The Redemption of a Rogue

by Jess Michaels

  She shut her eyes and stroked harder, rolling her clitoris with her thumb. She let her mind wander and it took her right back to Fitzhugh. Back to his study when the air between them had felt so thick and heavy. What would have happened if she’d done more than take his hand for that brief moment?

  What would have happened if he had tugged her closer like he had in the carriage? Or set her on the edge of the desk and stepped between her legs?

  The pleasure mounted with that thought and she followed it even though she knew she shouldn’t. Followed it to his hands pulling up her skirts. Followed it to his mouth on hers. To his cock sliding deep into her body as she clung to him helplessly.

  She followed all her fantasies, as wrong as they were, until her legs began to shake and the pleasure roared up like a wave in the ocean. When it crashed over her, she arched, her toes flexing against the sensation. It was over too soon and she sank back in the rolling water, sated if only for a moment.

  Lucky, too, for the door to the chamber opened and she slid her hand from between her legs as she heard the maid return. “These gowns are lovely, Mrs. Huxley. You’ll look beautiful in them.”

  “Very good,” Imogen said as she pushed to her feet and grabbed for a folded sheet of woven linen left by the tub to dry herself. She draped it over her body just as the maid came around the screen.

  She was a pretty girl, with dark brown hair and a round, friendly face. “There now, you must feel better.”

  “Worlds better,” Imogen agreed. “Almost myself again.”

  They walked around the screen together, and Imogen caught her breath. There were five gowns laid out on the bed, and each was more beautiful than the next. The finest of silks and satins, the most bright and happy of colors, the most elegant touches and embellishments.

  “They’re beautiful,” Imogen breathed.

  “Aren’t they?” Mary clutched her hands before her. “The pink is too formal, I think. But the green is my favorite and it will show you to your best advantage.”

  Imogen stared at the beautiful gown and then stroked the fabric gently. It was the finest silk she’d ever touched. Finer than anything she’d ever worn, that was certain. And it was another woman’s dress. What would Fitzhugh think when he saw her in it? What would he consider her best advantage?

  Or would he consider it at all?

  “Let us hope so,” Imogen said as she dropped the linen cloth and picked up the gown. “I’m ready.”

  But as Mary began to prepare the dress, Imogen couldn’t help but feel that statement was a lie. Whatever was about to happen, she wasn’t ready.

  And she wasn’t sure she ever would be. She could only hope she would survive the next few days or weeks in this man’s protection and not get too lost in his world. She had no place here, and she couldn’t forget it.

  Chapter 5

  Oscar stood at the window in the dining room, staring out at the dark garden below. His thoughts ought to have been on his work. Normally that was where his mind always took him. How many times had Louisa chided him for it, asking him to come back to her?

  He’d never been able to do it. Not enough for her satisfaction. And the wall had built between them and ultimately led to her death.

  But tonight it wasn’t his club that filled his mind. It wasn’t even the arrangements he’d begun to make in his investigation of the murder Imogen had been witness to.

  No, he thought other things. The woman herself. The slope of her neck. The curve of her jaw. The slant of her lips. Those things were…distracting. He shifted in discomfort and tried to push them away.

  But before he could, the door behind him opened and he turned to watch Imogen, herself, step into the dining room. It had been hours since he last saw her. In his study, her chin had lifted in defiance and fear and strength as he wrecked her world. She’d been undone then, her hair barely tamed, her gown dirty and torn.

  But not anymore. He caught his breath. The green gown had always been one of his favorites and she wore it well. The sleeves were a gauzy fabric and rather shockingly revealed the curves of her shoulders. The neckline was a bit low, and Imogen’s bust was a little bigger than Louisa’s had been, so the swell of her breasts edged at the neckline, forcing him to take in every inch of revealed flesh. Then the gown cascaded over her, the silk skimming her curves like it had been made to do so.

  Her dark hair had been smoothed and lifted and spun into some fashionable confection, but for one errant curl that brushed the line of her jaw and made him want to sweep it away with the back of his hand.

  “Good evening, Mr. Fitzhugh,” she said as she stepped into the room, apparently oblivious to the impact she made.

  She crossed to him and he tracked every movement, tracked the warmth of her as she stopped before him. Tracked the scent of her, something honeyed that reminded him of sweet treats.

  “Good evening,” he choked out. “I trust you feel better.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Everything always looks better after a bath.” He thought her gaze flickered lower when she said it, but then it was back on his face. “And the gowns are lovely. Thank you for allowing me to wear them.”

  He nodded as he held out the chair beside his. She took it and settled in, spreading her napkin across her lap as the first course was brought out.

  When they were alone again, she took a sip of wine and said, “Were they hers?”

  He had lifted his soup spoon to his lips, but now he froze there. As he slowly lowered it back to his bowl, he said, “Hers?”

  As if he didn’t know the her to which she was referring.

  “The woman you discussed with me earlier. The one who disappeared into the brothel. Louisa.”

  His felt his jaw tightening. Felt the strong desire to dress her down for daring to ask that. Instead he ground out, “Yes.”

  She nodded slowly and ate a few bites of food. “Who was she?” she asked at last. “A sister?”

