Midnight Raider

by Thacker, Shelly

  “Of course. Accompanied by a note on the royal stationery, no doubt.” He crossed to the window and stared out at the night sky.

  Elizabeth bit back a retort, observing him in the silver glow of the moon—the taut strain in his shoulders, his back, in his every movement and every word.

  “Marcus, what is it?” She moved away from the door and came to stand in the middle of the room.

  He remained tense and silent.

  “If you’re still angry with me for getting us mixed up with Lowe’s knot,” she said quietly, “go ahead and rant some more and have done—”

  “It’s not that.”

  “Then why have you been snapping at me all night?”

  He didn’t answer for a long moment. When he did, his voice was rough. “Didn’t you see him?”

  “Who?”

  “Halford. On the floor.”

  Elizabeth shut her eyes, knowing she would never forget. “Yes. What they did to that sweet, kindly man was—”

  “They didn’t do it. He did it.” Marcus shoved away from the window, his voice stark. “He blew his own brains out and they laughed about it.” He glared down at his boots, his fists clenching. “He could have shot one of them. Why didn’t he see that? Why the hell didn’t he at least try that?”

  Elizabeth remained still for a moment, studying him, the truth beginning to dawn on her. She felt like a fool for not realizing it sooner. The pain that wracked him went far deeper than what had happened tonight.

  “Marcus,” she whispered, moving closer. “What happened in that room?”

  “Forget it.” He turned away, prowling over to the tray of food and drinks on the table. “Tonight… brought back some memories. From a long time ago. I don’t want to talk about it.”

  Elizabeth remembered hearing him say exactly those words to her before—whenever the subject of his past came up.

  “I know you don’t want to talk about it,” she said gently. “But I think, perhaps, you should.”

  “You couldn’t understand,” he said flatly.

  “I could try,” she offered, staying where she was. Giving him the distance he seemed to need. “Marcus… is it about your family? About what happened to your parents?”

  He reached for one of the goblets on the tray, took a long swallow of whatever it held, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You want to hear the whole horrible thing?” He choked out a harsh sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “I suppose it’s only fair. I know all about you, don’t I?” He emptied the cup. “Fine. What the hell. Why not?” He turned to face her, his jaw clenched. “Let me tell you the whole damned story.”

  Chapter 15

  “I was fifteen. It was an August morning. We were at Worthington Manor, just outside London. My father asked my mother and I to join him in his study. Said he had news.” Marcus’s eyes glittered unnaturally dark in the wavering light of the lamps. His voice had become a cold monotone, as if he were reciting a passage memorized from a book long ago. “Father told us we would be leaving that day. Leaving Worthington Manor, permanently. Because it belonged to someone else. All of our homes and possessions now belonged to someone else—a man by the name of Charles Montaigne.”

  “But how was that possible?” Elizabeth whispered, not allowing herself to draw closer to him as she wanted to. She wrapped her arm around one of the tall posts at the foot of the bed.

  “Montaigne,” Marcus said, his tone still icy, controlled, “was one of four trusted friends who lured my father into the West Indies investment madness.”

  Elizabeth gasped, beginning to understand. “That awful scheme where everyone in England was buying shares in Caribbean sugar plantations—only it turned out half of the plantations didn’t exist?”

  Marcus nodded. “They talked him into investing all he could. My father was a gambler by nature. He made huge profits at first. He was mad for more cash to buy more shares—and Montaigne offered to loan it to him. All my father had to do was sign a note putting up the Worthington estates against the loan. Then the crash came.”

  Marcus looked down at the empty goblet in his hand as he continued. “My father found out that his friends had been involved in the company’s management all along. They knew the end was coming and used him to get out. His investment allowed them to unload their own shares at a rich profit. They were all fat and happy. We lost everything. That morning, my father confessed it all to my mother and I. He had documents in front of him—we were standing there on the other side of his desk, watching him sign away everything we had.”

