The Rake's Revenge

by Ranstrom, Gail

  Late traffic was light and the occasional passersby provided a feeling of normalcy. Once, when someone passed near them, McHugh turned and pulled her close, as if they were an amorous couple. She looked up at him and for a moment, the open hunger in his eyes made her think he would kiss her. Then resolve hardened his face and he released her and stepped back.

  After a quarter of an hour, a slender figure exited the club and walked briskly toward Pall Mall. McHugh signaled for Afton to follow him. Another right turn led them toward Parliament. Afton was relieved to be moving again. The cold had numbed her feet and hands, and the brisk pace set by their quarry soon warmed her. She wondered if he would hail a coach, but he continued and turned right on Cockspur Street to Charing Cross.

  At Downing Street, the man entered a private residence. McHugh pulled her into the shadows again. Minutes passed and Afton shifted her weight from one foot to the other while McHugh betrayed nary a twitch of a muscle. Passersby did not notice them in the deep shadows.

  “How do you remain so still?” she whispered.

  His head tilted down to her but she could not see his face in the shadows. “Practice,” he said. “Months in confinement without enough room to move. My box was roughly the size of an English coffin.”

  She smothered a gasp. He must have felt as if he’d been buried alive! No wonder he hated small spaces like the closet under the stairs. But if conditions had been so extreme… “McHugh, how did you escape?” she asked.

  His fingers bit into her shoulders and he lowered his head to whisper in her ear. “I would have to be very drunk to tell you that story, Miss Lovejoy. Do not ask again.”

  A chill that had nothing to do with frigid weather seeped through her. No, she would never ask again. She suspected the answer would terrify her.

  She began to understand how deeply he hated Madame Zoe and why he was determined that an incident like the one in her salon could never happen again. By his reckoning, Madame Zoe had sent Maeve on that ill-fated trip and set in motion the chain of events leading to his family’s death, his imprisonment and torture, and his inability to love again. It must gall him that he had shared something so intensely personal, so profoundly intimate, with the person he held accountable for that inhuman abuse.

  The door to the residence opened and their quarry hurried out with a furtive glance over his shoulder. He looked right and left before entering the street, and then started off at a brisk pace, merging with the foot traffic on Parliament Street. By the time they reached Westminster Bridge, he was moving at a run. He had caught on to their presence.

  Afton knew she’d never be able to keep up. “Go,” she urged McHugh. “I will follow.”

  He hesitated and looked as if he would argue, then nodded and pursued the man. Easily outdistanced, Afton was barely able to keep McHugh in sight.

  She was halfway across the bridge when the moon revealed the dark shape of their quarry hesitate and throw something into the Thames before starting off again at a sprint. She thought McHugh was gaining on him until she saw him peel off his great coat and hat, and dive headlong into the freezing water.

  Her heart leaped to her throat and her shouted, “McHugh!” came out scarcely louder than a croak for the fear tightening her voice. She lifted her skirts and ran for all she was worth to the spot where he had gone over. She leaned over the stone ledge, searching the black roiling river.

  “McHugh!” she shouted again. “Where are you, McHugh?”

  When there was no answer, panic began to build in her chest. Then she thought she saw movement in the murky depths and she wanted to scream with relief.

  He had gone over the ledge closer to the south bank, so Afton scooped up his hat and coat, ran to the end of the bridge and onto the embankment, where a wide stone stairway led down to the water. “McHugh! Where are you? Answer me! Rob…please answer me!”

  The only reply was the lapping of the river against the stone bank. Tears blurred her vision. How could anyone survive the freezing temperature of the water? She searched frantically for a skiff or rowboat, but none were tied to the iron rings set in the stone stairway. “Help me!” she screamed, but her words were carried off on the wind.

  She feared his sodden clothing had dragged him to the bottom of the river. “Oh, Rob…” she wept, sinking to her knees and burying her face in his greatcoat. His scent, masculine and spicy, filled her nostrils and she began sobbing. He couldn’t end this way. He just couldn’t. He’d survived too much to die at the bottom of the Thames.

