One for the Rogue

by Charis Michaels

  Inexplicably, she also thought of his blue eyes, easily the least useful detail to remember.

  She snapped her head up. “Quite well. There’s more work to be done still, but it was another step.”

  The agreement she’d made with Bryson Courtland had been vague and casual at best, and Emmaline had not shared the specifics of it with anyone, not even Jocelyn. She’d told her only that she was making plans for her and Teddy’s financial independence, that it was terribly important business, and that Teddy’s inheritance was at stake. For now, that was enough. Until she’d managed to gain control of any one of the five or six spinning plates in her wild scheme, she would keep the specifics close.

  Now, she told Jocelyn, “Dyson said the duke called while I was out.”

  Her friend nodded into the dying fire. “He did, I’m afraid. Not thirty minutes after you’d gone.”

  “Heavens, I left at dawn. His staff must watch us at all hours. What reason did he give?”

  “Oh,” Jocelyn said with a sad chuckle, “the usual things. He wished to know when you were due to return, where’d you’d gone.”

  “None too subtle, is he?” Emmaline let out a tired breath and raised her hands to her hair to fish for the nagging pins that held her hat in place. Before she was free of it, Dyson appeared in the doorway and cleared his throat.

  “His Grace the Duke of Ticking to see you, Your Grace,” the butler said pointedly. Dyson was proficient at announcing the new duke and warning Emmaline in the same breath.

  Emmaline made a face and worked more diligently on the hat. “Thank you, Dyson, I shall meet His Grace in the drawing room. Can you show him in—”

  “Do not bother, Emma,” said the duke as he strode past the butler. He glanced around proprietarily, as if he had immediate designs on every corner of the room. He was a short, ruddy man, purposeful to the point of doggedness. His face was perpetually creased with a look of unspecified determination. I shall, it always seemed to say. He made the simple act of selecting a chair and taking a seat seem like a scheduled event. His schedule, of course, his event.

  Emmaline snatched the hat from her head and smoothed her hair.

  The Duke of Ticking went on. “I won’t linger. I just came to bid you good morning and make certain you returned safely home.”

  “I am quite safe, Your Grace,” Emmaline said.

  “One can never be too cautious—a young woman alone, especially so early . . . ” The duke allowed the sentence to trail off. He raised his eyebrows at her, allowing his deep curiosity to show. “Where did you say you’d gone?”

  “Oh, I’ll not bore you with my charity errands.”

  “The church employs clergy, as I’m sure you’re aware, to carry out the Lord’s good work.”

  She smiled vaguely and studied her hat. If he wished to explicitly restrict her movements, she would make him say it in as many words. She waited.

  “I only mention this,” he went on, “because Marie, Bella, and Dora had a mind to call on the dressmaker’s later this morning, but I will need our family carriage. I thought to send them in yours, but I couldn’t say for certain when you would return.”

  “Quite,” Emmaline said.

  Marie, Bella, and Dora were three of the duke’s oldest children. Or three of his middle children. There were so many of them, she struggled to keep them straight. None of them rose before eleven o’clock in the morning—this she knew—and it was only now nine thirty.

  “I should think you might enjoy a shopping trip with the girls,” Ticking mused, “considering your proximity in age. They quarrel with their mother, but you may have a calming influence on them, just as you did on their grandfather.”

  The duke never failed to mention Emmaline’s age in relation to both his own young daughters and his dead father.

  “Forgive me, Your Grace, but I was under the impression that the smaller, older carriage was mine to use exclusively, as dowager duchess,” Emmaline said. “When I assumed residency in the dower house, I was told the carriage came with it.”

  “It is my preference that we share the vehicles in this family,” Ticking said, speaking to the ceiling as if conjuring up a high ideal.

  “I see. If you’re in need of my carriage for your children, you need only tell me in advance. I can rearrange my schedule.”

  He pivoted in a half circle. “Is it truly your carriage, Emma?”

  Yes, it is, actually, she thought, anger and frustration simmering. The carriage is mine. The dower house is mine. Even your carriage and the grand townhouse in which you live are mine—salvaged from the auction block with the dowry my father paid to marry me to yours.

