Willoughby 03 - A Rogue's Deadly Redemption

by Jeannie Ruesch

  “Also Lily’s brother,” Ravensdale added.

  Robert felt the need for a drink. “You are her brothers. Family protects one another. I understand. I don’t need the show.” Something inside of him pinched, though he couldn’t for the life of him understand why.

  “I want to know what bloody game you’re playing, Melrose. You’ve done enough damage to her, don’t you think? Played with her emotions long enough? What was that display?”

  “It wasn’t a display. I love your sister.”

  “You bastard.” His words held a note of resignation, and Adam shook his head.

  “Not quite the response I expected.”

  “You can’t love her now any more than you did before this supposed illness.”

  “What about what Blythe said? Something about men taking Lily? And you?” Ravensdale added.

  The room was charged with their aggression and Robert knew it was a matter of manners that kept them from getting physical. He could see the anger, the disgust in their faces.

  The last thing he needed to do was tell them about the copperplates or tell them what he knew about his past. Not until he had made a plan, not until he knew how to fix it.

  Not until he knew that whatever happened, he wouldn’t lose Lily.

  “I demand an answer,” Adam said, his impatience clear.

  “What has he done now?”

  Robert turned at the booming male voice. His body tensed at the sight of the man striding toward him with an angry purpose. The flare of anger inside startled him.

  “Another brother, I presume?” Robert addressed this to Adam. How many siblings did this woman have? And why did he have such a negative reaction to him?

  “Not mine. Yours.” The ‘you idiot’ was implied.

  His brother. The other one.

  Robert looked at the newcomer. Older than him, by a good measure.

  His brother. The man didn’t stop, instead reached a hand out to Robert’s shirt and hauled him up. “You bloody bastard, I wish I could kill you!”

  Up close and personal, Robert could see the ravaged lines around eyes bruised with grief. Something pinged in his head, like a string that had snapped from its violin. “Marcus.”

  He knew his name. How had he known his name?

  “He’s dead because of you.”

  “Who is dead?” Adam asked.

  “Cary.” Marcus snapped the word out. “He was murdered on the street.” Gasps erupted from the other people in the room. “This has something to do with you, Robert. What the hell have you done? You will tell me everything you know, or by God I will pummel you straight into hell, where you deserve to be.”

  The anger this man projected, the vision of Cary lying on the ground… “There isn’t much I can tell you.”

  “You damn well will tell me.”

  Robert held a hand up. Images flailed with a violent shove in his head, shifted with no more clarity than shadows skirting the edges of moonlight. “I mean, I don’t know.”

  “Like hell you don’t.”

  Did Robert really have to explain this again?

  “My sister believes he has lost his memory.”

  Marcus stepped forward. “You’ve what? Are you going to stand there and make up such a pathetic excuse?”

  “It’s true. I don’t remember you either.” His words inflamed his brother but Robert was distracted by the pulse that had begun to pummel his head.

  “As much as I wish differently, our blood runs the same.”

  “God help me if mine runs as cold.” Where had that sarcasm come from? “Blast it, I’m sorry.” Why couldn’t he stop the words that leapt out of his mouth? He felt compelled to sharpen his words with this man, and he had no idea why.

  His brother curled his lip. “You are pathetic, Robert. You don’t even care that our brother is dead.”

  “I do care,” he argued but it was hollow, words without the punch of grief that should accompany them.

  “Then you do remember.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You can’t have it both ways, you bloody jackass. Is everything a game to you?”

  “I’m not playing a bloody game!” Robert yelled. He was tired of the insinuations and the distrust. He knew he had no right to be. He was a bastard. He got it.

  But damn it, that wasn’t him anymore. He refused to be that man. He refused to believe he’d be that man again.

  “I can tell you what I do know. The same men that attacked Cary attacked me and took me somewhere else. It was a threat. I owed them something, and they wanted it.”

  “Where did they take you? Who are they?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You liar—”

  “I don’t. But Lily might know where we were.”

