A Reckless Runaway

by Jess Michaels

  “What does that mean?” Juliana pressed, coming to take Anne’s hand. He was happy for the support she had. She would need it.

  “There are rumors about him,” Harcourt said. “That he is involved in very dangerous activities. That he is not a man to cross, to the point that even the duke is afraid of his son. That he has…he’s killed.”

  “They aren’t mere rumors,” Rook said as he easily conjured an image of the most vile villain he’d ever known. “Everything said about the man is true. He is worse than what you know—it is no idle chatter.”

  “Damn it, Solomon,” Harcourt muttered, referring to his late brother.

  Rook let out his breath in a long sigh and then said, “When Ellis and your brother got involved with him, they were working for him. I think…Solomon, you said his name was. May I refer to him as such to reduce the confusion caused by calling him Harcourt?”

  Harcourt looked sick, but he nodded. “Yes. My brother never wore our title with honor, and hearing this I think he deserved it less. Call him by his Christian name. How did my brother meet you and your cousin?”

  Rook shook his head and tried to push aside the jealousy and loss that question inspired in him. Anne’s lips parted as if she could read that pain, and her hand stirred at her side like she wanted to touch him.

  He stepped back a little, though he wanted that touch so damned much it hurt. “In a gaming hell, Donville Masquerade.”

  Harcourt flinched again, and from the settee, the forgotten and very drunk Mr. Shelley called out, “Lovely lightskirts there. Very accommodating before they revoked my membership.”

  He immediately passed out, removing himself from the conversation, but Anne caught her breath and the other two sisters blushed red. They obviously now knew what kind of place Donville Masquerade was.

  “Solomon lost a great deal of money to Ellis that night, but they must have gotten on, because next thing I knew he was introducing your brother to me and telling me he was going to help us.” Rook set his jaw. “I warned them both it would end in nothing good, mixing our worlds, but they didn’t listen.”

  “You’re a bloody hero,” Harcourt growled. “What was my brother doing for Ellis?”

  “Providing access,” Rook explained. “Ellis and I had been robbing and running love ploys for decades. We did fine, but my cousin wanted even more. Bigger fish, he kept saying. Solomon provided introduction to those big fish for a cut.”

  Harcourt paced away. “How he must have loved playing the villain, my selfish brother.”

  “Sometimes.” Rook hesitated and moved a step closer to Harcourt. “The game appealed to him, I won’t say it didn’t. But I think you should know that he also spoke often about how he knew he had destroyed the wealth and good name of your family. There was some part of him that wanted to earn enough blunt to buy back some of the good graces. He also often spoke of you, especially at the end. You two had a falling out?”

  Harcourt pivoted to face him, his lips parted. All the color had left his face. Thomasina came up beside him and took his hand, watching his expression. And again, their love was on display. “He told you that?”

  Rook nodded without speaking.

  “We did,” Harcourt whispered after a moment had passed. “A year before his death.”

  “About the time he met my cousin,” Rook said, some of his hatred for Solomon Kincaid fading with this information. In the end, it seemed they were all broken. All lost. He couldn’t fully despise a man for that. “Which explains a great deal. He wanted to earn your respect, Harcourt. He obviously loved you.”

  Harcourt stared at Rook for what felt like forever. Then he whispered, “Thank you for that. It means a great deal. I certainly wish he had gone about it a different way.”

  “Yes.” Rook shook his head. “The two of them got very good at their games. And I was edged out more and more. By the time they met Winston Leonard, they no longer asked for my opinion or listened when it was given. He had heard of some of their schemes and asked them to do some work for him. But those two fools didn’t like the terms and decided to take something from him.”

  “What is it exactly?” Thomasina asked. “Ellis came here, demanding, desperate, but my husband and I thought it was a statue Solomon had hidden and Ellis flew into a wild outburst when he saw it. He was very clear that wasn’t what he came for.”

