West’s eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You had best still be heeding my warning.”
“Not to play about with any of your household staff? Not to worry. Your maids are nice enough if you like the country bumpkin type, which, thank the heavens, I do not. I like my women busty and lusty and willing.”
“Mattie turn you down, did she?”
“The woman kicks like a mule,” Sullivan grumbled.
West’s mouth twitched. “No doubt whatever harm she did was rightly deserved. Stick with the wenches at The Dog and Pony.” His tone abruptly sobered. “If I hear tell of anything different we are going to have a problem, Sullivan.”
“I hear you loud and clear. No need to shake a finger in my face like you’re scolding a dog.”
West dropped the arm he hadn’t even been fully aware he’d lifted. “Fine. Then we are on the same page.”
“We are.”
“I had best get some rest if I am to depart at first light tomorrow,” West said, even though he had a feeling sleep would prove to be incredibly elusive, if not outright impossible.
Sullivan shifted his body to the side, making room on the stairwell. “Get on with you, then. And don’t you dare wake me up before you go. I plan on sleeping in until well after one o’clock.”
“Keep that up and I will have to start addressing you as Lord Sullivan,” West said with the faintest of sneers.
The nobility’s habit of sleeping in was well renowned and equally as mocked. While most commoners often had a half day’s work under their belts by the time noon rolled around, a nobleman would’ve been lucky to have cracked his curtains and seen the light of day.
“I am already a prince.” A grin flirted with one corner of Sullivan’s mouth. “I couldn’t be a lord as well. Even I am not that greedy.”
Shaking his head, West started up the stairs. Halfway to the top he paused, his hand tightening on the railing. “Thank you,” he said quietly without turning around.
“Thank me when you have the girl,” Sullivan replied easily, “and don’t go forgetting the debt you owe me either.”
Shaking his head, West continued up the stairs.
Waiting until he heard West’s bedroom door open and close, Sullivan stood up and stretched his arms high above his head. “And that,” he murmured to himself with a self-satisfied smirk, “is how you kill three birds with one stone.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Eight Days Later
Emily had never been so bored in all her life.
Following the initial excitement of her return, she’d settled surprisingly quickly into the routine she’d left behind. If not for the memories and the gnawing ache in her chest that refused to go away, she would have thought she’d dreamt up the entire kidnapping.
Nibbling at her bottom lip, she scuffed the toe of her boot at a rock and hastened her step to catch up to Petunia whose brisk stride had carried her several yards ahead on the lazily winding footpath. A light breeze stirred the morning air, and somewhere in Hyde Park a morning dove cooed anxiously for its mate.
Emily rather thought she knew exactly how the poor bird felt.
“There you are.” Petunia’s overlarge bonnet covered her eyes, but her bright smile was clearly visible. Reaching out, she took Emily’s gloved hand and tucked it firmly into the crook of her elbow. “Feeling a bit peakish, dear? It is not like you to linger so far behind.”
“I suppose I am just tired,” Emily said automatically, repeating the same answer she’d been giving since her return whenever she was asked why she seemed so out of sorts.
She doubted anyone would want to hear the truth. Even she didn’t want to hear the truth, which was why she kept it bottled up deep inside. Unfortunately it had a habit of sneaking out at the most inopportune times, like while she was attempting to take a morning stroll in the park with her companion.
Forcing herself to stay in step with Petunia as they continued down the path, she managed to keep her mind free from West for a total of one minute – a new personal record – until a horse’s shrill whinny from somewhere out of sight had her thoughts turning to the playful colt she’d befriended, which of course made her think of Galahad’s owner.
She wondered what West was doing even now. Wondered if he was thinking of her as she was thinking of him. Her nose wrinkled ever so slightly. Hardly. If he’d thought of her at all, it had probably only been to say ‘good riddance’.
For the first four nights following her return home she’d stayed awake late into the witching hour, staring up at the ceiling, waiting in breathless anticipation for a handsome rake with golden eyes to jump through her bedroom window and steal her away. Her father and Petunia must have been of the same mind, because today was the first time in over a week she’d been allowed to go more than a block outside of Grosvenor Square.
As it turned out, they had nothing to worry about. Much to Emily’s hidden dismay, she feared West was not coming back to London. At least not for her.
Perhaps he’d realized her father would never be able to pay the ransom he was demanding. Or – much more likely, in her mind – he’d grown tired of the entire charade and decided to wash his hands of her once and for all. Now they were back where they’d started: he in his world and she in hers with no logical reason to ever cross paths again.
Now that she’d returned to London, it could not be more apparent to Emily that she did not fit in where she was supposed to. Like a small book set next to larger ones, she didn’t quite belong.
Being kidnapped and taken to Blooming Glen had done more than make her fall in love. It had opened her eyes to a world and a life she’d always dreamed of, but never been able to experience firsthand. A life without boundaries. A life without expectations. A life without rules.
She felt as though she’d been picked up and set down on the wrong shelf in the wrong library. Surely this was not where she was meant to be: confined in clothes that hardly allowed her to breath, forced to circle round and round on the same aimless path. An excellent metaphor for what she could look forward to, Emily mused. Always walking, but never getting anywhere.