  “Lily was taken?” Adam’s roar filled the room.

  Robert’s head began to throb, in waves that wrapped around his skull. Flashes of something—blurred images, garbled voices, ran through his head. Nothing he could make out, nothing he could catch. It was all a jumble.

  “Answer me!”

  Robert’s temple began to throb, his vision grew blurry. Robert pressed his palm against his head. “Give me a minute. I just need a minute.”

  If he could think, maybe he could bring the images back, make them clear.

  “You never cease to sink below my expectations, do you?” Marcus said. “Cary is dead and you put your wife in danger. Does someone else need to die before you become a human being?”

  “I will not let you hurt her again,” Adam warned.

  The ping pong of their accusations and their anger flung around Robert. His body grew itchy, and the room shrunk around him, making him feel large and boxed in. The urge to leave lurched in his gut.

  “Stop it!” Lily came roaring in the room, her sisters behind her. Her beautiful brown eyes were blazing with fury. “Can’t you see you’re hurting him?” She stopped at Robert’s side, laid her hand on his arm. “Are you all right?” Before he could answer, she turned to his brothers. “How dare you treat him this way?”

  His older brother scowled. “I told you to leave him, didn’t I?”

  The words felt like a punch in Robert’s gut.

  He didn’t understand why but the realization that his brother had urged his wife to leave him stung.

  “Unlike you, I refuse to abandon him when he needs help,” Lily shot back. “Whatever he’s done, it’s pointless to discuss it now. He can’t remember.” She looked at him. “Tell them.”

  Warmth filled Robert at her resounding defense. And yet, guilt edged it, threatened to squash it.

  He was lying to her.

  She was defending his complete lack of faculties and he was withholding a piece of vital information. He was a forger. The words were on the tip of his tongue. Fury at himself, at his inability to be a better man, rumbled through him. He curled his fists.

  Marcus saw Robert’s fist. “You plan on using that? Go ahead. Whatever it takes to show you for the liar you are. God, you are pathetic!” He pressed in, forcing Robert to dig in his position, tempting him toward violence that he wanted to aim at himself.

  “All these years I did my best to protect you from Mother, to keep you away from her so she wouldn’t—” He stopped. “You only saw that you were ignored,” Marcus continued. “How no one saw you.”

  Beside him, Lily sucked her breath in. But Robert didn’t blink. He matched his brother’s glare at eye level, his body lurching forward, ready for something he couldn’t understand. The impulse to goad his brother engulfed him.

  Why did he want this confrontation?

  It was as if a fog of red cleared from his eyes, and the scene around them crystallized. Robert could see Lily, her shoulders tensed, her eyes wide with alarm. Her family positioned within distance to yank her out of reach if necessary, to push him back—as though he might harm her.

  His arms slackened.

  He stepped back. “I don’t want this.” Even though he did.


  Marcus stepped forward, grabbing Robert’s arm. But it wasn’t anger, it was desperation, urgency. Anguish bent his shoulders. “I am begging you, Robert. Tell me what you’ve done. I can’t lose another brother, God help me.”

  Robert remained silent.

  It’s who you are, memory intact or not.

  He was a bastard of the first order.

  Marcus dropped his arm. “Everything I did, I tried to… God, why am I trying? Nothing has changed.” He gave a mirthless laugh. “You’ve made it clear you want nothing to do with us. This time I’m listening.” He stepped back. “You’re on your own.”

  He turned to leave, then stopped to look at Lily. “He will destroy you if you let him.” His gaze flicked to her family. “Do whatever you have to do to get her away from him.”

  “I plan to.” Adam’s response was solid, a warning that Robert had a battle still to fight.

  Marcus strode out.

  The room grew silent, and Robert had no words to express the pain that flooded him. He hadn’t understood anything Marcus had said to him. His cryptic words about their mother echoed Cary’s. Robert felt the ache in his heart, in his gut, in the weight of his limbs. The torment was cutting him in half.

