Married to a Rogue

by Donna Lea Simpson

  May flushed and wriggled, then gazed up into his face. He was extremely handsome, she thought, trying to be dispassionate. His eyes were the brown of rich caramel, with flecks of amber and mahogany. “I am sorry,” she said. “I’m very grateful that you happened to see what was happening and came after me.”

  He smiled down at her but she had the feeling he was being indulgent, as one might be toward a fractious but adorable child. She felt a spark of anger. He couldn’t be much older than herself; who was he to assume airs? “Why did you do it? Why didn’t you just go get help?”

  “There was not the time. It would have taken too long to go back, explain, and get help,” he said. “Besides . . .” He paused.

  “Besides what?” Conversation was better than silence. When they were silent she was all too aware of how close she was to him and how good he smelled and looked and how hard and lean his body was where they inevitably touched. He roused feelings she thought she had stifled long ago. That worried her.

  He shrugged. “I am hoping I have done a certain lady a good turn and that she will look more favorably on my suit.”

  May swallowed a lump of disappointment. So he had an ulterior motive, so what? It didn’t change that what he had done and was prepared to do was very brave. “You mean Emily, don’t you? You want her.”

  He frowned. “I had not thought you to be so perspicacious, little miss. I would not have said anything if I thought you could guess the lady in question.”

  “I have heard the gossip and I’ve seen with my own eyes how you dance attendance on her.” She held herself up straighter, trying to keep from touching his body, but it was impossible. There was barely enough room in front of him on his saddle and he held her firmly to him. “So that means you have not been successful so far.” She could not keep the hint of satisfaction out of her voice.

  “No,” he said grimly. “She vacillates. She is undecided. She is driving me out of my mind!”

  “Are you very much in love with her?”

  He chuckled. “How little you know of men, and how very English you are.”

  “What do you mean? Of course I’m very English.”

  “I mean that romance ’as little to do with love. You English, you pretend to be so pragmatic, so unemotional. You claim that the French are irrational, explosive, emotional. It is true that we excel at romance, and that is what I want from my chére Emily, but love? No. I do not believe in love.”

  “Well, I think she is in love with her husband,” May said, wanting for some unfathomable reason to hurt him, to erase the smugness from his voice.

  “Did she say that?” he asked sharply, glancing down at her.

  “No, not exactly, but she talked to me about . . . about making love, and she was talking about her and her husband. I’m not quite sure I understood, but she sounded wistful.” May leaned wearily against Etienne’s chest.

  They cantered in silence along the country road. It had been a horrible ordeal and she was so very tired.

  • • •

  Etienne, lost in thought, rode on. He had much to ponder if what the little one had said was true. When next he looked down, it was to find that she had fallen asleep. As uncomfortable as she must be, and wrapped in his Arab prince cape, she slept against his chest. An unexpected wave of tenderness passed through him. How unusual she was, but a good girl, and he was glad she had not suffered at the hands of that monstrous villain. She had told him the whole story when they first started out to head back to London. He was horrified at her unnatural mother. He would deliver the little miss to Emily. Emily would protect her.

  What he would do after that he was not certain. Things had changed and so his plans must change too. It was a stupid man who did not know when to bow out gracefully. Perhaps it was all for the best, for his other plans had gone awry and he was beginning to believe it was as God intended. He had never been committed to a certain course of action anyway, had backed out on the point of success, even, and must now find a way to put an end to it. It would not be easy for he was involved in a scheme diabolique, a scheme that he should have known to stay away from. He must leave London immediately after depositing the little miss on Emily’s doorstep.

  • • •

  Wearily Emily climbed the steps to Delafont House with Baxter behind her. “Where can she be?” A sob choked her voice. It was late afternoon and they had been traveling since just after dawn.

  “I was sure she would be at Saunders’s hunting box. We were so far behind them, and there are hundreds of tiny back roads and lanes. We couldn’t explore them all.” Baxter, too, sounded exhausted, but more than that he was deeply mortified that he had not been able to help the girl after all.

  Trumble flung open the door. “Oh, my lady, so glad I am to see you! Mr. Lessington is here, and has been worried—”

  “Your mistress is very tired, Trumble,” Baxter said, guiding Emily past the unusually garrulous butler. “I want her maid called and she should be put to bed immediately with a hot tisane and—”

  “It’s all right, my love,” Emily murmured. “I would really love a good cup of tea, though, Trumble.”

  She headed for the drawing room, the first room off the main hall. Baxter was close behind her as they entered. Two people glanced around at them from a sofa by the window.

  Emily cried out, “May!” She rushed to her friend, who was dressed in one of Dodo’s day dresses.

  “Less,” Baxter said to the man on the sofa with her. “How did this come about?”

  “In a most miraculous way. You must hear her story and judge for yourself if this is not the most amazing turn of events you have ever heard of.”

  The foursome settled in. Dodo joined them when the tea tray arrived. She had been the one to welcome first May late in the morning and then a worried witless Less just a half hour ago. She insisted that they stay until Emily got home.

