Harlequin Historical September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: The Lone SheriffThe Gentleman RogueNever Trust a Rebel

by Lynna Banning

  ‘You’ve still got feelings for her.’

  Ned pulled his shirt back down into place, and threw the brandy-soaked bloodied rags on to the fire.

  There was a silence.

  Ned was not a man who talked about feelings. He had quashed ‘feelings’ a long time ago. Feelings made one weak and open to hurt. Feelings hindered, not helped with survival. But what was between him and Emma Northcote, this thing that he felt... He said nothing and his silence was as loud as if he had shouted his agreement to Rob’s statement.

  Rob glanced away, uneasy and nervous. Bit at his thumbnail. ‘If Devlin organised what happened in the Botanical Gardens because you cut in on a dance with her, just think what he would do if you go after her.’

  ‘I’m not going after her. How could I, knowing who she is? Besides, this isn’t about Devlin.’

  ‘No? If he talks, then you kiss goodbye to Misbourne. You kiss goodbye to it all.’

  ‘You know Devlin can’t talk.’

  ‘There’s something else you should know.’ Rob looked away again, his manner awkward, his hand rubbing the back of his neck. ‘I was asking around about her, sniffing for some gossip on her and Devlin. You said there was something between them.’

  ‘And is there?’ Ned felt his focus sharpen.

  Rob gave a nod. ‘Seems she blames him and his pals for leading her brother astray. Little Kit Northcote running with the big bad boys.’

  Ned shook his head and gave an ironic laugh.

  ‘I thought so, too,’ said Rob. ‘Just thought you should know.’

  ‘Thank you, Rob.’

  ‘You managed to smooth it over with Misbourne?’

  Ned gave a nod.

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘He didn’t ask and I didn’t tell.’

  ‘Probably saw the bruise on your forehead and the grazes on your knuckles and guessed how you got them.’

  ‘It was too dark to see.’

  ‘It won’t be tomorrow.’

  Ned lifted the lid of the silver platter on his desk to reveal a thick slab of raw steak.

  Rob grinned. ‘I see you’ve thought of tomorrow already. Nothing stops bruising better than a raw steak compress.’

  But when Rob left a few minutes later it was not bruises or Misbourne that Ned was thinking of, but the woman who had helped him that night. Had she not come looking for him, Misbourne might have walked. But she had come and she had helped him, not baulking from the blood or the mess or what had to be done, although it had shaken her. It seemed he could still feel the tremble of her fingers against his face, wiping away blood he could not see, and the brush of her kiss that had brought him to his senses.

  He poured himself another gin and drank it down.

  You know Devlin can’t talk.

  Once that had been a certainty. Now, Ned was no longer so sure. Because, for all his assertions to Rob, after tonight he could no longer deny he still cared for Emma. He cared for her and if Devlin was to realise that fact then all bets were off.

  It was not an eventuality Ned could afford to risk.

  He took another swig of gin and stared into the flicker of the flames upon the hearth.

  He had to stay well away from her. For both their sakes.

  * * *

  Emma could not sleep that night.

  Her mind kept reliving the bloodied mess of Ned’s injury and the awful shock of finding him lying there on the grass. She had thought him dead. Dead! And that stomach-dropping moment had been one of the worst in her life.

  She looked down on to the quiet moonlit street, watching the trundle of the soil cart and the skulking shadow of a cat creeping behind it.

  Every time she closed her eyes she saw that seeping stain so dark against the white glow of Ned’s shirt, the torn linen and, beneath it, the glistening gash that gaped in the muscle of his belly. Such a thin black line to produce so much blood. His skin had been slick with it beneath her fingers. It seemed even now that she could still smell it in the air and taste its metallic tang on her tongue. Her stomach knotted at the memory. It felt like a hand had taken hold of her heart and squeezed, and would not stop squeezing.