  He couldn’t seem to catch his breath.

  “Lily.” Adam’s voice sounded hollow, far away, as the rush of blood throbbed in Robert’s ears. His head, God, it hurt.

  “Not now, Adam.”

  “We’re leaving,” Adam said.

  Robert thrust out a hand, grabbed Lily’s arm and clung to it. “Don’t go.”

  She placed her hand over his. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Yes, damn it you are.”

  “Adam, stay out of this.” Lily squeezed Robert’s hand. “You need to sit down. You’re not fully recovered.”

  “He is playing you for a fool!”

  Lily rounded on her brother. “Look at him! He can barely stand. So I will help him, and there is nothing you can do about it.”

  Robert fought to gain his posture. He didn’t want Lily thinking of him as a bedridden patient who needed coddling. He needed to protect her, not the other way around.

  “Adam.” One of the women spoke, her voice the calm in the midst of the stormy seas around them. “He isn’t likely to offer answers now, and we can discuss things later.”

  “I appreciate that you came,” Lily said, “but Robert cannot be here alone. He’s in no condition, and those men could come back…” Her words trailed.

  “If you think I’m leaving you here to face that, you have lost your senses.” He turned to Robert. “I shouldn’t be surprised you have no awareness or concern of the danger you’re putting her in, even though no one has even told me what this bloody danger is. You have never once put her needs above your own. Even with your memory missing, you are the same, selfish bastard you’ve always been.”

  “I don’t want her in danger,” Robert shot back. The flashes started again, blinding him. He closed his eyes, lifted a hand to his head to try and stop the spinning, the whips of pain that lashed his head.

  “Robert?” Lily’s voice was distant.

  Through the fog, one of the other women spoke up. “It’s clear he cannot be left, and it isn’t safe for either of them to be here. Lily, you and Robert should come home with us.”

  “No,” Lily said sharply.

  The panic that infused her tone cut through the fog in his brain, and he focused on her. Her eyes had grown wide, and she cast a fearful gaze at him.

  “What is it?” What had her so afraid?

  She was living there already. Why was she so fearful of them both returning there?

  “He…he needs to be here, where it’s familiar,” Lily said.

  “Lily, you told me countless times that Robert barely spent time in this house. Is this about Co—”

  “This is his house.”

  What was wrong with her?

  “We have to remain here,” she added. “It’s the only place we have to search.”

  “Search for what?” Her brother hadn’t missed that point.

  “The men that took us were looking for something, Robert owes them something. But he doesn’t know what it is. It must be in this house.”

  “What do you owe? Is it money? What?” Adam asked Robert.

  Robert stared back at the glare directed his way. He was acutely aware of the sketches on his desk. They seemed larger than life, filling the room, as though they contained a beacon meant to light the way directly to them.

  He needed to tell them he’d been a forger.

  “He doesn’t know,” Lily jumped in, her voice high. “But we have a week to find it. They won’t hurt us for a week, Adam.”

  The anger faded from Adam’s eyes, leaving them flat, unemotional.

  Robert didn’t think that was a good sign. Not a good sign at all.

  “They won’t hurt you for at least a week.” Adam’s words echoed Lily’s, but his were monotone. Smooth. The measured tones of a man at his limit.

  “I need to tell—”

  Robert found himself hauled up, again, this time against Adam, who had leaped at him, grabbed his shirt and yanked him close until their faces were inches apart.

  Instinct kicked in. Despite the pain, Robert clamped a hand around Adam’s arm. “Let go.”

  Adam twisted his fist in Robert’s shirt. “I could kill you.”

  Lily’s hands came in between them as she tried to stop it. There were people surrounding them, and then strong arms clamped around Adam and dragged him backwards.

  Lily remained and tilted her head to look at him. Her eyes were stricken, and Robert felt the weight of her worry.

  “Go with them. I can figure this out.” He had the sketches of the notes. He could find the rest, deliver what he owed, and then they could put the pieces of their lives together.

