My Rogue, My Ruin

by Amalie Howard; Angie Morgan

  She failed on both accounts.

  “Oh good Lord,” she whispered as a surge of aching warmth pooled low, at the apex of her thighs.

  The bandit didn’t hear her. He was much too busy hissing and grinding his teeth against the pain, his back arching. As his spine went flat against the cot again, he snagged Brynn’s wrist and tugged with surprising strength. She fell forward, the ceramic jug slipping from her hands and landing on the floor with a dull thud. It rolled onto its side, spilling whiskey, but that wasn’t her main concern at the moment.

  The bandit had pulled her flat against his chest and stomach, bringing his masked face mere inches away from hers. His eyes were still wild and wandering so she could only hope he hadn’t yet focused on her face. Would he recognize her, even disguised as she was?

  “Release me so I can bandage you,” she said, the husky tone of her voice not entirely put on. Goodness, he was virile, even woozy from a shot to his leg. He held her arm like a vise.

  “Shot me,” he whispered, incredulous.

  “Yes, well, what did you expect? You’re a highwayman,” Brynn replied, attempting to wrench her arm away and pull back to a safer distance.

  “No bullets,” he breathed.

  “Just one, and it barely grazed you,” she explained, still wiggling toward freedom.

  He finally released her, and she tumbled back, right onto her rump.

  The distant whinny of a horse and the steady clomp clomping of horse hooves had her up and on her feet again. Someone was coming. One of the bandit’s cohorts? Another criminal? What was this place, a hideout? She hadn’t stopped to wonder before. There were a number of abandoned cottages and stone ruins scattered throughout the woods of her own estate, and she imagined the neighboring duke’s estate as well.

  If the bandit and his allies had set up in one of them, she most certainly did not want to be discovered. The Masked Marauder had been shot, and he was weak and clumsy from blood loss, but this new arrival would not be.

  Brynn hurried for the door, taking a last glance at the bandit as she whipped it open. He was lying on the cot, his chest rising steadily with each breath. The mask. She’d spent ages ogling the bulge of his masculinity underneath his smalls, and yet she hadn’t lifted the slip of black silk to reveal his identity. There was no time now, not that she had any inclination to match a face to the ample…body part she’d gotten an eyeful of. If he turned out to be an aristocrat as she suspected, she’d never be at ease in polite society for fear of recognizing the man. She flushed and once again, her knees went inexplicably weak. Blast it twice on Sundays.

  Brynn rushed outside and swung up onto Zeus’s back. It was as if he had been waiting for an opportunity to unleash his boundless energy. She didn’t even need to dig in her heels—they were already off, a dark blur through the trees.

  …

  Archer’s eyes rolled back in his head. A boy. There had been a boy in the cottage with him. He blinked, but as his vision started to settle, saw there was no one there now. His head throbbed with every pounding heartbeat, and confusing snatches of what had happened rushed back toward him. He groaned as he reached for the whiskey jug tipped on its side at the edge of the bed. He took a desperate gulp. The fiery spirits brought him a shot of clarity just as Brandt burst through the door, his eyes widening at the sight of Archer lying half clothed and bloody on his cot.

  “Hawk? What the devil happened?” He threw off his coat, rushing forward. “I’ve been looking for you for hours. One of the footmen said you and the duke had another row. That you stormed out of his study like a man possessed.” Brandt crouched by Archer’s leg, his hands gently examining the wound. “I heard a shot and thought things had gone south.”

  “They did.” Archer blinked, his gaze slanting down to the faintly oozing but clean bullet wound. Though not life-threatening, it burned like the pits of hell.

  Brandt glanced up at him. “You’re supposed to tell me when you’re going out. Someone put up a fight, I see. I suppose it was bound to happen.”

  Archer gritted his teeth against the pain and humiliation. But he’d always been honest with Brandt before. “Not the occupants of the carriage. A boy. The cretin showed up on his horse and shot me.”

  Brandt’s eyebrows flew into his hairline. “A boy. Shot you. At this hour.”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Losing blood addles the mind. Are you certain it wasn’t the coachman or a groom?”

