Harlequin Historical September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: The Lone Sheriff\The Gentleman Rogue\Never Trust a Rebel (41 page)

‘There is me,' she said.

He touched the back of his fingers to her cheek. ‘You are my daughter wherever we are. Nothing will ever change that.'

‘Do you have no wish to resume your life as a gentleman?'

‘What makes a man a gentleman is not his birth or right, not his money or wealth or abode. It is the way he lives his life. And I live my life as a gentleman, Emma, whether it be in Mayfair or Whitechapel.'

A vision of Ned swam in her mind. Not dressed in the finery of Weston's tailoring, but in the shabby old leather jacket and trousers. Standing up for her honour that night with Black-Hair in the Red Lion. Protecting her from drunken sailors in the alleyway. His expression grim and measured. His voice quiet. And his face when he had opened the door of Colonel Morley's library and saved her from Devlin. She forced the thoughts away. Tried to swallow down the sudden lump in her throat. But when she looked into her father's wise old eyes, he seemed to see too much.

She glanced away. Folded her fingers together in the semblance of a composure she did not feel inside. Tried to find the right words.

Her father did not rush her. Just waited. Let the silence act like a cushion around her.

‘The man who is my husband...'
My husband
—the words sounded strained upon her lips. She swallowed again. ‘He owns this dockyard. But then you already know that, do you not? I should have realised when you referred to him as
Ned
Stratham on the day of the wedding. How could you not know, working here?'

‘Ned Stratham does not own this dockyard, Emma. I do.'

She stared at him in shock.

‘The business is mine. The money. The responsibility that all I employ here earn a decent wage in decent conditions. Ned transferred it to me, just before the wedding, when he came to speak to me.'

There was a resounding silence while she took in the magnitude of what he was telling her.

‘Is he here, today...?' She tried to make the question sound casual and unimportant.

‘He has not been here all week.' But he misunderstood her reason for asking. ‘You may rest assured our conversation will not be interrupted by Ned or any other.'

Her stomach squeezed tight.

There was a silence. She knew she had to tell him, all, not just a part.

‘It was not Ned that tried to...compromise me...in Colonel Morley's library. It was Devlin.'

‘Devlin?' Her father frowned.

She nodded. ‘Ned stopped him, then swapped their roles. He took the blame and made Devlin the hero.'

‘He did not tell me that part of it.'

‘There is something else I need to tell you, Papa. About Ned.'

He did not ask what. Waited with his usual restful patience that helped ease the hard heavy beat of her heart.

‘You had better sit down.'

But he did not move. Just stood there, with an almost peaceful expression.

She touched her knuckles to her mouth. Then let her hand fall away. Took a breath and looked up into her father's face. ‘Ned...' She swallowed. Took another breath. Tried again. ‘Ned Stratham is the man Kit gambled against that night, Papa.'

Her father's face registered nothing of shock. Only calm acceptance.

‘You already know?'

He nodded. ‘Ned told me who he was when he came to ask for your hand.'

‘And you let him wed me?' She stared at him aghast.

‘Would you rather have faced ruin and condemnation?'

‘Why did you not tell me?'

‘Because you would not have married him had I done so.'

‘And you wanted me to marry the man that ruined us?' She could not believe what she was hearing.

‘No, Emma,' he said gently. ‘I did not want that.'

‘But that is what you got. What we both got.'

‘Is it?' he asked, his eyes raking hers. ‘If we are honest with ourselves, hard though it is to admit, my dearest girl, we both know that is not true.' He touched a light kiss to her cheek. ‘You should go home to your husband, Emma.'

She could not tell him that Ned had gone. She just took her leave of him and began the long walk home.

Home. To the mansion in Cavendish Square. But her mind was a myriad of confusion and her cheeks were damp from silent tears when she got there.

* * *

She kept his bedchamber exactly as he had left it. Stopped the maid changing the linen on the bed. Where Ned's head had lain upon the pillow still held the faint scent of him. In the long dark hours of the night she held it to her. And her body throbbed for him. And her heart ached for him. And her soul felt small and empty without him.