  That Devlin could have stooped so low... He was a rake, a selfish, arrogant wastrel. But despite all of that she had always thought him a gentleman. Ned himself had said he had enemies. A man from trade would always have enemies amongst the ton.

  She shivered and pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. But it was not the cold that made her shiver. She still loved him. It was not a good realisation. She closed her eyes, knowing that it was all wrong.

  He was looking for the daughter of a title, everyone knew that. He might desire her, he had always desired her, but he would never marry her.

  Ned was ambitious. He was an empire builder. He had his plans. And she had both her pride and her duty. A hint of scandal and her position with Lady Lamerton would be lost and with it her best hope of finding Kit. Her father was relying on her. And given what had happened between them in Whitechapel... Fool me once and shame on you. Fool me twice and shame on me. The old saying whispered through her head.

  She loved him, but she was not a fool.

  So she would wish him luck in his search for a bride and leave him to the marriage mart.

  * * *

  Ned was sitting alone on a wooden bench in Green Park, looking out over a view that could not have been more different than the one from another bench a few miles across the city in Whitechapel. He needed space to think outside the walls of the mansion in Cavendish Square. He needed to be alone to think. And given his schedule for meetings tonight he could not go to Whitechapel. If he were honest, it was not the only reason he was not going to Whitechapel. He had not been back since Emma had arrived in Mayfair.

  The sky above was leaden, the air unnaturally still. There was barely a breath of movement. The atmosphere seemed to radiate a tension that made people uncomfortable and unsettled and all the while not knowing why. The portent of a storm to come. It kept them indoors, or hurrying along the streets to get there. It cleared the sweep of undulating green grass and its paths so that he had the place to himself, almost, save for the odd figure or two rushing away into the distance to escape that feeling and what was to come.

  Ned’s feeling of discomfort could not be so easily remedied. Not by returning to the house in Cavendish Square. Or by anything as simple as waiting for the storm to pass.

  I’m not going after her. How could I, knowing who she is? His own words seemed to ring in his ears, taunting him.

  He couldn’t get Emma out of his head. Maybe because of who she was. Maybe because she was the one woman in all the world he should not want and could not have. Maybe both of those reasons or neither of them, he did not know. What he did know, what he could no longer pretend to himself otherwise, was that he wanted her as Emma Northcote every inch as much as he had wanted her as Emma de Lisle. She had not changed, between Whitechapel and Mayfair. She was the same woman. He understood why she had lied and it did not alter the facts. That he wanted her. That he had feelings for her. And the realisation complicated everything.

  It brought risks he had never contemplated. To his plan, to all he had spent a lifetime working towards. To himself and the very crux of who he was and what drove him.

  Ned knew what he was and had always been comfortable with it. He saw things with a clear dispassion. But this thing with Emma Northcote was different. It pushed him to a place he had not been before, a place he did not want to be. It made him question things he did not want to question. It made him question what sort of man he was.

  He moved the fingers of his right hand in that old comfortable reassuring rhythm, tumbling the token backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.

  Because being who he was, if he cared for
her, how could he be with her?

  Unlike all the other problems he had faced in his life, blind-ended problems, problems the size of a mountain, this was a dilemma to which there could be no solution other than walking away.

  He had responsibilities. He had his destiny and his duty. And regardless that he did not play by the rules of the world, he had his own moral code, his own sense of honour.

  Every time he thought it through, all the arguments, all the logic told him to stay away from her. The decision was already made.

  But it did not stop him thinking about her.

  * * *

  Emma’s letter to her father had been posted. She had taken it to the Post Office herself so that no one else would see the Whitechapel direction written upon it, along with two of Lady Lamerton’s letters, under the guise of a need for fresh air. The guise in itself was no lie. The air was not fresh, but still and ripe with uncomfortable promise. But since the Botanical Gardens incident she had not felt herself and she needed some time away from the dowager. She needed time alone, to walk, to clear her mind and to straighten her thinking.

