The Rogue's Proposal (4 page)

Jane said nothing. She looked stern but resigned—so much older than her twenty years.
This past spring should have been her second Season—she’d received five offers of
marriage last year, including one from a baron. She’d turned them all down.

Of course, they hadn’t had the money for a Season this year. Now that they were poor,
she’d told Emma she would accept any one of the five if given the opportunity. But,
of course, none of those offers still stood. No one paid attention to either Emma
or Jane now.

“Thank you, Jane.” After lowering the valise to the floor, Emma stepped forward to
embrace her sister. “Take care of him.”

“I will.”

“I’ll find a way to get Papa’s money back,” Emma promised. “At least, I shall try…”

“I know you will,” Jane said. “When you’re determined, nothing can stop you.”

Luke blinked hard. His eyes were gritty. He felt like he hadn’t slept more than half
an hour, though by the way daylight blazed through the window, it had to be noon.
Or later.

A slight movement drew his attention, and he blinked again as the figure of a woman
wearing black and white came into focus. She was seated in the sole chair in the room,
a spindly wooden thing tucked into the corner. She was gazing at him with an ever-so-patient
expression on her lovely face.

“You have clothes on,” he said, his voice rasping over his dry throat. “How unacceptable.”

Her golden-brown eyes met his, and she raised a brow. “Many people prefer to utilize
clothing at this hour of the day. I am one of them.”

He closed his dry eyes and fell back against the pillow, his lips attempting to twitch
into a smile.

He’d enjoyed her company last night, even though she’d stood stiff when he’d kissed
her. She’d still tasted sweet. Then she’d made him a proposition and he hadn’t been
able to resist—even with her demand that they not engage in “relations.”

He chuckled out loud at that memory.

He’d give her time. He wasn’t one to force an unwilling woman. But he’d wear her down.
Because, even lying here in an uncomfortable bed in a strange inn in Bristol, he wanted
her beside him. Naked.

It seemed he’d have plenty of time to work on her resistance. She’d insisted they
travel together, after all.

He opened his eyes to find her still gazing at him with that imperturbable expression
that wound him in knots and made him want to knock down her wall of defenses, one
brick at a time.

“Good morning, Emma,” he murmured.

“Good morning, my lord.”

“Luke.”

She gave him an almost-smile. “Luke. Do you truly prefer that? Surely you are more
accustomed to ‘my lord’?”

That low and sultry voice washed over him, and he couldn’t prevent his body, already
on alert just from her presence in the room, from hardening.

“Mmm,” was his only response. He damn well did prefer Luke. That was his real name,
given to him by his real mother. Everything else was a sham. And for some reason,
while he was usually content to allow his women to call him whatever the hell they
liked, he wanted Emma to call him by his true name. Even if he wasn’t about to tell
her why.

“I think I shall like calling you Luke. Calling the son of a duke by his Christian
name—it’s such a brazen thing to do. I shall feel as if I’m doing something extremely
wicked each and every time I say it.”

“Excellent,” Luke said. “When the words
wicked
and
brazen
are connected to you, they appeal to me very much.”

She shook her head, laughing softly as he stretched and shifted his feet over the
edge of the bed. He was wearing only a shirt, but she didn’t seem to mind. Obviously
she’d seen men dressed only in their shirtsleeves and leaving their beds before.

That thought did not improve his mood.

She was a contradiction. Stoic, then playful. Flirtatious, then frigid. He wondered
what thoughts were really going through that pretty little head of hers.

He pulled on his trousers, which had been strewn on the floor beside his feet. He
rose and stretched, then used the bellpull to call for some water to wash.

He turned to Emma, who, save for the lack of the little white cap, looked exactly
as she had last night. Even her clothes looked the same, with nary a wrinkle. He wondered
briefly whether she’d sat there all night, then furrowed his brow. He vaguely remembered
her leaving just before he’d removed his clothes and fallen into an exhausted heap
on the bed.