There were so many thoughts going round in her head. So many emotions conflicting and confused. Love and anger. Blame and injustice. Guilt and regret. Grief and loss. They clamoured relentlessly through her body, stoked her mind in constant motion. One thought more than all the others.

There could be nothing of sleep. She rose. Pulled a shawl around her nightdress. Crossed the darkened room. She opened the curtains and stood there at the window, looking out into the darkness of the night.

The street lamps had extinguished. There was no moon. Only a scattering of tiny stars, silver-bright sparkling pinheads on the black velvet of the sky.

Her father's words whispered again through her head:
If we are honest with ourselves, hard though it is to admit, my dearest girl, we both know that is not true.

She understood. She had always understood. All of the rest of it had been excuses and misplaced blame. She had lied to herself because it was easier than facing the truth.

Ned Stratham was not the man who had ruined her family. It was Kit who had done that. She allowed the thought freedom for the first time. It hurt. But the hurt was less than she had expected. It was pale in comparison to the rest of what she was feeling.

Ned might have taken the money, but coming from where he did, how could she honestly blame him? Had she walked in his shoes, would she have turned away so readily from such temptation?

And her heart ached all the more for the man who was her husband.

* * *

At five o'clock the next morning Emma sat at Ned's desk. She was still wearing yesterday's dress and her head throbbed with fatigue.

The house seemed dead. The street outside had not yet woken. Silence hissed in her ears. She glanced down at where her hands lay upon the desk, and the token within them. Rubbed her fingers upon it, wondered if it really would bestow luck.

‘Bring him back to me,' she whispered. ‘Please, God, bring him back to me.' Because he might be the man who had faced Kit across a card table in a smoky gaming den, he might be the man who had won her family's money, but none of that changed the fact that she loved Ned Stratham. And none of it changed the fact that in her bones she felt he was a good man.

She tried tipping the token along her knuckles as Ned always did, but it fell off and rolled to land upon the desk's surface time and again. So she left it where it lay. Stroked a finger against it. An old gaming token. What had his mother lost that she would give up her child? She thought of Kit and the night he had left for the gaming hell with Devlin and Hunter. She thought of Kit facing Ned across a table in Old Moll's Den. She lifted the token and flicked it to spin upon the smooth dark polish of the desk.

She did not hear its soft whir, only the whisper of the words Devlin had spoken,
No one put a pistol to his head and forced him to the gaming tables.

Devlin had been there that night. Devlin must have known exactly what had happened. The thought only struck her then. So obvious that she wondered that she had not realised it before.

If Devlin was there that night, then he must always have known who Ned was. It explained Devlin's contempt, the tension that had always crackled between him and Ned—indeed, between Ned and the rest of her brother's friends who had been with him on that fateful night. It explained, too, why Devlin had tried so hard to keep her away from Ned.

What it did not explain was why Devlin did not just tell her that fact? He must have known that telling her that one truth would have worked far better than any warnings or threats or innuendoes.

If Devlin wished to save her from Ned, what better way than that? And yet Devlin had not.

Something uneasy stroked down her spine. That sense that there was something she was missing. A feeling that something was not right. That there was more to the story than Ned had told her. The token stopped spinning and landed flat on the desk before her with a soft clink.

The air rippled with mystery. She frowned and stared down at the token as if it held the answer. It did not, of course, but she knew who did and she knew, too, where to find him. She smiled a grim determined smile and, scooping the token up from the desk, placed it safe inside her pocket. Then she rang for the carriage and went to fetch the long dark winter cloak that Ned had bought for her.

Chapter Eighteen

T
he footman who opened the door of the St James's town house had a face that did not betray the least shock to find a woman standing on the doorstep at six o'clock in the morning, almost as if it were not so unusual an occurrence.