  The rapid rising and falling of Marcus’s chest was the only sign that he felt any emotion at all about the story he was relating.

  “By the time he finished, Montaigne and his men were there. Arrived first thing that morning to toss us out. Walked right into the study. My father stood up to face them… and I came around the desk, to stand beside him… I thought if… the two of us could stand together against them, that somehow…”

  Marcus’s voice faltered. A muscle flexed in his cheek.

  “Then I saw the gun… in Father’s hand. But I didn’t realize… I thought he meant to fight them. To fight for us. Instead, he… put the pistol to his head and pulled the trigger.” Marcus shut his eyes, as if trying to shut out the memory. “His blood… was all over the desk. On the papers he had signed… I fell to my knees beside him, on the floor. His blood was all over my hands.”

  Elizabeth hung her head, anguished at the image of Marcus, so young, forced to witness his father’s brutal death.

  Marcus cleared his throat, his voice hoarse as he told her the rest. “Montaigne’s men came at me, tried to pull me away. I picked up the gun and attacked the son of a bitch. Montaigne grabbed the pistol and hit me across the face with it. Then he ordered his men to throw me out, and my mother as well. Tossed the empty gun after us. Said if we tried to make any trouble, he would tell the authorities that he and his witnesses had seen me kill my father.”

  Marcus stared down at his hands, as if belatedly realizing that he still gripped the empty goblet.

  He dropped it on the tray and it landed with a clatter. “They had him buried in a pauper’s grave. Wouldn’t even pay for a headstone out of the money they had stolen from him.”

  Elizabeth ached for what he had lost. She could only imagine what it had been like for him, carrying that pain inside all these years, never sharing it with anyone.

  As if for the first time, she noticed the scar on the side of his jaw, realizing that it must be from that night, inflicted by Montaigne—with the gun that Marcus’s father had used to commit suicide.

  “Marcus,” she whispered, her throat dry and tight, “I’m so sorry.”

  He walked toward the bed and sank onto it. “We went from one relative and friend to another.” He rested his elbows on his knees, his voice quieter now. “Even the ones who had anything left after the West Indies debacle turned us away—because Montaigne had made good on his threat. He gave out the story that I killed my father. Even got it into the newspapers. Seems he wanted to destroy us completely.” His jaw tightened. “No one would take us in. Everyone believed that I was a murderer, that I had gone mad.”

  He kept his gaze downcast, and looked utterly worn out.

  “One day we were at the heights of London society,” he said bitterly. “The next, we were penniless. And we were outcasts.”

  Elizabeth felt tears burn her eyes as she imagined the rest: a fifteen-year-old boy determined to take care of his mother, with nothing more than a pistol and his own cunning to live by, hatred burning in his heart. He had probably been scared witless the first time he robbed someone, but it became easier the next night… and the next.

  Now, after ten years, it was all he knew. The road and the gun. Darkness and danger.

  He had no softness in his life, no family or friends to blunt the sharp edges of vengeance and solitude. It hurt to think that Marcus had lived that way so long.

  “Marcus,” she whisp
ered, “you’re not alone anymore—”

  “Elizabeth, you still don’t understand.” He lifted his head, his voice taut. “When a man has a wife, a family, he’s supposed to take care of them. No matter what, he’s supposed to protect them.” He regarded her with a hard stare—the same accusing look he’d given her on the road earlier tonight. “For ten years, I haven’t wanted a woman in my life. Someone to protect, someone to…” He cut himself off, cursing. “All this time, vengeance has meant everything to me. You’ve made me forget that. And I don’t want to forget.”

  Elizabeth understood, more than he realized.

  He wanted to be left alone in his hate. Alone with the darkness and danger and his need for retribution.

  But she couldn’t do that. She couldn’t leave him alone… not anymore.

  Not certain how to explain that to him, in his present mood, she turned and walked over to the washstand, where she poured steaming water from the pitcher into the porcelain basin. Picking it up, along with some linens and soap, she crossed to Marcus’s side.

