“A visitor, sir.” The portly butler hurried forward, silver salver in hand.
Thomas fought not to roll his eyes at Jensen’s formality. An employee of the Matteson household for nearly twenty years, the man took his position seriously, even during times like these when the duke and duchess were at their country estate and Thomas was the only family member in residence.
And he was in residence precisely because his mother and father were not, turning Chatham House into bachelor’s quarters until they returned in January. Yet Jensen and the rest of the London staff continued to serve with the precision of a military regiment, taking pride in their positions in a duke’s household even while the duke was away.
And while the old lord was away, the young lord would play…or at least that had been his plan. But it was deuced hard to do when the staff followed his every move. For heaven’s sake! Yesterday morning he caught Cook spying on him to make certain he ate breakfast.
Most likely, their close attention came upon orders from his mother. He would have found her concern endearing if it didn’t aggravate the hell out of him. And it was damned grating that nearly everyone he interacted with these days—including the household staff, apparently—still thought of him as fragile. As still not fully recovered. As broken.
“My lord.” Jensen presented the card with as much flourish as if he stood in the gilded front hall of Stonewall Abbey rather than in a stable with his shoes dangerously close to a pile of manure.
“Better watch your step, Jensen,” Thomas warned as he took the card. “This isn’t the foyer.”
He watched with amusement as the proud butler slowly took a step backward.
Then he read the embossed name on the card. “The Earl Royston?” Odd. Why the devil was that man here?
“I’ve put him in the drawing room, sir.” Jensen hesitated and cleared his throat as if dreading telling him, “And Lady Emily is taking tea in the morning room.”
His lips curled grimly. Yet another person set on ruining his morning, apparently. “My sister is, is she?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell Royston I’ll join him in a moment.” He arched a brow. “And please tell my sister that she has her own London town house and should bloody well stop haunting mine.”
“Yes, sir.” Despite the curt nod of his head, Thomas knew the portly butler had no intention of passing along that message.
Straw rustled inside the stall behind him, and Jensen furrowed his bushy brows. “Should I call for one of the footmen to help you with your horse, sir?”
“No need.” He waved off the offer. At the sound of more rustling, he added, “Just a filly I’ve been attempting to break.”
With a shallow bow, and careful to miss the manure, Jensen turned smartly on his heel and retreated toward the house.
Thomas waited until the butler was out of sight before opening the stall door. Folding his arms across his chest, he leaned against the post and looked at the woman standing inside.
“Just a filly you’ve been attempting to break, am I?” Helene Humphrey, the young widow of the late Charles Humphrey, pouted with mock peevishness as she brushed at the straw clinging to her riding habit. The same habit that just moments ago had been pulled down to her waist and bunched up around her hips as she’d straddled him in the hay. “How positively uncomplimentary of you, Chesney.”
He shrugged. “You’re the one visiting my stables, Helene.”
“And where else am I supposed to take such a fine morning ride?” She turned her back to him so he could fasten up her dress.
He did as she wanted and fastened her up—of course he did. He was a gentleman, after all, and a gentleman always helped his lover freshen her appearance after a tryst, even if she made assignations with half of London society and had just ridden him off six feet from a pile of horse shit. Having settled into wealthy widowhood with all the restraint of an opera diva, Helene thrilled at indulging in a string of dalliances, including those she’d risked before Humphrey died.
That was why he enjoyed bedding her. With Helene, a man got exactly what he saw…no secrets, no surprises. Just a beautiful and eager woman with a hot mouth and a cold heart.
“One of these mornings, we really should put you onto a horse.” As he fastened the last button, he lowered his head to brush his mouth against the side of her neck. “I’ve got a new gelding you might like.”
With a wicked smile, she turned in his arms and reached down to cup his cock. “Why would I want a gelding,” she purred, “when I’ve got a stallion?”
Her fingers caressed him through his riding breeches, more in possession than desire. Drawing a breath through clenched teeth, he reached down to grasp her wrist and pull her hand away. He didn’t like to think of himself as providing nothing more than stud service. Even if the implication were true.
“At least your guests have good timing.” She stepped back and tugged at her gloves. As with the hat, she’d kept her gloves and boots on the entire time he’d been inside her. Mercifully, she’d discarded the riding crop. “Ten minutes earlier, and I would have been extremely put out.”
Ten minutes earlier. He would have been annoyed, but would he have truly cared?
His chest tightened with disquiet. Good Lord, had his life really come to this? Pre-appointed tumbles in a horse stall with a woman he didn’t even like, done more to release the acute uneasiness that pounded relentlessly at him than for physical pleasure?
Just one year ago, his life still possessed meaning. He’d felt alive then, and he never would have sought out a woman like Helene. In public, he had moved at the center of society, taking advantage of all the benefits that life within the peerage afforded, concerned with nothing more than fast horses, faster women, and the odds in the book at White’s. But in private, he’d served as a War Office operative, his skills highly valued and his work important, and his life was filled with purpose.
Until everything had gone so horribly wrong. Right in Mayfair, of all places. That was the evening when he learned the difference between being alive and truly living.
