A Reckless Runaway

by Jess Michaels

  “My shoulder,” Ellis admitted. “Through and through. It’s not bad.”

  The pain on his face told a different tale, but Rook didn’t say that. “Come back to the house and we’ll get you and Juliana looked at.”

  “No,” Ellis whispered.

  Emotion swelled in Rook as he realized what his cousin was saying. “Handsome,” he murmured, but that wasn’t right. It wasn’t enough now. “Ellis.”

  Ellis stepped away. “I’m a lost cause. Because of me, that girl up there is maimed. I can only destroy, cousin. And if I stay, I will.”

  Rook shook his head. “If you stay, maybe you’ll become better. Please. Please don’t walk away.”

  Ellis glanced up the hill, and there was a powerful longing on his face. For a moment, it felt like he might choose a different path.

  But then he looked at Rook again. “Goodbye, Constantine. And good luck. You were always the better man of us both. I know you’ll find your way.”

  Rook reached for him, but Ellis backed out of the way, hands raised. Then he turned and walked down the hill, back toward the horse he’d ridden in on. Away from their past and whatever future Rook would face now without him.

  In the past, he would have followed. Ellis would have been his priority. But right now there was a woman at the top of that hill. A woman who needed him. A woman he loved more than his own life.

  And so he went his way and his cousin went his own.

  He crested the hill. Thomasina and Harcourt were helping Juliana down the hill toward his horse. He could only imagine the earl would carry her home at top speed to have the slash across her cheek looked at.

  Anne stood watching him. When he reached her, she opened her arms and drew him against her briefly. “I thought you wouldn’t come back,” she said softly.

  He shook his head. “Come, we must have your sister tended to. And then we’ll talk.”

  She arched a brow. “I would like to talk.”

  He nodded, though he wasn’t certain she would like to talk when it was all said and done. But it had to happen, so he took her arm and led her down the hill. Toward home. Toward the end.

  Chapter 23

  Anne stepped from Juliana’s chamber, wiping her hands on a fresh towel. It didn’t make her feel clean. If anything, she felt dirty and broken. And when she saw Rook waiting for her in the hallway, still dusty and bloody from the earlier encounter with the devil, her exhaustion mounted.

  He straightened up and met her gaze. “Juliana?”

  She bent her head. “The surgeon stitched the wound.” She pursed her lips. “It wasn’t a large cut, but it was deep. She will likely have a scar.”

  His mouth tightened and she saw his guilt work across every feature. “I’m sorry.”

  She set the towel down on the table near her sister’s door and moved to him. She reached for his hand, taking it, feeling the roughness of him against her softness. Then she guided him toward her bedroom. He didn’t resist as she took him inside, as she shut the door. He moved to the chair beside her fire and sank down into the cushion, staring at his clasped hands.

  She leaned against the door for what felt like an eternity. “You think this is your fault.” It wasn’t a question, it was a fact, and she stated it as such.

  He glanced up. “It is my fault. I tried to protect you by going back to who I am. Instead I let a monster walk into your midst and didn’t end up protecting you or your family at all.”

  She wrinkled her brow. “Who you are,” she repeated. “And who is that?”

  “Rook Maitland,” he said on a shaky breath. “Criminal, Anne. I stole from Harcourt.”

  “To end all this,” she argued. “You cannot blame yourself for that.”

  He shrugged, and his sigh was long and heavy and pained. “Either way, I went back to my cousin’s side. You have to understand, I would have done anything and everything to take care of this. I would have destroyed everything. And it isn’t just to save you, Anne. In the end, destroying everything is what I know.”

  “You are Rook Maitland,” she said, thinking of the man who had thrown his knife at Winston Leonard. Thinking of the man who had shattered a statue to find a hidden code. One he still had in his pocket, thanks to the confusion of the afternoon.

  “I’m glad you understand that,” Rook said, pushing to his feet.

  “Do you understand that you are also Constantine Maitland?” she asked, tilting her head slightly to catch his gaze when he wouldn’t give it to her willingly. “Constantine Maitland is my lover, a man so tender that he made me believe in a future I’d all but given up on. Constantine Maitland walked away from the violence of his past and lived on an island creating beautiful things as he tried to find his peace.”

  “He also walked away from you,” Rook said with a shake of his head.

  She let out a long sigh. “You are so convinced you are unworthy. But do you think I lied when I said I loved you?”

  His jaw tightened, and it took a moment for him to grind out, “No. You think you love me because we spent weeks in close proximity, with an intense physical connection and a dangerous threat looming over us. But all that is gone now. And soon you’ll remember who I am. And who you are. You’ll understand that we can’t be together.”

  Her heart hurt at that statement, made with such conviction. With such firm belief that it was true. And she was terrified it was. That he would make it so.

  “Why?” she asked, wishing her voice didn’t tremble.

  “Look at your life, Anne.” He motioned to the beautiful room around them. “I don’t belong here.”

  She looked at him instead of their surroundings. She looked at the wild, untamed man before her. The one who made her heart race and her body open and put her heart at peace even in the middle of a storm. She looked at him, and she smiled.

  “You’re right, Rook. You don’t.”

