What A Rogue Wants (26 page)

“
Grey.” Edward’s word was
a wary sigh. “Father and you were so much alike. He didn’t want to
tell you about us until he was certain you were suited for the life
of a spy. It seemed obvious to me years ago, but Father wouldn’t
hear of telling you until you’d had a proper chance to meet a
woman, get married and settle down. Once you proved you’d never do
that, he sent you to the king to be told what we were. Not the way
I would have done it, but I had no say in the matter.”

No one had ever had any say but
Father, and he’d not said enough. Anger coursed through him. “Why
the hell would it matter if I were married?” Grey asked, thinking
suddenly of Madelaine.

“
Because Father knew, as
we all do, that a wife makes you vulnerable. A wife is something
that can be used to bring you down, and it’s wiser not to give the
enemy one more weapon to use against you.” Edward watched Grey with
a steady gaze. “Is there something I should know?”

Grey shook his head. He couldn’t think
about all of this right now.

After a moment, his brother turned
away, shoulders slumping, and walked toward the house once
more.

The butler scrambled out of the way as
Grey followed Edward through the front door to Father’s study. Grey
paused just inside the door. He would never come home to see his
mother and father sitting in here again. Impossible. He walked over
to his mother’s favorite chair, picked up the shawl draped over the
back of the dark leather, and inhaled deeply of the lingering
flowery scent.

She’d rocked him as a
toddler wearing this shawl, nursed him when he was sick, unlike
many ladies of the
ton
who let the nannies do all the caretaking. Hell, she’d
probably prayed he’d return her love by taking care of her, doting
on her. His heart lurched. He was a bastard. He’d failed his mother
and his father. His pathetic, wrong reasons didn’t change the
facts. When Edward thrust a full glass of whiskey toward him, he
set the shawl down and took the drink.

The dark amber liquid sloshed as he
swirled it under his nose, savoring the calming musk before tipping
the glass and taking a long drink. Along with the whisky, mild
warmth settled in the pit of his belly to partially fill the hollow
space Edward’s news had left.

Edward downed his drink then set the
glass on the side table. “I’m going to bed. Don’t wake me unless
the house is burning down round my ears. We’ll talk tomorrow about
how to tell Liz.”

Grey nodded his agreement. Left alone
in the study with nothing but his guilt and thoughts, he stared
outside at the falling snow. He felt like he was falling. How could
it be that he’d been so sure of things a few hours ago? He replayed
the last angry conversation he’d had with his father, until the
guilt sent him to his feet to pace the room.

He stalked to the sideboard to pour
another drink, but his hands shook and the whiskey kept sloshing
over the rim of the glass. Giving up, he set the glass down and
strode out of the study, down the corridors and out the front door
into the dark, cold night.

He didn’t know where he intended to go
until he was halfway up the hill to the orchard where Edward had
buried their parents. He stopped in front of the fresh graves, the
dark dirt dusted with white snow. His lungs burned with each ragged
inhalation of breath. He dropped to his knees in front of the
graves, the snow instantly seeping through the wool of his
trousers. After a moment, the lower half of his body was
numb.

He wanted to be numb and forget his
parents were dead. He’d not been close to Mother in years. His
father never. The weight of his fault sunk him all the way to the
ground. A violent trembling shook his body, and his teeth
chattered, until he clamped his jaw shut. He’d missed the chance to
tell his parents he was sorry for the pain and worry he’d caused
them. He’d missed the chance to show his father that his trust had
not been misplaced.

What could he do now? He
let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, a white ring
against the dark night. The thoughts he’d pushed away earlier when
speaking with Edward came to the surface. He winced, reality
setting in. He had to give up the one thing he had come to want
more than anything in his life.
Madelaine
. He didn’t want to
endanger her, and he could never turn his back on what his father
had expected him to do. It seemed what he wanted and what life gave
him would forever be at cross purposes. Leaning over, he lay his
hand first on his mother’s cold headstone and then on his father’s.
“I’ll make you proud.”