  Instead, she said carefully, “I understand your concern about the carriages.” She’d overheard her father say this to business associates many times. I understand. When there was nothing more to be said, this statement neither agreed nor disagreed, but it got in a word.

  And it wasn’t even a lie; she did understand all too well.

  She understood that her husband had fallen from his horse and died before he’d bothered to include her in his will, binding her to the miserly new duke as dependent and tenant and hostage.

  She understood that her parents’ ill-fated trip to America had taken their lives before they’d determined how to pass down their prosperous family business and tidy fortune to Teddy. As male heir, he was entitled to it, but his mental state meant he could not manage any of it.

  Most of all, she understood that her own gender entitled her nothing—not her parents’ money and not even the dowager stipend, if the Duke of Ticking did not wish to dole it out.

  She’d spent the last year and a half trying to challenge this understanding from every possible angle, freeing herself and Teddy from the legal trap and social prison that fate had so cruelly landed in their laps.

  Across the room, the duke ran a hand over the smooth, pomaded surface of his hair. “Very good, then. Will you require use of the carriage tomorrow?”

  She looked at him. This was none of his business, and he knew it. “I may send it to fetch Miss Breedlowe,” she said.

  “Ah, yes. The new nurse. How are you getting along, Miss Breedlowe?” He squinted at Jocelyn.

  “Very well, Your Grace,” Jocelyn said, “but I should not take credit for being a proper nurse. I am merely a companion to Teddy.”

  “A companion, yes . . . ” His voice always spiked when he spoke of Teddy—louder still when he spoke to the boy.

  He ambled closer and bent at the waist, his face two feet from where Teddy sat with his book. “I say! Teddy? How do you like your new nurse?”

  Teddy looked up at the duke and then to his sister, his eyes uncertain. Teddy was not accustomed to bellowing, and he’d never liked Ticking, but Emmaline had warned him repeatedly against rudeness to the duke. She held her breath and nodded slowly to him.

  “That’s right, Teddy,” she urged. “Can you bid His Grace a good morning?”

  Teddy’s gaze swung back to the duke.

  “Are you sure he does not require a doctor’s care?” asked Ticking, studying him as he would an animal in a zoo.

  “Quite sure,” Emmaline said in a clipped tone. Her simmering patience had rolled to an angry boil. “Say hello to His Grace, Teddy.”

  Miss Breedlowe moved silently to the boy and slipped the book from his hands.

  “Quite fond of that book of yours, Teddy?” said the duke.

  “Parrots,” said Teddy.

  “Parrots?” the duke repeated. “And what need might we have for parrots in England? Planning a journey to the tropics, are you?”

  “Teddy is a student of the life sciences,” Emmaline said.

  “I asked the boy,” snapped the duke.

  “Parrots,” Teddy repeated. Emmaline felt his tenseness mounting like a string being pulled back from a bow. He couldn’t tolerate being hemmed in, especially by someone with a booming voice whose morbid expression was at odds with the interest he showed.

  �
�Shall I take Teddy out to break the ice on the fountain, Your Grace?” asked Jocelyn, God bless her. She put a calming hand on the boy’s shoulder. “This is something he and I had planned to do for thirsty birds in want of a drink.”

  “That sounds lovely, Miss Breedlowe. Thank you,” said Emmaline. “Off you go.”

  Miss Breedlowe leaned to whisper something in Teddy’s ear and, miraculously, he nodded. Ticking watched their exit with a keen, calculating eye.

  “If that will be all, Your Grace,” Emmaline said, “I hoped to join Teddy in the garden before Miss Breedlowe leaves.” She smoothed one of the feathers on her hat.

  The duke lowered fleshy lids over pale eyes. “I would bid you not to fret, Emma, over the money you’ve spent to have your brother looked after. This expenditure does not trouble me.”

  Not fret over the money? Emmaline had not used the modest allowance Ticking allotted her to pay for Miss Breedlowe’s service. Her parents left her money to care for Teddy when they set sail on their doomed journey. She paid Jocelyn from this account. But she dare not make specific remarks on any of Teddy’s finances to the duke. The less the duke knew about Teddy’s money—before their parents’ drowning and after—the better.

