Harlequin Historical September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: The Lone Sheriff\The Gentleman Rogue\Never Trust a Rebel (33 page)

There was an apprehensive feeling in her bones, a gnawing sense that all was not well.

Rob Finchley looked like he was worried, too, and that he was struggling to pacify Misbourne. The earl and his son's expressions were cool and remote. They were men that few others would risk insulting, having something rather dark and silent and sinister about them.

‘I wonder where Stratham has got to,' Lady Lamerton whispered in her ear. Other people were beginning to notice, too.

Unease made the skin on the nape of Emma's neck goosepimple.

When Lady Lamerton's friends wandered over to speak to the dowager, Emma exchanged civilities with them, then sank into the background and watched Misbourne.

The earl was saying something to his son. He looked irritated and as if he were on the verge of leaving.

The most important deal of my life.
Ned would not have just walked out on it. Emma knew that something was wrong. She glanced at Lady Lamerton and her friends in full gossip, then slipped away into the shadows towards the glasshouses.

The first glasshouse had been set up with screens for use as a withdrawing room for the ladies. It was while on her way towards the second that she saw the dark still shape lying between the tall hedging that led into the maze. Her stomach dropped in dread and an iciness stole through her blood because, even in the darkness, she recognised that the shape was the body of a man; a man that the moonlight showed with white shirt and cravat...and fair hair.

Chapter Ten

E
mma ran the distance and fell to her knees at his side.

His eyes were closed, his bottom lip grazed as if from a fist. She touched her hand to his neck, felt the beat of his heart beneath her fingers and knew he still lived.

‘Ned!' she whispered his name urgently. ‘Ned!' Delivered light butterfly slaps to his cheeks. Kissed his mouth to shock some response from him.

He gave a low moan, opened his eyes, looked directly into hers for a heartbeat and then another, sharing her breath, as the confusion cleared.

‘Thank God,' she breathed.

He sat up, clutching a hand to his side. ‘How long have I been away?'

‘About twenty minutes or so.'

‘Is Misbourne still there?'

When she nodded he got to his feet, with a wince. ‘I need to get back to him.' But she glanced down to see his tailcoat open and the seep of a sinister dark stain over his pale waistcoat.

‘You are bleeding!' Her heart twisted in her chest. ‘I will fetch help.'

‘No!' He caught hold of her hand. His eyes held hers, resolute and determined.

She gave a nod, understanding what he needed.

‘I'll make a pad to staunch the worst of the bleeding, if you could rip long strips from your petticoat to tie it in place.'

She did as he asked. There was nothing of false modesty in his seeing her legs. They both knew the absolute urgency of this.

He pulled up his shirt. In the moonlight the smear of blood glistened wet and dark on his pale hard-muscled belly. She could see the dark slash of a wound before he pressed his folded handkerchief to it.

‘What happened?' She began to wind the strips of petticoat tight around his waist to secure the handkerchief in place as best she could.

‘I received a message from you that you needed my help and asking to meet here.'

‘I did not send any message.'

‘I realised that when I saw the welcome party waiting for me.'

She swallowed and did not ask how many men it had taken to fell him, just concentrated on tying the strips off.

As he dropped his shirt into place she saw the long tear in the material where the knife had cut.

‘It's worse than it looks. They were paid to beat me, not kill me.'

‘Someone does not like you,' she said.

‘Quite a few people,' he replied as she dusted down the shoulders and back of his tailcoat.

But there was one name that whispered between them.

‘Devlin would not stoop so low...not over a dance.'

Ned just gave a grim smile. ‘Go back now so that we are not seen to return together.' He did not need to tell her what that would do to her reputation. ‘I'll finish up here and follow in a few minutes.'

She nodded. ‘Good luck with Misbourne.' Reaching a hand to his face, she wiped a smear of blood from his cheek.

Their eyes held for a tiny second more before she dropped her hand and hurried back to the play.

* * *

Lady Lamerton was still talking to her circle as Emma stopped to speak to an old school friend not so far away from where Misbourne stood...as if that was what she had been doing all of the time.

The bell rang to sound the end of the interval.

Emma headed back to Lady Lamerton.

‘Was that Phoebe Hunter I saw you talking to?'

‘It was.'

‘I thought you and she no longer spoke.'

‘We did not. But if I am putting the past behind me with so many people, Phoebe should be the first of them. You know she is having renovations done at Blackloch and a new nursery built.'