  “A-Afton…” A faint voice carried to her from the churning water.

  “Rob?” she shouted, scrambling to the edge of the stairway.

  “Here,” he called, not twenty feet away. “I canna see you.”

  “Rob,” she cried again. “Swim toward my voice. This way, McHugh. On the embankment.”

  She heard the slap of water and a moment later McHugh’s dark head bobbed into sight.

  “Here, McHugh. Just a little farther.”

  She reached out to grasp his hand and drag him onto the bottom step the moment he was close enough. He was as cold as ice and his entire body was racked with violent shivering. Great plumes of steam rose in the air from their panting. “I thought you had drowned,” she gasped.

  He pushed himself into a sitting position and shook the water from his face and hair. “So did I.”

  She draped his coat around him, knowing that he would freeze unless she could get him dry and warm immediately. She helped him to his feet and supported him so that he could climb the steps to the street level. “Ho! Driver!” she called to a passing coach. She could not take Rob back to his hotel in this condition, nor could she take him home with her. There was only one safe place to go.

  McHugh stumbled into the coach while Afton gave the address of La Meilleure Robe and a brief explanation that her brother had slipped and fallen into the river. Then she followed him into the compartment.

  When they were underway, he reached across the distance and traced a line down her cheek with one icy finger. “You’re crying.”

  “No,” she lied, dashing the tears away with the back of her hand. “It is the cold. And your infernal splashing.”

  Teeth chattering, he grinned. “Did I hear ye calling me Rob?”

  It was all she could do not to throw her arms around him and tell him how desperately afraid she had been that she would never see him again, and how furious she was at him for risking his life for an unknown trinket. “I think I must have called you everything I could think of,” she admitted. “Whatever were you thinking, McHugh? Why did you jump in the river?”

  “The blackguard threw something over the edge—something he didn’t want to be caught with—and I wanted to see what it was.”

  “Simpleton,” she hissed, losing her temper entirely. “You nearly died. And what do you have to show for it? Nothing. You must never, ever do anything so foolish again.”

  She stretched out his hand, a wadded object clenched in his left fist. “Not for nothing, Miss Lovejoy. For this.”

  “What is it?” She squinted, unable to see clearly in the darkness of the coach.

  Some piece of evidence. Some incriminating item. Something that would identify the man as the murderer… Rob didn’t know. He only knew that if the blackguard wanted to be rid of it, then it would be of interest to Afton and him. He clutched it in his hand and returned it to his pocket.

  “Later,” he said, unable to control shivering so severe that his teeth chattered. Permanent damage from the cold was only moments away.

  Afton seemed to realize it, too. She began to chaff his hands between her own, pausing only long enough to breathe heat into the hollow between his palms as he had done that night barely two weeks ago outside the opera. She worked tirelessly as the coach thundered on, the tears still coursing down her cheeks.

  Dear Lord, how valiant she was! How steadfast and loyal. He longed to lean forward, just slightly, to kiss the top of her head as she attempted to bri
ng warmth and feeling back to his hands. He longed to tell her that he’d been a fool, and that she’d been right to do whatever it took to keep her family safe and together. And that he was touched how she cared enough about him to be upset that he could have died.

  “Afton…” he breathed.

  She looked up at him, her aqua eyes luminous with unshed tears. There was a question in them, and a vulnerability that twisted him inside.

  “Th-thank you,” he said, unable to find words for the jumble of emotions roiling inside him.

  The coach drew up outside the dress shop and Afton stepped down, tossing the driver a coin. The quid was much more than the fare but the driver did not offer change and Afton did not press for it. She was too intent on fitting her shoulder beneath Rob’s arm to act as his crutch. They stumbled noisily up the stairway together, and she was able to retrieve her key from whatever hidden pocket she had stowed it in.