She thought of the quiet afternoons she had spent curled up beneath the shade of an oak tree with Galahad’s soft, sweet face on her lap… and she yearned. For what had been. For what could not be. For what would never be again.
A duke’s daughter did not sit about in horse fields. A duke’s daughter did not gossip and laugh and dine with the servants. A duke’s daughter did not run about with her hair unbound. A duke’s daughter did not wear the same dress for more than five hours in a row. A duke’s daughter did not kiss a man she was not affianced to… and a duke’s daughter certainly did not fall in love with a criminal.
Except she’d done all of those things, and enjoyed each one more than the last. So how, after experiencing such blissful freedom and learning what it felt like to stretch her wings, could she be expected to step willingly back into her cage?
“Are you certain you are all right, dear?” Petunia’s concerned voice broke through Emily’s thoughts, drawing her abruptly back into the present. “You seem to have gone quite pale.”
“I am fine. I am simply—”
“Tired,” Petunia finished for her. “Yes, I know dear. That is what you keep saying. Would you like to turn around? You could take a nap before Lady Yvonne’s luncheon.”
Emily barely managed to suppress a grimace. She’d forgotten all about the luncheon. The last thing she wanted to do was sit about in a parlor sipping tea and nibbling at stale crumpets while women tittered all around her, asking intrusive questions and raising their overly plucked eyebrows at whatever response she gave.
It would be her first public appearance since she’d been stuffed into a carriage and whisked off towards Southampton. Both Petunia and her father had assured her no one knew the truth behind her sudden disappearance. Everyone who had noted her absence in the first place – which were very few people indeed – were under the assumption she’d been
visiting a sickly aunt in Brighton.
Emily found she truly did not care if the truth was revealed one way or the other, but at least this way her reputation was intact (heavens knew poor Winnifred Cole had never been seen or heard from again after her kidnapping incident) and she could continue on with her plan to enter into a loveless marriage for the sake of protecting her family. Now she only needed a man to agree to marry her, which hopefully wouldn’t be too much trouble, especially since word of her father’s financial ruin had not yet reached the masses.
During her first debut into society she’d earned no less than a dozen marriage proposals, most of them from lords she could hardly remember let alone actually consider spending the rest of her life with. Every year thereafter the proposals had dwindled, but they’d never stopped entirely. Despite her social shortcomings and her awkward nature and her unfortunate habit of saying whatever was on her mind, Emily was still the daughter of a duke, and any children she bore her husband would be grandchildren of a duke, and their children great-great grandchildren of a duke, and so on and so forth.
In short, she was the equivalent of a very valuable broodmare with excellent bloodlines and prospective buyers would most likely happily overlook any and all quirks if it meant ensuring her hand in marriage.
“Lady Emily, who is that man staring at us?” The quiet urgency in Petunia’s voice drew Emily’s head up, and she squinted ahead to where the walking path forked off to the left and became partially obscured by sweet smelling rhododendron bushes.
“I… I am not sure,” she replied even as a prickling sense of awareness lifted the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck. They were still too far away to tell for certain and he wore a hat that hid his eyes, but the man sitting on a bench staring directly at them certainly looked like…
Her mind rebelled at the name, and she faltered mid-step, dragging Petunia to a halt beside her. No. It couldn’t be. There was no reason he would be in Hyde Park at such an hour. No reason he would be sitting on the path she and her companion traditionally walked. No reason he would be staring at her so intently. Except… except no one else had ever given her butterflies, and in a heartbeat her belly was filled with them.
Petunia’s fingers tightened on Emily’s arm, her short nails digging through the thin fabric of her gloves and into her skin. “It’s him, isn’t it?” she hissed, her gray eyes widening and her face paling beneath the brim of her bonnet. “The one who took you!”
She didn’t have a name to say, for Emily had never revealed West’s true identity, leaving Petunia and her father to assume she’d been kidnapped by an unknown brigand instead of one of London’s most notorious criminals. Biting her lip, she slowly nodded. “I believe it might be.”
Petunia looked wildly around. “You must run!” she cried. “Quick, go now. I will hold him off as long as I can.” She brandished her reticule like a weapon, holding it out in front of her as though it were a deadly pistol instead of a small, rather pitiful looking beaded purse. Emily did her best not to smile and gently extricated her arm from beneath Petunia’s claw like grip.
“It will be fine,” she said gently. “He will not hurt me, Miss Petunia. I am going over there to speak with him—”
“Lady Emily, you must not!” Petunia gasped.
“—and I need you to stay here. He won’t hurt me,” she repeated, desperately hoping she spoke the truth, for after her last encounter with West she knew better than anyone that the wrong words could hurt just as much as a physical blow. “I will only be gone but a minute. Please,” she said when Petunia’s mouth mulishly set in a hard, disapproving line. “This is something I must do.”
“If your father knew of this—”
“It would upset him greatly, which is why neither of us are going to tell him.”
“Oh, very well. I suppose I cannot stop you, can I?”
“No,” Emily said with a shake of her head. “I am afraid not.”