  “A jewel, my lady,” Rook said softly. “As big as your fist. An emerald with the finest cut I’ve ever seen. Immediately the whole thing went wrong. Leonard came at them like a banshee from hell. I have never seen my cousin afraid until that day when they were called to the dueling field to settle the matter. Ellis tried to negotiate. And Leonard cut Solomon down as an example.”

  Harcourt staggered and sat down hard in the chair. “So it wasn’t a duel.”

  “No, it was a cold-blooded murder. I had followed them, but I was too far off to do anything to help them. Leonard gave my cousin a certain amount of time to return the gem. Honestly, I assumed he had done so until all…this.”

  Anne moved closer to him. “Assumed?”

  Rook met her gaze. There were many things he wanted to say to push her away. “We had a code. Murder wasn’t part of it. Ellis might not have struck Solomon Kincaid down, but his actions led to his end. I walked away from him. From everything.”

  “That was when you went to your island,” Anne breathed.

  Harcourt looked between them with a wrinkled brow. “But he came back and you helped him.”

  “He isn’t all bad.” Rook heard the crack in his voice, the one he couldn’t control. “He saved me in many ways that I can never express.” As he said it, Anne took another step toward him and he both prayed she would touch him and that she wouldn’t. She didn’t, though her green gaze held his gently. “So I agreed, not knowing the rest. But when I heard your name, your title, in Gretna Green, I knew there was no coincidence.”

  “It isn’t,” Harcourt mused. “Ellis thinks we have the gem. His desperation for it is evident.”

  “And that is very out of character,” Rook said with a confused shake of his head. “Ellis has always been nonchalant about his acts. Even when he was threatened, you couldn’t ruffle his feathers. When he is desperate, it is never good. That he concocted this terrible plan with Anne and can’t seem to control himself about this…it makes me wonder what else Leonard is threatening. What else Ellis thinks he has to lose.”

  “Is that all of it then?” Harcourt asked, rising back to his feet.

  Rook nodded slowly.

  “I need a moment,” Harcourt said softly. He exited the room without any further comment. Thomasina made a soft sound of distress and rushed after him.

  Anne still stared at Rook, her gaze even and unreadable. Then she turned to Juliana. “Will you take Father?”

  Juliana glanced at him. “I don’t want to leave you alone with him.”

  Rook refused to react to that, though Anne flinched. She moved toward her sister, taking both her hands. They said nothing, but the conversation flowed between them nonetheless for a moment. Juliana leaned forward and rested her forehead against Anne’s at last.

  “Anne—” she breathed.

  Anne shook her head. “Please.”

  Juliana pulled away and glanced at him. Held his stare for a beat, two. Then she sighed. “Very well. I suppose there is little harm to it at any rate.”

  She paced away to their father. It took a moment for her to rouse the drunken lout and get him to stagger from the room with her. Once she had, Anne moved to the door and closed it gently. She leaned against it, watching him. Reading him. Blaming him.

  Then she let out a sigh and said, “Now tell me the truth. How long did you really know Harcourt was my fiancé?”

  Anne watched Rook cringe and knew the answer before he spoke. Still, she needed to hear it and he didn’t disappoint.

  “I told Harcourt the truth a moment ago. I didn’t know of your connection until Gretna Green. The same time you found out
Thomasina had married him in your stead. I swear to you on my life, on my island, on my peace, I didn’t lie about that.”

  She bent her head and wished that didn’t give her so much relief. “But you didn’t tell me either. We spent so much time together after you found out, both in town and on the road. You talked to me about so much, but never even a hint about Ellis and Harcourt and all this mess.”

  He turned and walked away to the window. “I know.”

  “Why didn’t you?” Anger rose up in her and she tamped it down with difficulty. “Why did you keep me in the dark?”

  He was silent for a long moment. His hands flexed in and out of fists at his sides as he stared into the darkness gathering outside.

  “Constantine,” she whispered.

