My Lord Rogue
A Nelson’s Tea Novella
by
Katherine Bone
Table of Contents
Title Page
License and Copyright Notes
Also Available
Dedication
PROLOGUE
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
Author’s note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Thank you for reading My Lord Rogue!
Excerpt from Duke by Day, Rogue by Night
License and Copyright Notes
My Lord Rogue
Copyright © 2018 by Katherine Bone
Published by Seas the Day Publishing
(Second Edition)
Cover Design by For the Muse Designs
Editing by Double Vision Editorial
ISBN: 978-0-9982-0742-1
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means—except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews—without the author’s written permission.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author.
For more information contact [email protected]
or visit www.katherinebone.com.
Also Available
The Regent’s Revenge Series
The Pirate’s Duchess, Novella
The Pirate’s Debt, Book #2
The Pirate’s Duty, Book #3
The Heart of a Hero Series
The Mercenary Pirate
The Nelson’s Tea Series
Duke by Day, Rogue by Night, Book #2
Dedication
“Desperate affairs require desperate measures.”
~ Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson
To M.V. Freeman, Crystal R. Lee, and my family for encouraging and inspiring my stories. Dreams really do come true!
Prologue
Kent
October 1801
“They say they’ll invade us these terrible foe. They frighten our women, our children, our beaus, but if should their flat-bottoms, in darkness set oar, still Britons they’ll find to receive them on shore.” The sun moved behind a cloud as Gillian Corbet, Baroness Chauncey sang “Heart of Oak” and bent to snip several clumps of heather from a plant in her garden.
The vibrant colors of the flowers she’d grown, combined with their floral scents, reminded her of her tenure on stage at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane when wealthy benefactors would gift her bouquets. The memory of one admirer in particular held extraordinary power over her—Lord Simon Danbury, the second son of the third Duke of Throckmorton. Tall, honorable, and regretfully betrothed to another, he’d been a patron of the arts and her first love. Smiling at the memory, no longer angry or distraught about the separate paths their lives had taken, Gillian cut a dozen bloodred roses for the arrangement she was preparing for the foyer.
Five years had passed since her husband had assumed the name Lucien Corbet, Baron Chauncey after escaping the guillotine in France. Lucien was a “Chouan,” a follower of Jean and René Cottereau’s revolution against tyranny and a descendant of pamphleteers. They were a team, she and he, bent on weakening Napoleon’s power as master spies.
Lucien had recruited Gillian to the rebellion after their arranged marriage. She’d taught him the art of disguise, while he’d taught her the art of subterfuge. As operatives in England’s employ—Gillian often pretending to be a widow—she and Lucien strove to stop Napoleon’s secret police while appearing to be self-absorbed members of the ton. Together, they’d transformed a dilapidated mansion with its forgotten garden into a haven for butterflies and hummingbirds, and a place of sanctuary to which they could return after dangerous missions.
A clatter of horse’s hooves interrupted her musings. Lucien!
Gillian rose excitedly, abandoning her roses, and sheltered her eyes from the sun. She’d had misgivings about Lucien traveling to France without her, and it pleased her to know he’d safely returned.
But wait . . .
She squinted, certain she was mistaken. But there it was again: a riderless horse galloping pell-mell to the house. As the black horse neared, the white star-shaped marking on its chest became clear. This was not just any horse, but Lucien’s. Her heart sank.
“Polaris!” She dropped her basket of flowers and picked up her skirts, trampling the garden in her haste to intercept the beast. There was only one reason Polaris would return without Lucien. He was in trouble!
Polaris’s nostrils flared as he stamped the ground before her, his eyes wild. “Where is he?” she asked the magnificent horse when she finally got him to stop kicking.
Polaris shook his head, laboring to tell her something he didn’t have the capacity to say. Dread seized Gillian’s heart. She searched the horse for signs of injury, anything that would indicate what had happened to her husband. Lucien’s untouched musket was still sheathed behind the saddle. Whatever had happened, he had not been given the chance to retrieve the weapon. An ambush?
Nausea washed over her. She grabbed the reins and circled Polaris so she could mount him. Blood coated the black’s thick mane, and she brought the reins around and stepped up to the saddle. Gillian bit her lip, refusing to think the worst, as she touched the sticky strands to gauge how far away Lucien could be.
Still warm.
Lucien must have sent his horse to her directly after being attacked.
“Take me to him,” she ordered.
With her heart beating frantically, she wheeled Polaris southward and kicked the horse’s flanks, urging him into a run back the way he’d come. She and Lucien had been through plenty of hellish scrapes together in their five years of marriage, and she wasn’t a fool. She knew what this meant. And as she’d been trained to do, she girded herself for what she might find as Polaris’s gallop took them past hedgerow fences. Time seemed to drag on as they raced up a hill and over a stream before Polaris transitioned to a canter, and then ambled to a stop. He raised his head and snorted violently.