  Once inside, she left him holding the back of a chair as she piled more wood on the grate and used a bellows to fan it into flames. That done, she helped him to the sleeping alcove and pulled the blanket from the bed.

  Understanding the need to shed his freezing garment, he began to unfasten the buttons of his shirt. Numb with cold, his fingers refused to work. He pulled his cravat off and hooked his fingers over his collar, prepared to rip the damn thing off. Afton placed her hand over his and drew it away.

  “Let me,” she murmured.

  He dropped his arms to his sides and she stepped closer. He gazed down at her bowed head as she began to work the buttons, and he felt the first welcome stirring of heat in his middle. If he had not been afraid of leeching her warmth and leaving her chilled, he would have pulled her against him. Her scent, her softness, seeped into his soul but left him hungering for more. “Afton…” he whispered.

  She stilled and her hands began to tremble. He willed her to look up but she resisted. After a long agonizing moment, she stepped away and stooped to gather his jacket and cravat. She offered him the fallen blanket with one hand. “Finish and wrap this around you,” she instructed, “and I will hang your things on the mantel to dry.”

  As unaccustomed as he was to taking orders, he was content to let Afton have her way. He could see that she was on edge, ready to snap at the slightest provocation. He had commanded men under stress, and he recognized that her need to be doing something was essential to her sanity.

  She pulled the curtain to allow him some measure of modesty. Disrobing was a difficult procedure with his fingers still numb from the cold, but he managed the task in a few minutes, leaving the garments in a sodden heap on the floor.

  Afton pulled the only overstuffed chair in front of the fire and gestured to him to sit. He gladly complied and stretched his bare feet out to the hearth. Sensation began to return with a sharp prickling beneath his skin.

  He ignored the pain as he watched Afton wring out his clothes and hang them from the mantel to dry. She was so perfectly beautiful with her hair knotted at her nape and long copper tendrils curling around her face that he wanted to touch her again—feel her heat and softness. God, how he wanted all of her and everything she had ever been and would ever be. What a bitter irony it was that love had come to him in the guise of what he most loathed, and he had been too blind, too angry to see it before he had destroyed any chance to win it. He had abused Afton’s goodwill beyond enduring.

  When she shook out his greatcoat, she removed the wadded cloth from the pocket. As if just now recalling the reason for being here, she held up the white bundle to have a look at it. It appeared to be a man’s cravat. As the folds fell out, the triangular shape came into view, complete with deep red stains. Afton held the neck cloth for him to see. “B-blood?” she asked.

  He reached for the cloth and turned it over in one hand. “Damn. If this means what I think it does—” He started to rise but Afton pushed him back into the chair.

  “If it is, then what, m’lord? Will you put your wet clothes back on and go out on a chase?” She threw her hands up in disgust. “Whatever it means, it is too late to change it. You cannot help anyone if you are on your deathbed with pneumonia.”

  There was sense in her words, McHugh knew. He could change nothing by putting himself at further risk, but he chaffed to be doing something. Anything. “Afton, I cannot dally here—”

  “Dally? This is not a dalliance, Lord Glenross! You were nearly a victim of your own foolishness.”

  “Fortune favors the bold, Miss Lovejoy,” he retorted, a little amused by her assessment.

  “Bold?” she repeated. Her face registered confusion and then outrage. Tears sprang to her eyes and she spun away from him. “You may think so, sir, but I think differently. I will grant that you have a reputation for courage. Every single member of the ton says so. They speak of your fearlessness and persistence in the face of defeat. But I think you are one of the greatest cowards I have ever encountered! The very worst kind of all—the kind that hides behind bravery as a ruse to keep others at a distance.”

  Her denouncement amazed him. He’d been called many things in his life, but never a coward. “I have never run from a fight, Afton. I have never refused a plea for help.”

