A Rogue of One's Own

by Evie Dunmore

Cecily’s chin quivered with alarm. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Is anyone going to shoot?” cried McMahon. “Half a penny for five shots!”

  Lucie had vanished into the crowd; she would, she was short and she was fast.

  No, she had not been fast just now. She had walked like a woman injured.

  “My lord?” Cecily made it sound like a sob.

  He shook his head and went after his heart.

  Chapter 32

  It took her a quarter of an hour to reach home, and her breathing was still a distant, labored sawing noise in her ears. She knew she had a heartbeat, rattling around in the cavern of her chest, but she did not feel it; there was a disconnect, she was a cold, disembodied mind floating aimlessly from room to room.

  Tristan had lied to her.

  Tristan was engaged to Cecily.

  Tristan had lied to her.

  He broke into her kitchen not ten minutes later.

  The familiar sight of him, his face handsome and guilty, when in truth she did not know him at all, slid sharp like a blade between her ribs. She realized she stood with her hands pressed over her heart.

  He crossed the kitchen with three long strides and stood too close.

  “Lucie—”

  She slapped him so hard, the force of the blow turned his head to the side.

  When he looked at her, his eyes glittered bright like fool’s gold. “Allow me to explain.”

  Her hand had left a red mark on his cheekbone.

  “I’d rather slap you again,” she said.

  He raised his hands in a shrug. “If you must.”

  She flexed her smarting fingers. “I want you to leave.”

  At least she wasn’t railing and screeching. Her voice was as frozen as she felt inside.

  He shook his head, making to say something, but she held up her hand.

  “All I asked for was honesty. But honesty is an impossibly tall order for someone like you, isn’t it? I might as well have asked a tiger not to kill—he can’t help himself. More fool me.”

  He gritted his teeth. “You are not a fool, and I did not lie.”

  She crossed her arms. “Are you, or are you not, engaged to my cousin?”

  “I am not,” he said, his gaze so direct, so lucid, it felt genuine. A treacherous tendril of hope fluttered in her chest. She quashed it.

  “Why would she make such claims if there were nothing to it?”

  His eyes narrowed. “The little—” He shook his head. “It’s not entirely her fault. It’s Rochester.”

  A terrible fatigue came over her at his words, urging her to retreat, to go curl up in a black hole, safe from the sight of him.

  “It’s always someone else’s fault, is it not.” She turned away, because he wasn’t leaving.

  He followed her down the corridor, and she sensed his urgency on her skin like a touch.

  “Leave,” she said, her voice rising.

  “Not as long as you are feeling like a fool,” came his cold voice. “This is my fault entirely.”

  “So you admit it.”

  “Of course—but I hope you will accept mitigating circumstances.”

  She gave a hollow laugh.

  “Rochester is blackmailing me and holding my mother hostage.” He said it quickly.

  She stopped.

  When she turned back, he met her gaze evenly, but he looked unsettled and his hands were clenching by his side as though he were suffering a bout of nerves.

  A crack ran through the icy shell holding her together; she could feel it. Still, she flinched when he made to take her arm, and he withdrew his hand with a scowl.

  “Very well,” she said. “You may explain yourself.”

  She guided him into the drawing room and settled on the old settee, hands folded, her back stiff as a board. He stood before her with the reluctance of an outlaw in the dock.

  “Rochester is hell-bent on seeing the Ballentine line secured,” he began. “He was alarmed when I made clear that I had no interest in marriage in the foreseeable future.”

  A sudden, leaden feeling pulled her back into her body. It should not have bothered her, his reluctance to marry, but hearing him say it with such certainty grated on some layer of her soul.

  “Your main duty at this point in your life is to provide an heir,” she said coolly. “Your father is hardly making unreasonable demands.”

  He inclined his head in agreement. “It is, however, unreasonable that he will stop at nothing short of murder to see the Ballentines hold on to the Rochester title. He was in the process of arranging a match with your cousin and gave me a few months to rehabilitate my reputation to allow her to accept me without causing talk about your family. To ensure my cooperation, he threatened to put my mother into an asylum. And one thing you must know about Rochester is that I have never seen him make an idle threat.”

  Gooseflesh rose on her arms. His tale was straight out of a gothic novel.

  But his mother had always been deemed erratic and different. Inconvenient noblewomen were sometimes quietly locked away at private asylums . . . and she had seen the marks Rochester had left on Tristan’s back—she wouldn’t put such sordid behavior beyond him.

  “This is why you need money,” she said slowly. “The passive income from London Print.”

  He nodded. “I would have been cut off from any family accounts until my father’s death. And life for two people in India requires deep pockets.”

  India.

  She swallowed hard. “I see.”

  His eyes darkened with regret.

  “My dear—”

  She shook her head. “When were you going to leave?” Her voice was unsteady.

  He ran a hand over his face. “In a few weeks.”

  “So soon,” she said softly.

  “I made a mistake, not to tell you sooner. I should have told you the moment I read all those letters—it was when I knew you would at least have understood the absurdity of the situation.”