‘Indeed?' The dowager looked pleased with the news. The bell rang for the end of the interval and they resumed their seats once more.

The players strolled upon the stage, just as Ned slipped into his seat.

He looked just as he had done when he left—smartly and expensively dressed, his tailcoat fastened neatly in place. No one save him and Emma would ever have known what lay beneath.

* * *

Rob eyed the wound as Ned changed the dressing on his belly later that night. ‘Luck of the devil, a little bit deeper and they'd have spilled your guts.'

‘Not the devil,' Ned said and thought how the ivory token tucked in the pocket of his waistcoat had deflected the blade. ‘Besides, they weren't trying to kill me.'

‘Doesn't look that way to me.'

‘The knives only came out in retaliation for the loss of their friends.'

Rob's eyes were steady on his. ‘What did you do with the bodies?'

‘They were gone when I came round. They must have taken them with them.'

‘And you dressed the wound yourself?'

‘I had help.'

Rob looked at him in question.

‘Emma Northcote.'

‘You are kidding.'

Ned met Rob's gaze and raised his eyebrow.

Rob closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘I'm not even going to ask.'

‘Better that way,' Ned said.

‘What the hell was she doing with you, Ned?'

‘I thought you weren't going to ask.'

‘You've still got feelings for her.'

Ned pulled his shirt back down into place, and threw the brandy-soaked bloodied rags on to the fire.

There was a silence.

Ned was not a man who talked about feelings. He had quashed ‘feelings' a long time ago. Feelings made one weak and open to hurt. Feelings hindered, not helped with survival. But what was between him and Emma Northcote, this thing that he felt... He said nothing and his silence was as loud as if he had shouted his agreement to Rob's statement.

Rob glanced away, uneasy and nervous. Bit at his thumbnail. ‘If Devlin organised what happened in the Botanical Gardens because you cut in on a dance with her, just think what he would do if you go after her.'

‘I'm not going after her. How could I, knowing who she is? Besides, this isn't about Devlin.'

‘No? If he talks, then you kiss goodbye to Misbourne. You kiss goodbye to it all.'

‘You know Devlin can't talk.'

‘There's something else you should know.' Rob looked away again, his manner awkward, his hand rubbing the back of his neck. ‘I was asking around about her, sniffing for some gossip on her and Devlin. You said there was something between them.'

‘And is there?' Ned felt his focus sharpen.

Rob gave a nod. ‘Seems she blames him and his pals for leading her brother astray. Little Kit Northcote running with the big bad boys.'

Ned shook his head and gave an ironic laugh.

‘I thought so, too,' said Rob. ‘Just thought you should know.'

‘Thank you, Rob.'

‘You managed to smooth it over with Misbourne?'

Ned gave a nod.

‘What did you tell him?'

‘He didn't ask and I didn't tell.'

‘Probably saw the bruise on your forehead and the grazes on your knuckles and guessed how you got them.'

‘It was too dark to see.'

‘It won't be tomorrow.'

Ned lifted the lid of the silver platter on his desk to reveal a thick slab of raw steak.

Rob grinned. ‘I see you've thought of tomorrow already. Nothing stops bruising better than a raw steak compress.'

But when Rob left a few minutes later it was not bruises or Misbourne that Ned was thinking of, but the woman who had helped him that night. Had she not come looking for him, Misbourne might have walked. But she
had
come and she had helped him, not baulking from the blood or the mess or what had to be done, although it had shaken her. It seemed he could still feel the tremble of her fingers against his face, wiping away blood he could not see, and the brush of her kiss that had brought him to his senses.

He poured himself another gin and drank it down.

You know Devlin can't talk.

Once that had been a certainty. Now, Ned was no longer so sure. Because, for all his assertions to Rob, after tonight he could no longer deny he still cared for Emma. He cared for her and if Devlin was to realise that fact then all bets were off.

It was not an eventuality Ned could afford to risk.

He took another swig of gin and stared into the flicker of the flames upon the hearth.

He had to stay well away from her. For both their sakes.

* * *

Emma could not sleep that night.

Her mind kept reliving the bloodied mess of Ned's injury and the awful shock of finding him lying there on the grass. She had thought him dead. Dead! And that stomach-dropping moment had been one of the worst in her life.

She looked down on to the quiet moonlit street, watching the trundle of the soil cart and the skulking shadow of a cat creeping behind it.

