To Capture a Rogue_Logan’s Legends

by K. J. Jackson

  Logan inclined his head to Bournestein and then turned back to his men. With the slightest finger twitch as command, two of the men in front of the doorway parted, opening a path out.

  The world blurred in front of Nicolina’s eyes. A hand on her back, ushering her out of the room. Gareth’s warm body next to hers, his arm slung behind her waist and steering her to the door. Norton scrambling to follow them out. The dark din of the drinking room. Murmurs. The crooked door to the street bobbing in and out of focus in front of her.

  It wasn’t until she and Gareth and Norton were out on the street that Logan’s men filed out behind them.

  Logan fell in step beside Gareth.

  Gareth looked to Logan as his arm tightened around Nicolina’s back. “You should have let me kill the man—or at least one of his brutes.”

  Logan’s look stayed forward, his eyes scanning the usual St. Giles dead-of-night activity ahead of them on the street. Drunks, prostitutes, and vagrants filling the night, moving in and out of shadows. He shook his head. “It isn’t the right time to start a war, Callison.”

  “But it will be eventually?” Gareth asked.

  Logan shrugged in reply. A few steps passed and he pointed to a line of black carriages waiting to deliver the lot of them back to the West End.

  Nicolina craned her neck to look behind them as Gareth kept her feet moving along the cobblestones. Curved in a half circle behind them, Logan’s men walked along the street—one of the worst in London—as if they owned the night. A formidable force no man in the area would dare counter.

  If there was a war, she had no doubt who the victor would be.

  { Chapter 14 }

  Nicolina stared at the bowl, the rippling water in it tinged red.

  Red from blood. Her husband’s blood.

  A shiver skipped across her back.

  How very close she had come to losing him again.

  Reaching into the bowl, she swished the cloth and pulled it from the bowl, wringing the excess water from it as her head shook. “I just don’t understand how Norton could do that to me.”

  “Sometimes people disappoint, Nic. Sometimes their reasons are sound. Sometimes they are not.” Gareth sighed. “And sometimes, they are just plain selfish. No apologies, no accounting for their actions. They are just selfish.”

  Her wrists dropped, landing on the lip of the bowl. “But Norton is my brother.”

  “Being your brother does not make him a good person, Nic.” Gareth’s voice was heavy, tired, and rightfully so. “Norton has always been of that character. Ever since we were all young. There is no changing him. Until he stumbles upon his own reckoning, you waste your energy on having expectations for him.”

  Nicolina knew what Gareth said to be truth. But she couldn’t give up on hope for her brother—even after what he did to her in the Joker’s Roost—especially because of what he did to her there.

  Norton had descended into a very dark place and she hoped it scared the devil out of him.

  “You didn’t wait for me, Nic.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. “You said an hour, Gareth. I did wait. I waited two hours—even though I didn’t think Norton had that extra time to spare.” She looked back to the bowl, the expanding rings in the bloodied water now still. “And I thought I was helping him, an excuse for him to escape that rat’s nest. I had no idea what he intended—that he thought he could…could gamble me away like I was nothing more than a worn shilling.”

  “I shouldn’t have been late, Nic.” Gareth’s voice had dipped low. “I was dealing with that belligerent drunk when I should have been by your side.”

  She waved her hand over her shoulder at him. “It is done.”

  It was done. And she had finally seen what she needed to see in her brother. Seen what she had needed to in Gareth.

  She shook the twisted cloth over the bowl and turned around to her husband. He sat on the plain bed in his sparse room, shirtless but with his trousers still on. His brown eyes had slightly narrowed at her, watching her closely.

  Logan had delivered them to the simple, nondescript townhouse three streets away from the Revelry’s Tempest that Gareth shared with several of the other guards. Aside from the bed, a small chest of drawers with a pitcher and wash basin sitting atop and a single wingback chair by the fireplace were the only items that sat within the cavernous space. Meant to be an elegant chamber for a prosperous man, the room’s original purpose was decidedly not being utilized.

