Viscount of Vice (8 page)

Robbie shrugged. “I don't know what home is.”

“I don't either, but if you're willing to fight, I'll find you the best doctors and the best care. I won't leave your side. We can figure out home together.”

“I don't know if I can do it.”

Flynn raised a brow. “You can always go back to Satin, though I might persuade him Bath is too dangerous for him and his gang right now. You'd be safe with me. But you have to fight.”

Robbie stared at his brother, then nodded slowly. “I'll fight.”

Flynn nodded. “Follow me then.” But instead of leading, he draped an arm about his brother's shoulder, his other hand still clamped on Emma's hand. The three of them started off together.

“Where are we going?” Emma asked.

“Home.”

Robbie held himself together long enough for Flynn to ensure Emma was escorted home and Lady Chesham was introduced to her lost son. His mother had known her younger son at once. For perhaps the first time, Flynn had seen tears stream down her cheeks as she took Robbie into her arms. Robbie wept as well, clutching her tightly. Flynn stood and watched the two of them, feeling awkward and out of place. And then his mother had held her hand out to him, inviting him forward, and he'd joined the circle.

The family was whole again. Flynn felt whole again.

The joyous reunion had been short-lived. Flynn had barely summoned Doctor Emerson when Robbie began to shake from violent tremors. Derring accompanied the doctor and explained to the viscountess how he'd been investigating Satin in London and followed the crime lord to Bath. Once in Bath, Derring had encountered Robbie, and after talking with the man and several paid informants, determined Robbie was very likely Robert Flynn. Robbie's memory of the brooch his mother had worn when they were children was all the proof Flynn needed.

Flynn offered to attempt to retrace their steps from the night before and lead Derring to Satin's flash ken, but Derring's reports put Satin back on the road to London. Derring called Satin an opportunist. With Robbie, Emma, and Flynn out of his reach, he would move on to easier game. Derring intended to follow Satin to London, though there was little likelihood of finding the man among the sprawling masses there. Flynn left his mother to hear the doctor's report and to thank Derring privately. Doctor Emerson was not optimistic.

The first day Robbie began suffering from chills and nausea, and he could not seem to sit still. After the ordeal of the night before, he should have been exhausted—Flynn was—but Robbie could not sleep. The doctor said insomnia was typical at this stage of treatment.

Now, after days of unrest, Robbie had finally fallen into a fitful sleep, and Flynn had stumbled out of his brother's room, feeling bleary-eyed and disoriented. He had no idea what day it was or how much time had passed. He only knew his brother was more of a fighter than Flynn ever would have been had they traded places. His mother and a bevy of doctors were within. Flynn's uncle and several of his cousins had traveled to Bath as soon as his mother sent word. The family had rallied, and Flynn knew his brother was in good hands.

He could finally take care of the one item that had been on his mind from the moment he'd stepped through his mother's door—making Emma his wife. On the way to his room, Flynn asked a footman for the day and time and was shocked to learn two days had passed. He cursed and had to restrain himself from leaving that instant. He hadn't wanted Emma to suffer any repercussions from the night she was abducted. But instead of preventing them, instead of protecting her, he'd bloody well left her to fend for herself for two days. He didn't want her to think she was simply one more in a long line of his women.

He had to show her she was the
only
woman.

And still, as much as he wanted to go to her immediately, as much as he
needed
to go to her instantly, he could not do so in his current state. One did not ask a woman to marry him with vomit on his clothing and a scruffy beard on his cheeks. Flynn would have to bathe and change. She deserved that much.

When he finally emerged from his room, clean and dressed in his best, his mother was waiting for him. “How is he?” Flynn asked.

Her thin lips tightened. “Much as he was earlier. No worse, though I am certain worse days are to come.”

“Awake again?”

She nodded.

“I should go to him. I told him I would not leave his side.”

Her hand on his arm stopped him. She was a small, slight woman with dark hair streaked with gray. He still remembered when it had been fully blue-black. Her features were sharp, and though she had once been beautiful, she was too thin now to be called as such. She might still have been attractive if she smiled. Flynn knew this because, wonder of wonders, he had seen her smile several times in the first hours Robbie had been home. “He will understand a few hours' absence. You have somewhere more important to go at the moment.”

