by Lauren Smith
How had he forgotten that? For so many years since his father had passed, he’d remembered only the man who’d gotten deep into his cups and visited gambling hells to waste their fortune. But he hadn’t always been that way. He’d been kind once. Loving and playful. A man who’d spent hours fishing with his sons and teaching his daughter to ride. A man who loved and was loved.
Ashton’s eyes burned, and he blinked rapidly.
“Father.” He spoke the word, but neither the man nor the boy looked his way. They were intent on their game of chess. The boy crowed in triumph as he claimed the first pawn from his father.
“You were always talented at that game.” A deep voice chuckled from behind Ashton, making him jump.
His father, looking like the man he’d watched die so long ago, stood behind him. But the haunted look he’d expected to find wasn’t there. Only peace.
Confused, Ashton glanced between this vision of his father and the man who still played chess with his younger self.
“Father?” he whispered. How was it that he could feel like that seven-year-old boy all over again?
Malcolm came to stand behind him, watching their younger selves play chess. The squares upon the board were coated in lacquer, gleaming in the sunlight.
“Father, how…where…?” He was at a loss for words and blinked back a stinging sensation in his eyes.
“It’s a place in between.” His father watched as the young Ashton claimed another pawn, grinning at the younger Malcolm across from him.
Ashton looked around him. The sunlight heated his skin, and the smell of his mother’s spring roses perfumed the air, their white petals blossoming outside the windows. Morning dew clung to the leaves, but there was no birdsong or breeze from the open windows.
“Between what?”
Malcolm’s eyes were a mixture of peace and melancholy.
“Between your last breath and your first.”
Ashton tried to understand what his father was saying. Splinters of memories formed inside his mind… Rosalind telling him she loved him, letters pressed to his chest, the crack of a pistol, blinding pain. Ashton clutched his shoulder, but it was a phantom pain. There was no blood on this shirt.
“I was shot.” He strained to cling to those memories, but they were beginning to fade, like mist at dawn. Everything slipped into obscurity but Rosalind’s face.
His father nodded at their distant selves still removing moving pieces around the board. “Do you remember that game?”
Ashton let go of his arm as the phantom pain subsided.
“I do.” He could remember how the marble pieces had been cool against his fingertips, and the aroma of his father’s pipe smoke clinging like a lover’s perfume to the air. A scent he realized he still missed. Strange, he hadn’t thought of those memories for years. He was always so focused on the future—and so afraid to look back.
“When I taught you to play it wasn’t about victory or defeat. It was about how a man plays the game. The choices we make upon this earth. Not every decision has to be analyzed and thought out, but it should always feel right.”
Malcolm placed a hand on Ashton’s shoulder, and he felt all too young, like the boy he’d been all those years ago, the one who had crawled onto his father’s lap after supper to study the maps of the world or talk about sailing to distant lands. It was why he loved his shipping companies—they were the last bit of that past he still embraced.
His father smile’s was etched with lines of sorrow. “I failed you, my boy.”
“You didn’t—” Ashton protested, but his father shook his head.
“I did. But that is not your burden to bear. You must stop carrying the weight of my sins around your shoulders. You have so much left to do.” He pointed to the chessboard. The room was empty now except for him and his father. No more ghosts of the past haunting them with memories of happier days.
As Ashton focused on the game of chess, and the pieces began to move on their own; pawns chased his knights, and bishops slid across the board. “What must I do?”
“Same as in the game. You must protect your queen, or the king is lost.” His father’s voice sounded distant, and when he turned to face him, he was gone.
Ashton choked down words he had left unsaid, knowing it no longer mattered. His father was gone.
My father’s sins are not my own. He watched the battle unfold upon the chessboard until a ring of white pieces protected his queen.
Rosalind.
*****
Rosalind curled up on her side of the bed next to Ashton. It had been two long days since the doctor had extracted the bullet, sewn up the wound and seen to proper bandaging of Ashton’s shoulder.
When she’d asked how soon Ashton would heal, he’d replied, “The rest lies with God.” The doctor’s parting words had left her ill and feeling hollow. She hadn’t moved from Ashton’s side except to tend to her personal needs.
“Ashton, come back to me,” she begged for the hundredth time. Her fingers clutched his. She waited for a squeeze, a twitch, any sign that he was still there and she hadn’t lost him.
She wiped at the tears that kept pooling in her eyes. She couldn’t lose him, not when her heart had finally accepted him as her own.
“Please…” She would give anything in that moment for him to be all right. “I will never leave you again.”
“I…will hold you to that…” Ashton’s voice was rough, barely above a whisper.
“Ashton!” She felt his hand grip hers, squeezing weakly. She started to cry as she lifted his hand to her cheek and stared at his face. His dark-gold lashes fluttered, and she caught a glimpse of those blue depths she’d come to adore.
“There now.” He removed his hand from her hold to brush tears away from her cheeks. A heavy sigh escaped him, and his gaze moved about the room. “What happened after…?” He didn’t finish.
“My brothers and your friends fought off the hired men. Some died, others fled. Two were caught and will be facing punishment.” She didn’t want to talk about any of that. With him alive and awake, none of that mattered.