  Her eyes squinted in the low light from the fireplace, searching Gareth’s face for any dried blood she had missed. Other than the three cuts along his cheek and his eye still swollen half shut, nothing else marred his face. She pointed to his lap. “Off with your trousers. I need to look at the wound on your leg as well.”

  She walked over to him, stopping in front of him.

  Gareth made no motion to loosen his trousers. Instead, he stared up at her, his brown eyes intense. “Nic…”

  “What? Off with your trousers.” She moved down to kneel on both knees before him and set the wet cloth on the wooden floorboards before reaching for his left boot to pull off.

  His hand clamped down on her shoulder as he wedged his boot from her grip. “Nic, you cannot do that.”

  “I cannot remove your boots?” Her hands went on her hips. “Need I remind you I have pulled them free hundreds of times?”

  “Not like this, you haven’t.”

  Her head tilted slightly forward, her left eyebrow lifting. “What are you speaking of, Gareth?”

  He exhaled as he looked downward, his gaze centering on his lap. “This is the other thing that happened during the war that you need to know of, Nic. I have not had a moment to explain.”

  “Explain what?”

  “My foot—it is not whole.”

  She dropped backward onto her heels, her arms falling to her sides. “What do you mean not whole?”

  He cleared his throat as his fingers ran through his hair. His brown eyes lifted to her. “As in gone.”

  “Gone?”

  “Amputated. My left foot was amputated, Nic. A round shot hit it. It was so damaged, the blood unstoppable, so they took it.”

  She gasped, her hand jerking forward to clutch his right knee. She started to sway, her head going light as she looked up at him.

  Her imagination overtook her—what had happened, how it had happened. She forced the wretched question from her mind onto her tongue. “Gareth…they…they sawed off your foot?”

  “They did, Nic.” The line of his jaw set hard, not a twitch along his face. He was steeling himself against her. Against her reaction.

  “You did not think to tell me of this? The pain”—she gulped back a gasp—“the pain you must have endured. And you did not tell me? But I asked—I inquired as to your limp.”

  “There has not been time, Nic. I was set to tell you, but then…” He looked away from her, his gaze settling on the fire. “I understand if you do not want a cripple for a husband, Nic.”

  She sprung up from her heels onto her knees, her hand flying through the air before she could stop it.

  Not that she wanted to stop it.

  Her hand struck his cheek, the smack of flesh hitting flesh not nearly satisfying the surge of anger that spiked in her body for the idiocy she had to knock out of him.

  His look flew to her, his own rage bubbling. She cut him off before he could utter a sound.

  “If you ever speak such blasphemy to me again, Gareth, I truly will leave you.” She moved forward, pushing herself in between his legs so she could grab both sides of his face, her voice vehement. “The worst thing I ever lived through was losing you. And I couldn’t bloody well care less if you came back to me with no legs, much less minus a foot.”

  “And I failed you on that accord as well.”

  “Coming back to me?” Her head shook. “I don’t care if I had to find you, Gareth. The point is that once I did, you came back to me. In here.” She dragged his fa
ce downward and set her lips on his forehead. “In here.” Her right hand slipped down from his face to land on his heart.

  His head dropped forward, his eyes avoiding her.

  For the longest moment, he sat still. Silent.

  He didn’t believe her.

  Her fingers curled on his bare chest, wanting to beat him, to rail at him, to force him to see what was right before him.

  Instead, her words manifested in the slightest whisper. “Gareth, your foot—Pippin—above all of it, you—you—are all I have ever wanted. A phantom foot is not going to change that. What you believe are your failures does not change that.”

  She stopped, having to swallow away the lump tearing at her throat. “For all that you had convinced yourself you could not—did not deserve me. You still came back to me. Against my anger. Against your own will. And I know how determined your will is.” Her left hand along his jaw tightened to his face. “You are what I want. What I need. I need my husband. And the rest…the rest can fall away.”

  His pinky twitched, and slowly, his left hand lifted and he set his palm along the back of her hand on his chest. His head lifted, his brown eyes meeting hers. “You have me, Nic. You always have. Do not doubt it.”