  “I understand,” she said again.

  “Now that you have such a capable caretaker for the boy,” he went on, “you may wish to spend more time in the company of my children. My father adored them, you know.”

  Well, that was a lie. The late duke had been appalled that his son and daughter-in-law had willfully reproduced seventeen times (and counting), and he was never so annoyed as when his son brought any fraction of the wheedling grandchildren for what always proved to be a raucous and destructive visit.

  But now Ticking would expect some general commitment. This was his way. He made disagreeable statements and waited, daring her to oppose him.

  He watched her speculatively.

  Emmaline cleared her throat. “My plan has been for Miss Breedlowe to allow me a few hours outside the house for charity pursuits. Otherwise, Teddy and I enjoy each other’s company. We always have.”

  Ticking nodded with feeling. “You are a devoted sister,” he said, pity in his voice. In his mind, Teddy was a burden. Well, a burden or a bag of money.

  “Thank you.”

  “The duchess and I had hoped you would be a devoted grandmama too,” he went on. “Furthermore, the company of children is a perfect diversion for a lady in deep mourning. Far more acceptable, some might say, than charity work outside the house. Before sunrise.”

  “Oh, but I’m only in full mourning for three more days, Your Grace. And I’m afraid I might find myself entirely out of my depth amid seventeen children.”

  “Nonsense,” he said. “Your many years with Teddy will serve you well. Intelligent, capable children may prove a relief to you after looking after a boy who struggles so.”

  Now, Emmaline could but stare.

  “Think on it, Emma,” he instructed, turning on her to stride to the door. “Think about your background and what you bring to this family. Here is a way to contribute.”

  And there it is, she thought. The real “burden” to the dukedom has always been me—the common merchant’s daughter whose dowry sustains them even while my breeding makes them look the other way.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Beau grappled with the memory of the veiled woman for two days after she’d gone, a new and unwelcome distraction. Women, in his view, were largely interchangeable, not to mention abundant, and it wasn’t like him to spend more than ten minutes cogitating over one in particular.

  She wasn’t special, he told himself, she was more like . . . cautionary.

  If he must think of her, he should do so in terms of wariness. Extreme wariness. If he meant to avoid her, it was better to understand her.

  For example, he wondered about her age. Not more than twenty-five, an honest guess. Possibly as young as nineteen. Far too young to be shrouded in widow’s weeds.

  And why, he wondered, had she returned to hector him? Two—now three times? The third time, it had taken real work to get her off the bloody boat. He’d all but pitched her into the canal. When she had gone, it had been in a sudden, fraught sort of mad dash—a flight, if he was being honest. Like she had been spooked. Something to do with liveried grooms on the shore. Why?

  When he wasn’t asking himself why, he asked what.

  What could any of these details matter, when she’d managed to string together all the words he hated most in the world and then repeated them, again and again.

  Rainsleigh.

  Viscount.

  My lord.

  Expectations.

  Manners, manners, manners.

  A description of the conditions inside Newgate Prison would have been more welcome.

  Newgate was a ready comparison, as Beau stood adjacent to it now, eating an apple and watching an unmarked door across Creed Lane. He’d posted himself against a lamppost since dawn and planned to stay another hour at least, taking note of who came and who left. It was boring work, although essential for the raid he would lead later in the week.

  The raid.

  When he wasn’t thinking about the duchess, he was thinking about the raid.

  His sister-in-law, Elisabeth, ran a charity that rescued young girls from brothels and retrained them for honest work and a new life. Through a series of small, seemingly harmless favors, Beau had somehow become the group’s de facto muscle and chief brothel raider.

  It had seemed like a good idea the first time he’d done it—dangerous and clandestine, and best of all, so very unlike a viscount. Sixteen months later, and he was still leading the raids, although he promised himself after each one that it would be the last.

  He took another bite of apple and spun it in his hand. “I should leave Britain,” he told his dog. She lay at his feet, lazily watching as horses and pedestrians plodded down Creed Lane toward Cripplegate.