And his life had become a living hell. Unconsciously, his hand reached for his side, for that spot just above his hip where the bullet hole still hideously pocked his skin.
“Next Thursday morning, then, for our usual ride?” She trailed the end of her riding crop suggestively along his shoulder as she stepped past him into the aisle to leave. “Although, I have so been wanting to try riding bareback.”
He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back against him. He’d found release with her just minutes ago, but he was still restless, still oddly unsatisfied, and recklessly sought one last moment of distraction with her. “When it comes to being bareback, Helene,” he murmured as he nipped at her earlobe, “I suspect there’s nothing you haven’t already tried.”
He drew a soft moan from her as his hand fondled her breast through her riding habit, and his cock flexed. Did he have time to take her again? Nothing more than a quick, desperate diversion, certainly, yet one that would keep at bay the rising anxiety for a little while longer.
Giving a throaty laugh, she slipped out of his arms. “Insatiable!” she scolded with a teasing smile and smacked him playfully on the shoulder with the riding crop. “But I’m due for breakfast, and you have guests waiting.”
Then she sauntered away, shooting him a parting look of a heated promise for their next morning ride. Her hips sashayed wide with every step from the stables and down the narrow back alley to her waiting carriage.
Blowing out a harsh breath, he stalked toward the house with hands clenched in frustration. Not over Helene. Frustration over— Christ! Everything.
However much he knew he should be grateful for still breathing and moving, the long and painful recovery, coupled with the public exposure of being shot, left him nervous, desperate, anxious. An unexpected movement or shadow could send his heart racing and his breath panting, and the rush of adrenaline through his body would rattle h
im beyond control.
He ran his fingers through his black hair, cursing them for shaking. The War Office wouldn’t give him another field assignment now. He’d become too conspicuous for espionage work. Too wounded. And both because of the shooting and his position as the duke’s heir, the military refused him any sort of commission. Even the damned admiralty rejected him, for God’s sake.
Apparently, he wasn’t even good enough to drown.
Yet he couldn’t bear the thought of returning to the life he’d led before he joined the War Office, when he had nothing to do but wait for his father to die so he could become a duke. After fighting against Napoleon on the Peninsula as part of the Scarlet Scoundrels of the First Dragoons, he found little meaning in being a society gentleman. In the past few months, he’d worked his way through all the pursuits enjoyed by the quality…horses, gambling, women. Until nothing was left. But he felt just as empty as before.
No wonder so many men gambled away their fortunes, became drunks, or turned into rakes who sported in ruining young women—they were bored out of their blasted minds.
When he thought about what little that life held for him and the darkness now edging his existence, he doubted he could survive. He’d managed to hang on to his sanity during the past year only by clinging to the hope that he had connections in the government who could help him get back into fieldwork.
Jensen opened the front door as he bounded up the steps and strode inside the town house. He paused at the foyer table to sort quickly through the morning mail, searching for one particular message, one specific—
He saw the letter, and his heart skipped.
Earl Bathurst.
With a nervous breath, he broke the wax seal to scan the message from the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, the man responsible for overseeing the War Office and his last chance at returning to the field. But each sentence caused the uneasiness to grasp out for him again, to clutch and strangle at him with its claws, and his heartbeat sped sickeningly as the blackness crept in around him.
Bathurst had refused his request for another assignment. He remained unconvinced that Thomas had recovered enough to continue his work.
As the ghost pain pierced him, he covered his side with his hand, even knowing that the wound was completely healed by now. He pressed his eyes closed to concentrate on his breathing. Slow, steady, controlled—
“Anything I can help you with, sir?” Jensen was at his side.
Opening his eyes, he covered his humiliation with a shake of his head. “Just put all this in the study, will you?”
He tossed the unwanted letter onto the pile and turned away. He would deal with it later, once he was alone and could fully absorb the refusal of this last desperate attempt for life. But now the Earl Royston waited upstairs in the drawing room for him, and he had to appear to be normal in front of his father’s acquaintance from the Lords, no matter how painful the engulfing blackness in his chest.
Taking a moment to gather himself, he paused to lean his shoulder against the doorway of the downstairs morning room and looked in at his sister as she sat on the sofa, her feet curled up beneath her, an open book on her lap. He’d brought her such worry over the past year, and the guilt of the hell he’d put her through only added to the tightening that clenched at his gut.
But for now, she was relaxed, happily humming softly to herself, and absolutely glowing. He smiled at the sight of her.
“Do you have a valid reason for being here, Mrs. Grey,” he drawled, hoping his voice sounded more steady than he actually felt, “or are you simply spying on me again?”
“The latter, of course.” Emily returned his smile as she set the book aside and reached toward the tray on the low table to pour a cup of tea. His sister moved with an inherent gracefulness that turned women green with envy, and the sharpness of her mind only served to distinguish her even more from the other society ladies. “I know you have a visitor waiting for you—Royston wished me good morning when he arrived—but when you’re finished with him, I expect you to join me for tea.”
Not a request, he’d noticed. “You know, officially, I outrank you.”
“Only on paper, brother dear.” She took a thoughtful sip. “Although, it wouldn’t hurt to put your title to good use and consider calling on some of the young ladies who—”
“No.”