  He pivoted at her use of his first name. It was the mark she’d intended to hit. His lips thinned before he choked out, “Because every moment with you has been stolen since the beginning. And I knew that once you found out the truth, you would look at me as you’re looking at me now. Like I’m shit on your shoe. And I am, Anne. I am.”

  She flinched. “I already knew what you were, Rook.”

  “No, you didn’t. You romanticized me into a Robin Hood from the old children’s stories. Didn’t you?”

  She ground her teeth. Damn him for seeing through her. “I suppose I might have pictured you as a noble highwayman, yes.”

  “But I wasn’t,” he said softly. “I didn’t go out to hurt people. Brutality was never my style. But I did what was right for me and no one else. I was not a hero. And what I told you about Ellis and Solomon Kincaid and Winston Leonard and murder and blood and death…that’s the closer truth to what I am.”

  “What you were,” she argued, wanting to defend him, even to himself. “For some reason, you want to spin your past in the ugliest light. And perhaps that is fair, because I’m certain you suffered greatly and so did others you left in your wake. But I spent time with a different man these past few weeks, Rook. I spent time with a good man. A gentle man. A decent man. You could have proven yourself a brute many times. You always proved yourself to be far more.”

  He shook his head, his expression broken like what she said actually hurt him. “Don’t.”

  “Why shouldn’t I?” she pressed. “You must know what you’ve come to mean to me. You must know that I—”

  “Don’t!” he exclaimed, louder as he jerked across the room and caught her elbows. He drew her up sharp against his chest, and every moment of longing she’d ever felt toward him magnified as she stared up into his eyes and saw everything she needed. Not what she’d convinced herself she wanted.

  What she truly needed.

  “Don’t say something foolish that will only cause more chaos,” he grunted. “I will do everything in my power to protect you from my cousin and from the villain he managed to enrage to the point of madness. But you and I…we have nothing, Anne. We will never have anything. So you need to let go of that notion. And you need to do it now.”

  He was still holding her, and despite his cold words, she saw the heat flare in his gaze as he stared down into her face. His fingers shifted against her arms, his lips parted slightly.

  Then he pushed her away. Not roughly, but firmly. And he left the room and left her broken.

  Chapter 19

  Supper came, and somehow Rook managed to bring himself into the dining hall and face the woman he was trying so hard to lose. It was impossible to avoid her, as their party was very small.

  The Earl of Harcourt sat at the head of the table, his wife on one side, holding his hand and speaking softly to him. He looked ragged. Anne was on his other side. Next to her was Juliana, and across from Juliana was where he had been placed. He recognized the buffers being placed between him and Anne.

  They were required, it seemed. Certainly they were earned.

  As for Mr. Shelley, after his drunken display earlier, he hadn’t joined the group. For that Rook was pleased, as the man seemed entirely disinterested in protecting his children. Anne deserved better, that was certain.

  It was a mostly quiet affair. No one seemed in much of a mood to discuss the things that had been revealed a short time earlier in the parlor. And yet hardly a person at the table touched their food, either.

  At last, as the dessert dishes were placed before them, Harcourt looked evenly at Rook. “I suppose we must discuss what our next move is. Do you believe your cousin will continue to pursue this issue of the stolen gem?”

  Rook folded his arms. “I think you know the answer to that question. Of course he will. He believed you had the item. That means he likely searched every other place he thought it might be hidden. He won’t stop. Whatever is driving him is too important.”

  “What do you think it might be?” Juliana asked softly.

  Rook shook his head. “I don’t know. He has a half-brother who is important to him. Gabriel might be at the heart of this. There is little else Ellis has ever allowed himself to care about. Whatever the reason, the outcome is the same.”

  “Our return to London is long overdue,” Harcourt said with a glance toward his wife. “The estate there is smaller, easier to protect. Public spaces would be safer, I think. And there are places in Town where my brother might have hidden this gem. I could pursue a search and see if I could just find the item and return it to Leonard myself.”

  Rook stiffened at the idea. “You can handle yourself, that is clear. But Leonard is not to be trifled with. It would be dangerous.”