  Rook fought the urge to flinch at her quick acceptance of his words. It was better this way, of course. If she accepted the way things had to be, then she would forget him faster and move on with her life. He would go home. That would be the end of it.

  “I’m glad you understand,” he said as he edged toward the door she was blocking with her lovely body. “I’ll leave tomorrow. As soon as Juliana is able to travel, I’m sure Harcourt will take you to London, because the danger hasn’t passed.”

  “I won’t go to London,” she declared with a little smile tilting the corners of her lips.

  He wrinkled his brow. “Of course you will. You cannot be alone with Leonard still out there, wanting his prize. You must go to London where you will be safe.”

  “I won’t go,” she said again, her voice filled with certainty. “Not without you.” She moved forward a step, blocking his path to escape. Filling his world.

  She took his hand, and some tiny part of his resistance died. “You said you don’t belong in my world. But the truth is, Rook, neither do I. Not anymore. I belong in London with the man I love, fighting against an evil that threatens both my family and his.”

  There was such clarity to her tone and to her gaze that he could almost believe her. “Anne—”

  She ignored his interruption and squeezed his hand gently. “I also belong with him on his island in Scotland where I can wonder at all his many talents for the rest of my life.”

  He shook his head. “You would hate me for taking you away from wealth and privilege, Anne.”

  Her brow furrowed. “When we reached Gretna Green last week and I didn’t want to go home, do you remember what you said to me?”

  “Anne—”

  She ignored the interruption. “You chastised me. You said you would not accept that I’d live a long, cold life alone. You told me I hadn’t earned that, even though my choices had potentially harmed someone I loved. But Rook, I was already living that life. I surrounded myself with frivolity and foolishness and tried to tell myself I was happy. But the first time I’d felt happy in a very long time was when I was with you
, digging for clams and throwing knives at targets. It was the first time I felt…real.”

  His lips parted. “You can’t mean that.”

  “But I do,” she said with a tiny laugh. “I want real. I want you. Please don’t make me chase you back to your island and ruin all your cast-iron pans until you submit to my whims, as you know you will.”

  “Perish the thought,” he said with a laugh he never thought he’d use again once he lost her.

  Only it didn’t feel like she would let him lose her now. In a world where he’d fought to merely survive, now this woman stood across from him, fighting for him to be more. To thrive with her.

  “I have told you I love you before,” she said softly. “And I meant it every time I said those words. But now I need to hear you tell me the same if it’s in your heart. Do you love me, Rook?”

  He stared at the ground, his throat closing. His heart throbbing with pure terror. If he said those words to her, it would be over. He would be hers and he would never leave her side again. He would drag her down, or so he’d feared all along. But now he wondered if, in the end, she could actually lift him up.

  It felt like that was possible. It felt like it could be true. And so he slowly met her gaze and jumped off the highest, most terrifying cliff of his life.

  “I love you, Anne,” he admitted, and the words felt like honey on his tongue. “I love you with all my heart, even though I know I could never deserve you. Even though I fear you will come to regret me and any life we make together.”

  Her eyes filled with tears, but they were happy ones. She moved toward him, closing the last distance between them and cupped his cheeks gently. “I love you, Rook. I love Constantine. I love all your facets and I will love them all forever.”

  He arched a brow. “That sounds like a wedding vow.”

  She blushed. “I hope it will be.”

  She said those words, and for the first time in his whole life he pictured a future. He pictured life on the island with her, he pictured laughter and love. He pictured rainy days when they stayed in bed and made love. He pictured children.

  A future he had never imagined he could have became crystal clear, and he wanted to protect it, and her, with all his might. There was one way he could do that.

  “Marry me,” he said. “Marry me, Anne Shelley.”

  Her face lit with pure joy, pure happiness. And she gathered him closer as she whispered, “I will, I will, I will.”

  It was only when he kissed her that she stopped saying it. And then she showed him the same long into the night.

  Epilogue

  Ellis Maitland winced as he pushed his wounded shoulder back and felt the blast of pain work through his entire arm. He didn’t hate the pain. He deserved it, after all.

  He straightened on his horse, lifting his spyglass to watch as the carriage pulled up to the fine townhouse in London. The door opened and people began to pile out. Harcourt and his wife. Rook and Anne Shelley. And then the last.

  Juliana Shelley took Rook’s hand to be helped from the rig. She turned her face, and Ellis saw the bandage still resting upon her once-perfect cheek. The one that had been marred thanks to his bad deeds and worse decisions.

  Ellis had done that to her, the woman he hadn’t stopped thinking about for weeks. She was why he deserved the pain he felt now. She was why he didn’t try to drink it away or take laudanum to numb it. She was why he had decided to settle his score with Winston Leonard once and for all, in a way that the bastard couldn’t escape. Once the so-called gentleman returned to Town, that was exactly what Ellis would do.

  Consequences be damned.

  Excerpt of A Counterfeit Courtesan

  The Shelley Sisters, Book 3

  Preorder Now - Available March 3, 2020

  * * *

  Late Summer 1812

  Ellis “Handsome” Maitland leaned back against the long bar, drink balanced in his hand as he scanned the wide, open room before him. It was a room he knew well, for he had hunted here at the Donville Masquerade for years. The notorious underground sex club was the perfect place for a man like Ellis to find lovers, find marks, find trouble.