She just wanted him to get well so he could tease her and she could rile him up and tumble him into bed. There were a thousand things she wanted to do with him, and none of them involved dwelling on how she’d almost lost him.
“Ashton.” She moved in closer.
His eyes settled on her face, and he smiled. “What’s all this? Surely you didn’t think I’d leave you? You still have a promise to keep.”
He was trying to tease her, but she couldn’t joke about this. Not when she’d almost lost him.
“Ashton, please.” Damnation, she was going to blubber like a fool. “I need to apologize. I never should’ve left you.”
Ashton shook his head. “No. Had our roles been reversed, I’d have done the same. You felt betrayed, and I gave you no reason to believe I wasn’t speaking the truth.” He paused, catching his breath. “The man you believed capable of those things is the man that I used to be. The man who used anyone and anything to achieve his goals. But from the moment I met you, I’ve wanted to be worthy of you. I don’t want to be that heartless man any longer.” He cupped her cheek as Rosalind gently grasped his wrist, stroking him in a desperate need to comfort him.
“Nonsense. You are the kindest man I’ve ever known,” she insisted.
“I’m not. But if you let me, I shall endeavor to be worthy of that praise for every day of the rest of our lives together. You are everything to me, Rosalind.” The simple word sent wild shivers of joy and fear through her.
“I’ve never been everything to someone before.” She’d been a burden, a creature to be kicked about and shoved away, a thing to be pitied. Henry had cared for her in ways she’d never thought possible, but she hadn’t been his world. She’d never been someone’s everything.
“You are mine. I will show you what that means until my dying breath.” There was a deep solemnity lightened only by love in his eyes as he held her
gaze.
She sniffed and nodded. “You won’t cry off then? About the wedding?” She’d been so afraid that he’d wake up from this wound only to realize she hadn’t been worth any of this, certainly not almost dying over.
His eyes twinkled. “I walked alone into a castle with those brutes you call brothers to win you back. What do you think?”
A laugh escaped her. “I suppose that’s true. You did face quite the odds.” She knew he never took risks, not unless he’d secured his chances of winning first. But there had been no guarantee she would go back to London with him, or that her brothers would let him walk away with all his teeth.
The bedchamber door opened, and Cedric appeared. “I heard voices… Oh, thank heavens.” He grinned at seeing them. Then he angled his head out to the hallway. “Wake up, you lot, Ash’s come around.”
Rosalind raised her brows as Cedric entered the room. The viscount shrugged. “We were in the hall, scattered about.”
“But we have plenty of good beds…”
The rest of the League filed in behind Cedric, their fine clothes rumpled and hair mussed, each of them sporting bandages. They, like she, hadn’t slept much the last two days, and it showed in their faces.
“We wanted to be within shouting distance in case you needed anything,” Cedric explained.
Charles broke from the group and came over to Ashton’s bed. “Glad to see you’re awake.” He looked between Rosalind and Ashton, smiling. She was no longer Charles’s enemy, it seemed. The shy but welcoming smile reassured her of that.
“How’s your shoulder?” Lucien inquired as he and the other rogues gathered around the bed.
“Like the devil himself is burning a hole through my body,” said Ashton.
“I’ll summon the doctor. He’s sleeping upstairs.” Godric departed, his limp still pronounced.
“Where are my brothers?” Rosalind asked, realizing she hadn’t seen them in at least a day.
“Lord Kincade has been handling the inquiry regarding the deaths of the men, and he has also handled the investigation into the other men as well,” Lucien said. “He advised us not to inquire further, and I’m more than happy to oblige. What occurs in Scotland should stay here. I’ve no interest in this trouble following us back to London.”
“What about Brodie and Aiden?” she asked. “Did they find the ones who escaped?”
The others exchanged glances before Lucien continued. “Your brothers arrived back two hours ago, the horses exhausted.”
A flicker of unease moved through her at Lucien’s careful deflection. “Are they well?”
Lucien nodded. “They are, but they failed. The three men eluded them. The trail went cold a couple of miles away. They may have split up.”
Ashton sighed wearily. “Then we failed.”
Rosalind held her breath, wondering when the right time would be to bring this up. It seemed there would be no better time than now. She reached into the secret pocket in her skirt and pulled out a single letter.
“Here…” She held it out to Ashton, and he took the letter. Then he raised his stunned eyes to hers.
“Is this is what I think it is?” he asked.
“Yes.” She blushed. “I kept one before I handed the packet to you. When we return to Lennox House, we can figure out how to decode it using the cipher.”
“Good Lord.” Lucien whistled softly. The others had all learned about the letters and what they represented. Even one might have the power to expose Hugo’s dealings. But it would also blacken her family’s name and possibly ruin it forever.
Ashton clutched the letter but made no move to open it. “Thank you, Rosalind,” he said.
She only nodded, burying her fears. She knew what was at stake now. The weight of Hugo’s sins far outweighed her family’s name. If she wished to be Ashton’s wife, she had to be prepared to help protect their families and one another from Waverly. They could in time perhaps repair their name if they shined a bright enough light on where the blame truly lay.