He hadn’t dreamed at all last night. He’d slept like the dead. Thank God.

“What time is it?”

“A little past noon,” she said.

He sighed, rubbing his temple to soothe the headache forming there.

“Can I fetch you something? Something to eat or drink, perhaps?”

“No,” he said. He’d rung for a servant. He wasn’t about to make a lady like Emma Curtis
play serving girl for him. “Thank you,” he added belatedly.

He dropped his hand and slanted his gaze toward her. “God knows how long you’ve been
sitting there waiting for me to awaken. I assume you have a plan that I have delayed
by my late rising?”

Hell, she looked like a woman with a plan, all tidy and calm. While he was muzzy-headed
and had slept half the day away.

She pressed her lips together. Such delectable, plump lips. He wanted another taste
of her ripe sweetness.

“Well,” she said slowly, “it was no hardship to watch you sleep, I must admit. You
look rather innocent and boyish in repose.”

Him, innocent? Boyish? He snorted. She ignored it.

“However, I have been thinking of how to proceed,” she said, all business now. “I
suppose we ought to begin by analyzing the papers that contain the clues as to where
we might locate Roger Morton.”

He nodded.

“And then we should go.”

“Care to tell me where we’re going?”

“Scotland.”

He raised his brows. “Ah. Perhaps I should see these papers.”

“Of course.” She rose and knelt down beside the tattered valise that sat beside the
chair. She removed a small pile of carefully folded clothes, and Luke realized that
was all she planned to bring on their journey. It couldn’t have been more than one
dress. Not even half the amount of clothing he carted about everywhere.

She removed a file, set it on the small, round table, and then returned the clothing
to her bag.

A servant knocked, and Luke opened the door. He ordered water to wash and a light
luncheon for both of them, then turned back to her. She’d resumed her seat and was
patiently waiting, hands folded in her lap.

He took two steps toward her—it was a damned small room—and held out his hand. “Let
me see.”

She took the first sheet of parchment from the file and handed it to him.

He looked it over. “It appears to be a receipt for a transfer of funds from the Bank
of England.”

“Yes, that’s exactly what it is. However, that is not my father’s signature. It is
a forgery.”

“You believe Roger Morton forged your father’s signature? Then took your father’s
money and ran?”

“Yes. But before he left Bristol, he killed my husband. Henry was involved somehow—I
don’t know exactly how. He must have known Morton’s intentions, and…” Her voice dwindled.

He looked at her over the top of the wrinkled sheet, noting the color high on her
cheeks. How sickening it must be to discover that your own husband was involved in
a scheme to steal your family’s money.

“How much did Morton take in total?” he asked in a low voice.

“All of it.”

He released a slow breath and glanced at the document. The amount was over five thousand
pounds. “Was there more than this?”

“Yes.” Her voice was clipped. “Quite a bit more.”

“Do you know where the rest of it went?”

She shook her head. “No. That is the only paper that struck me as odd when I was looking
through my husband’s personal effects after he died. At first, I wondered at the large
withdrawal. When I went to my father, he knew nothing about it.”

“Why would your husband have this in his possession?”

“He knew Morton. They had an association of some kind.” The delicate, pale column
of her throat moved as she swallowed and looked away. Her fingers tapped her knee
as they had tapped the table down at the tavern last night. “I went to the street
in Bristol listed as the location of delivery for the funds. The landlady was very
helpful—she told me that a man named Roger Morton boarded there occasionally but hadn’t
been there for some time—not since”—she took a steadying breath—“since the date of
my husband’s death.”

She suddenly looked vulnerable. Alone. Some unfamiliar instinct urged him to go to
her. To take her into his arms and hold her and tell her everything would be all right.

But he couldn’t do that. How could he? He wouldn’t even know if he’d be lying.

Emma took another shaky breath and continued. “The landlady let me in to search Morton’s
rooms. It was there that I found an unopened letter.” She gestured to the remaining
sheet of paper she held in front of her. “When I questioned the landlady later, she
told me it had been delivered by the post on the eighteenth of September of last year.”

