Along Came a Rogue (30 page)

Grey blew out a deep breath, his shoulders sagging with relief. Emily was going to be fine—Emily and the baby were both going to be fine.
Thank God.

His chest swelled with love, and he longed to hold her. He started past Kate for the hallway, but her fingers tightened around his shirtsleeve, his jacket long ago shed in one of the first rounds of pacing. She stopped him.

“Give Emily time to rest.” She gave him a reassuring smile. “When she's ready, I'm certain she'll want to see you.”

He hesitated, glancing down the hall. He didn't want to wait any longer, not when he'd already been waiting over five hours.

“You stay here,
all
of you.” Her eyebrow arched in warning, expressing how well she knew the three men gathered around her and how much trouble they could cause. Especially when they were together. “I'll come for you when she's ready.”

With an affectionate squeeze to his arm, Kate left to return to Emily.

Edward placed his hand on Grey's shoulder and drew him back into the room. “A small celebration is in order.” He withdrew cigars from his jacket breast pocket and passed them to Thomas and Grey.

Thomas grabbed the cutter from the fireplace mantel and snipped off the end of his cigar. “It'll soon be your turn to be a nervous father, Colonel, pacing at the birth.” He tossed the cutter.

Edward caught it one-handed. “I'll damn well handle it better than Grey, certainly.”

Distracted, Grey let the jab pass without comment. They would continue the game of taking shots at him all night, he knew. Just as he knew he was due each barb for how publicly he'd eschewed domesticity in the past, how mercilessly he'd teased Edward when he fell in love with Kate, and how he'd teased him even more when he discovered that they were expecting their first child. But his thoughts were with Emily.

He absently lit his cigar in the lamp and watched the tip glow red. The delivery was over, and she'd given birth to a marquess. Nothing would ever be the same for her. Her life could no longer be her own. Now she was responsible not only for her son but also for his title, his estates, his fortune…and all three hundred years of family history and social expectation accompanying it. And she didn't deserve to have that responsibility made harder by shadows of his past.

“Do you plan on smoking that cigar, Grey, or are you just going to stand there and watch it burn to ash?”

He glanced up and found Thomas grinning at his expense, so he popped the cheroot between his teeth. His chest warmed at the thought that Thomas would truly be his brother once he married Emily. “For the life of me, I can't figure out why Emily tolerates you.”

“Ironically,” her brother returned the volley with a teasing smile as he leaned back against the wall, “I was just thinking the same about you.”

Grey's teeth sank into the cigar. Unwittingly, Thomas had no idea how much his teasing jab cut to the quick. What could a former cavalry officer and War Office agent offer her that she'd need or want now? Emily claimed she loved him just as he was, but she deserved more.

And damnation, he was going to give it to her. Flinging his cigar into the fireplace, he stalked toward the door.

Thomas straightened, puzzled. “Where are you going?”

“Out,” he answered shortly. “There's someone I have to find.”

“Tonight? At this hour?”

“Yes.” He glanced backward at his two best friends as he strode from the room. “And tell Emily that I'm not going anywhere.”

Grey pounded his fist against the front door of the dark town house.

“Mind your manners!” The old butler opened the front door and scowled out at him in the light of a small candle. Obviously not expecting visitors at this hour, the man had made a halfhearted attempt to dress in his uniform jacket but still wore his nightshirt and slippers beneath. “You're waking the dead, blast it!”

“I need to speak to the viscountess,” Grey demanded.

“It's past midnight.” The man furrowed his bushy gray brows together, peeved at having been woken from his sleep, and began to close the door. “Come back in the morning at a proper hour!”

“I need to see her
now
.” Slapping his hand against the door to hold it open, Grey glared down at the butler. “Tell her Major Nathaniel Grey is here. I am certain she will want to see me.”

The butler hesitated. Grey knew the man was weighing in his mind the decision of whether to send him away until morning, fearing he might be there for an important reason, or go upstairs and wake the dowager. Neither choice was appealing at half past midnight.