  “It tortures Bryson that I remain to fail, each and every day, at being what he expects me to be. Bollocks, it tortures me.”

  The dog lifted her head from her paws and cocked her head, listening for the five or six words that she understood.

  “We could go to Africa. Cape Town.” He shook open the broadsheet newspaper in his hand. “The Dutch have gone toes up, and the Crown is playing guard dog against the French. There’s money to be made. Ships sail every week.”

  He took a final bite of the apple and tossed the core. “Next month,” he told the dog. “After the raid. Not before—but after. Most likely.”

  The next raid would infiltrate a particularly nefarious prostitution ring that, Beau had discovered, changed locations every few weeks. From his surveillance, they had learned there were girls on the inside as young as nine. He’d worked with Elisabeth and the raiding team to plan a covert raid for the early morning hours, in and out very quickly, rescuing as many as a dozen girls, if they were lucky. The door he watched now was a suspected third way in, but “suspected” wasn’t good enough. He must know for sure. Two back doors were useful, but three would be even better.

  “Let’s take a walk, Peach,” Beau told the dog, watching an old woman slip from the door with a marketing basket. Peach gave a noncommittal yawn and stretched. Beau shoved off the lamppost, tucking the paper under his arm, starting to whistle.

  “Ah, there you are, Lord Rainsleigh.”

  His whistle died in his throat.

  Surely not.

  Peach deserted him immediately and trotted to the source of the voice, wagging her tail.

  His brain spun through every conceivable scenario that allowed him to have misheard.

  Not her. Not here. Not again.

  The voice spoke again. “You are not an easy gentleman to find.”

  And there it was. No one in his acquaintance dared refer to him as a gentleman, except his brother. And this was not the voice of his brother. This was not the voice of any man.

  This was the voice of the
duchess.

  She stood beside his lamppost with her voluminous black bombazine shining in the morning sun like wet feathers.

  “You. Cannot. Be. Serious,” he said lowly, checking around to see who on the street might have noticed. The answer was everyone, of course. It was impossible not to notice a woman dressed in head-to-toe ink-blot black, the spines of her elaborate hat spiking toward the sky.

  “You’ll forgive the intrusion,” she began.

  “No. I will not forgive the intrusion. What in God’s name are you doing here?”

  “Elisabeth Courtland suggested I might find you in the vicinity of Newgate.”

  “Elisabeth has no particular notion of where I may be at any given moment in time. Try again.” She opened her mouth to answer, but he spoke over her. “What do you know of Elisabeth?” His sister-in-law shared none of Bryson’s ambition for the title. She had no reason to set this woman on him.

  “I am a volunteer in her charity office,” the duchess said. “We are friends, she and I. She told me you would be preparing for the raid.”

  Beau narrowed his eyes, studying her through the damnable veil. If anyone could guess his location, it would be Elisabeth, but she, more than anyone, understood the incredibly covert nature of surveillance. They would discuss this the next time he saw her.

  “I have no wish to detain you or interrupt whatever you are endeavoring to accomplish here,” the duchess went on, “but I should like to speak with you again. About the lessons. If you’ll but hear my offer, I shall leave you to your business.”

  “You shall leave me, regardless. Better yet,” he said, looking around for some place to conceal himself from the brothel door, “I’ll leave you. We will not have this conversation again.”

  “Wait, Lord Rainsleigh—”

  He cringed at the sound of the title and summoned the dog with a low whistle.

  “I’m prepared to tell you why,” she called to his back.

  He hesitated half a second, responding to some note of urgency in her voice, but moved on. He could be urgent too. Urgently, he opposed aristocratic practices of lordly duplicity and petty tyranny, and he wanted nothing to do with any of it. His brother thought he eschewed the title because he was lazy. Quite the opposite. He’d witnessed the abuse and advantage of some of the country’s most “noble” gentlemen; as a result, he’d sworn he would never be a party to anything like their unearned entitlement, and he meant it. Even if he found himself a viscount. This woman could explain herself to the lane, or the lamppost, or the walls of Newgate Prison for all he cared, but not to him.