“I have to see Lady Emma before her brother comes to kill me.”

“He did come, actually,” his mother said. Flynn gaped at her. “This morning. I sent him away. I do believe when he heard your brother's howling, he was more than persuaded to return at a more opportune time.”

Flynn laughed bitterly and shook his head. After all of this, how ironic if his life ended with a pistol ball in his chest on the dueling field.

“I assume you are going to ask the girl to marry you.”

“I meant to go sooner.”

“Good. That is, if she will have you.”

His head jerked up. “If she will have me?”

The viscountess raised one thin brow. “You are not exactly a paragon of gentlemanly behavior.”

Now his mother was chastising him? He'd brought her son home to her, rescued Lady Emma—more or less—and had stayed at his brother's sick bed for two days without rest. And she still had the gall to bring up his murky past. “Many of the stories about me were exaggerated,” he said, his tone surly.

“I am glad to hear it. The one about you and Lady Maxwell? Was that exaggerated?”

Flynn frowned. “No, but—”

“And that one about the drinking contest at the coaching inn. Was that exaggerated?”

Flynn glowered.

“What of the one where you gambled away the Chesham estate and land? Was that exaggerated?”

“I won it back.”

“I see, and what of—”

“Mother, I take your point. But I am certain Emma will look beyond all of that. It was in the past. It's not the future.”

She laid a hand on his arm, and he looked at her in surprise. “I am glad to hear it. I've worried about you so.”

He blinked, not certain he had heard her correctly. She'd
worried
about him? Was this her way of saying she loved him? He did not know, but he knew of one woman who he could be certain loved him. One woman who would probably cry tears of gladness when he but mentioned the word
matrimony
.

“What are you waiting for?” his mother said, shaking him out of his thoughts, which had turned from Emma's elation to her tears of joy.

“Nothing. I—”

“Be on your way then. And Henry? Be prepared for a fight.”

* * *

Emma sat in the front parlor and tried not to listen to her brother and sister arguing in the drawing room above her. They were speaking about her, of course. They'd done nothing but speak of her from the moment Andrew had arrived from London yesterday afternoon. The topic was the same—she was ruined, she had shamed the family. Emma wanted to laugh at the snippets she overheard. She had been taken against her will. How was that her fault? But she
was
still a virgin—unfortunately. Some ruination!

In the past quarter hour, her siblings' conversation had turned to her exile. She'd soon be sent to Ravenscroft Castle. She supposed it could hardly be considered exile when she enjoyed the castle and its grounds so much, but she had enjoyed London and Bath as well, and now she supposed she would be an old woman before she would be allowed to return or be seen in any sort of society.

That was if her brother and sister had their way, and she could see no reason they would not. Emma rose and parted the curtains of Katherine's rented house to watch the procession of carriages taking the wealthy out for an afternoon ride or to make calls. She desperately wished she could escape the sound of her sister's condemning voice for an afternoon. Emma supposed she could hardly blame Katherine for being cross with her. After all, Emma had disappeared from under her nose at the assembly ball and then reappeared the next morning, disheveled and being driven in one of Viscount Chesham's carriages. It didn't help that Mrs. Emerson had sent a hysterical note surmising that Emma had been abducted by Chesham's younger brother, and explaining that the viscount had gone to rescue her. Her sister had assumed
rescue
was a euphemism for something far worse, considering the man doing the rescuing.

Sir Brook had certainly attempted to salvage her reputation, but what could he do other than corroborate the basic story? It had not been her fault or her choice, but she had been alone with the Viscount of Vice, and she was ruined.

Predictably, Flynn had made no comment at all since they returned. If he'd denied it, no one would have believed him, and if he'd admitted it, it would have only made her situation worse. She might have hoped for some word from him, some private letter or smuggled note, but he was silent. Andrew and Katherine thought he had washed his hands of her, but Emma had faith in him. He had his brother to think of now. Robbie needed him. She had heard the Chesham family planned to return to London to seek expert medical care. And since she would probably never be allowed in London again, she supposed she would never see Flynn again. Perhaps she would read of him and his notorious deeds. Or perhaps it was better if she did not. Perhaps she should simply content herself with her role in life: aunt to her sister's and brother's children. She rather thought the role of spinster aunt suited her. She enjoyed running around with her niece, and she could help the Duchess of Ravenscroft with the new baby.