Once Grey returned to the house, he
grabbed a bottle of whiskey and headed up the stairs to his old
room. He tugged off his coat and cravat then sank into a deep
chair. In one day he’d lost his mother, his father, and the woman
he was coming to love. He tilted the bottle and drank deeply,
searching for the same numbness for his mind that the snow had
offered his body.

FOR THE NEXT COUPLE OF weeks, Grey
worked by Edward’s side to set their parent’s affairs in order and
to make sure their death was indeed an accident. Once the accident
site had been combed and surveyed and every piece of broken
carriage had been sifted through and studied, the misfortune of
their parent’s tragic deaths couldn’t be denied. Once they found
the shattered wheel, which Edward belatedly remembered Father had
put off repairing, and they studied the snow-slick road which still
showed signs of the tracks that had sent the carriage over the
embankment, they both agreed it wasn’t murder.

After working so closely with Edward,
Grey now felt more a part of the household than he ever had before.
How bloody ironic. Bitterness filled him. The bitterness ebbed
after a few days, and thoughts of Madelaine replaced it. The last
thing he wanted to do was think about Madelaine and having to face
her, or his parents’ death, or having to go back to Court and break
the news to Liz. He fought back reality by doggedly filling his
hours with a thousand tasks followed by hours of training in
weapons with Edward at the end of each day.

His barrier against reality would have
been perfect if it wasn’t for the thoughts that slipped into his
dreams. Waking night after night drenched in sweat, recalling some
way or another he had purposely hurt his father or remembering his
promise to Madelaine to return for her was going to be the death of
him.

He took to drinking several glasses of
whiskey a night in an effort to have a dreamless sleep, but when he
realized how much whiskey he’d consumed after only two weeks, he
ceased drinking all together. The dreams returned in violent force,
so when he woke now, he’d stalk to the ballroom and spend the
silent hours between dark to dawn practicing with weapons, until he
felt sure he was just as good as his father would have
expected.

Some nights, he saw Edward prowling
the halls, or walking aimlessly outside in the gardens in the snow.
They didn’t acknowledge each other. To do so would have been to
acknowledge their demons. Edward’s glazed-eyed look told Grey his
brother welcomed avoiding reality just as much as he did. It was
easy to keep putting off the inevitable confrontation with
Madelaine and Liz, because the thought of it made him ache deep
inside where he’d not known he was capable of hurting.

In the third week, Gravenhurst sent a
letter informing them the king was still in Kew recovering from a
sudden bout with madness, but that His Majesty was on the mend. The
news reinforced, in Grey’s mind, his decision to stay at his
brother’s home until the king was fully recovered. Only the king
could give word for Grey and Gravenhurst to leave for France, and
the last thing Grey wanted to do was go back to Court and have to
stay and wait for the king to give the order.

Once at Court he’d want to deliver the
news to Liz, speak with Madelaine, and then need to leave
immediately for France. Seeing Madelaine day after day, while
knowing she would one day soon lie in another man’s arms, become
another man’s wife would be like a knife in the gut. Reality waited
like an obedient dog. On the morning of the fourth week,
Gravenhurst arrived before dawn waking Grey from a troubled
sleep.

Grey dressed hastily and met Edward
and Gravenhurst in the library.

Gravenhurst was never one for
niceties, but this morning he didn’t even offer a greeting before
he thrust a letter at Grey and one at Edward. Both men read in
silence for a moment. Grey’s heart roared in his ears. After a
moment, he met Gravenhurst’s steady gaze. “Do you know what this
letter says?”

“
Of course. I’m to go with
you to Lancashire.”

“
Lancashire?” Edward
glanced at both men. “Why does the king send you there?”

“
His letter to you doesn’t
explain?” Grey asked.

“
He expressed his sincere
sorrow for our parents’ deaths and bade me to find Pearson
immediately. What does your letter say?”