  She whirled to look at him again, her face reddened and her lashes spiked with tears. “That is not courage, McHugh. That is despair. You are brave because you have given up on life. You do not care if you live or die, so when you take the ridiculous chance of jumping into an icy river, you are risking nothing! You do not need your courage to face death at the end of a sword or pistol—or even a frozen river. Real courage is embracing life—the joy and the pain—and never giving up. You’ve surrendered, McHugh, and so you have nothing to lose. That is not courage. That is hopelessness.”

  He stood, forgetting the cold. His blanket slipped and he wrapped it around his waist with a vicious jerk before taking two steps toward her. “What the bloody hell are you talking about?”

  “You! You are so devastated by the loss of your wife and son, and so obsessed with avenging them, that you have stopped caring about anything else. You do not care if you live or die, so you court danger so that you can feel something—anything. And I…I…”

  The angry words she’d been reluctant to voice had come out in a heated rush. Because they were as true and raw as her wild emotions? “Do not stop now, Afton. Finish it. You what?”

  She glanced at him, shook her head and sank into a chair to bury her face in her hands. “I cannot bear to watch it any longer.”

  “Watch what?”

  “Rob McHugh destroy himself.”

  Something fluttered deep in his chest, like the wings of a bird struggling to break free. “Why should that matter to you?”

  She looked up, anguish in every line of her face. “I cannot bear to lose anyone else I love. I’ve lost Mama, Papa, Auntie Hen…”

  Was that an admission to loving him? Impossible. He’d done everything imaginable to earn her hatred. But what did she mean? That she cared? Or that she felt responsible for the risks he took? “I know how fond you are of assuming the burden for everyone, Miss Lovejoy, but do not think you are responsible for my actions.”

  “Where have I heard those words before?” she mocked, brushing at her eyes.

  He hadn’t realized his words had been an echo of hers from the night before until she posed the question. “I am not alone in losing sight of what is important,” he murmured. “You think only of your sister and brother, and how they would perish without you. And of avenging your precious auntie Hen. You are willing to risk scandal, ruin, your future, and even your pretty little neck to accomplish your goals, and devil take the hindmost.”

  “Then we are two of a kind,” she admitted, looking more than a little unsettled with that realization.

  He moved closer, intending to comfort her. He wanted to show her the tenderness that always seemed to elude them at such times. He wanted to love her as she should be loved, holding nothing back and asking nothing in return. “Af
ton,” he breathed, reaching out to smooth her wayward tendrils back into place.

  She shrank away and stood, a look of misery on her face. Retrieving her cloak and muff, she hurried to the door. “Stay until morning, m’lord. Your clothes will be dry by then. There is enough wood for the fire.”

  “Stay with me, Afton.”

  “I cannot, McHugh. You’ve said so yourself. It would only end badly. We are both too…too damaged.”

  “But—”

  “I will hire a coach. Do not worry about me.”

  The door closed with a soft click and he sank back into the chair in front of the fire.

  With Afton gone, the cold returned. Everything inside him rebelled at the thought of losing her. He wrapped himself in the soft wool, searching his heart for answers.

  Chapter Seventeen

  McHugh took long strides down St. James Street, the early morning sun on the fresh fall of snow dazzling his eyes with its brilliance. He knew where he was going, and he knew what he had to do. Looking neither right nor left, he was so consumed by his thoughts that he scarcely noticed the hubbub of traffic and the noise of street vendors hawking their wares.

  He could not rid himself of the memory of Afton’s accusation. She had been wrong, though. He was not devastated by Maeve’s loss. Saddened, yes. Guilt-ridden because he had not loved her, yes. But it was Hamish who was his true loss. Rob’s chest constricted at the memory of the smiling, fair-haired child. The lad had been bright and funny, and they had adored each other. Within a month of his birth, Rob had forgotten that he was not Hamish’s father and had accepted him as the McHugh heir. Maeve had been jealous of his relationship with the lad, as if she had only given birth to Hamish to spite him and could not bear that he found any joy in claiming another man’s bastard as his heir.