“Her ladyship is abed,” the butler protested. “If this can wait until morning—”

“It cannot.” He strode past the old butler into the marble foyer. “Send her maid up to wake her. I'll wait here.”

“Sir, I insist! You must return in the morning.”

“Grimsby,” a female voice called out from the landing, “who is it?”

Grey turned to look up the curving staircase at Lady Henley. Even in the middle of the night, even wearing a dressing robe, the dowager exuded an imperialness that would have awed half the
ton
. And undoubtedly had at some point in her eighty years of life.

Odd, then, that Grey was most likely one of the few people in London whom the old woman could not intimidate. “I need to speak with you.”

“It is the middle of the night.” She tightened the belt cinched around her waist. “Must we do this now?”

“Yes.”

She arched an elegant brow. “A proper gentleman would call at a reasonable hour.”

“I'm not a proper gentleman, though, am I?” He pinned her with a hard gaze. “Unless I am after all.”

With a slight hesitation, understanding the full meaning behind his cryptic words, she pursed her lips and nodded curtly. “You can wait in the drawing room. I shall be down in a moment.”

She disappeared back into the shadows of the first floor, Grey assumed to dress properly before heading into the battle that awaited her.

“This way, sir.”

He followed Grimsby into the drawing room and waited while the old butler lit the candles, then stirred up the fire. It was clear from every grudging move the man made that he disliked being woken in the middle of the night.

“Thank you,” Grey said quietly when the butler straightened away from the hearth and then shuffled out of the room, presumably to hurry back to his quarters before her ladyship could send for tea and biscuits.

But there was a decanter of scotch on the side table, and that would do far better than tea for what was to come tonight. Without waiting for an invitation, he poured himself a glass.

“Pour me one as well,” the viscountess ordered as she walked regally into the room. It hadn't taken her long to don a morning dress and pull up her silver-gray hair.

He obliged and poured scotch into a second glass, then held it out to her. “You know why I'm here, then?”

“Why else would you pound on my door at midnight, Nathaniel?” She eyed him cautiously over the rim of her glass. “I heard what you did this evening, by the way, how you saved Emily Matteson's life. The rumors are already circling through Mayfair.”

That didn't surprise him, knowing how much the society hens loved juicy bits of gossip. “She had the baby.” With a faint smile, he swirled the scotch. “A boy.”

“Well, then, here's to the new marquess.” She lifted her glass slightly in a toast, then took a large swallow. The tough old woman could handle her liquor better than most men he knew. “Lady Emily is well, I assume?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.” She gave him a long, assessing look, then turned to sit on one of the chairs before the fire, gesturing for him to take the other. “They will promote you, you know. For saving her life and the life of the littlest marquess.” Then she emphasized, “
Colonel
Grey.”

“No, they won't. I'm leaving the War Office,” he informed her.

“They will,” she corrected with firm certainty. “And a nice position in London for you as well.”

The way she said that pricked at him, and he clenched his teeth. “Because of your doing, then.”

“Don't be foolish, my boy. You're far too intelligent for such nonsense.” She pointed a finger at the chair in a silent command and scowled when he didn't obey. “Of course, it was my doing. As soon as I'd heard what you'd done, I contacted Lord Bathurst to make certain he knew how valuable an agent you are.”

“What else has been your doing over the years?” His jaw tightened. “The position offer in Spain, my rank in the cavalry, being assigned to the First Dragoons…or did it start even before then with my very first job as a stable boy?”

“You were always an excellent horseman and a dedicated soldier. I merely put in a good word for you along the way. There's no sin in that.”

“Not in that,” he challenged. Finally, he sat, and the two of them stared at each other like two enemies sizing up each other before battle. “But there was sin before that, wasn't there?”

She said nothing, but when she raised the glass to her lips, he saw her hand tremble.

