To Capture a Rogue
~ Logan’s Legends ~
A Short Regency Romance
K.J. Jackson
Copyright © K.J. Jackson, 2017
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, Living or dead, is coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any forms, or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.
First Edition: December 2017
ISBN: 978-1-940149-26-4
http://www.kjjackson.com
~
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More of my Books
Historical Romance
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out my other historical romances—each is a stand-alone story and they can be read in any order (here they are in order of publication):
Stone Devil Duke, Hold Your Breath, currently free!
Unmasking the Marquess, Hold Your Breath
My Captain, My Earl, Hold Your Breath
Worth of a Duke, Lords of Fate
Earl of Destiny, Lords of Fate
Marquess of Fortune, Lords of Fate
Vow, Lords of Action
Promise, Lords of Action
Oath, Lords of Action
Of Valor & Vice, Revelry’s Tempest
Of Sin & Sanctuary, Revelry’s Tempest
Third in the Revelry’s Tempest series (Winter 2018)
To Capture a Rogue, Logan’s Legends
Second in the Logan’s Legends series (Winter 2018)
Paranormal Romance
Flame Moon #1, currently free!
Triple Infinity, Flame Moon #2
Flux Flame, Flame Moon #3
– For my favorite Ks
{ Chapter 1 }
~~~
Men of uncommon valor.
Each with a past to deny.
Peerless. Formidable. Coveted.
One man to unite them, this band of guards unlike any other.
These are Logan’s men...
~~~
London, England
September 1814
The blade embedded into the wood next to his temple wasn’t his first clue.
But it did verify the fact that Nicolina was ready to kill him. And this time, she might very well do the job.
“You’re alive, you bloody bastard.” Her left fist flew hard into his chest, pinning him to the stable wall as her right hand shifted position on the black leather hilt of the blade next to his head.
His wife always had been fire. Uncontrollable. Demanding. Explosive.
But the blade was new. Or at the very least, she had never come this close to severing his ear.
Nicolina had always been good with the blade. Too good, thanks to that misguided uncle of hers.
“Alive.”
The one word seethed long from her full lips as she yanked the dagger from the wood. Her shoulder shifted back, her arm ready to strike again.
Gareth caught her wrist high in the air, halfway to contact.
She could attack him once in an ambush out of the black of night. But not twice.
Twice he would not let slide.
His fingers around her wrist tightened, choking until she squealed. Her left fist on his chest started to pound into his flesh.
“Blast it, Nic.”
His muttered words sent her into a flurry of fury, a demon wildcat bent on pummeling him into the depths of hell. Her left fist and the tips of her boots flew in a whirlwind, bent on punishing.
He shook her captured arm, squeezing harder until the dagger popped, slipping from her fingers. He twisted her wrist into submission, forcing it behind her back as he spun her, his free hand wrapping around her waist.
Trapped, she screeched, her legs flailing as he lifted her from the ground. Her body clamped to his, he carried her to a stall at the back of the stable, grabbing several lengths of leather reins on the way. Within seconds—against her twisting and kicking—he managed to tie her wrists onto the rails of a wooden chair behind her back.
Her body bucked against the seat of the chair and he rounded on her. His hands clamped onto her shoulders and he set his weight to bear down onto her.
“Cease, Nic.”
Still a wildcat, she jerked to the left under his weight, tilting the chair to the side, almost making it tip over.
He caught her mid fall and righted the chair, then dug his fingertips into the muscles in her shoulders. “Dammit, Nic, cease. You bloody well just almost cut off my ear.”
Her body stilled even as her chest heaved with rapid breaths. She shook her head, trying to clear wild locks of blond hair that had escaped her bonnet from in front of her eyes. She looked up, her green eyes piercing him. “If I had wanted to take your ear, Gareth, I would already be holding the bloody stump of it.”
“What the hell are you doing here, Nic?”
“What the hell am I doing here?” A forced cackle screeched through her teeth. “What in the hell are you doing here, Gareth? What in the hell are you doing alive? What in the hell business do you have at a gaming hall? What in the hell are you doing walking around, alive, healthy, whistling—whistling, damn it, bloody well whistling—I heard you come through the gardens whistling. While I think you are dead—for a year—and not just any death—a cold, painful, vile death—your body lost, rotting on some random dirty field on the continent. And you are whistling?”
“Nic—”
“What, Gareth? What? There is no excuse—none—you are alive and you didn’t come home. You are dead—dead. And then suddenly you are here.”
Gareth’s head dropped forward, his eyes closing. He willed a breath deep into his lungs. Peeling his fingers upward and off of her shoulders, he took a step backward.
Took a step away.
He had to breathe. Breathe air that was not hers. Air that wouldn’t consume him. Space that wouldn’t consume him. Fire that wouldn’t consume him.