  “I should pummel you for putting her in danger,” Adam said. “Illness be damned.”

  “Enough,” a woman yelled, who then placed a firm hand on Adam’s arm. “Lily, you and Robert will return to Adam’s. You will not be left here in danger, neither of you. We are family. We take care of our own. We’ll send men to search this house upside down. They’ll find whatever it is Robert must return. But enough is enough.” She whirled on Adam. “And you. Baby and I will deal with you at home.”

  “Let me go,” Adam said to Ravensdale, who held his arms.

  The man raised his brow. “Are you going to behave? I’m not about to let either your wife or mine blame me for any of this.”

  “Blast it, let go.” Adam yanked free, took a tense breath. By the fists at his side, he hadn’t satisfied his need, and Robert watched him warily.

  “You have ten minutes to pack his things,” Adam told Lily.

  “Adam, I can’t.” The words strangled in Lily’s throat.

  The calm female stepped forward. “You can and you will.”

  “Blythe—“

  “It will be all right.”

  When Lily didn’t respond, Robert turned to her. The fear stamped on her features surprised him. “I should stay here,” he told her. “Continue to search.”

  The other woman waved a hand to dismiss his words. “She’ll never let you stay without her, and none of us will let her stay here at all. If there is something to find, our men will find it.”

  “But—”

  The woman crossed her arms. “Do you find an issue with that? Because I believe Lily’s safety is the priority.”

  It was. She was right.

  Robert nodded. “I need to let Edwin know.” His permanently affixed shadow would be none too happy if he left again without warning.

  “I’ll find Anna to pack,” Lily said. She left the room, her family followed. Robert drew a deep breath.

  He moved to the desk and scooped up the sketches—all of them—and shoved them inside one of the sketch books. If those men were going to find the banknotes he had forged, he needed to prepare Lily.

  Chapter Twenty


  Lily’s blood had drained to her toes, leaving her feeling a little nauseous. The carriage ride felt like torture, as each roll of the wheels took them closer to Adam’s home.

  Took Robert closer.

  Where Cordelia lived.

  All of them under one roof.

  She hadn’t been able to say a word the entire trip, for the panic inside her. It had taken root in her stomach and spread with wild abandon. She’d had to swallow the fear several times already.

  She couldn’t look at Robert. Even when his hand came to rest on hers, when their fingers laced. Lily clung to them, drawing whatever strength she could.

  Ironic that the very man who made her feel so insecure was also the one to feed her strength.

  The churning of the wheels began to slow.

  Her entire body felt stiff, tense, and Lily wished she could reverse the last hour and refuse the offer.

  What had she been thinking?

  She couldn’t do this.

  A warm hand landed on hers, and Lily looked up, met Blythe’s eyes. The empathy in them told Lily that she’d done a pitiful job of hiding her terror.

  “We’re here,” Blythe said. “Why don’t you two take it slow. I’m going to go in and be sure Aria is prepared for you.”

  Blythe hurried out before them. Mere minutes later, they were out of the carriage and standing on the sidewalk before the house.

  Lily sucked in air.

  “Do you want to tell me what is so bad about being here?”

  Lily stared at the house, unable to meet the questions she could feel.

  “Lily? What is it?”

  What was worse? Watching it unfold, without giving him warning? Or telling him what he would feel when he walked in and saw Cordelia, so they’d both be prepared?

  Because as much as Lily wanted to believe that she would remain first in his heart, she couldn’t. The threads of insecurity had been embroidered onto her very being.

  “Let’s go in,” she told him, without answering his questions. She didn’t wait, but knew he followed her up the steps.

  Her hand reached out to touch the door, knowing the woman he’d wanted in the past stood on the other side.

  How had Lily let herself get so invested?

  She had believed in him once before, and he had broken her heart. She’d been so willing to give it back to him, to let go and jump in without heed of the consequences to come later.