  Emma knew just how hard it was to live in a different world from the one you had been born to and raised within. One’s roots coloured everything. To sever them and walk the other path was not easy. She thought of how much she had had to learn to survive in Whitechapel. Ned must have done, and indeed still be doing, the same here. He always seemed so confident, yet she knew that every small thing would be alien to him.

  The sky was darkening, changing through shades of grey to a deep, menacing charcoal.

  A storm was coming. She could feel the ominous stillness of the air. Smell the scent of promised rain, sense the slight winding of tension deep within. Knew she was still too far away from Grosvenor Place to reach Lady Lamerton’s home before it hit. She cast a worried glance at the green silk of her skirt. Once a rain-ruined dress would have meant nothing more to Emma than an excuse to visit the mantua maker. Now it was different. She had walked the other path, where women had one dress to last a lifetime.

  She gave a grim smile at that thought and took the short cut through Green Park.

  Halfway through she saw the gentleman sitting on the wooden bench.

  The image reminded her of another man sitting on a different bench, in a different place, at what seemed a lifetime ago. But within a few steps her heart began to thud harder and something trickled into her blood, making it rush, for she knew that figure with its dark-blond head and she knew that trip and magical roll of the token over his fingers. It was like the replaying of a dream in her head, except it was real and happening before her eyes.

  Her heart skipped a beat. Her feet faltered and ground to a halt.

  He glanced up, met her gaze, as if he had been sitting there waiting for her. The token ceased its rhythmic tumble.

  Time stretched between them. A tiny moment encapsulating something too big to contemplate.

  Ned got to his feet. Stood there, his eyes never leaving hers.

  Emma’s heart was thudding fast and hard enough to escape her chest. Swallows were diving and swooping inside her stomach. She took a breath. Resumed her walking. But she did not look away any more than he did.

  She stopped before she reached him.

  ‘Emma.’ Her name was low and husky upon his lips.

  ‘Ned.’

  The ensuing silence stretched tense. She could feel the strain of so much between them.

  ‘How are you?’ he asked softly.

  ‘Well enough, thank you,’ she said slowly. ‘And your wound?’ She glanced down to his tailcoat and what she knew lay beneath.

  ‘Healing well, thanks to you.’ His eyes scanned hers. She saw the movement of his Adam’s apple. ‘You shouldn’t have had to see any of that.’

  ‘I have seen worse,’ she lied. ‘You forget that I worked in the Red Lion.’

  ‘I forget nothing, Emma.’ The undercurrent strengthened. Nights in darkened alleyways, passion and kisses, that last sunlit morning at the stone bench, promises and insinuations... All of it was there, whispering between them. ‘You risked your safety and your reputation to help me, Emma.’

  ‘Then we are even, Ned.’

  ‘We will never be even.’

  She did not understand his words, just saw the dark intensity in his eyes and the way he was looking at her, that made her heart race all the faster and ache for him.

  She swallowed. ‘I should be getting back. Lady Lamerton will be waiting for me.’

  He said nothing. Just gave a tiny hint of a nod as if he agreed with her.

  She gave a curtsy.

  He gave a bow.

  She walked on, leaving him standing there.

  Only a few paces before she stopped. Touched her fingers to her forehead. Closed her eyes to stop the tears that threatened. Knew she might not get another chance to ask him, not in all of her life to come.

  She turned and met his gaze.

  He had not moved. He seemed tenser than normal and there were shadows in his eyes.

  ‘May I ask you something, Ned?’

  He gave a nod.

  ‘Why did you come back to Whitechapel all those times?’

  ‘It is my home. Where does a man go to relax but his home?’

  ‘Cavendish Square is your home.’

  ‘Cavendish Square is where I live.’ Not his home.

  ‘Can you find no relaxation here?’

  ‘Here I must play the part of a gentleman and we both know I am nothing of that.’

  ‘You seem to play it with ease enough.’

  He smiled at that. ‘I thank you for the compliment. But it took many tutors and much practice to achieve.’