  Archer shook his head. Brandt said nothing as he stood to retrieve a strip of clean linen from a trunk. When he returned, he removed the tourniquet that had already been tied tightly around Archer’s thigh to staunch the flow of blood. He couldn’t quite remember how it got there, but he figured the ripped cloth had come from the boy.

  Brandt poured some more whiskey on the wound and, ignoring Archer’s coarse outburst, finished the work and bandaged it deftly. “There. You’re lucky that it’s only a flesh wound, and this mysterious boy didn’t have better aim. You’ll live.” Brandt took a swig from the whiskey jug and offered it to Archer. “Did you ride back here? I didn’t see your horse.”

  He swatted Brandt’s hand away when he pressed it to Archer’s clammy forehead, nodding as if satisfied that a fever hadn’t set in. Archer scowled. He wasn’t delirious. At least, he didn’t think he was. “Out back. The boy helped me.”

  “The same boy who shot you brought you here and cleaned your wound? I’m surprised he didn’t make you breakfast, too. Where is this savior of yours, pray tell?”

  “He must have…left.”

  Archer sighed. It sounded farfetched even to him. But he knew he hadn’t imagined it.

  “Did he see your face?” Brandt asked, turning serious.

  “I don’t bloody well know,” he groaned, furious with himself and a touch troubled. Coming on the heels of that blasted note claiming to know his secret, the last thing Archer needed was some unknown boy to have taken a peek under his mask.

  The boy had been slim in stature, dressed in black with a hat that had obscured his face. No more than fourteen, Archer guessed. He dimly recalled the slim width of the boy’s forearm. Maybe younger. He had been fearless. Shooting him, and then returning to save him from probable death. The boy had what Montgomery used to call mettle.

  “Let us hope not,” his friend murmured, clearly worried. Hell, Brandt didn’t even know about the note yet, and Archer again chose to stay quiet about it. He had no proof that it had indeed been meant for him, and no other notes had been forthcoming. Though it lay like a warning prickle in the back of his mind, Archer would not let its rankling presence dictate his course of action.

  He closed his eyes as the whiskey dulled his senses—and the pain in the thigh as well. The boy’s skin had glowed gold in the firelight. Perhaps it hadn’t been a boy at all. Perhaps it had been an angel sent to torment him for his sins. Archer grimaced at the unwelcome thought. He’d returned empty-handed tonight. And there were greater sins in the world than the ones he committed relieving some of the more entitled ton of their glutted wealth…like the starving poor and abandoned children, whom his very thievery fed and clothed. Archer ground his jaw and gave in to the exhaustion that crept on the edges of his consciousness.

  He’d risk whatever penance his actions brought.

  Chapter Six

  Given the bizarre circumstances, Brynn had been out far longer than she’d planned. Dawn was already on the horizon when she arrived back at Ferndale, and there was a bustle of activity up at the house near the kitchens. Thankfully, there was no sign of Vickers in or near the stables, so she quickly rubbed down a lathered Zeus and settled him back in his stall with a generous helping of oats.

  If only mending the Masked Marauder’s injured leg could have been so simple.

  She tried to forget leaving him on that cot, his trousers around his shins, but it was impossible. Her mind pulsed with nothing but memories of him stretched out before her, those gauzy linen drawers leaving so little to th
e imagination. It was utterly disgraceful the way she’d fixated on his muscular thighs and yet hadn’t bothered to expose his face.

  Grabbing hold of a dusty cloak hanging on a nearby peg, Brynn swore under her breath and poked her head around the doors. The only sounds to be heard were those of the horses nickering behind her. There was a chance she could get back into the manor and up to her room unnoticed, where her dirty, bloodstained attire would feed the fire, hopefully still burning low in the grate.

  She drew the large cloak around her and started for the house. Footsteps made her freeze in her tracks, and she flattened herself against the side of the stables, her breath coming in panicked pants. She darted a look at the woods and then one back to the house, and had just made her decision to flee when a deep and decidedly unamused voice halted her escape.

  “Going somewhere?”

  Brynn turned in slow motion and saw her grim-faced brother. “Why are you looking at me like that?” she breathed out. “So I went for a ride. What of it?”