  She exhaled, a breathless laugh, relieved. “I don’t.”

  Her hand along his face slipped around to the back of his neck and he leaned forward, kissing her gently, for his lower lip was still swollen. But she could feel the passion simmering beneath the light touch. Passion that had never wavered.

  He pulled back slightly, a smile carving into his face. A smile she hadn’t seen in years, the smile she had fallen in love with long ago. The smile that had set upon his face on the day they were married. Easy, adoring, without the weight of the world bearing down upon him.

  Her hand on his neck slid forward, her thumb tracing the lower curve of his lip as she looked at him in awe.

  He was back. Her husband was back. Damaged, battle weary, haunted. But hers again.

  “Nic, what I have not told you—”

  “There is more?”

  A chuckle escaped his lips. “This is a good thing. It is about the foundry.”

  Her forehead wrinkled. “Uncle Felix’s foundry? Bournestein owns it. That was what Norton was convinced he could win with that pot.”

  “That was what he was playing for?” Gareth shook his head. “He was playing for a lie. Lipinstein purchased the foundry days ago.”

  “He what?”

  “Logan owns it now. And he wants me to run it. No more Revelry’s Tempest. It was why I needed to wrangle the drunk, Greyson. He is to be my replacement on the guard.”

  Her eyes flew wide. “Gareth—but that was what you always had planned upon—taking over the foundry. What Uncle Felix had planned for you. He knew Norton would never be able to handle it.”

  Gareth nodded.

  “I scarcely believe it.”

  “Nor I. But it is real.”

  Her head tilted to the side. “But how did—did you know this of Mr. Lipinstein, that he had these means?”

  Gareth shrugged. “For all that the man is forthright, is loyal beyond all sanity, and has done for all his guards of the Revelry’s Tempest, he is a mystery to me. He doesn’t ask questions of us. And we don’t ask questions of him. All of us guards served with him in some capacity on the continent. And he has found all of us, picked—or dragged—us out of the squalor we were living in.”

  “Then I shall thank him properly next time I see him.” Nicolina looked down to Gareth’s lap. The dark crusted fabric of his trousers sat dried with blood. “But before any of that, I need to get to this last wound of yours.” She looked up at him. “And that means your trousers are gone, your boots are gone.”

  He stilled. “Are you ready for that?”

  She looked up at him, a smile, sweet and wicked and loving curling her lips. “Dear husband of mine, I am ready for anything. Never doubt it.”

  His smile reflected hers. “I never shall.”

  He stopped her left hand as she reached for his boot and pulled it upward. His fingers quick, he dragged off the ribbon-wrapped ring on her pinky.

  Spinning the ring in fingers, he found the end of the black ribbon and pinched at the fabric, untying it. Strip by strip, the black ribbon fell from the metal, revealing the rose gold ring her Uncle Felix had helped Gareth craft long ago. Strung together with the finest etchings, stones of topaz that matched her eye color lined the ring, catching flickers of light from the fireplace.

  He held the ring up in between them. “I was hoping this was under that ribbon.”

  Staring at the ring, she exhaled relief, not even realizing how the last year of concealing her ring had weighed upon her. How very long it had been since she had hidden it away. Hidden her heart away.

  “Let us get this on the correct finger, shall we?”

  Her left hand trembling, she lifted it up to him as her heart swelled in her chest.

  A smile playing on his swollen lips, he slipped it onto her ring finger.

  He was home. Truly home. He was hers once more.

  And she was his.

  { Epilogue }

  At Gareth’s touch on her shoulder, Nicolina excused herself from the group of women—all wives and daughters of the artisans. They had gathered in the large main workshop, both the workers and their families, to celebrate the re-opening of Uncle Felix’s foundry. Gareth had managed to find and bring back all but two of the workers that had left when Bournestein took over.

  Nicolina looked to her husband as she turned. “He is here?”

  “He is. And as uncomfortable as I have ever seen him.” A twinkle of levity sparked in Gareth’s eyes.