Nerves on edge, Gillian knew Lucien was somewhere nearby. She slipped out of the saddle and landed softly on her feet, careful not to make another sound as she took in her surroundings. When nothing alerted her to Lucien’s presence, she walked along the edge of the wood until she located a trail of blood leading into the trees. She stopped, her heart thumping faster.
Leaves rustled. An eerie silence met her ears until she heard the faint cry of a tawny owl—the signal Lucien had adopted from the Chouans. He was close, hiding, but in danger of being discovered. Her hopes ignited. Whoever was searching for her husband intended to finish him off, which meant she still had time to stop Lucien’s attacker.
A twig snapped fifty paces away in the thicket. Then another.
Gillian hiked her skirts up and secured them about her knees with straps she’d sewn into her gown, and then she pulled the loaded musket out of its sheath on Polaris’s back. She crept into the forest, careful to step only where her kid leather boots would be less likely to make noise. The last thing she wanted to do was announce her presence. She couldn’t help Lucien if she were dead.
“Vous ne pouvez
pas fuir,” a deep voice shouted in French. “You cannot run.”
The threat came from the northwest and thirty feet off her position. Someone had followed Lucien, most likely someone who also planned not to leave any witnesses behind, which explained why her husband had not ridden directly to the house for help. He’d ventured to France this time at the behest of Vice-Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson and Henry Dundas, the prime minister’s former war secretary. Lucien had proven that as a Frenchman and Jacobin with influential political ties, he would not be intimidated by Napoleon’s secret police.
A gun cocked somewhere beyond the trees to her left. Laughter, maniacal and victorious, met her ears. She instantly reacted, sneaking toward the sound, aiming the musket at anything that moved as she tried to anticipate where her quarry would emerge.
There.
Through the trees, she caught sight of a man. Tall and blond, he was dressed in black and towered over someone. He held a gun in his hand. “You led a merry chase, Corbet.”
Gillian gasped. Lucien!
Filled with urgency, she fired the musket. Her aim was true, and the man jerked, twisted, and fired his weapon into the air as he fell dead. Nausea coiled inside her. She’d been trained to kill, but she’d never been forced to do so. Lucien had always been there to protect her. And now, if anyone else was looking for her husband, the assassin had made their whereabouts known.
Fearing for their lives, Gillian ran as fast as she could through the thicket, paying no heed to the branches clawing at her legs as she made her way down the hill to her husband. When she arrived at the scene, she found him laboring to breathe beneath his attacker’s dead weight.
“Gillian.” His voice held none of his usual vigor, frightening her all the more.
“Don’t move!” she cried. She grabbed the stranger’s legs and hauled his body off her husband. When Lucien was freed, she dropped to her knees beside him and lowered her startled gaze to his bloody hands. They were clasped over his stomach. He peeled his hands away, revealing a gaping wound that confirmed her suspicions. He would not survive this time. Her breath caught in her chest. “No. No. No. I refuse to believe it. This cannot be happening.”
“My luck has run out, mon amour,” he said. “I’ve lost too much blood. I don’t—” he inhaled deeply “—have much time.”
She had to get him home. She had herbs, potions, and ways of dealing with injuries there. Surely . . . “You are not going to die!” she vowed. “Polaris and I will take you home.” She started to rise, but he grabbed her by the arm, stopping her. She frowned as she glanced down at his loose grip. Where was his strength?
He couldn’t be dying.
Fighting back tears, she sank to her knees. Five years! That’s all they’d had together. It had not been enough time to learn to love each other the way a husband and wife should. “I will bandage your wound,” she said, struggling to rip strips of fabric from the hem of her skirts. “I must stop the bleeding. You will be fine, Husband. We have been through worse. You will be fine,” she repeated. “You will see.”
“Stop,” he pleaded weakly, pulling her closer so he could whisper in her ear. “No . . . time. Nelson . . . in . . . danger.”
She pulled back and stared down at him. “Admiral Nelson?”
“Oui. He has returned to London. He is . . . unwell—another bout of malaria. They plan—” he coughed up blood “—to strike in two days’ time at Drury Lane.” She dabbed his mouth. “Must stop . . . Fouché.”
Joseph Fouché was Napoleon’s chief of police. If he was involved, the stakes were incredibly high.
“D’Auvergne,” Lucien continued. “He said . . . head wounds Hadfield received . . . Battle of Tourcoing . . . conditioned him . . . to kill the king.”
Her eyes widened. This would mean Fouché had been at the heart of the assassination attempt on King George at Drury Lane a year ago.
“It all makes sense . . . now.” Lucien tightened his grip. “You must help the admiral . . .”
“I cannot go back there.” She shook her head. “What you ask—”
“No choice, ma chérie.” He smiled wanly, touching her cheek with his cold, sticky hand. “Nelson needs . . . you. Go to Stanton.”
“The marquess?” They had trained Percival Avery, the Marquess of Stanton, to be a spy. They’d worked together and become close friends.