  May assured Emily that nothing had happened to her other than a bad headache from the knockout drug, being frightened out of her wits and being a little sore from riding awkwardly sideways on a saddle for hours. Reassured on that point, Emily finally relaxed enough to allow her to tell her story.

  At the end of it, and after several cups of tea for the ladies, sherry for Less and brandy for Baxter, she looked around at the four gathered near her. Emily and Baxter exchanged glances.

  “And so Etienne Marchant was your savior? Pardon me, but I find it very odd that he seems to be there whenever someone is in trouble,” Baxter drawled, his dark sardonic eyes on May.

  “Nevertheless,” she said, smoothing down the cream muslin of her skirts. “He took me away from there and I am grateful. I didn’t know where I was, I had no money for food or a place on a mail carriage and I was in my costume. Captain Dempster was merely stunned; he was on his way out with a pistol and actually fired it! He would have killed me if Etienne hadn’t swept me up on his horse and ridden off.”

  “I don’t know what to make of this,” Emily said. She glanced over at her husband. They had gone all the way to Saunders’s hunting box just ten miles south of Chelmsford, and indeed he was there, but May was not. The elderly rake disavowed any knowledge of an abduction or worse and appeared shocked by the idea. Neither Emily nor Baxter believed him, and Baxter, speaking to him privately, told him that if any rumor reached his ear ever again having to do with Lady Grishelda May van Hoffen or any other young lady he would expose Saunders for the dirty lecher he was. Right before he killed him.

  Baxter and Emily had returned to London exhausted and worried, not knowing what to do, and only hoping Less had found something out about where she could have been taken. To find her safe and in Emily’s home watched over by Dodo and Less had been overwhelming, but then to hear that Etienne, whom Emily had begun to think the villain of the piece, had rescued her, was past belief.

  Less pardoned himself to attend to theater business. Shortly after he left they heard a commotion in the hall. Trumble raised his voice, something he was not won
t to do. “My lady is not at home!”

  Baxter left the ladies to find out what was going on. They heard his voice saying, “No, Trumble, we must deal with her sooner or later. It might as well be now.”

  He ushered in Lady van Hoffen.

  “Ah, the Queen of Tarts,” Dodo said acidly. She had no patience for certain types of women.

  “What is going on?” Lady van Hoffen said, her common accent more pronounced in her anger. Her face was unbecomingly flushed and her dress a little less immaculate than usual. “Grishelda, what are you doing here?”

  May stood. Emily caught her hand in her own and felt the young woman tremble.

  “Not Grishelda, Mother; May. My name is May! There is no need for pretense. Lord and Lady Sedgely know all about your plot to have me abducted, raped and forcibly married to that doddering old fool. Thanks to them, and . . . and others, I am safe.”

  Maisie van Hoffen had paled at May’s bold speech, especially at the word “rape.”

  “Whatever do you mean, May? I have been worried sick about you all night, running away like a naughty girl—”

  “Don’t touch me,” she said, evading her mother’s outstretched hands. “I overheard your plans to sell me off to Lord Saunders. And I overheard that old villain ask your Captain Dempster to break me in! Break me in, as if I am some kind of wild animal to be tamed.” She shuddered.

  “That’s not what . . . he wasn’t going to . . .” Lady van Hoffen’s legs gave out and she plopped herself down uninvited on a convenient chair. “He was going to do that to you? Take you to bed?” There was trembling hurt in her voice.

  May’s expression hardened into something worse than distaste. “That’s what really bothers you, isn’t it? Not that he was going to rape me, but that he would have had me despite being your . . . whatever that disgusting animal is to you.”

  Dodo had discreetly left the room and Emily and Baxter had drifted away and stood together, their arms around each other, at a convenient distance. This was May’s fight, unless she needed or asked for their help.

  May felt stronger than she had ever been in her life. She had fought off Dempster herself, saving herself from him. Etienne, as he pointed out, had merely been there to help her get away. She glared at her mother and there was pain in her heart that the woman who had borne her could have done such a thing, but there was a growing peace, too. Nothing after this could shock her. Her mother would never change but she didn’t have to be her victim anymore. “I could have you arrested for conspiring to have me kidnapped. You would be transported, at the very least, sent to live in the wild with criminals.”

  Lady van Hoffen stirred. She looked older and very tired, the red of her hair glaringly fake in the bright spring light that filled the room. “But my darling daughter, it was only because you will marry no one! A woman needs to be married, should be married! I thought it was for the best.”

  “I don’t believe that. You know my feelings on the subject.” May tried hard to keep her voice stern, but it softened just a little. “I am steadfast in my determination. I do not want to marry, ever, and so am going to return home to Lark House. However . . . I will give you the London house to live in and a small allowance on two conditions.”

  Maisie stared down at her hands and said nothing.

  “You will never come home to Lark House and you will never, ever see Captain Dempster again. I don’t know where he is, or if he will dare show his face in London again, but you are not to see him.”

  “But—”

  “Never!”

  Maisie glanced up at her daughter’s implacable expression. “May, I truly did not know he intended to do that to you. I was in love with him, or . . . or in thrall to him.” She buried her face in her hands and sobbed.