He wasn’t ready.
He hadn’t been able to even bear the thought of seeing her. Of setting himself in front of her once more. Not with the shame.
And then this. Her attacking him out of the blind.
His forehead lifted, his eyes pinning her. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t twitched. She just stared at him, each breath she took sending a fresh tremble through her body. Anger. Anger consuming her.
“You are in no state to listen to me right now, Nic.”
“Untie me.”
“You are not calm enough to untie.”
Her body convulsed, her arms trying to break free from the leather binding them to the chair. “Untie me this instant, you treacherous monstrous arse.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “My point.”
“You don’t get to have a point, Gareth.” Her body continued to twist, yanking on the knots holding her down and the small black bonnet on her head slipped to the side and fell down onto her shoulder. “You are bloody well alive. So you don’t get a point. You don’t get a word. You don’t get anything.”
He exhaled a long breath, striving for control, striving to reconcile the fact in his mind that his wife had randomly appeared in London, found him, and was sitting before him.
Plotting his quick and painful death, no doubt. But here. Here with her green eyes shooting daggers at him.
“What do you want of me, Nic?”
Her head snapped back, her body stilling. “
What do I want?” A coarse chuckle left her as her look went upward to the stable roof, her head shaking. “Nothing, Gareth. Absolutely nothing.”
“You attacked me, Nic, your blade nearly impaling my forehead, and you want nothing from me?”
Her gaze dropped to skewer him. “I strike that. I do want something from you, Gareth. I want you, my husband, to know that I am well aware of the fact that you are alive.”
“Then you have succeeded on that score, Nic.” He inclined his head to her. "Good eve.”
He spun and strode out of the stables without a backward glance.
{ Chapter 2 }
They had stayed too long at the park.
Why did she always fall prey to the precious wide eyes of her charges? How could she sink a blade into a wall not even an inch from her husband’s temple, yet not say no to a six-year-old girl and seven-year-old boy with merriment on their minds?
If they had just left Hyde Park in time—ignored the hundreds of round rocks that begged to be thrown into the Serpentine—they would have been home at dusk, changing for bedtime. Not walking along Brook Street under the waning daylight in what she hoped would be a shortcut home to Lord Samport’s residence.
The candles wouldn’t have suddenly been lit in the front window of that tall, stately townhouse on Brook Street, drawing her attention to the facade. Her eyes wouldn’t have fallen on the shoulders of the man standing on the middle step of the stone stairs leading into that townhouse. Shoulders that were oddly, distantly familiar. Her gaze wouldn’t have been inexplicably drawn to the head attached to the shoulders, searching for a profile.
If not for those blasted rocks at the water’s edge, she wouldn’t have seen the man on those stairs turn. Wouldn’t have seen it was her long-dead husband standing there. Standing tall and clean and virile and proud—alive—in the middle of London.
He had given one sweeping glance out into the street—yet his look ventured nowhere near her and the children—and then he had disappeared into the townhouse.
The children hadn’t given her a moment to pause or let her feet slow as they tugged her forward, hungry for leftover Banbury cake before they slept.
Her husband. Alive.
Alive and in London. A fifteen-minute stroll away.
By the time they had arrived back to Lord Samport’s townhouse, Nicolina’s fingers were itching—near to shaking in their need to unwrap the carefully concealed bundle hidden in the bottom of her satchel in her room. She had hurried the children through eating and gotten them to bed, not waiting nearly long enough for them to fall asleep before she rushed to her room.
Digging free the bundle of felt from her satchel, she unfurled it as quietly as she could, attempting to keep the clinking of blade against blade to a minimum. Plucking her favorite dagger from her cache of knives, she then slipped out the back of Lord Samport’s home and into the night, hustling along the edges of the streets. The black she had worn for the last two years allowed her to sink into the shadows, and she had found herself a shrouded spot across the street from the townhouse on Brook Street, tucked tight along the base of a curved marble staircase to an empty house.
The perfect spot to watch.
And she had waited. And stewed. And waited. And ire she couldn’t control began to simmer. And then she waited longer. Waited until her ire splintered, turning into a rage born out of the desecration of steadfast love.
He was alive.
Her husband.
The man she had counted on most in the world. The man she would have done anything for. The man that had mastered her soul so completely, he had become a very part of her—and her him.
The man that had given his life for the crown. The man she had grieved so savagely for, she had almost died from her broken heart gripping her with such ferocity she could not lift spoon to mouth. Could not roll over in bed. Could not move until she had wasted away almost to the grave.
And he had been alive the whole time.
Alive and here in London. In London, carousing in a gaming house of all things.