And Emma supposed she'd had her moment of pleasure. No one could ever take the night she'd spent with Flynn away from her. No one could ever erase the memory of holding him in her arms. For those brief moments, at least, he'd been hers.

She had dropped the curtains when she heard the sound of hoofbeats again. The quarrel above her had stopped, which meant Andrew was probably pacing and cursing, and Katherine had retreated to her room with yet another megrim. Then the hoofbeats stopped, and Emma lifted the curtains again, curious as to who the visitor might be. It was obviously someone who did not know she was in residence; her very presence tarnished the entire house. She gaped when she recognized the Chesham livery.

Her heart raced as though she'd run ten miles. The blood seemed to drain out of her head, and she felt dizzy for a moment before she clenched her hands and forced herself to calm down. It couldn't be Flynn, she told herself. What did she expect him to do? Tell her he'd fallen madly in love with her and could not live without her? She almost burst out laughing at the very thought. He'd made it quite clear he would never marry, not willingly, at any rate. It was probably his mother, come to apologize for her son. Emma would now be forced to endure an awkward tea with the viscountess, listening to apologies she did not want.

She pressed a hand to her hair and straightened her shoulders. She should attempt a smile, if not for the viscountess, for the benefit of the servants whom she could hear emerging into the vestibule to receive the unexpected visitor.

Finally, the coachman hopped down, lowered the stairs, and opened the door of the equipage. Emma wished she had a chair or perhaps a mountain nearby on which to lean, for it was Flynn who emerged. Her knees felt quite weak at the sight of him. He looked even better than she remembered him. He stepped down from the carriage, and her gaze roved over him appreciatively. He was perfectly turned out in a blue coat and buckskin breeches that showed his lean, muscular thighs to advantage. His cravat was snowy white, and his boots gleamed in the sunlight. His dark hair fell over his forehead in carefully tousled curls, and his chiseled cheekbones stood out in his square face.

His gaze swept over the house and settled on her in the window. His hazel eyes met hers, and he held her gaze for a moment before entering the house. She felt her face flush, quite familiar with the look in his eyes. Desire, she would have termed it. Once she sought it. Now, she did not know what to do, what to feel. Was he here to apologize? Had his mother forced him to come? Did he feel obliged to ask for her hand in marriage? Oh, how mortifying. She would rather be ruined than be anyone's obligation.

Before she could escape, the door to the parlor opened, and he was announced. She did not even hear the butler's words. All she could do was stare as Flynn bowed to her, quite formally, and search for her raspy voice. “Lord Chesham.” She sounded young and cowed, and she quickly cleared her throat. “What an unexpected…pleasure.”

He grinned at her, seeming to see straight through her false words. “Is it?” Moving forward, he paused before her and took her hand. “Lady Emma, you must forgive my intrusion. I found myself quite eager to speak with you.”

“Is your brother well?” she asked with some alarm. Her gaze met his again, and she felt as though the ground under her feet trembled.

“He is fighting. The doctors assure us he will be well, in time.” The intensity in his gaze softened. “Thank you for asking.”

She nodded, not certain what to say next. Perhaps he had not come to propose. Perhaps he wanted her to know Robbie was well. She floundered for a moment, trying to think of what to say, what to do with her hands. Finally, she said the only thought that entered her mind. “I have forgotten my manners. Shall I ring for tea?” Oh, but she detested herself and this ridiculous formality. He had not come all of this way to sip tea.

“Actually,” Flynn said, “there is something I would like to discuss with you in private. This appears the perfect time—”

The door of the room shot open, and a voice boomed, “What the devil are you doing here?”

Emma jumped, almost glad for her brother's interruption. She did not want to speak privately with Flynn.

“Ravenscroft,” Flynn said, sounding jovial. “How good to see you again.”

“I wish I could say the same. But circumstances being what they are, I'm going to have to shoot you.”

Her brother was holding a rifle. Flynn stepped clear of Emma, ensuring she was safely out of Andrew's line of fire. Really, did Flynn think
she
was the one who needed protection? Emma angled herself so she could see his face. He looked quite relaxed, as though he had not a care in the world.