  “No, Mrs. Huxley,” he said softly.

  Her gaze flitted down to her plate and her voice caught as she asked, “A—a lover?”

  “Imogen,” he rasped out because he couldn’t find his full voice.

  He thought she might stop then. Her cheeks flushed and he could see she was uncomfortable with pressing and poking and prodding. But then she slid her hand out and covered his for the second time that day. Her skin was warm and soft, the weight of her fingers somehow…comforting.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I only ask because I’m wearing her dress. And you say she disappeared into the very brothel where I nearly lost my own life.”

  “And you think you have the right to know,” he finished as he slid his hand away and rested it on his thigh beneath the table. He flexed it because he could still feel the weight of her palm on his knuckles.

  “Perhaps not the right,” she said. “I suppose I don’t have the right. But at present I feel so raw about what I saw, what I experienced. Nothing feels normal or right or peaceful. I can’t even go home.”

  “And if you crack my chest open and spill some of me out, that will make you feel that the scales are balanced?”

  Her eyes went wide at the image and she shook her head. “No, I suppose it won’t. I’m sorry, Mr. Fitzhugh. You’ve been nothing but kind to me since I destroyed your peace by colliding with you last night. I won’t pry.”

  She returned her attention to her plate, but Oscar couldn’t do the same. He stared at her face, her lovely face. Her kind face. Her troubled face. And in that moment, he wanted to give her what she desired. Anything she desired.

  He cleared his throat. “Louisa was a courtesan.” Her gaze shot up and her dark eyes widened. “And for a while I was her protector. Her lover.”

  “It ended.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Long before the Cat’s Companion.”

  “Wh-why?” she asked, and then she shook her head. “I’m sorry. That answer is certainly none of my affair. I shouldn’t have asked it.”

  It wasn
’t her affair, but he had studiously avoided speaking to anyone about Louisa for six months. He spoke around her, but never directly about her. Now that he’d opened those gates, it was like he was compelled to walk through them.

  “She wanted more,” he said, trying not to think of Louisa’s tear-streaked face as she told him that she loved him. As she begged him to feel the same emotion. As she realized he didn’t. Couldn’t, he had told her. “And I couldn’t give it to her. So it ended. Badly.”

  Imogen had shifted, leaning forward, entirely engaged with him. Her steady stare should have made him uncomfortable, but instead it was…comforting. Almost a beacon in a storm that he’d been navigating for months.

  “She disappeared a few months later,” he said. “And I started looking for her. I heard she died. I know she died. And it is…my fault.”

  “Oscar,” she whispered, using his first name for the first time since he introduced himself. No one called him that. Everyone called him Fitzhugh. Even Louisa had done so. Fitz, if she was being cheeky.

  But hearing his real name, his given name, from this woman’s lips was…intoxicating. Some of the pain of the past slid away when she said it, replaced by far darker and more desperate emotions.

  Needs.

  “I’m so sorry,” she continued, completely unaware of what he was thinking.

  She reached out and caught his hand again, this time with both of hers. She cocooned him with her warmth and his gaze slid to her lips.

  Very kissable, full lips. He hated himself for noticing that in this moment of high emotion and tension. He hated himself for being able to divorce himself from what had happened with Louisa and instead focus on what his body drove for with Imogen.

  “Be careful, Imogen,” he said, his voice rough with desire.

  Her eyes went wide but she didn’t drop his hand. She just stared at him, her pupils dilating and her mouth slightly parted. She licked her lips before she said, “Why?”

  He arched a brow. “You know why.”

  The door from the kitchen opened again, and she dropped his hand and leaned back in her chair as the soup bowls, largely untouched by them both, were taken away and the next course was brought in.

  He never stopped looking at her as this was done. Not when the servants left them alone, either. She held his gaze, too. That shocked him, truly. Most women he’d known in his life had been startled by his intensity. Few had matched it.

  And yet this woman held her own admirably.

  “Let’s eat,” he said softly.

  She nodded. “Very well.”

  Neither of them moved to do so, and he couldn’t help how his mouth quirked up a bit in the corner. He blinked first, not because he needed to, but because he chose not to have this erotically charged battle with her tonight. He swept up his fork and began to eat, and she slowly did the same.

  He changed the subject to books and watched her shoulders relax. But whatever electric moment had happened between them was still there, throbbing like a heartbeat behind it all.

  He wasn’t certain that could ever be forgotten.

  After supper, Imogen stepped into the parlor with Oscar on her heels. She felt him there, watching her, circling her, and she had no idea what to do or how to feel about it. He had offered confession about the woman who had once been his lover and she recognized that was probably a rare thing. Something…oddly special to get a glimpse into the heart of a man like this.

  But then everything had shifted, changed because she touched him. And even though they had spent the rest of the supper talking of books and music and food, she couldn’t pretend away the tension that arced between them.

  He moved to the sideboard, and at last she could breathe because he was no longer marking and tracking her, like a hawk to her helpless rabbit. He poured them each wine, but as he pivoted and held out the glass, he frowned.

  “I feel I owe you an apology,” he said, those intense eyes settling firmly on hers once more.