  “To protect my family, I would take any risk,” Harcourt said, covering Thomasina’s trembling hand with his own.

  Rook could see there would be no turning him from the idea. Not that he could blame Harcourt. He nodded. “Very good. I think my time would best be spent seeking out Ellis. I have ways of finding him that I haven’t utilized in a long time. Shared networks that will know the truth. Perhaps I can curb some of his desperation from my end.”

  Anne dropped her fork with a clatter that seemed to ring in the air around them all. “You—you would not go with us to London?”

  The gaze of every person in the room shifted to him once more. He cleared his throat and refused to meet her gaze. Doing that in the parlor earlier had nearly broken him. “No, Miss Shelley. I don’t belong with you in London.”

  Her gaze narrowed and he saw the spark of her anger along with the devastation of her heartbreak. She pushed her chair back with a screech of wood on wood, threw her napkin across her uneaten cake and left the room without saying anything more.

  He shook his head as he set his own fork aside. “She would be better off letting me go.”

  “I agree,” Harcourt said softly. “But as we all know, Anne has her own mind.”

  “And her own heart,” Juliana said with a glance toward Thomasina that spoke volumes. “We’ll give her some time to herself and then follow.”

  Rook got up. “If you love her, do your best to convince her to forget me. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have much to ready if I’m to leave tomorrow to find my cousin. Good night.”

  Rook trudged up the hallway toward his chamber. When he reached a bend in the hall, he hesitated. Turn to the right and he’d find Anne’s room. He knew it from servants’ talk. He could go there. He could touch her. He could taste her. He could forget, for a moment, that he couldn’t be with her.

  Except doing that was patently unfair to them both. So he turned left instead and opened his chamber door. He ran a hand through his hair as he moved to the wardrobe. The other outfit he’d brought along on the road had been cleaned and folded neatly inside the drawers, and he tugged it out and looked around for his small bag.

  “Going somewhere?”

  Rook pivoted, hands raised in fists, at the sound of his cousin’s voice.

  Ellis stepped from the shadows with a chuckle. “That’s twice I’ve snuck up on you in the last month. You really need to polish those skills.”

  Rook gritted his teeth. “I left that life, remember? I don
’t need those skills.”

  “Everyone needs those skills,” his cousin said, and his voice was suddenly weary.

  Rook stared at him. Ellis had lost some weight in the past few weeks. He was a little more gaunt than usual and there were circles under his eyes. The casual grin on his face didn’t reach those eyes either. His cousin looked tired, he looked grim and he looked…afraid.

  The last time he’d seen that light of fear in Ellis’s eyes had been the day Winston Leonard struck down Solomon Kincaid in cold blood.

  “What have you done?” Rook asked softly.

  Ellis’s cheek twitched and the smile faded. “Nothing worse than anything else we ever did, eh?”

  Rook moved forward a long step. “You’ve done much worse and you know it. Going after Harcourt’s fiancée? Trying to use her as leverage? And what about the damned gem, Handsome? Why the hell didn’t you return it months ago?”

  “I didn’t know where it was!” Ellis said as he paced away to the window. “I have been looking for that fucking thing for almost a damned year. Barely keeping Winston Leonard at bay. Do you know how many beatings I’ve taken at the hands of his thugs?”

  Rook flinched. “Then why didn’t you come to me sooner?”

  Ellis shrugged and his tone dropped. “You got out, Constantine. No one ever gets out alive. I had to protect you.”

  Rook’s eyes went wide at the use of his given name. Ellis hadn’t called him that in two decades at least. Now his cousin’s gaze flitted over him from head to toe and there was a slight smile on his face.

  “I couldn’t drag you through shit again.” Ellis sighed, and again it seemed like the weight of the world was on his shoulders.

  “I would have gone through that shit of my own volition if you had told me about the danger you were facing,” Rook insisted. “At least I would have told you that your plans were foolhardy. I would have kept you from playing Anne for a fool.”