  She set the basin on the rug. Then she straightened, looking down at him as he remained seated on the edge of the bed.

  He might not accept her comfort or caring, but he would at least have to let her tend his wound.

  “Let me see your arm,” she said softly.

  Without a word, without taking his gaze from hers, he took off his frock coat and tossed it to the floor. His waistcoat followed. His fingers moved to the buttons on his shirt. He unfastened them with quick, sharp movements.

  Elizabeth held his gaze, refusing to let him stare her down. His entire demeanor was aggressive, hostile. As if he wanted to push her away.

  But she wasn’t easily pushed. Surely he had learned that by now.

  He peeled off the shirt, wincing when it stuck to the deep cut on his arm. He tossed it aside and it landed on the floor atop his other tattered, blood-stained garments.

  Now naked to the waist, Marcus looked like some mythic warrior come to life and ready to do battle. He was all muscle, from the contours of his shoulders to the sculpted steel of his ribs. Dark hair covered his chest, almost obscuring deep brown nipples… then tapering to a line down the center of his flat belly, disappearing at the waist of his breeches.

  Elizabeth thought the sound of her breathing had become far too loud in the room.

  Only the bleeding cut on his right arm marred his perfection, along with another scar—the one on his left arm, from the night they had first met on Hounslow Heath, when she had accidentally shot him.

  She touched the mark, gently, with her fingertips. “I’m sorry for that.”

  “It certainly made a memorable first impression.” His voice was low. “You’ve marked me for life, my lady highwayman.”

  If he’d meant that as another caustic remark, he’d said it all wrong.

  Because it had come out soft, almost aching.

  Elizabeth swallowed hard. Kneeling, she wet a length of linen in the basin, rubbing the soap over the cloth. When she stood, his gaze was there again, capturing hers with that challenging look.

  Trying to keep her hand steady, she leaned over him and gently dabbed at the deep cut on his right arm.

  His scent enveloped her, dark, spicy. Male. Elizabeth tried to focus her thoughts on something else.

  “Did she know?” she asked.

  “Did who know about what?”

  He spoke quietly, his voice inordinately deep and intimate, so close to her ear.

  “Your mother. Did she know how you earned your money?”

  “I told her I’d found work as a hackney coachman. It explained why I was often out at night.”

  “And she never questioned you?”

  For a moment, he didn’t reply. “Only once. A coach driver shot me in the leg. I told her I had gotten caught in a disagreement between two drunken customers. She didn’t believe it for a second, but she didn’t try to stop me. Every night after that, though, when I left, she would say, ‘Be careful, Marcus. Please be careful.’”

  Elizabeth felt a lump in her throat. “What happened to her?”

  “She talked of nothing but returning to our country house in Dorset until the day she died. It was her favorite place in the world. But her health was fragile, and she never really recovered from my father’s death. A fever took her when I was twenty. In the end, I… couldn’t save her, either.”

  Elizabeth met his gaze, understanding now why he was so protective, so determined to watch over those he cared about.

  Including her.

  She also felt grateful to the woman who had raised him to be such a gentleman—in the best sense of the word. Gallant. Honorable. He had lost all of his inheritance… but he had never lost that.

  Marcus’s voice became rough. “You said once that I’m selfish for wanting to spend Montaigne’s riches on old bricks and blades of grass. But those bricks and blades of grass… they’re all I have left.”

  No, she thought. That’s not all you have left. “I was wrong,” she whispered.

  “I’m going to get it all back,” he said sharply. “For her. For them. All of it. Every damned brick, every blade of grass, every trapping of the aristocratic life a Darkridge earl is supposed to have.”

  “I know,” she assured him. “And I’m going to help you. We’re partners, remember?”

  He didn’t reply, the hard line of his mouth curving downward.

  She finished cleaning his wound, wrapped a clean strip of linen around it, and began tying the ends.

  He turned his head, trying to watch what she was doing. “You’re not tying that in a damned bow, are you?”

