside him. His hand on the top rung had started to shake.

  “Beau?” Emmaline asked, taking a step toward him.

  He wanted to tell her that he was a poor choice for this, that his nerves and resentment and bloody life’s journey around the world instead of around the Britain’s leisure class would sabotage him.

  He wanted to tell her that he would stammer, or sneer, or laugh in their faces and tell them all to go to hell. At least this would be a complete and fully formed thought, unlike anything official or meaningful he was meant to say.

  Unlike anything remotely beneficial for Teddy.

  He wanted to tell her that he would be nineteen again, facing off with five noblemen who listened politely and then assured him that he was well and rightly mad if he thought he could convince them of anything but exoneration for their sons.

  But these arguments sounded weak and peevish and unsubstantiated, even to his own rapidly panicking mind, and he was not sure he could stand the indignity of her assurances.

  His fear was irrational; he knew this. He was a man, just like any other, and he could certainly stand up in a court for the purpose of saving the life of a sweet and innocent soul. He could grit out the words that needed to be said.

  And yet, what if he could not? He had not been able to convince Lord Laramie ten years ago, and, for good reason, he’d tried nothing of the sort since then.

  Honestly, he could not say whether he could try it now.

  Even for her. This woman who now looked at him with anxious, tear-bright eyes. The woman with whom he suspected very strongly he was falling into the thing everyone called love.

  Especially for her, he could not promise to do it.

  If he did not try, he would not fail.

  Beau released the shuddering wine rack and said, “I was thinking of taking Teddy out of the crush of London to Wiltshire, to our family estate, Rossmore Court, until you are in need of him for the hearing.”

  She took another step toward him. “You’re going to Wiltshire?”

  “We cannot rely on Stoker and Joseph to look after Teddy forever. They are due back in school. And you are busy preparing for the journey to New York and mounting a defense against the duke in bloody Parliament. Jocelyn has duties at Elisabeth’s foundation. She’s been useful with Teddy, but now that I’m no longer leading the raids, she’ll be needed more than ever.”

  “You’re going to Wiltshire?” Emmaline repeated.

  Beau would have laughed if he were not suffering from such debilitating cowardice. She looked as if she might take up one of Bryon’s priceless bottles of wine and hurl it at his head.

  “Just until he’s needed for the hearing. I’ll take Mr. Broom to help me. You know that I can keep him safe, and the atmosphere in the country is relaxed and slow—a nice change after he’s been shifted from the dower house, to the ducal townhome, and now here.”

  “That logic would be sound if you weren’t proposing to move him yet again. To Wiltshire. Should I take this to mean that you will not testify in your role as viscount at Teddy’s hearing?” She would not look away from his face.

  “No,” he made himself say.

  “No, you won’t testify, or no, you will?”

  “I don’t know,” he snapped. “I warned you, Emmaline. I warned my brother, I warned all of you. I am not capable of . . . of . . . ” How could he make her see without showing her the parts of himself he hated the most?

  “Of what?” she demanded. “Don’t be cryptic and dismissive, not now.”

  “You’re right,” he shot back. “You. Deserve. More. I’ve said it from the very first. You deserve a proper husband who can take on the world. When I say I am not capable, I mean I am not capable of looking after for you.” He strode past her and put his boot on the first step of the staircase.

  “That,” she said, spinning around, “is a horrible thing to say. I don’t require looking after. I’ve learned that about myself in the last year. What I need is a partner. And I think we are brilliant together. And I think you should testify for my brother, even if you are afraid.”

  Beau began to climb the stairs. “You are the one who takes things on, sweetheart, even when you a
re afraid. Not me. It’s why you took on the Duke of Ticking, and look where that’s gotten you.”

  He regretted the words, even as he said them, but he did not want to be followed.

  “Stop talking!” she called up after him. “Do not say another word. You make it more difficult to forgive you, the more you say!”

  It was only a matter of time for that, sweetheart, Beau thought, rounding the top of the stairs, but he was careful to take her advice and stop talking.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  By the time Beau left with Teddy, his dog, and Mr. Broom for Wiltshire, Emmaline had come to terms with his departure. She did not like it, but she was prepared for it on an intellectual level. Her heart, of course, could never be prepared.