Every time she closed her eyes she saw that seeping stain so dark against the white glow of Ned's shirt, the torn linen and, beneath it, the glistening gash that gaped in the muscle of his belly. Such a thin black line to produce so much blood. His skin had been slick with it beneath her fingers. It seemed even now that she could still smell it in the air and taste its metallic tang on her tongue. Her stomach knotted at the memory. It felt like a hand had taken hold of her heart and squeezed, and would not stop squeezing.

That Devlin could have stooped so low... He was a rake, a selfish, arrogant wastrel. But despite all of that she had always thought him a gentleman. Ned himself had said he had enemies. A man from trade would always have enemies amongst the
ton
.

She shivered and pulled her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. But it was not the cold that made her shiver. She still loved him. It was not a good realisation. She closed her eyes, knowing that it was all wrong.

He was looking for the daughter of a title, everyone knew that. He might desire her, he had always desired her, but he would never marry her.

Ned was ambitious. He was an empire builder. He had his plans. And she had both her pride and her duty. A hint of scandal and her position with Lady Lamerton would be lost and with it her best hope of finding Kit. Her father was relying on her. And given what had happened between them in Whitechapel...
Fool me once and shame on you. Fool me twice and shame on me.
The old saying whispered through her head.

She loved him, but she was not a fool.

So she would wish him luck in his search for a bride and leave him to the marriage mart.

* * *

Ned was sitting alone on a wooden bench in Green Park, looking out over a view that could not have been more different than the one from another bench a few miles across the city in Whitechapel. He needed space to think outside the walls of the mansion in Cavendish Square. He needed to be alone to think. And given his schedule for meetings tonight he could not go to Whitechapel. If he were honest, it was not the only reason he was not going to Whitechapel. He had not been back since Emma had arrived in Mayfair.

The sky above was leaden, the air unnaturally still. There was barely a breath of movement. The atmosphere seemed to radiate a tension that made people uncomfortable and unsettled and all the while not knowing why. The portent of a storm to come. It kept them indoors, or hurrying along the streets to get there. It cleared the sweep of undulating green grass and its paths so that he had the place to himself, almost, save for the odd figure or two rushing away into the distance to escape that feeling and what was to come.

Ned's feeling of discomfort could not be so easily remedied. Not by returning to the house in Cavendish Square. Or by anything as simple as waiting for the storm to pass.

I'm not going after her. How could I, knowing who she is?
His own words seemed to ring in his ears, taunting him.

He couldn't get Emma out of his head. Maybe because of who she was. Maybe because she was the one woman in all the world he should not want and could not have. Maybe both of those reasons or neither of them, he did not know. What he did know, what he could no longer pretend to himself otherwise, was that he wanted her as Emma Northcote every inch as much as he had wanted her as Emma de Lisle. She had not changed, between Whitechapel and Mayfair. She was the same woman. He understood why she had lied and it did not alter the facts. That he wanted her. That he had feelings for her. And the realisation complicated everything.

It brought risks he had never contemplated. To his plan, to all he had spent a lifetime working towards. To himself and the very crux of who he was and what drove him.

Ned knew what he was and had always been comfortable with it. He saw things with a clear dispassion. But this thing with Emma Northcote was different. It pushed him to a place he had not been before, a place he did not want to be. It made him question things he did not want to question. It made him question what sort of man he was.

He moved the fingers of his right hand in that old comfortable reassuring rhythm, tumbling the token backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards.

Because being who he was, if he cared for her, how could he be with her?

Unlike all the other problems he had faced in his life, blind-ended problems, problems the size of a mountain, this was a dilemma to which there could be no solution other than walking away.

He had responsibilities. He had his destiny and his duty. And regardless that he did not play by the rules of the world, he had his own moral code, his own sense of honour.

Every time he thought it through, all the arguments, all the logic told him to stay away from her. The decision was already made.

But it did not stop him thinking about her.

* * *

Emma's letter to her father had been posted. She had taken it to the Post Office herself so that no one else would see the Whitechapel direction written upon it, along with two of Lady Lamerton's letters, under the guise of a need for fresh air. The guise in itself was no lie. The air was not fresh, but still and ripe with uncomfortable promise. But since the Botanical Gardens incident she had not felt herself and she needed some time away from the dowager. She needed time alone, to walk, to clear her mind and to straighten her thinking.