She shot him a peevish glare over the rim of her teacup, which he ignored. He would have to marry someday and produce an heir, but there was no hurry. No need to punish some poor girl unduly by bringing her into the madness of the Matteson family sooner than necessary.
“You came to check on me again,” he accused gently, although in truth, he was glad to see her.
“I came because I had the day to myself for once, and I wanted to spend time with my loving brother.” Despite that obvious lie, she scolded lightly, “Shame on you for insinuating otherwise.”
He arched a blatantly disbelieving brow. Emily was beautiful, charming, elegant…and an absolute pain in the ass whenever she meddled in his business, which was most of the time. But he loved her, and he would gladly lay down his life for her—when he wasn’t set on throttling her himself. “Where has Grey gone off to, then?”
“He and the colonel went to Tattersall’s to look at a hunter that Jackson Shaw has up for auction,” she answered far too smoothly, clearly having practiced her response in anticipation of the question. She never could lie well, not even as a child. “Kate and the twins are away at Brambly House. And I couldn’t bear the thought of being all alone at home, so I came here.”
“You couldn’t bear the thought of me being all alone, you mean,” he countered, knowing full well that she had her son, his nanny, and a dozen servants to keep her company. “So you came here to torture me.”
With a shrug, she lifted the teacup to her lips. “If you can’t torture family, well, then who can you torture?”
“And that,” he pointed out earnestly, “sums up every Matteson family dinner since we were five.”
She choked on her tea. Laughing, she cleared her throat. “Go on, then, see to Royston. I’ll be here when you return.”
“Dear God,” he grumbled painfully, “truly?”
He saw the devilish smile she tried to hide behind the teacup, then turned into the hallway.
“And give my regards to Lady Humphrey the next time you…see her.”
He froze. Damnation.
Rolling his eyes, he glared at her over his shoulder. “You’ve become as much of a spy as that husband of yours.”
With a wave of her hand, she dismissed him. “Torture, spying—it’s all Matteson family business.”
Yes, he conceded lamentably as he took the stairs three at a time, he supposed it was. Except for him. Not any longer.
Pushing the black thoughts from his mind, he strode into the drawing room. “Lord Royston.”
“Chesney.” Simon Royston, Earl Royston, warmly clasped his hand. “Good to see you again.”
He smiled shortly at the earl, the warmth of the man’s greeting assuming a familiarity much closer than the two men actually shared. Royston was his father’s acquaintance. Except for passing greetings at social events, Thomas had rarely spoken to the man.
In comparison to the Matteson family, with its title going back nine generations, the Roystons were recently titled, the current earl only the third of the line. But the earl’s grandfather had been well admired among his peers, and Simon Royston carried on that reputation. Because of the man’s acquaintance with his father—and more so due to a niggling curiosity about what brought the earl to Chatham House during the off-season, a curiosity that just might distract him for the remainder of the morning—Thomas was willing to receive him.
He gestured to the liquor cabinet. “Whiskey?” Not yet noon, the hour was early for a stiff drink, but Thomas noticed the tension in the older man’s body, the dark circles beneath his eyes indicating lack of sleep. The earl could use a drink. And if truth be to
ld, so could he.
Royston nodded. “Please.”
Thomas poured two glasses and handed one over, then motioned for the man to sit. He settled into his chair and watched as the earl tossed back nearly half the whiskey in a single swallow.
“I have to admit,” Thomas said as he studied him over the rim of his untouched glass, “this is a surprise. Of course, as a friend of my father’s, you’re always welcome here, but surely, you know that Chatham is in the country for the hunting season.” As should be every other man of landed property who had the good sense to avoid London this time of year. Including Royston.
“I came looking for you, actually.” The earl paused. “May we speak in confidence?”
He nodded, holding back a puzzled frown. Whatever could Royston want with him?
The man leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and rolled the crystal tumbler between his palms. “There’s been trouble at Blackwood Hall.”
Thomas had never been to the country estate, but he knew of the place, which had been in the earl’s family for as long as the title. Situated in the heart of Lincolnshire, the estate was two days’ hard ride from London under the best of conditions; at this time of year, with the increasing cold and fall rains, a coach would be lucky to reach the estate in four. So whatever sent the man scurrying to London must have been serious. “What kind of trouble?”
He answered glumly, “Highwaymen.”
“Highwaymen,” Thomas repeated and carefully kept his face stoic, not letting his disappointment register at the mundane answer.
Royston grimaced. “I know what you’re thinking—where is there a road in the Lincolnshire countryside that doesn’t have highwaymen?”
He had been thinking exactly that but instead offered, “Actually, I was wondering why you didn’t go to the constabulary.”
“I have, but to no avail.” He finished off his whiskey. “It’s a puzzle, that’s what it is. A damnable mystery.”
With his interest pricked at that comment, Thomas stood to refill the empty glass. “How so?”
“There appears to be no pattern, except that there is.” When Thomas frowned at his enigmatic choice of words, he continued. “The only robberies in the area have been guests returning home from Blackwood Hall, and then, not all the guests and not all the time.” He grimaced. “We’re being targeted. My guests. Me.”
Along Came a Rogue Page 30