  Beau had been forced to linger two days to await Mr. Roe’s interrogation of Teddy. Teddy had endured this brilliantly, answering the questions he could understand and sitting in calm silence for the questions he did not. Mr. Wick was invaluable as his advocate and intermediary. Best of all, the young lawyer argued to allow Teddy to remain in the care of Emmaline and Beau until the time of the trial, and the magistrate agreed.

  In many ways, sending Teddy away with Beau felt like the best course. Teddy had been traumatized by the suggestion that he had attacked anyone, especially the duke’s son Orin, the only of the duke’s many children that Teddy had actually enjoyed. He had backed slowly into the corner of the drawing room when Mr. Roe had gone, covering his ears and shutting his eyes. It had taken a half hour to coax him from the wall, and only the promise of a ride on Beau’s horse to the countryside had done it.

  So perhaps Wiltshire was best, Emmaline thought. Best for Teddy but hell for her. The loss of her husband, so soon after she’d married him, felt like a physical crack in her heart that bled loneliness into her chest. The fact that she was also angry and confused did little to diffuse this heartsickness.

  After their fight in the wine cellar, he’d returned to the Paddington Lock to sleep in his boat rather than join her in the room they’d shared for all of one night. By the end of the week, he’d collected Teddy and gone. They’d passed those days with few words between them. She was angry; he was . . . inscrutable. (Although if Emmaline had to guess, she would say he was angry too.) He’d not foreseen this when he’d asked to marry her—solicitors and hearings and facing a duke in parliamentary court. To make matters worse, his brother, Bryson, was furious at his desertion. Likely, Beau felt as if he’d disappointed everyone.

  The irony was, she could understand if his past failures, or his present resentment, or the unnamed . . . whatever it was prevented him from testifying for Teddy.

  If he could not do it, so be it. She loved him too much to hold that particular weakness, whatever the source, against him. God knew she harbored every manner of weakness for nearly her whole life. Only in the last two years, when she’d been given no other choice, had she found courage and the spirit to fight.

  Perhaps Beau would, one day, learn to deal with Important Men about Serious Matters or perhaps he would not, but she would love him just as much, regardless.

  What troubled her was his inability to discuss it with her and his neck-breaking flight from her side.

  She might not need him to testify, but she certainly needed him to hold her at night when she could not sleep for fear. She needed him to listen to her recount the progress that she made, building their defense, with Mr. Wick. Simply put, she needed him.

  And this—this need and his abandonment—would be the first thing she discussed with him when he returned Teddy for his hearing.

  If he returned.

  As it now stood, she had no idea whether he intended to carry on as her husband after the hearing came and went, or return to the canal, or sail to New York or Timbuktu.

  And perhaps that was the most infuriating bit of all. The not knowing. It was painfully similar to other times when she’d been made to guess where he was and if he would come for her. She had enough problems without trying to understand the vague evasiveness of Beau Courtland.

  And so it was with a mix of heartsickness, frustration, and sheer exasperation that she greeted her husband two weeks later, when the date for the hearing rolled around, and Beau and Teddy returned to London. Due to storms off the channel, the carriage had arrived close to midnight, barely managing the icy roads at a slow lurch. Teddy had fallen asleep in the carriage, and Beau had carried him to his room and tucked him into bed while Emmaline watched from the doorway.

  Her husband looked more haggard than ever she had seen him—even more haggard than when she’d first called on his boat and discovered him unconscious.

  To her great frustration, his wrung-out condition served to suppress her planned list of questions and concerns. He’d ridden through a storm to deliver her brother to her. Would she harangue him as soon as he walked through the door?

  “I’ve missed you,” she heard herself say instead. Teddy was finally asleep, and he met her in the dark hallway.

  He grabbed her up and crushed her to his chest with such force the embrace was half of a hug and half an effort to keep the two of them from tipping over. They stood for five, maybe even ten minutes in the hallway outside Teddy’s room and simply held each other. He inhaled the scent of her skin and rubbed his beard against her hair. She allowed the solid, muscled strength of him to shore her up.

  Not enough, she’d said in her brain, but she could not bring herself to say the words. The truth was, in that moment, it felt very much like enough. It felt like all she’d ever wanted.

  “Will you come to bed?” she heard herself ask.