  Sad, she felt so very sad. “Why didn’t you—tell me?”

  He was on his knees before her, looking up at her with a sincerity in his eyes that cut her to the bone. “Because at first, it was my own affair, and mine alone to solve. For what it’s worth, I had not expected mutual feelings and esteem to grow between us. But they have, and fast, and I came to feel reluctant to share my failings as a man with you—it is shameful enough that I could not protect my mother while I still lived at Ashdown. As you might imagine, Rochester has always been a bully. Above all, I suspected if I told you it would come to precisely this.”

  Feelings and esteem. But evidently, no trust.

  She glanced down into his flushed, handsome face. “So you were a coward.”

  He went very pale. “I was, yes.”

  How would he have told her in the end? To her face? In a letter, to be read when he was already on his way to the subcontinent, not to return for years and years? He was still going to leave her, in fact, and something vital splintered apart deep inside her chest.

  “It’s why you took the loan from Blackstone, isn’t it,” she said tonelessly. “An even greater criminal than your father.”

  He nodded. “Rochester cannot touch him. However, there is a twist in the plot: my mother recently disappeared, and Rochester is not behind it. And as long as I have no clue regarding her whereabouts, my hands are somewhat bound—I must find her before my father does.”

  Her mind whirled, from the feel of his hands clutching her skirts, from breathing in his warm scent. She shook her head in a bid for clarity. “All of this sounds . . . utterly outlandish.”

  His brows rose. “Does it? After everything you know about the plight of wives trapped behind closed doors?”

  His tan had returned, and his features had softened. He looked like a man unb
urdened after carrying an impossible weight for too long, and it erased the last of her doubts—he was telling her the truth.

  “And yet,” she murmured, “and yet you came to my bed, when it threatened your solvency and thus your plan.”

  He gave her a dark look. “What can I say. You were naked.”

  She covered her eyes with her hand. As she had suspected all along, he hadn’t meant to bed her. He had simply lost control over his urges.

  She breathed through another jab of pain. “I understand your silence on the matter of your mother,” she said. “I would have felt protective of such circumstances myself—it is hardly acceptable to speak about unpleasantness within one’s own family. And yet, I still wish you had.”

  Because while her head understood, her nerves were still jangling, her pulse still spiking. India. He would have left, and he hadn’t been truthful. The reality of it continued to ebb and flow through her veins, burning like acid. Images kept surging, of Cecily’s face, the glimmer of triumph in her eyes, the guilt in Tristan’s. Her foolish request of going to the fair with him; her dreams of going anywhere with him. It felt as though she were falling.

  “My dear.” His hands slid up from her hips and locked around her waist, the warm, possessive pressure unwelcome and devastating. Her instinct was to run from him, the source of her hurt and confusion. In a terrible paradox, it was his arms she wanted to run to.

  She shook her head.

  His eyes heated. He rose up on his knees and his face was close to hers.

  “You feel very far away right now,” he said.

  She turned her face away, because he was near enough to kiss, and stupidly, she wanted to.

  He leaned in and buried his face in her neck.

  She was frozen in his embrace. But his lips moved up over her throat and the soft, familiar contact unleashed a warm wave of longing down through her legs, rendering them useless.

  She took a fistful of his hair and pulled. He had cheapened something glorious, and she wanted him in pain for it.

  “I never intended to hurt you,” he murmured against her ear. “I ask your forgiveness. Forgive me.”

  “Sweet words won’t absolve you.”

  He drew back, his eyes bright. “And this?”

  She made an angry sound when his mouth covered hers, but her lips parted and let him in. His kiss was drenched in need, and her hand slid from his hair and curved around his nape to pull him closer, and she loathed herself for it. His arms circled her and pressed her to his chest, and she became soft and pliant in response, and she resented that, too. Her body was melting, wanting his, even without the honesty, without the trust. She wanted him inside her and resented him at the same time. How sordid, how grotesque.

  His thighs were pinning her skirts to the settee, keeping her legs trapped. She could bite him, but she could smell the arousal on him, and felt the heat of his urgency, and knew the only thing stopping him now would be her asking him to stop. And the words did not come.

  With an angry moan, she slid her hand down the flat plane of his stomach, over the front of his trousers, and found him hard. He made a guttural sound, and his weight crashed down on her, crowded her back into the upholstery. It was a tussle, a heated tangling of tongues and fingers dragging off clothes and untying laces, until fabric ripped, and she wrenched away. She gasped at the sight of the remnants of her chemise, torn like paper, clean from her collarbone to her navel.

  She glared at Tristan, panting. “Get a hold on yourself!”

  He gave her a thin smile. “This is me having a hold on myself.”

  His hands spread the ruined fabric, exposing her breasts, and his head lowered. A rush of heat swept over the surface of her skin as her body arched up.

  She let her head fall back against the settee. There was no stopping either of them, now. He was in the grip of something stronger and older than reason, and she wanted one last time. One last time. She offered no resistance when he shoved up her skirts. She had taken a rogue into her bed, into her life, so a mad last tumble in a ripped bodice was a befitting good-bye.