  “Is that so?” Gray said, his arms crossing. “And where, pray tell, is Apollo?” Brynn’s heart sank. Of course he would have seen her riding in on Zeus, or if she knew her brother, he would have already noticed that both Zeus and Apollo were missing and had decided to lay in wait to catch her red-handed. She paled at the murderous look on his face. “Zeus isn’t properly trained. You could have broken your neck. I will ask you again, Briannon, where is Apollo?”

  “Don’t you dare take that tone with me, Gray.” She bristled at her brother’s sharpness, but her bravado deserted her at his thin-lipped expression. “I can explain,” she said, the next words tumbling from her mouth without an ounce of grace. “I went for a ride yesterday to clear my head, and came across a boar. Apollo got spooked and threw me. Lord Hawksfield was there. He turned his ankle trying to reach the boar—”

  “Yesterday? Were you hurt?” Gray interrupted, his voice sharp.

  “No,” she said, wringing her hands in the lap of the skirt. “I shot it.”

  “And Hawksfield?”

  “He didn’t have a horse, and he insisted on escorting me home, considering I was wearing what I usually wear…” She broke off at the thunderous shine in her brother’s eyes and gulped. “Considering the way I was dressed, he thought it would be proper to act as my escort. He wasn’t pleased about it, either, and well, he’d turned his ankle, as I said…” She was rambling. She always rambled when nervous. “I didn’t know what to do, Gray. Leave him there, injured, after he tried to save me? He was a gentleman, I assure you. I changed at the cottage and came straight here. He took Apollo.”

  “He would have been fine if you had left him,” Gray muttered, but Brynn could see him softening. He had a temper, but he usually knew how to subdue it with rational thought. He’d calmed enough to consider the impossibility of the situation. “If anyone had seen either of you, your reputation would be in tatters. And I doubt Hawksfield would care at all.”

  “No one saw me.” She eyed him and drew the cloak from the stables closer around her. Hopefully it shielded the blood spatters and dirt on her clothing. “And, well, last night, I needed to get out. I couldn’t sleep, and Zeus was the only one awake. I was perfectly safe, Gray, I assure you.” She bit her lip at the lie—no need for Gray to know the particulars of what happened with the bandit. Tatters would be the least of what would be used to describe her reputation should it come to light that she had been in an abandoned cottage with a half-naked man, and a criminal at that. She would be shunned from polite society. An outcast. Her mother’s shame would be unimaginable. No, there was no need for anyone to know.

  Gray’s face darkened, but he nodded. “At least you are safe. Count your blessings Mother and Father are both still abed. You best get inside before Lana starts ringing all sorts of bells when she finds your bed empty.”

  Brynn gave him a slanted look. “Lana has far more sense than to do such a thing.”

  Gray didn’t seem at all appeased. The rigid shape of his shoulders and the downward tilt of his mouth pointed toward his continuing the rest of his brutal setdown. However, he took a deep breath, expelled it, and surprised her.

  “Speaking of our neighbor, there are rumors in London.” He kept his voice low, as if imparting a confidence. “Bradburne lives an excessive lifestyle, some say to the detriment of his fortune. You have a significant dowry, Brynn, and I wouldn’t put it past Hawksfield to try to get his hands on it in order to stock the family coffers.”

  “Gray!” she cried, though she faltered on what to say next. She wasn’t naive as to how marriages worked, and why certain men married certain women and vice versa. Money and titles were coveted. She found it strangely distasteful to think of it and Lord Hawksfield in the same breath. Brynn would rather be married off to an untitled pauper than someone as capricious as he. For heaven’s sake, she’d choose marriage to the bandit she’d shot over that high-handed man.

  She banished the thought as a sudden rush of heat spiraled through her at the recollection of the marauder’s utterly virile body. If she were married to him, he would be well within his rights to take her, as Cordelia’s aunt had put it. At least one form of taking seemed to be something the bandit did particularly well. She had to force a breath into her lungs at an unbidden image of him lowering her into their marriage bed and taking something quite different.