“Oui. He will know what to do . . .” Lucien spasmed, and his pain-racked groan tore through her defenses.
“No.” She squeezed his hand and held it to her lips. “You will go with me, Lucien.” She turned her cheek, untold agony slicing through her as she was struck by how deeply she truly loved her husband. It was not the all-encompassing love she’d felt for Lord Danbury, but it was comfortable, reliable, and lasting.
His eyes turned glassy. “We’ve shared many things . . . but never what you needed most, ma chérie. Go to him.”
He spoke of Danbury now, and she knew it. But deep in her heart she also knew she couldn’t love a man who’d married another. “You are wrong,” she cried. But he wasn’t and that hurt the most. “I have loved you, Lucien.”
In my own way.
“And I you,” he said. Blood trickled out of his mouth, and she dabbed his lips again, praying that God would spare his life. “Promise me . . . you will stop . . . Fouché. The admiral must . . . assemble Nelson’s Tea.”
She squeezed his hand and tried to soothe him, stroking his forehead. She nodded, tears spilling out of her eyes. “I promise.” She gripped Lucien’s cold, clammy hand tightly to her breast. “I will promise you anything.”
“Good.” He writhed in pain, struggling wildly, but somehow the force of his will allowed him to form coherent thoughts. He inhaled loudly, a gruff rattling that dug into Gillian, never to be forgotten. “They plan . . . kill Nelson . . . when arrives . . . Holcroft’s play . . .”
Tears fell from her eyes as she wiped more blood from his face, this time off his chin. “You speak of Holcroft’s Deaf and Dumb?”
“Oui . . . Be there . . . the marquess . . .” Lucien squeezed her hand almost violently as another spasm overtook him.
“I will find Stanton,” she vowed. “I will do whatever it takes.”
He struggled to place something in her hand. “Here . . . this . . . explains.”
“You have my word,” she said, fisting the crumpled missive in her palm. “I will not fail you, my dearest love.”
“My love.” He smiled faintly and closed his eyes.
Unchecked tears slowly streamed down Gillian’s face and a sob tore from her throat. “Lucien, no . . .”
A twig snapped. Then another, the sound moving closer in the woods.
She searched the trees before looking back down at her husband. “Someone is coming.”
“Leave,” he said. “Now. I beg . . .”
“No.” Tears escaped her eyes as she shook her head. “How can you ask such a thing?”
Voices, faint but growing more audible, carried through the trees. She glanced at the dead man’s gun that had drawn his companions. By all that was holy, what was she supposed to do now?
Lucien arched his back and tightened his grip. “Go,” he said more forcefully. “Warn them.” It was an order she’d be foolish not to accept.
Her heart pounded against her chest as her gaze darted around the perimeter. If she didn’t get her husband up now, they wouldn’t be able to escape.
“I will not leave without you,” she whispered. “Get up. Fight to live.”
His body grew lax, and his lush, velvety-brown eyes drank her in. “You have pretended . . . to be a widow.” He gasped. Blood trickled out of his mouth. “No need to pretend . . . now . . .”
One
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players . . .”
~William Shakespeare, As You Like It
Westminster
Two days later
Gillian Corbet straightened her shoulders, adjusted her blac
k veil, and entered the lion’s den, willingly taking a step toward her own destruction. She had not returned to Drury Lane since falling in love with Lord Simon Danbury, the man whose kiss had promised her happiness, and then finding out he was marrying another. Now, after what seemed like a lifetime of heartbreak and renewal, she was a widow in the truest sense. No need to call upon her acting skills now. Not when she felt Lucien’s loss so keenly and carried the weight of the world on her shoulders. The stakes of Vice-Admiral Nelson’s impending assassination would be an incomprehensible blow to her husband’s legacy, the monarchy, the Admiralty, and England. The death of England’s savior would weaken British morale at a time when war was already threatening the country’s shores. She could not allow it. She would not allow it. She’d promised Lucien she would prevent such a catastrophe, or she’d die in the process of fulfilling her vow.
Britain depended on a network of spies to outwit the enemy, and the one thing she had in her favor was that her husband had trained her well. Failure was never an option. And she would do anything to honor Lucien’s dying wish, even if Lord Danbury discovered her presence. Lord Danbury was a member of the ton and one of Nelson’s most respected allies. After marrying Lucien, Gillian had also learned that Danbury was a member of British counterintelligence. She shivered. In the five years they’d been together, Lucien had only requested one thing: never tell Danbury that she’d been recruited as a spy.
If Lucien was right, the audience at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane would get more than they had bargained for at tonight’s performance of Holcroft’s Deaf and Dumb. The play gave attendees a chance to meet—or at least see—the Baron of the Nile, Vice-Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson himself, who had recently returned from India with his mistress, Lady Emma Hamilton, wife of Sir William Hamilton. It was rumored that the three of them were involved in a tryst, that she had delivered the vice-admiral a child—a daughter—in January.
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