He leaned forward. “Tell me,” he ordered.

“You've made a fine life for yourself,” she commented, and he noted that she didn't deny the accusation. “Why does the past matter now?”

“Don't be foolish,” he echoed her words. “You're far too intelligent for such nonsense.”

Her eyes flickered at that, making him think she was pleased at the way he challenged her. But whatever he'd seen on her face disappeared quickly. “All these years, I've kept watch on you, and not once did you try to learn the truth from me. The one person who would have known, the one person who knew everything that happened in Trovesbury Village…not the vicar, not the constable.”

She reached into the pocket of her pelisse and withdrew two letters, then tossed them onto the floor between them. His eyes followed—the letters he'd written to the parish vicar and county constable inquiring about his birth. The hairs on his nape bristled.

“You could have come to me at any time, Nathaniel, but you never did. Until tonight.”

“It never mattered before,” he answered honestly.

Her lips pulled into a slow, knowing smile. “So you've set your sights on Lady Emily, have you?”

Despite the tightening of his gut, he stared at her stoically, years of gambling and spying teaching him to hide all emotion from his opponent. “Aren't you going to tell me that I'm overreaching my station, being too ambitious for a former groom who mucked out your stables? For a soldier to dare aspire to marry a duke's daughter?”

She scoffed at that. “Of course not.”

“Why not? Everyone else in your social circle would.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and fixed his gaze hard on her. “Yet you know I'm even worse than that, don't you? You know I was an orphan. You've known from the moment I arrived at Henley Park.”

“Yes.” Her gaze never wavered from his.

“Yet you, a woman who shouldn't have deigned to even glance in my direction, think so highly of me.” His eyes flickered as they studied her. “I could never figure out why you would pay any attention to me at all—the urchin for whom you arranged an education equal to that of your own grandsons, whom you got commissioned into the First Dragoons.”

“You achieved success yourself, Nathaniel. I only made certain the right people noticed.”

“Yet I was nothing to you.” He paused significantly. “Unless I wasn't. Unless you knew something that held you in debt to me.” He leaned back in the chair and swirled the scotch in his glass. “Are you going to tell me now, or should I start guessing?”

“Something tells me your first guess would be correct,” she murmured.

Keeping his silence, and trying to ignore the sudden nervous pounding of his heart, he stared at her and waited.
He knew.
Something inside him had known for years but denied it, had known but never pressed for the truth. Because knowing the truth would not have made any difference.

Until Emily.

“Boys showed up all the time at Henley to ask for work in the stables or gardens.” She stared down into her glass, her voice distant and reaching far back into herself. “But there was one…The first time I spotted that boy, I knew who he was. I recognized my son Charles in him as clearly as if he were once again standing before me himself as a child. So I made certain the boy was given work in the stables, an education, and later, an army commission. It was the same career he would have gotten had he been publicly recognized as my grandson.”

Grey felt the words swirl down his spine, as clearly as if she'd shouted it—
Viscount Henley was his father
.

“But now,” she continued as she looked up at him, “that boy wants to marry the daughter of a duke, and all that he has accomplished is still not enough, is it?”

“No,” he admitted quietly, setting the unwanted scotch aside. This fight with the dowager had been a long time in coming, but it was still far from over. “You know what I need from you,” he told her quietly. “Why I came here.”

“I told you before, Nathaniel. I will do anything I can to make your way easier—I owe you that. But I will not let you nor anyone else hurt the Henley name.” She shook her head. “Your legitimacy will irrevocably damage the reputation of my family, and I cannot allow that.”

“You've freely given me everything else.” A warning edged low in his voice. “Do you really want me to take this by force?”

Her lips pressed together. “You have no proof.”

“I don't need proof. All I need is rumor, helped along by the fact that I look just enough like Charles Henley to fan the gossip.” He shrugged, hoping she understood that he was not bluffing in this. “I already possess the reputation of a rake. I have nothing to lose.”