But what would that do to England and Scotland? she wondered.
“We’ll let you rest, Ash,” Cedric said. The men departed the bedchamber, but Ashton gripped Rosalind’s hand as she returned to her seat.
“Come and rest beside me,” he said. “I feel better when you are close.”
She smiled. So did he. She needed him as much as he needed her.
She curled up by him again on the bed, careful not to lie near his wounded shoulder. Their hands remained linked, and she drifted to sleep deeply for the first time in two days, finally knowing Ashton would be all right.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Hugo stood in front of the large fireplace in his study at his townhouse on South Audley Street. Waiting. His blood was roaring in his ears, and his head felt light.
He promised himself it would be over soon. The evidence of his foolish beginnings, evidence that could damage the country, let alone threaten his own life, would be back in his hands and could safely be destroyed. The League of Rogues would not learn how deep his interests went and could not unravel his carefully constructed web of lies and secrets.
The study door opened, and his butler nodded at him.
“Sir Hugo, Mr. Sheffield has arrived.”
“Show him in. Is my wife still at home?”
“Yes, Sir Hugo. She was preparing to go out this evening. Should I tell her you wish to speak with her?”
“No. Send Sheffield in.”
“Very good, sir.”
Hugo turned back to the fireplace and only turned again once Daniel had entered. Daniel’s coat was covered in dust from the road, but his face was bright with triumph.
“Did you get them?” Hugo asked, his heart pounding again.
Daniel slid a hand under the folds of his coat and pulled out a packet of letters. He handed them to Hugo. The parchment was yellow with age and the ink was a little faded, but the words were legible…words that would have outed him as the English spy who had orchestrated the destruction of a Scottish separatist rebellion by the murder of their monarchist leaders.
“Any problems?” Hugo asked as he ruffled the letters’ edges in his hands.
Daniel hesitated before answering. “There was some loss of life in retrieving them, and two men were captured.”
“Should we be concerned?”
Daniel shook his head. “Hired locals only. They know nothing.”
“Good.” Hugo smiled coolly. The League would never know about the content of these letters. He caught Daniel eyeing them.
“Do you have any further need of me this evening?” Daniel asked.
Hugo didn’t bother to look at him. “No. You may go. Tomorrow we have plans to make.”
“Sir?” Daniel waited, tapping his riding gloves delicately against his thigh, the only hint of his impatience.
“Avery Russell has been making use of Sheridan’s youngest sister in his work here in London. I think it’s time we escalate that. What would you say to seducing Miss Sheridan and involving her in a mission to France? I would very much like to have her disappear there. It would distract watchful eyes from our true mission. You know the one I mean.”
“Yes, but…” Daniel’s face reddened.
Hugo chuckled. “You’re a genius spy, Daniel—don’t tell me a little seduction frightens you off.”
“It isn’t that. I am involved with another, and—”
“Don’t be naïve. Your loyalty is to the Crown. And in this room, I represent the Crown and its interests. We’ll talk more on this later. You may go.”
Daniel bowed curtly and exited the room. Hugo’s shoulders sagged as he held the stack of letters in his hands, weighing them.
His instinct was to burn them, but something gave him pause. After a moment’s hesitation, he counted them, unfolded each one and checked the dates. One letter toward the end was missing.
He crunched the old sheets of parchment in his hand. The letters had been in Lennox’s possession. If there wa
s one man in the League who gave Hugo pause, it was him.
He was the only worthy adversary who played a game of chess with living pawns as well as Hugo did, and now Lennox had proved who would prevail.
He must have kept one before he handed them over to my agent. It was the only logical explanation. The late Lord Kincade would not have left one letter out. He was too methodical in their dealings to make such a mistake.
A sense of doom closed in around him, choking him like the river had when he’d tried to erase Charles from the world. The League had managed to outmaneuver him.
But hope still remained, however slim. They still needed to learn how to decode the message, and none of his agents had found the cipher that was sent to Rosalind. Perhaps it had been lost? And if the League were to discuss what they had found within earshot of his men… Well, at least then he would know what they knew, and he could prepare a defense accordingly. It was possible the fragments they possessed held nothing too damning. And with luck, his men might even be able to steal it from under their noses.
A sharp chill dug into the base of his spine. He held hope, but no illusions. The evidence they had could destroy the world he’d spent the last years building.
He leaned closer to the fire and let the packet drop on top of the logs. He watched the flames burn away at the letters.
And yet he was not safe. It was only a matter of time before a reckoning came.
*****
It was raining on his wedding day. Ashton stood at the front of the altar in the small cobblestone church only two miles from his ancestral home, listening to the rain whisper against the windows and the hum of it on the vaulted roof above.
“Even you cannot control the weather, old boy,” Charles teased as he stood beside Ashton.
A rueful smile twisted his lips. “Indeed, I cannot.” Damn the rain. I will marry Rosalind today, no matter what.
He waited, desperate to somehow distract himself from his nerves. What if she didn’t show? No, she would. She’d promised him, and that promise held a greater weight than the most secure bank in England.