It had taken half the night before Nicolina had determined that the townhouse was functioning as a gaming house—thanks to the snippets of conversations from the patrons arriving and going into the house. The closed front curtains were gauzy enough to let light out, but they hid enough that she had been able to see very little of the activities inside.
Half the night had wasted away and she had not seen Gareth. So she had moved to the rear mews to see if she could get any closer.
She hadn’t even slipped halfway down the alley toward the townhouse when she had heard the whistling.
Whistling she had recognized instantly. Whistling she had heard a thousand times over. Whistling that haunted her sleep.
Whistling, light and airy.
That was the moment her rage had exploded. That was the moment she had lost all rational thought in her head. Red. Only red flashing in her mind, in her eyes.
Red that still blinded her vision.
Nicolina twisted her arms behind her, the leather cutting into the skin on her wrists.
And now that bastard husband of hers had left her tied there. Tied to a blasted chair.
A horse snorted in the stall next to her.
Tied to a bloody chair in a horse stall, of all places.
The husband she had waited on for two years. Two horrific years of waiting for a crisp, sealed missive from the crown regretfully informing her of her husband’s death. Two years of wondering and praying and pleading with forces unknown for him to be well. For him to survive.
The missive had never appeared, but after two years, the money he sent every month had stopped. And that was as sure a sign as any that Boney’s forces had felled him.
Then the war ended. And her last flicker of hope died.
Her chest tightened, cutting her breath as the last year of mourning washed over her. Of having to wake every day, drifting from dreams where he was alive into reality where he was not. Every morning having to remind herself that he was no longer in the world. To have to accept that fact. Again and again and again.
Yet he was alive. He had been this whole time.
And he had not come for her.
That cruel fact sank into her chest, defeating her to her core.
He had not come.
Her arms went limp, and her head dropped forward, tears filling her eyes. Tears that flowed so furiously they sopped the lap of her black muslin dress within a minute, the wetness seeping down through her chemise to chill the top of her thighs. Her shoulders shook, the angle they were held back by her bound wrists behind her the only thing holding her from curling forward into bone-crushing sobs.
“Lady Vandestile does not allow whores on the premises.”
Even muted through the blood pumping in her ears, the rumble of the deep baritone voice made her head jerk up. Her eyes searched the stable around her as she rapidly blinked to clear the tears. Craning her neck to the side, she spotted a man turning into the stall and approaching her.
Nicolina’s forehead scrunched, her head shaking. “Whore?” Her tears had shrunken her voice to a whisper.
“Prostitutes.” Three long strides into the stall and the man stopped in front of her. “There are plenty of streets around here where you can ply your wares. This street—this alley—is not available to you.”
She squinted, her tears finally tapering enough to see him clearly, and she looked up at his imposing form.
The devil.
The man had to be the handsomest male to have ever walked the earth. His face chiseled, smooth marble with strength in every line. Dark hair cut short. Piercing eyes.
Even in the dim light of the stable his eyes were unsettling. Haunting.
Nicolina hadn’t appreciated another man’s looks since Gareth had started courting her five years ago. They had married three months before he left for war, and her eye had never wandered. Never in all the years. But this man’s face demanded the attention. Demanded
appreciation.
She stared up at him, her mouth slightly agape.
“You will only get one warning.” His perfect lips moved, his baritone the thickest golden honey. “We keep this street clean. You are not welcome here.”
Her head snapped back at his most definite threat, her look dropping to the front of his black waistcoat. Not welcome here?
She looked up, meeting his dark silver eyes. Black—they almost looked black with only the flickering light of the lantern hanging on the wall of the stall. The menace in them stole her voice for a long second.
Then she realized how he was looking at her.
He was looking at her like she had no right. No right to be there. No right to sully his precious building with her foul presence.
She had heard him say prostitute, but it hadn’t registered in her mind he was actually calling her a harlot.
But there was no mistaking it. He was looking at her like a whore.
Her hackles spiked. “You—you think I’m a prostitute?”
He folded his arms across his chest and flicked his head toward the chair. “You’re tied with a leather strap to a chair in the back stall of Lady Vandestile’s stable. Your dress is soiled wet. I am to think otherwise?”
She twisted, trying to rip her wrists free from the leather bindings. Damn Gareth and his damn knots. “I am no such thing, sir. I am a governess for a very prominent lord.”
“And you are tied like a whore to a chair, why?”
Her mouth clamped shut, a heated flush quickly filling her face. She did look like a whore. A discarded harlot.
She exhaled the indignation filling her lungs and set her look on the top black button of his waistcoat. “I came to your establishment to speak to a gentleman that was here on the premises. And this is how the conversation ended. Can you please untie me?”
“None of the gentlemen inside would tie an innocent woman to a chair and then abandon her amongst the horses.”
To Capture a Rogue_Logan’s Legends Page 1