  She smiled, too, a sad smile. ‘And the change of clothes was so that you would not draw unwanted attention.’

  ‘Turning up at the Red Lion dressed in Weston’s best...’ He raised his rogue eyebrow.

  She traced the scar through it with her eyes and thought of her own trip to Whitechapel. ‘I can imagine.’ She paused before asking, ‘Have you been back recently...to the Red Lion?’

  The hint of a smile vanished. ‘I have been too busy.’ His eyes held hers with an intensity that lent other suggestions to the reason he had not returned to the chop-house.

  The tension ratcheted between them, humming with the strain. The very air seemed to crackle.

  Great heavy rain droplets began to fall, hitting her cheeks and rolling like tears. Big and slow. Hitting the olive-green silk to darken it with spots, each one so big and juicy that it seeped right through the thin muslin of her spencer.

  She glanced up to find the charcoal sky dimmed almost dark as night.

  ‘I have to go.’ But her words were dwarfed by an enormous crack of thunder that peeled and rolled across the heavens. The rain began to pelt with a fury that matched the roar of the emotion between them, as the storm was unleashed.

  ‘Too late, Emma,’ he said and they seemed the most ominous words in the world. Ned peeled off his tailcoat as he spoke, wrapped it around her shoulders and, taking her hand in his, they ran through the weight of the drumming rain to the nearby oak trees.

  He pulled her under the cover of the low leaf-laden branches to the shelter beneath. They stood facing one another, their hands still entwined. So close that she could see the glitter of raindrops on his waistcoat and the sodden linen of his shirt, moulded transparent to the hard contours of his chest. So close that she could feel the brush of his chest against her own, the rise and fall of his breathing. So close that she could smell the scent of rain-soaked material and beneath it the scent of him, clean, familiar, tantalising.

  She tilted her face up to look at him.

  His hair was sodden, turned dark with the rain and slicked back against his head. And his e
yes, the most amazing eyes in the world, were like a window to his soul.

  The trees and driving rain were like a curtain around them, locking out all of the real world, creating a moment they would never have again.

  ‘The last time I saw you in Whitechapel... That day on the old stone bench...when you said that when you returned we needed to talk...’ The rain ran in rivulets down her face.

  He stroked the drops away from her cheeks with gentle fingers. His eyes studying hers.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, answering the question she had not asked. ‘I would have told you of Mayfair. I would have told you it all.’ And he really would have done because he had thought her the same as him. Hard-working, smart and ambitious enough to climb from her working-class roots. A woman who would have shared his vision, who would have understood. A woman who could straddle both worlds.

  ‘Ned...’ she whispered.

  She was the same woman. The same woman beneath that name and there was such a cruel irony in that.

  Emma let her gaze wander from his eyes to his lips and he knew that she wanted him as much as he wanted her. He was made for loving her. She was made for loving him.

  And in the heavens above was the crash of thunder as if something of the world was being torn apart. Lightning flickered, illuminating her face in its stark white light. Illuminating everything she was, everything he wanted.

  ‘God forgive me,’ he whispered with shaky breath and lowered his face to hers.

  He kissed her with tenderness. He kissed her with passion. Savouring this moment that was everything they could not have.

  She slid her arms around him, anchoring them together. They lost themselves in passion and emotion, and need. Lost themselves with a fury that matched that of the storm all around.

  Her heart beat with his. The thunder reverberated through them, the crashing and splitting of the skies only reinforcing what was happening between them. Fate and destiny proving that they would not be denied.

  He kissed her until the furore of what flowed between them calmed enough to let them breathe again. They stood there entwined, chest to chest, lip to lip, the brush of his eyelashes against hers. Two lovers, beneath the old oak trees in a busy and fashionable park in London in the middle of the day, whose reunion the heavens had conspired to hide. The thunder was quieter now, the storm moving away. The lightning no longer flashed. In the silence there was only the drum of rain, drawn like a grey screen around them.