Petunia’s eyes narrowed. “I think, very much, that there is more to the story of your disappearance than you have let on.”
“A bit more,” Emily admitted.
“After you have spoken to him” – Petunia sniffed disdainfully in West’s direction – “we will return home and you will tell me everything. Everything, Lady Emily, or I will scream to the high heavens and draw everyone upon us within a half mile.”
Emily eyed Petunia curiously, surprised – but certainly not displeased – by her companion’s newfound sense of courage. “I think I am not the only one who has something to tell.”
Petunia’s pale cheeks flushed with color and she looked away, her gaze skittering to the ground. “Get on with it,” she muttered, “before I change my mind and do the right thing by screaming.”
“You are a dear, dear woman.” Leaning forward, Emily placed an impulsive kiss on Petunia’s pink cheek before she picked up her skirts and walked deliberately towards the bench, her heartbeat increasing with every step until it was threatening to burst right out of her chest by the time she drew close enough for her suspicions to be confirmed.
“It is you,” she whispered. With only a mere foot of space separating them, it was impossible to mistake West for anyone else, even though he’d deliberately dressed to disguise his true appearance.
In addition to the black topper he had slung low over his brow, he wore a dusky rose cravat tucked neatly inside a high collared waistcoat she’d never seen before. His face was cleanly shaven, revealing a smooth, square jaw line free of stubble. He’d even trimmed his hair and pulled it back in a neat tail. Any random passerby would assume he was a well-to-do gentleman out for a casual morning stroll. Emily would have thought the same herself if not for the betraying race of her pulse and the pounding of her heart.
He looked up as she approached, tipping his head back until their gazes met. Her breath caught and held as she found herself once again sinking into a pair of piercing caramel eyes flecked with gold.
“I’d hoped to see you here,” he said quietly and the air she’d been holding inside her lungs escaped in a heady whoosh. When he unfolded his body and stood up she took a wary step back, arms rising to cross over her chest in an unconscious display of protection.
She felt the brush of a rhododendron branch against the back of her scalp but when she tried to twist to the side it snagged and pulled at her curls, tugging them from the confines of her carefully constructed coiffure.
“Here.” In a flash West was beside her, his fingers gently extricating her hair from the branch. For half a heartbeat his hand lingered at the nape of her neck and she longed to arch into his warm touch like a cat lifting its spine for a scratch, but before she had time to do anything so foolish he cleared his throat and stepped back.
They stared at each other, and Emily drank in the familiar planes and lines of his countenance like a woman half starved. How had she existed for twenty-three years without knowing his face? Just eight days without seeing him seemed like half a lifetime.
“Why did you come here?” she asked softly, knowing the answer she wanted, but afraid to ask for it. The butterflies in her belly flapped their wings in nervous anticipation and suddenly Emily wished she’d remained with Petunia.
West rubbed his chin, fingers sinking into the hard line of his jaw. “Business.”
Emily’s heart sank like a stone.
“And you.” His eyes warmed, promising a tender caress he could not give with Petunia watching them from down the path like a hawk. Yet she felt his touch all the same. It was the whisper of his fingers through her hair. It was the glide of his thumb across her cheek. It was the touch of his lips against her temple. “I came for you, Princess.”
“Oh.” She took a small step back, overwhelmed by the flood of emotion that suddenly filled her chest. “I… I do not know what to say.”
“At a loss for words?” One dark eyebrow lifted. “I find that rather hard to believe.”
“This is all a bit overwhelming.” And it was. To have finally
started making herself face the fact that West would never return for her, and then to have him show up when and where he was least expected… It was like something out of a dream. Or, she thought uncertainly as a sliver of doubt began to edge its way into her cloud of hazy euphoria, something straight out of a nightmare. “If you have come to take me back to Rosemore and hold me again for ransom—”
“No. No,” he said firmly, cutting her off before she could say another word. “There are many things I regret, the last words I spoke to you principle among them, but the one thing I do not regret, the one thing I cannot regret, is kidnapping you. It may have been wrong, but if it had never happened we never would have met.” He inhaled sharply as his eyes darkened with emotion. “To have never heard your voice… To have never felt your soft skin… To have never held you against me… There is no worse fate I could think of than that.”
Oh dear. Emily had never swooned a day in her life, but she feared she was precariously close to doing just that as her knees threatened to buckle and her head felt a bit woozy. “Mr. Green – West – I do not know what to say.”
“You’ve said enough, if what you told me before still stands?” When she nodded jerkily his entire body seemed to soften with relief. “I was afraid after the way I acted you would never want to see me again.”
“You were an ass.”
His mouth curved. “I was an ass,” he agreed without hesitation. “And you were right to leave as you did although you took a good ten years off my life worrying something might have happened to you before I found out the truth from Sullivan.”
“You were worried about me?” she said in surprise. Worried he’d lost his ransom was easy to believe, but worried about her? It was something she hadn’t even let herself imagine, especially not after the way they’d parted. “I… I didn’t think you cared.”
“I care too much. Too damn much.” He eyed her closely. “Haven’t you been listening to a word I’ve said?”
The Duke of St. Giles Page 19