‘If you would be so good as to call back later, madam. His lordship has not yet risen.'

‘Then you had better wake him and tell him that Mrs Stratham is here to speak with him.'

Only once she was inside did she push back the hood of the cloak and look around her.

It was a distinctly masculine drawing room. Dark red walls. A black-onyx fireplace rather than the usual white. And above it a painting of an exotic-looking woman in a shockingly intimate pose. Emma studied it in horrified fascination.

* * *

He appeared some fifteen minutes later, smartly dressed in a shirt and cravat so white that they gleamed in the soft autumn daylight. But his dark hair was ruffled and his chin and cheeks were blue shadowed with beard stubble.

‘Devlin.' She tried not to think of the last time they had been alone together.

‘Emma.' His voice was gravelled in a way that hinted at his excesses of the night before. ‘Or rather I should say Mrs Stratham.' He smiled in that easy way of his. ‘Coffee, or perhaps you take chocolate in the morning. Kit always did.'

‘No, thank you. I am not here for refreshment.'

‘No, I rather suspected as much.' He walked over and poured himself a brandy. Glanced up and saw her watching him with disapproval. ‘Hair of the dog. I over-imbibed last night,' he said by way of explanation, and took a swig. ‘Does your husband know you are here?'

‘He does not.'

‘I see.'

She should have been afraid. Given what he had done to her, being here with him alone was a foolhardy position in which to place herself. But she felt nothing of fear because, with Ned's confession, she finally understood.

There was a small silence in which he topped up his glass again and moved to stand before the fireplace. He looked at her. Waited for what she had to say. Almost as if he knew.

‘In Colonel Morley's library that night...' she began. Stopped. Glanced away in embarrassment.

‘My sincere apologies over our little...misunderstanding.' He looked as uncomfortable as she felt at the mention of what had happened between them that night.

‘It was hardly that.'

He dipped his head, raised an eyebrow, half-agreement, half-disagreement, and took another sip of brandy.

‘You said I should have married you.'

‘And so you should have.' There was nothing of jest or humour in his face now, only a deadly earnest. ‘But it is too late now. You should go home, Emma. Married woman or not, I do not need to tell you what it would do to your reputation were you to be seen here.' He looked remote, cool, emotionally detached. A world away from the man that night in the library.

But she just stood there. ‘You really were trying to save me, just as you said.'

‘You know,' he said so softly that it was almost a whisper. ‘Who he is. That is why you are here.'

She nodded. ‘He told me.'

Devlin closed his eyes momentarily. And when he opened them he glanced away. ‘I did try to save you from him.'

‘I know.' She understood everything that Devlin had done had been to save her from Ned. ‘That is why you proposed marriage.'

‘Yes.'

‘Why you tried to compromise me when I refused—to force me to the altar.'

‘Monteith and the others were supposed to interrupt us kissing. I am sorry for forcing you, but I would have done anything to stop him getting his filthy hands on you.'

‘Anything,' she said. ‘And yet all you had to do was tell me who he was. That he was the man who won against Kit that night. Why did you not just tell me, Devlin? That one small fact?'

‘Because of the oath, of course.' He finished the brandy from his glass. Moved to the decanter and poured himself another. ‘Had I told you, Stratham would have made Kit's cheating public and none of us could allow that.'

The world seemed to fall away from beneath her feet. Her stomach plummeted to meet her shoes. There was a cold seeping dread of realisation through her blood. She stared at Devlin as the full horror of his words hit home. ‘Kit cheated?' The voice that asked the question did not sound like her own.

‘Ah,' said Devlin softly. ‘Stratham did not tell you that bit.'

‘No,' she said. ‘He told me nothing of any cheating. But you are going to tell me what happened that night, Devlin. You are going to tell me it all.'

And he did. How they had taken to frequenting Old Moll's Den in the East End. How Stratham had toyed with them, and baited them, winning from them, night after night.