She handed him the sheet of stationery, and he realized then that her evidence consisted
of only these two sheets—the money transfer to a home let by Roger Morton and this
letter.

He unfolded it and read.

Luke read the letter twice, then glanced up at Emma. Today was the seventh of October.
Just over a full year after the deadline stated in this letter.

Emma’s head was bare, her bonnet hanging from its strings from one of the pegs on
the wall behind her. Sunlight burnished her glorious hair, making it shine in various
shades of bronze and mahogany and gold. But it was twisted severely at her nape. So
severely that no tendrils curled around her ears as they had last night.

Her body was coiled tight, just like her hair, her only movement that never-ending
tapping of her fingers. He wanted her limp and responsive in his arms…in his bed.
He wanted to pull out her pins and loosen that glorious, thick fall of russet beauty.
He wanted to find the pins that kept her body so tightly coiled and pull those away
as well.

And perhaps, if he found this bastard Roger Morton for her, he could do just that.

“When was your husband killed?” he asked quietly.

“Last year on the seventeenth of September.”

So, the letter had been delivered to Morton’s residence the day after he’d finished
his nasty business with Curtis. The letter had never been opened, so clearly Morton
had already escaped from Bristol by then.

“I see why you suspect Morton after reading this. This certainly implicates him in
the murder of your husband. And it implicates this Macmillan fellow as an accomplice.”

“Yes.” Her gaze was flat and impenetrable. He wondered if she mourned Curtis. She
seemed more angry than heartbroken.

“How was he killed?”

She looked down at the hands clasped in her lap. “Drowned in the Avon. At first, we
thought nothing of it. It wasn’t the first time he’d been gone all night, and—”

“He’d been gone all night?”

“Well…yes.”

“Where to?”

Her chest rose and fell, drawing his eyes to her bosom.

For hell’s sake, Luke, focus!

“I don’t know. I thought perhaps one of the taverns on the waterfront. Or maybe one
of the gaming hells—”

“How long had you been married?” He’d forgotten what she’d told him last night; he
knew only that it had not been long.

“Three months.”

He narrowed his eyes. What kind of newlywed man would leave his wife—especially a
wife who was as fine a creature as Emma—alone at home while he went off to carouse
in a common, dirty tavern or a dishonest gaming hell?

Gazing at her pink cheeks and pale complexion, at those sinful lips, he blew out a
breath. “How did you learn about his death?”

“By the following night, I was very worried. He’d never been gone that long. My sister
and I alerted the authorities, and they began to search for him. Witnesses told the
constable that he had been drunk, that they’d seen him leaving a pub and heading toward
the riverfront with another man. Later they found Henry’s sodden, ruined coat and
then nearby a soiled handkerchief embroidered with the initials R.M. I thought the
discovery of the handkerchief was a random occurrence until I discovered Roger Morton’s
involvement later.”

Emma twisted her hands in her lap as the servants arrived with food and a basin of
water. There wasn’t space for all of it on the tiny table, so Luke directed them to
place the items in various locations on the bed and the floor.

She didn’t look at him as he washed as best as he could without removing his clothes.
Then he moved the table closer to the bed and laid the tray of food on it. He gestured
for her to move her chair across the table from him as he used the edge of the bed
as his chair. She was still gazing into her lap, her shoulders rising and falling
with each deep intake of breath.

“Come, Emma,” he said softly. “Eat.”

She looked up at him for the first time in several minutes. Then she nodded and dragged
the chair a few inches so she could sit on the other side of the table from him.

The meal was simple country fare, but delicious. The smells of gravy and roasted meat
wafted through the room. A pigeon pie, roasted vegetables, an apple tart, and weak
ale to wash it all down. Luke divided the portions equally between their two plates
and didn’t pick up his own fork until she had hers in hand and was moving the food
around on her plate.