Grey handed the letter to Edward. His
brother’s face soon mirrored the skepticism Grey felt. “I don’t
believe Stratmore is a traitor to the king.”

Grey let out the breath he’d been
holding. “Neither do I,” he agreed, glad his brother had voiced the
same opinion about Madelaine’s father. Grey glanced at Gravenhurst,
the most cynical man he knew. “What about you?”

“
When my uncle murdered my
father, I learned no man is above treachery if the circumstances
are right.”

Edward waved the king’s letter in
front of Grey and Gravenhurst. “What paper is the king talking
about that has gone missing?”

Grey raised a questioning eyebrow at
Gravenhurst. “Did he tell you?”

“
He did. But you may do
the honors, since you were there.”

Grey quickly explained about the new
code Stratmore had created and about the meeting where the duke had
shown the king and Grey the code. Then haltingly, he told Edward of
the king’s spell that day and the madness he’d written about with
the angels telling him things and needing to execute his
administrators.

By the time Grey was finished,
Edward’s complexion was pasty. He walked over to the study door,
shut it, and turned back to Grey. “That was damned foolhardy of the
king to write down some of the missions he planned to assign us.
Even if he was simply practicing the code.”

Grey nodded. The rest of what the king
wrote hung between them like a deadly snake. Was Edward going to
ignore the king’s other words? Grey couldn’t do that. “We have to
find that paper and destroy it. It could be used to prove the king
is mad.”

Edward’s eyes narrowed. “Was
temporarily confused. Under a spell.”

“
Alright. Temporary
madness. That could do grave harm if not monitored.”

“
We’ve been monitoring
him, Grey. That’s part of your job as one of us.”

Grey’s jaw went slack. “I had no
idea.”

A sardonic smile tugged on Edward’s
lips. “It’s not something I think the king wished to tell you,
unless the need arose. He’d hoped his spells were over.”

“
Yet they’re not. So where
do we go from here?” He wasn’t sure what Edward wanted from him,
but he wanted to do what his brother expected. His father would
have wanted no less.

Edward let out a long sigh. “We keep
watch as we’ve done. Guard him closer. And when he’s fully
recovered we gently approach him about the possibility of putting
further measures into place if the time should ever come that the
spell occur too often and pose too much of a danger.”

That sounded reasonable. “The king
claims to have put the paper in his nightstand that night. Perhaps
Stratmore took it and burned it because he knew it could harm the
king? We all agree it should be destroyed.”

Edward hit his open hand
with his fist. “Yes, we all agree, but none of us would take the
paper and destroy it without the king’s permission. It is
his
paper. He gives the
orders. If Stratmore stole the paper then he committed an act of
theft and deliberately disobeyed the king we all vowed to protect
always and serve forever. Let us hope the king destroyed the paper
and forgot when he was overcome by the next dark spell. He fell ill
right after Stratmore’s visit, did he not?”

“
He did.”

“
Did you notice any
tension between them when you were with them?”

“
Only the tension brought
on by what the king wrote.” Grey shrugged. “They argued, but if it
was over the paper, I couldn’t say.” The dire implications for
Madelaine’s future if her father was named a traitor to the king
made Grey’s gut twist. “If Stratmore did take the paper, do you
think the king would forgive him if the duke assured him he was
simply trying to protect His Majesty from himself?”

“
It’s hard to say. They’ve
been lifelong friends. Yet I don’t know any man, let alone a king,
who’d be happy to think he needs to be protected from himself. And
as I’ve already said, it’s our sworn duty to obey the king’s
orders.” Edward made a guttural sound in his throat. “What a mess.
The king
could
forgive Stratmore or he could just as soon hang him for
treason. Let’s pray the king remembers he burned the paper or finds
it before a choice of the duke’s life or death must be made. Is
there anything else you remember about that meeting?
Anything
unusual?”