  Trouble had found him here, too. Not the harmless, fun kind. The real kind. The kind that had destroyed too many lives. The kind he had to end now in the only way that made sense anymore. There would be consequences, but there always were. This time he wouldn’t be able to avoid paying them…and he had accepted that.

  He slugged back his drink with a wince. A fissure of pain shot from his shoulder at the movement. He’d been injured there a few weeks before. But it wasn’t just physical sensation that made him flinch. Fear ripped through his chest. Perhaps he hadn’t fully accepted the consequences that would come. But he was working on it.

  Across the room, the big double doors carved with rutting lovers opened and a woman stepped through. Not all that shocking. After all, ladies made up nearly half the occupants of the room, seeking their pleasure with as much gusto as the men here. Sometimes with more gusto, considering the masks most wore. He wore one too, and lifted his hand to touch the leather edge as he adjusted it.

  What made the newcomer stand out was how much she didn’t make the effort to do so. The ladies who came here were mostly experienced. Married women seeking what their husbands could not or would not provide, widows who refused to climb into a grave with their lost lovers, courtesans who sought the safety this club and its owner, Marcus Rivers, provided while they sold their wares for pleasure and enormous profit.

  Everyone here had their role and their place, and as he looked at the woman who had just entered the room, he realized she did not. It wasn’t that she didn’t try. She wore a mask, but unlike the other ladies who made a show with feathers and satin and jewels, the disguise was plain. Her gown was daring enough. The neckline dipped down, revealing the upper swell of a truly lovely pair of breasts, but it looked like she had altered an existing gown, perhaps removing some tulle or lace that would offer more modesty. The gown was certainly not designed to attract in this den of sin. It had butterflies on the fabric, for God’s sake.

  And then there was her demeanor. The lady stood stock still just past the entryway and stared into the room, mouth open in just the slightest manner as she stared around her in what appeared to be shock.

  Ellis had ceased to be shocked by anything in this world when he was six. Jaded, his cousin always used to call him. Before Rook stopped speaking to Ellis weeks ago.

  He shook his head and pushed that troubling thought away. Protecting those he cared about was why he was here. Not pretty ladies who were looking around the big room at couples pawing each other, suggestively dancing, rutting against the wall as others leered.

  The woman across the room shifted, looking back toward the door behind her. But she didn’t run. She fisted her hands at her sides, and he watched her draw a long breath that lifted her breasts and come farther into the room.

  It had been a long time since Ellis had played the libertine. Once upon a time, it had been his greatest pleasure, his way to make a living. Love games were his expertise. He’d carefully chose a mark, one who needed what he provided and little more, or one whose bad behavior made his ultimate abandonment fit the crime.

  Then he seduced. He convinced. He fucked. Everyone left satisfied, at least physically, he with a heavier purse. But the last year or so…he’d had no interest in such things. His only attempt at a seduction scheme had started and ended badly…with his cousin’s now wife. He winced at the thought.

  The only flare of real desire he’d felt in that time had risen at the most inopportune moment, with a woman who surely despised him. The new wife’s sister, actually. Juliana. Her very name was a benediction. A prayer Ellis sometimes woke saying in the night, hard as a rock as he remembered a brief moment when he’d held her in the midst of hell on earth.

  But as he shook those thoughts away and stared at the woman at the door, he realized he wanted her. Just wanted her. Not for any ulter
ior motive, but because she had drawn his eye.

  “Why not?” he muttered as he scanned the room another time and found it still devoid of the man he was hunting. “There won’t be many chances left for pleasure, after all.”

  Those maudlin words hung in the air around him as he downed the remainder of his drink, set it behind him and shoved off the edge of the bar to stalk toward her.

  She didn’t look like she fit here, but certainly she must. Women didn’t come to the Donville Masquerade unless they wanted the kind of pleasure innocents couldn’t understand. Her darting gaze and shifting body could very well be part of a game. Play the innocent. Bring in the bees through a different kind of sweetness than that of the experienced women who were moaning and pleading around them.

  And if she wanted to play games, Ellis Maitland was the perfect man for her.

  He edged closer, and she turned at his approach, lifting her gaze to his. He came to a stop as he stared at those eyes. Eyes that he knew. Eyes that had haunted him for nearly a month, dancing into his dreams, digging him further into a hole he would never escape.

  He knew those eyes. Knew their owner even though he’d only touched her once, held her once as she trembled in fear that was his fault. They had bled together. He after being shot trying to protect her. She after being sliced with a knife because he had failed. Even now he saw the edge of a scar on her cheek peeking out from under the mask. He flinched at the sight of it and the proof it provided to his mystery woman’s identity.

  But what was she doing there? What the hell was she doing standing in the middle of the Donville Masquerade, looking up at him with an expression of interest and fear, but not recognition?

  Well, he was damned well going to figure that out. So he shrugged on a new mask, the one of “Handsome” Ellis Maitland. A persona he had come to hate as much as the physical mask that pinched the bridge of his nose as he smiled at her in false greeting.