  He pulled away and stared at her. “Emma,” he began, sounding confused, “you cannot mean to allow me to—”

  “It’s not for you.” She sighed, realizing that she meant this.

  And so they had gone to bed, and he had made love to her with such ardent, passionate, tender feeling she had wept from the futility of all they had missed while he had been away. She had fallen into the first peaceful sleep she’d had since the night of her wedding. She dreamed of Liverpool, and her parents before they had drowned, and New York City.

  But when she awakened in the morning, her husband was gone.

  Beau slipped from Emmaline’s bed just before sunrise, dressed quietly, and crept down the stairs. Peach followed silently behind him. The street outside the house was swathed in the icy murk of frozen fog. He turned up the collar of his coat and hunkered down against the cold.

  “Rainsleigh?”

  Beau went still, reacting to the name he still thought of as his brother’s.

  He turned with exaggerated slowness, squinting into the mist of Lady Frinfrock’s front garden.

  “Lady Frinfrock?” he whispered. It was five o’clock in the morning.

  “Yes, of course,” came the reply. “Who else would be standing in my garden, calling your name before dawn?”

  “What are you doing out of bed? Does Miss Breedlowe know you are out in the cold?”

  “I don’t live or die by Miss Breedlowe’s command. If she does not approve of the hours I keep, she wisely does not impose her judgment on me. I enjoy the sunrise on icy winter mornings, if you must know. What excuse have you?”

  Beau shrugged. “Running away from home, I suppose.” He had not bargained on trading Emmaline’s questions for the marchioness’s.

  “Again?” she asked.

  Beau looked right and left down the hazy street. The chambermaids and kitchen staff would be up soon, readying their houses for the day, but now the silence of nighttime reigned. He ambled to the black iron spears of her garden gate.

  “Have you brought the boy back for his day in court?” she asked.

  “I have. He does not understand the hearing, but we have talked about what it may be like and how he must behave.”

  “And have you talked about how you must behave?”

  The question took him by surprise. Either his short marriage had softened his instincts, or he was still half-
asleep. He opened his mouth to answer but closed it and looked at the sky. He squeezed his eyes shut. The answer, of course, was no.

  “Did you know, Beauregard, that everyone is granted by God with certain gifts?”

  He stifled a groan. The last thing he needed in this moment was a lecture on the gifts from God.

  The marchioness went on. “For example, I was granted the gift of cultivating the earth with beautiful vegetation and of sharing my sage counsel with people who need it most. That is to say, sharing it with everyone.”

  “And I give the appearance of someone who may need this sage counsel, do I?”

  “Well, you are not a vegetable in need of cultivation. It is common knowledge that you are quite skilled in cultivating, all on your own.”

  He smirked.

  She continued. “But you are handsome and charming, dashing and brave, aren’t you? You are in possession of what some might call a large heart but with a champion’s eye for the smallest among us. These are your gifts, a very rare and—dare I say—beguiling combination indeed.”

  “Er, thank you.” Beau had never heard her say so many positive things in one sentence.

  “But did you know, we all have other skills, and qualities, and traits that we may not classify as ‘gifts’ but that can still be called upon to get the job done? We must work harder at these.”

  “My lady,” he cut in wearily. It was obvious, what she intended, and he was too old to be lectured.

  “For some reason,” she went on, “you believe that you cannot represent your family or your marriage or even this dear, daft boy who relies on you, because you’ve convinced yourself that you’ve no aptitude for this sort of thing. In this, my dear boy, you are mistaken.”

  “No,” he said, irritated now, “I’m not mistaken. I don’t have the aptitude, and I—”

  “Oh, not mistaken about having no aptitude. Of course you do not. It’s clear to me that you may be very average, indeed, at the task of testifying in parliamentary court. There’ll be no harlots to rescue or lost simpletons to find inside those moldering halls. It will be precisely what you fear: stodgy, self-important men, preconceived notions about right from wrong, and entitlement. Of this is not what I speak. You believe you cannot do it because it does not come easily to you. But you can do it. It can be done. It’s not impossible. It simply takes more work. Time and preparation and care. Not every useful skill comes naturally to most people, Beauregard. In the end, you may do passably well or you may do dreadfully. It depends on how hard you are willing, finally, to try, doesn’t it? But regardless, it will get the job done.”