  She took a sip of the alcohol, wishing it shored her up more than it did. “About what?”

  “Louisa.” His gaze slid away and his frown deepened. “I think I may have been gruff about your questions. She is a…delicate topic.”

  She tilted her head, watching him. This was not a man accustomed to discomfort and yet he was allowing himself to feel it in order to offer her an olive branch of some kind. One she wasn’t certain she was owed. After all, she had pried into a life that had nothing to do with her.

  She smiled, perhaps the first real smile she had felt cross her face in weeks, even months. “Isn’t gruff part of your personality? Your magnetism?”

  His brow wrinkled. “Is it now?”

  She nodded. “It seems to be. I’m certain many a person has looked at you and thought, ‘what is that very gruff man thinking?’ and then you speared them with a glance and sent them skittering away in nervous terror.”

  His eyes narrowed, and now she couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Oh yes, that’s the glance.” She lifted a hand to her chest. “And my heart pounds, just as you intended.”

  The corner of his mouth quirked slightly. Close to a smile, not quite one. She found herself wondering what he would look like if he did smile. Truly smiled.

  “I am an ogre then, in your estimation. Is there a bridge I was meant to be guarding?”

  “Not an ogre,” she said with another laugh. “Ogres are ugly, for one thing, and you must know you aren’t that. And cruel. Which I know for a fact you aren’t.”

  At that, his expression hardened a little. The walls came back up. “A dangerous assumption, Mrs. Huxley. I suppose I can be as cruel as anyone else.”

  He turned away and walked to the fire. He stirred it, not because the dancing flames needed it, but she thought he might. He didn’t like the playful connection, it seemed. It made him nervous. An odd thought that she could do that to such a commanding person with just a little playful teasing.

  It made her want to press her luck, but instead she let out a sigh. “At any rate, you owe me no apology. I understand how the past one shared with another can be…difficult. Discussing it delicate, as you put it.”

  He pivoted at that. “Can you?”

  She nodded. “My husband has only been dead a little over a year, after all.”

  He moved closer. “You two were close.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Because you can’t stand to have me call you Mrs. Huxley when you’re talking about taking another man to your bed,” he said. “That indicates some level of guilt at doing so. A betrayal you are loath to make. Hence, I make the guess that you were close. Perhaps you even loved each other, as seems to be the fashion in Society marriages at present.”

  There was something bitter about his tone, but she couldn’t address it. Not when his words pierced her heart. Earlier she had prodded him about his past with Louisa and had been frustrated when he dodged the answers, even if she wasn’t owed them.

  Now he did the same and she felt a similar desire to push aside what her answers would reveal. But was that fair? In the privacy of this house, under these strange and trying circumstances…did she want to keep the barriers of polite lies between them?

  It seemed her body would compel her to speak before she made a decision about that question, because she heard the words falling from her mouth. “I might as well complete my humiliation. Ours was an arranged marriage and it was…complicated.”

  Complicated. What a word to describe the push-and-pull between her and Warren.

  “How so?”

  She refused to look at him. She didn’t want to see his face when she said the words that were perched on the tip of her tongue. “He had…many affairs,” she said softly. “Often very publicly and never with any sense of shame or apology. But I was told, by him and by others, that it was the way of our world. That I should accept it because our marriage gave me opportunities.”

  Oscar’s voice was strained and filled with disdain as
he spat, “Opportunities.”

  She glanced at him then. His brow was low, his dark eyes penetrating as they focused on her. His lips were pressed hard together, making the full line of them thinner and white with pressure. He looked angry, but not at her. For her.

  It gave her the strength to continue. “And to be…fair, Warren could also be affectionate. Kind. Passionate. Even loving when it suited him. We were not always unhappy. I often believed he did care for me, in his own fashion. And then he died.”

  “And you were left with nothing,” he said softly.

  “Yes. I was shocked.” She paced away from him, to the window and looked out over the street below. Carriages danced by, it was early enough that people still strolled in the lamplight in small groups. Life went on. It always had.

  “It sounds as though his family took advantage,” he said. “From what you said this morning.”

  She nodded. “They did. I was told that if I had been a good wife, he would have made arrangements. That his lack of planning had to do with me, not him.” Her jaw clenched as she ground her teeth. “And so here we are. He dug a hole and somehow I have managed to pull the earth down in around myself.”

  He made a low sound in his chest, and as she pivoted to face him, he came across the room toward her in a few long steps. Her eyes went wide as she watched him do so, confident and certain as a king. He reached for her, like he would take her elbow or her hand, but then he stopped himself and yanked his hand back.

  “You cannot truly believe that it is your fault. From everything you’ve told me, you were put in an impossible situation by him, by his family, by every circumstance. You were doing your best to save yourself. Perhaps the decisions you made weren’t perfect, but neither are anyone’s. This is not your fault, Imogen.”

  Her lips parted. In all her life she had not ever had someone defend her so vigorously. Even Aurora, her closest friend and confidante, was not so bold. And yet this man, this near-stranger, demanded that she give herself grace. He sprinkled it over her without hesitation or demand.