  He leaned over her, one hand on the back of the settee, his other hand working between them, unfastening his trousers, his expression so darkly determined, she barely knew him.

  Her lids lowered, shutting him out.

  When he did not move, her eyes slitted open.

  Above her, his face was agony. “Lucie,” he said hoarsely. “Say you will have me.”

  How tempting, to deny him his pleasure at the height of his pain.

  Unfortunately, it would hurt her just as much.

  One last time.

  She slid her hands up his arms and held on to his shoulders. “I will have you.”

  He moved over her with the might of a storm, forcing the air from her lungs, and she clung to him, her mouth beneath his, as they tumbled through the dark. She knew he would not stop taking her until she would cry out. She would lose this battle gladly. How foolish of her, to once have thought holding back her voice would hold back her heart. How foolish of him to think wringing such bliss from her now would return her heart to him. She held out long enough to make him sweat, until he had to be hurting from it, and when the blaze consumed her, she screamed.

  He was heavy on her until the beat of his heart against her ribs had slowed. He sank to the floor with her in his arms, cradling her close.

  “Let me stay tonight.” He was slurring the words.

  She was too wrung out to send him away. “Draw the curtains and lock the door,” she said, the leaden exhaustion after a shock already claiming her. By the time he had returned to her, she was asleep.

  * * *

  The sense of betrayal returned with the cold light of dawn creeping through the curtains. She lay staring up at the ceiling with tired eyes. The longer she looked, the more cobwebs she saw, flimsy torn veils graying with dust.

  Tristan was still going to India, and she still felt like a fool. It weighed on her chest and leered at her as grotesquely as the gargoyles protruding from every roof in Oxford.

  She should be rejoicing. With Tristan gone, she would have time for all the things that mattered again, and at least de facto she would have much more control over London Print. Free rein, had that not been her heart’s desire a month or two ago?

  How quickly things could change. The thought of him gone left her hollow.

  What puzzled her most was that nothing had been missing from her life before him—how could he feel essential now?

  She took a shuddering breath and rolled to her side, away from him, and dragged herself to a sitting position. He woke then; she could feel it.

  A soft rustle of blanket, and then his fingers touched her bare spine. Her shoulders tensed in response.

  The caress faded to nothing. “I gather you are still angry,” he said.

  The intimate scratchiness of his morning voice hurt her. The sooner he was gone, the better.

  “I am,” she said to the room. It had to be anger. The hollowness, the sickness in her chest.

  There was a pause. More rustling, as Tristan was sitting up, too. “Will you look at me?” he asked gruffly.

  She glanced back over her shoulder and blinked against the fresh pain the sight of his tousled hair and bare shoulders brought on.

  “Funny, is it not,” she said. “You told me not to trust you, but I did. I told you to be honest, and you were not. We have both broken the rules.”

  His eyes had a hard look to them. “No,” he said. “It is not funny.”

  She looked away. At least he was not trying to deny his lack of honesty, or attempting to dress it up as mere secrecy. Dishonesty, secrecy, good reasons or not: at the end of the day, she had suspected nothing. She had been skin to skin with him, looked into his eyes while he was inside her, and she had suspected nothing. He was greatly skilled at guarding his
secrets. He could hide anything he chose from her—until he couldn’t, because the secret things always found a way to the light, and then they would pull the floor from underneath her feet.

  “No,” she agreed. “It is not funny.”

  She buried her face in her hands and ground her palms against her eyes. She had to look well put together for the celebratory lunch at the Randolph with the Investment Consortium today. The chance for this was slim. She was so fatigued, it felt as though her face were melting off her skull.

  “I would be much obliged if you could take your leave,” she said.

  She looked away when he picked up his clothes and dressed, because this was the last time she would ever see him do so.

  He let her herd him to the kitchen without protest or attempts to sway her, perhaps because he felt guilty still.

  He turned to her a good few paces from the back door. “I wish to see you tonight.”

  She quickly shook her head. “I’d rather not.”

  His hands flexed by his side, as though he had to stop himself from reaching for her.

  “Because of the broken trust,” he said, calmly, but his body was a column of tension.

  Because of everything.

  She could only nod.

  A dreadful emotion rose between them; they stood and watched helplessly while what they had created between them was changing as unstoppably as the tide was turning.

  His eyes shuttered then, the amber glow gone. “I will find the countess,” he said. “And then I will earn your forgiveness.”

  The sound of the kitchen door falling shut behind him came from a distance. Moments later, his head and shoulders darkened the kitchen window as he walked past. He was looking straight ahead.

  Her back against the kitchen wall, she slid slowly to the floor, her legs sprawling on the cold flagstones.

  The problem was not that she had not forgiven him. It was that she already had. She was an inch from bolting out the door to go after him, calling his name. She’d fling herself into his arms and bury her face against his neck. She’d breathe him in and ask him to stay; to forget everything that had happened and to ignore everything that was coming for them.