  “He is accustomed to controlling events and people, not actually partaking in the revelry.”

  “Exactly, so we must catch him before he disappears on us.”

  She set her fingers along Gareth’s upper arm. “Do you have it? Where is he?”

  “Both by the main office. I think he means to slip into it and then out the back door.”

  Nicolina eyed the room, finally catching sight of Logan sipping from a tankard of ale as he edged closer to the doorway of the office. The usual handsome lines of his face were lined with discomfort.

  Gareth grabbed her hand, tugging her behind him as he weaved through the throng of people, dodging slaps to his shoulders and men attempting to draw him into conversation.

  They reached Logan just as his right foot slipped through the doorway of the office.

  Gareth caught his arm. “You cannot disappear on us just yet, my friend.”

  Logan looked over his shoulder, his eyes going from Gareth to Nicolina. He sighed, resignation taking over his gaze as he realized he was trapped, at least for the moment.

  “I came, per your request,” Logan said. “And now I must move along.”

  “Five minutes at this party does not constitute participation, Logan.” Nicolina couldn’t keep the smirk from her face as she teased him. “You would be surprised at how many unwed women are in this room. I can introduce you about if you would like.”

  A priceless cringe flashed across his eyes.

  Gareth laughed, ushering Logan into the office. “Don’t mind my wife. She is set on torturing you a pinch more than what these last five minutes have done.”

  Logan’s look settled on Nicolina and the scold creasing the corners of his eyes slipped into wry amusement. “If I wasn’t afraid of your husband, I would have your hide, imp.”

  “Then it is a good thing I chose well in a husband.” Nicolina closed the door to the office.

  Gareth picked up a tall, skinny bundle of cloth from beside the door and turned to Logan. “We saw you attempting an exit, but before you leave, we wanted to give you something.”

  Logan’s head angled to the side, his look questioning.

  Balanced long atop both of his hands, Gareth held the long bundle up to Logan. “This.”

  Logan looked at the dark cloth, yet
made no motion for it.

  Gareth lifted it a little higher, and Logan stepped forward, hesitantly taking the bundle. Logan turned, setting the cloth down on the nearby desk and then unwrapping the folds of fabric.

  Logan’s fingers paused, gripping the cloth, as he revealed the gift inside.

  A gleaming sword reflected shards of light from the wall sconces.

  “It is the first creation of the re-opened foundry,” Gareth said. “It is yours.”

  Logan’s fingers slowly set the dark cloth down, his hand slipping along the hilt of the sword. The grip was smooth, an elegant line of onyx inlaid with gold. From the ruby embedded quillon, the golden knuckle guard swooped away in three precise arcs balanced equally between delicacy and strength.

  “It is remarkable. Unparalleled.” Logan lifted the blade and set it out directly from his nose, eyeing the straight length of it. A low whistle escaped his lips.

  “That is the bar we set.” Gareth nodded to the blade. “Every piece that comes from our foundry will meet this level. Steel that will not fail the men that possess it.”

  Logan held the sword out to Gareth. “I cannot accept it.”

  “You can and you will. I will craft more. A lifetime of them. And in the first set, one for each of your men.” Gareth pointed at the blade. “But this one is yours and I will not accept your refusal of it. You never know when you will need it.”

  Logan’s eyes pinned Gareth. A silent look—of gratitude, of respect—passed between the two men.

  Logan offered one nod, and then turned to Nicolina. He glanced back to Gareth. “Did you ever tell her?”

  Gareth stilled, shaking his head.

  Nicolina’s gaze flickered between the two men. “Tell me what?”

  Logan turned fully to Nicolina. “Your husband is a legend—”

  “Logan—”

  “No,” Logan lifted the sword as he looked at Gareth, “you force this upon me, I force this upon you. She has a right to know as your wife. A right to take pride.”

  Gareth sighed. It was all the permission Logan needed.

  Logan looked at Nicolina. “You need to know what your husband did on the continent during the war.”