‘Sitting there, tumbling that token of his over his fingers without cease. Taunting us.' Devlin's face was hard at the memory. ‘We would have called it quits, but Kit would not have it. He was convinced he could beat Stratham. I laughed at him. Ridiculed him.
Like you did the last time?
I said to him. I did not realise what it would push Kit to do.' Devlin closed his eyes, but not before she had seen the guilt and pain in them. ‘He persuaded us to go back to Old Moll's.
One more time
, he said.
Knew he could win
, he said. So we went. And we played again against Stratham and his friends. And low and behold, Kit did it, just as he said he would. He won. Then Stratham and his toughs accused Kit of cheating. We thought at first it was just bad form on their half, just a ruse to get out of paying.'

There was a grim tortured look on Devlin's face, and a faraway look in his eyes, as if he had gone back two years and was there once more in the smoky haze of Old Moll's Den.

‘
Pull up your sleeves
, Stratham commanded. Kit refused, of course, as every one of us would have done. We were all incensed on his behalf. All of our honours slurred. All ready to fight.

‘
Pull up your sleeves or I will do it for you
, said Stratham again. And Kit did.'

Devlin met her eyes. ‘There were cards hidden there. He had cheated.'

There was a deafening silence in the room.

She swallowed down the bitterness in her throat.

‘Have you any idea what happens to men that cheat at cards in Whitechapel, Emma?'

‘I think I might hazard a guess.' But she knew. She knew in detail and it sent a chill through her bones.

He looked away, his expression hard, reliving the memory of that night. ‘He would have been found washed up on the banks of the Thames.'

And that would have been a mercy after what else they would have done to him.

‘They were going to lynch him. But Stratham said he would settle for all or quits. Everything that Kit had staked on that table. One turn of the cards. Just Kit and Stratham.

‘They would not trust Kit to deal. We would not trust Stratham. So Stratham had me deal the cards.' Devlin held her gaze hard. ‘I dealt your brother that final hand, Emma. Not anyone else. I dealt and he lost.'

Lost the money, but kept his life and all of his limbs, she thought.

‘Stratham struck a deal. We were to say nothing of who he was and how he had come by his wealth. In exchange he would keep quiet on Kit's cheating. But he never lost an opportunity to remind us. He was a card shark who played us. Then, and now. Every time I look at him I remember.' There was both loathing and guilt in his eyes as he spoke the bitter words. Then he met her gaze. ‘But better to lose every penny, Emma, than bear the other disgrace.'

Of being a cheat. Within a society which deemed gambling debts ones of honour, there was no greater disgrace. She nodded, knowing that if it ever got out that her brother had cheated at cards there would no way back for any of them.

‘I am sorry, Emma, for Kit, for the marriage to Stratham and for the rest of it.'

She gave another nod. ‘I blamed you for corrupting my brother, but the truth was Kit needed no corrupting. You tried to protect him...and me.' And she had blamed Ned for taking the money, when what he had done was something much more.

‘But not well enough,' said Devlin quietly. ‘I did not stop Stratham when it came to you.'

‘And I am glad of it,' she said. ‘He is not what you think him, Devlin. He is a man of integrity and honour.'

Devlin said nothing, but she could see in his eyes that he did not believe her.

‘I love him, Devlin. I love him with all my heart.'

Silence echoed her admission.

‘I cannot pretend to agree with your measure of Stratham, but I am glad of your happiness,' Devlin finally said.

They looked at one another for a moment.

‘You should go to him.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘I should. I will.'

‘I wish you all the best,' he said and bowed.

Emma pulled up the deep hood of her cloak and, with her identity hidden from any early morning prying eyes, she slipped away from the St James's town house.

* * *

She did not go home, but went instead to another man's house in a respectable street not so very far away.

‘Mrs Stratham.' Rob Finchley received her as uneasily as the last time.

‘Mr Finchley. Ned said I was to come to you, if I had a problem.'

‘How may I be of help?' He gestured to the red-covered sofas in the neat and tidy drawing room.