  “It’s not beyond the realm of possibility, that’s all I’m saying,” Gray went on, holding up his hands in surrender, and absolutely clueless as to the bawdy turn of her thoughts. “And I don’t want to see you caught up in some scandal that ends in a marriage to that…that…”

  “Scoundrel?” she offered.

  He vaulted one of his golden brows. “I would have chosen a slightly less tepid word.”

  She smiled. His vocabulary did often do his quick temper justice. However, it seemed odd the distaste Gray harbored for their neighbor.

  “Is he so very awful? Do not think me too well informed, brother, but are you not known as a scoundrel yourself?” she said, still grinning even as Gray’s lips pulled thin with annoyance. Or perhaps it was embarrassment. “And what of the other young men of your acquaintance?” she pressed playfully. “Aren’t all men scoundrels in some way?”

  “If you have heard that I am on par with Hawksfield, then I would say your information is rather dusty,” he replied with a lopsided frown. “And while I know a scoundrel or two, none of the men of my acquaintance are interested in ruining my sister, that I promise.”

  “You needn’t worry, Gray.” Stifling her amusement, Brynn was quick to reassure him. “I am in no danger of being caught up in any scandal concerning Lord Hawksfield or being ruined by any man.”

  Just a half-naked bandit whom she’d shot.

  Brynn’s mind went to the exquisite ruby necklace in her bedroom that the blackguard had given her, and her heart stuttered. Her early morning ride with the future Duke of Bradburne paled in comparison to the time she’d spent in utterly indecent proximity to that thief. If there were to be any scandals in her future, she’d wager they’d be at the hands of the Masked Marauder, especially if they ever crossed paths again. She would fling the necklace in his face and shoot him again for stealing her grandmother’s pearls and for bidding her undress him while he was half-conscious. Unwittingly, her hand lifted to her throat as she grinned at the gratifying, if savage, sentiment.

  “And what if Hawksfield is the one who sent you that ruby necklace?” her brother asked. Her startled glance jumped to his.

  “He isn’t,” she answered with conviction. Too much perhaps, because Gray peered at her, his curiosity piqued at her resolute rejection. “Not if their finances are in shambles, as you’ve said,” she added quickly.

  “He could have gotten them on credit,” Gray mumbled.

  Brynn ignored him. “I have to get inside and dress before the decade ends, Gray. We can argue about the mysterious ruby necklace later, although I have it on high authority that Hawksfield
wouldn’t know the first thing about sending courtly gifts to any female, much less something so imaginative. That would require him having an actual personality.”

  Gray chuckled, shaking his head. “Your tongue is as sharp as a whip, sister. Don’t forget, the Gainsbridge affair is tonight,” he said over his shoulder, and Brynn cringed. Though desperate to avoid yet another social scene, she’d be expected to go to the annual masquerade since the Earl and Countess of Gainsbridge were dear friends of her parents.

  “Blast it,” she swore.

  Her brother chuckled. “If Mother heard you speaking like that, or found out you were gallivanting around Ferndale in the middle of the night, you’d likely be disowned.” He shook his head as if perplexed. “You are the only female I know who would rather shoot a boar than attend a ball.”

  “I like balls, I just don’t like being ogled like a teacake,” Brynn muttered. She would much prefer getting to know someone and determining whether they had common interests before being bound together for a lifetime. “You’ll be going, won’t you?”

  He caught up and linked his arm with hers, his teeth flashing. “Why certainly, dear sister. After all, my wonderful, handsome self must attend if I am to set the ladies of the ton afire.”

  Brynn shook her head at his bald-faced lie—she knew her brother would prefer to be locked up in Newgate rather than attend a ball. Of late, Gray seemed to favor the quieter comforts of Ferndale and the local village, despite being a prime target, as the future Earl of Dinsmore, for the mothers and daughters of the ton. Just as their neighbors were, the Duke of Bradburne, and his only son, Lord Hawksfield, each of them unattached.

  “Liar.” Brynn pinched Gray’s shoulder, before skipping ahead a few steps out of his reach. “Then again, if you find a bride who loves you as much as you obviously love yourself, you will have made a splendid match.”

  “That is the plan,” he said with an affected flourish and then sighed. “Alas, such perfection like this does not exist, so I fear that it may be a lost cause.”