  “No, I am not tying it in a bow.” She couldn’t help noticing that her two hands together couldn’t span his arm. And that his skin felt unexpectedly soft, a contrast to the granite-hard muscles flexing beneath her fingers. “There,” she said a bit too brightly as she completed her task. “That should stay in place until you can get back to London and have Quinn do a better job. It’s not so bad as it looks.”

  “Speaking as the man who’s been bleeding all night,” he grumbled, “I have to disagree. It’s damned painful.”

  “It will feel better by tomorrow.” She started gathering up her supplies.

  “Ever the optimist.”

  “Being cynical,” she chided gently, “is not somehow superior to being optimistic.”

  “But it is a more accurate way to view the world.”

  Sighing, Elizabeth stepped around his clothes on the floor, carrying the basin to the window, where she emptied it into the dark alley below.

  She heard the creak of the bed ropes as Marcus let himself sink down onto the mattress.

  Aware of his gaze on her back, she leaned against the window sill. “I suppose it would look rather odd for the Prince of Wales and his man to be sharing the same room. I… should probably ask the innkeeper for another.”

  “You could probably talk him into giving you the entire inn,” Marcus said dryly. “But don’t feel you have to leave on my account.”

  “I don’t.”

  “Then don’t go.”

  He said it casually, as if he were trying to be flippant, but Elizabeth caught a note of entreaty beneath the fatigue in his voice.

  She told herself there was no need to stay with him. His wound was tended, the bleeding stopped. He was in no danger. And a little distance between them might be a very good idea at the moment. Walls. A door. She could just leave him to rest—and stew in his irascible mood—until it was time to leave tomorrow.

  Trying to decide whether to go or stay, she crossed to the table to survey the tray of food and drinks the innkeeper had provided. It was a veritable banquet. There were cold veal cutlets, chicken legs, thick slices of roast beef, dark bread, cheese, and apricot tarts. The thoughtful Mr. Bacon had even provided pewter plates. Taking a portion of everything on the tray, Elizabeth began making a plate for Marcus.

  And found herself wondering if he had put his shirt b
ack on yet.

  She didn’t want to look to find out.

  Lifting the goblet that was still full, she discovered that it was brimming with tavern punch, a heady mixture of wine, juice, spices, and sugar. She picked up Marcus’s empty cup instead, carrying it over to the washstand to fill it with water from the pitcher.

  She really should ask for another room, she decided. Although she hated to risk her luck with Mr. Bacon by rousing the innkeeper from his bed a second time.

  And she didn’t want to be separated from Marcus.

  Not for a night… not for a moment.

  The thought flitted through her head and almost made her drop the pitcher. She set it down with a thump and rubbed her eyes. She was obviously worn out. Exhausted. Unable to think clearly. She was much too sensible, too independent to allow herself to…

  She couldn’t possibly be falling…

  No. No. She grabbed the cup of water and returned to the table. Marcus was an aristocrat, an earl. As elevated above her as the stars in the night sky. Yes, perhaps she had developed certain feelings for him. Perfectly understandable feelings. Gratitude for the way he had protected her. Sympathy for what he had lost. Respect for his intelligence and courage, his sense of honor.

  But the two of them were partners in a business arrangement, nothing more. They could never be more.

  So she didn’t… care for him. Not in that way.

  The way a woman cared for a man, one special man who had stolen her heart.

  Still holding the goblet of water, she picked up the plate of food and turned toward the bed. “Marcus, perhaps it would be best if I asked the…”

  Her words trailed off as she realized that he had fallen asleep.

  The tension that had kept him on edge all night had finally released its hold over him. His chest rose and fell rhythmically, his dark lashes resting on his cheeks, his hair tangled over his eyes. One of his hands rested on his bare abdomen, his other arm stretched out across the mattress. The bandage stood out stark white against his muscled bicep… the ends tied in a neat little bow. She hadn’t been able to resist, after he had given her the idea.