But Emma shook her head and stayed where she was.

‘You can tell me where Ned is.'

‘I've already told you, Mrs Stratham, I don't know where he is.'

Silence.

‘You were there that night in Old Moll's Den.'

‘I was there.' His expression was cool, his jaw stiff and tight.

‘Ned did not tell me that my brother was a cheat.'

His eyes moved to hers. ‘Who told you?'

‘Devlin let it slip. He thought Ned had already told me.'

‘Ned would never have told you.'

‘I know.' And she knew, too, why. ‘I love him, Mr Finchley. I want him to come home. So you see why I need to find him.'

An uncomfortable expression crossed Rob Finchley's face. He looked away.

‘Please, sir. I am begging you. Please tell me where he is.'

Rob Finchley swallowed. She heard him blow out a breath. He raked a hand through his hair before finally meeting her gaze once more; and when it did she saw compassion in his eyes.

‘I really don't know the answer to your question, Mrs Stratham.'

‘But he must have left a means for you to contact him.'

Rob Finchley shook his head.

She stared at him, feeling her hope shrink and diminish with what she saw in his face.

‘Loving you, knowing who you were...it tore him apart.'

Just as she was tearing apart. She had spoken such cruel words to him. She had let him walk away when he had looked at her for one single word to stay.

‘I have to find him, Mr Finchley.'

‘I wish you luck, truly I do, ma'am. But if Ned doesn't want to be found, I don't think that you will find him.'

* * *

Panic was rising in Emma, and cold dread. Back in Ned's study in Cavendish Square she pulled open every drawer, rummaging through them, emptying the neat piles of legal papers that Mr Kerr had left on to the surface of the desk. There was nothing else there. She opened cupboards and checked the shelves of the library with their blue leather-bound books.

She searched his bedchamber and dressing room, went through the pockets of every tailcoat in his wardrobe. But there was nothing.

She worked her way through his clothes' chest, through each pair of breeches and every waistcoat folded neatly within, and found not a single clue as to where he might have gone.

She pressed the waistcoat to her nose, inhaling the scent of him. She would not let herself weep, just pressed on with an utter determination to find him.

She moved to the wardrobe. Inside hung the shabby leather jacket and trousers he had worn in Whitechapel. Once they had been brown, now they had faded to a soft silvered birch. She traced her fingers against the jacket, remembering the very first time she had seen him, remembering the first moment those blue, blue eyes had looked into hers and tilted the axis of her world, and made beautiful butterflies flutter in her stomach.

Just as with everything else, the pockets were empty. But these clothes were not like all the others. Because they whispered to her another place she might seek him.

* * *

‘Emma.' Nancy glanced up from behind the bar of the Red Lion Chop-House. ‘Didn't expect to see you back here, girl.' The older woman's eyes darted over Emma's fine clothes, over her face, taking it all in in an instant.

The hour was still relatively early. Three diehard regulars sat at a table, eyeing Emma with curiosity. Other than them the place was empty.

There was the sound of the cleaver chopping against the wooden block and Tom's cheery whistling coming from the kitchen. A new girl was mopping a spill from the floor without enthusiasm.

Paulette wandered over from where she was scraping wax from a table in the corner. ‘All right, Em? Look at you! Ain't you the fancy lady!'

Emma gave both Paulette and Nancy a hug.

‘I'm looking for Ned Stratham.'

‘All right.' Nancy raised her brows. ‘You and him still walking out?'

‘In a manner of speaking.'

‘Is it serious?' asked Paulette.

‘Very,' said Emma. ‘I need to find him. Urgently.'

She saw Nancy and Paulette exchange a look.

‘Like that, is it?' Nancy set the cloth she had been wiping the ale taps with down on the counter.

‘Has he been in?' Emma asked.

‘We've had neither sight nor sound of Ned Stratham in months,' Nancy replied.

‘Since I told him you'd gone for a lady's maid, he ain't been back,' said Paulette.