  “It’s over, Mother. He’s evil and this is for your own good as much as it is for me. It makes me sick, the things he said about you, the way he talked.” She was perilously close to tears but she sniffed them back and straightened her backbone. Never again would she face that kind of fear. She would have the life she had always wanted, free from her mother’s interference, free of demands, and free forever from men. She would go home; home to Lark House and peace.

  Chapter Twenty

  The last few weeks had been the most confusing period of his life, Baxter thought. Sir Douglas Prong had ferreted out the information that the one man Baxter had thought was still alive and who was the one trying to kill him was dead, killed in an ostensible accident two months before. As the ancient knight had said, all the spies Baxter turned in were either dead or incarcerated. He also confirmed that there was no Etienne Marchant. The current Vicomte Marchant was an artist living in Italy. No one had seen the faux vicomte since he had deposited Lady May van Hoffen on Emily’s doorstep the morning after her ordeal.

  Baxter had traveled the countryside to the house in the woods that Lady May had described to find that Dempster and his cohort had deserted the residence. It had taken him days to confirm that the “captain” had left the country and was now, presumably, on the Continent. From there Baxter had traveled to Brockwith and then returned to London.

  Baxter finished up some paperwork at his desk in the library of his London home and thought about what he was going to do with his tangled personal life, other than avoid it, which is what he had been doing.

  Making love with Emily had been like coming home, a joyful blend of sensual fulfillment and blissful love. She had told him she loved him. She had shown him she wanted him over and over, but fool that he was he could not get over her having been with someone else. Could she truly love him and yet have slept with Etienne Whoever-he-was? It was a question that haunted him day and night.

  He should be banging down her door demanding to see her, but instead he had filled his days with business. After gallivanting the countryside looking for Dempster he had stayed at Brockwith for over a week to straighten out some problems his steward could just as easily have attended to when he returned from a trip to the north to buy some sheep. In truth, Baxter was deeply troubled and confused, and that did not sit well with him. He feared the truth and was avoiding it at all costs, but he couldn’t do that forever.

  Cromby came to the door of his library, his sanctum, and cleared his throat.

  “I told you I didn’t want to be disturbed.”

  A gloved hand pushed the butler aside and Lady Marie Sedgely, the Dowager Marchioness, erupted into the room. “Since when will you not see your mother?”

  Inwardly groaning, he stood, politely, and said, “Mother, if you intend to visit, let us retire to the parlor, where Cromby can see that we have some tea.” He nodded to the long-suffering butler.

  In the parlor, seated in front of the tea tray, his mother fixed him with her gimlet stare. “So, Sedgely, do you mean to breed with your wife or not? Don’t think I will forget about this. Do you want the Sedgely estate and title going to some Frenchie if you die tomorrow?”

  “Stop talking nonsense, Mother. William in Shropshire is my heir. He is perfectly capable of carrying on the estate in a respectable manner and already has a child on the way.” Baxter settled back in his chair and closed his eyes. He had not slept in two days and he was too weary to deal with his mother at that moment.

  There was silence.

  Unusual to be in the same room with his mother and for there to be silence.

  He opened his eyes and stared across at her. She shifted uncomfortably and fiddled with the teapot. She stripped her gloves off and tossed them aside.

  He sat up straight and glared across the tea tray at her. “What is going on?”

  She eyed the plate of cakes with a stern eye and poked one. “Dry. I thought as much. You need a wife to keep a close eye on the cook. He and the staff are probably living high and feeding you dry biscuits and—”

  “I have a wife, if you remember.” His voice was ominously quiet and hard and his mother glanced at him.

  There was a trace of a wistful smile on her grim face, but
it was gone so quickly Baxter could not swear to having seen it.

  “So like your father,” she muttered.

  “Mother, out with it. What is this about a French heir to the Sedgely title?”

  “Your Aunt Ophelia—you know she is the keeper of the family history—tells me that your great-grandfather’s brother moved to France, where the line originated back in the mists of time, you know. He married a French woman and bore two or three sons. They in turn had sons, who had sons, who had sons.”

  “Yes.”

  “You are the last direct male descendant on the English side; your cousin William is removed from the direct line.”

  “Yes, Mother, we know all of this. It is well documented.”

  “Well, now that the war is over, if you should die it is the French side who would inherit because they are several degrees closer than is dear William.”

  “But we are not in contact with the French . . . you know something!” He gazed sternly at his mother, who had taken one of the stale tea cakes and crumbled it into crumbs on the tray. This nervous action was so unlike her that it gave him pause.

  “The direct descendant has been traced, Baxter. We know who he is; now the lawyers are just trying to find him to confirm this and to do the paperwork. He is your legitimate heir, and his name is Etienne Roulant Delafont.”

  • • •

  “Understandably, Baxter is livid. Positively in shock.” Less sat with Dodo, May and Emily in Emily’s cheerful morning parlor.

  Dodo chuckled. “I would give up my next quarter’s allowance to have seen his face when Marie told him the news.”

  “But is it known definitely that Etienne Marchant, or at least the Etienne we knew, was Etienne Delafont?” Emily could not take it in. It seemed absurd to think that the man who had been romancing her for so long had been her husband’s legal heir.