What A Rogue Wants (42 page)

“
Send Lady Madelaine to
me, and then I’ll send you Ashford.”

A scream of protest rose in
Madelaine’s throat. God, how he must hate her.

“
I think not,” Grey
replied.

She had to lock her knees not to
crumble with relief.

The scarred man responded by shoving
his pistol hard into Lord Ashford’s temple. Grey’s brother groaned
in response. “I’m afraid I’ll have to shoot your brother unless you
do what I say.”

Madelaine watched Grey. His lips move
in a silent swear. Why wasn’t he sending her over? Did he truly not
want to? Did he still care for her despite what he believed about
her?

He glanced between her and his
brother, the tick in his jaw becoming so pronounced she counted ten
beats. He loved her still, or at least he didn’t want her to die!
Her heart squeezed with happiness at the same time fear rose up and
nearly gagged her. If Grey didn’t make the trade, he would surely
die trying to save his brother. And maybe his brother would die
too. Maybe they’d all die anyway, unless she did something. She
could save Grey and his brother if she was brave enough and
cunning. She’d rather risk everything than nothing as she’d done
her entire life.

Praying she didn’t end up shot in the
back, she bolted across the room, her muscles tensing and her eyes
seeking an opening.

BETRAYED YET AGAIN. GREY LOCKED gazes
with Edward as Madelaine flew across the room. Edward leaned his
chair far to the right. As it started to topple, Grey pulled the
trigger of his pistol, blood roaring in his ears. Something sharp
skimmed across his shoulder and caused his pistol to jerk to the
right. Pain, like the quick slice of a knife, yet different, flared
across the path of the wound and coursed down his arms. His finger
numbed instantly. He dropped his pistol by his feet.

He stared in horror as the stranger
aimed one of his pistols at the floor where Edward lay. Grey’s legs
propelled him forward to charge the man. Madelaine’s scream tore
through the hum in his head, but a deafening explosion drowned the
sound of her fear and all else out.

Madelaine and the man crumpled like
puppets whose strings had been abruptly cut. Grey reached them as
her head hit the ground with a sickening thud, lolling back, her
eyes fluttering shut. He focused on the man. He lay perfectly
still, face up and eyes open wide with death. A dagger, jeweled at
the hilt, protruded from the man’s neck. Good. The
bastard.

Grey swayed on his feet, disbelief
making the room swim. Madelaine hadn’t betrayed him. She’d saved
him. He scrambled to his brother and jerked off the gag.

“
Forget me,” Edward
barked. “Help her. Help Lady Madelaine.”

Rushing back to Madelaine, Grey ripped
off his cravat and pressed it to her side where he thought the
blood was coming from. From outside the door, noise reached him―a
tap followed by a drag. Someone approached. He laid Madelaine
against the ground, lunged toward the dead man and yanked the
dagger out of his neck.

Grey was on his feet when Gravenhurst
appeared at the door, pistol aimed forward and dragging his right
leg behind him. Gravenhurst stopped in the doorway, his pistol
falling to his thigh and his mouth dropping open. “What
happened?”

“
Madelaine saved us. Do
you know of a physician around here?” Grey demanded, releasing the
dagger by his brother’s head and scooping Madelaine into his arms.
Her head lulled back like one of his sister’s childhood dolls. A
chill swept over him. She couldn’t die. He’d been wrong. So
wrong.

He pressed her close as he strode
toward the door. Her coldness made his chill feel like a fever. He
stopped in front of Gravenhurst. “Is there a physician near?” he
asked again.

“
Milsford Street. One
block over and turn right. He’s in the white house. Tell him
Gravenhurst sent you. We’ll be there shortly.”

Grey wrapped his arms tighter around
her body as he ran down the stairs and out into the night. “Don’t
die on me, Madelaine.” But with each step, the coldness of her skin
increased, making his throat tighten with fear of losing
her.

He could see the white house at the
end of the street, yet the harder he ran, the greater the distance
to the house seemed. Driving himself forward like a man possessed,
he reached the house, and kicked open the door instead of slowing
down to knock.

A man, dressed in his retiring robe,
barreled into the entranceway with a brass candleholder gripped in
his hand. “Who the bloody hell are you?” the man demanded, his gaze
sweeping over Grey but settling on Madelaine.

“
Gravenhurst sent
me.”

“
Not again!” the man
growled and set the candleholder on a side table. Grey didn’t have
time to sort out what the man meant. He hoisted Madelaine up so the
physician could see her blood-soaked side. “Will you help her?
She’s been shot.”

“
I can see that.” The man
pushed Grey down the hall toward an open door. “My office,” he
murmured to Grey’s raised eyebrows.

“
Put her there.” The
physician nodded toward a table. “And then move out of the way if
you want me to work.”

Grey laid her gently down, his stomach
clenching at her pasty skin and her blood covering his hands as he
brought them away from her. He stared at her, unable to make his
legs carry him away. He loved her. And he’d almost handed her over
to death. She must have seen it. Known it. And had sacrificed
herself to save him. Shame and disgust rolled in his
belly.

“
Get out of the way!” The
physician shoved him aside.

He stumbled backward as the man
frantically ripped her dress from her body. Grey trembled so
violently he had to lean against the wall for support.

Soft fingers curling around his arm
startled him. He looked down into the concerned face of a pretty
brunette. Her blue eyes blinked at him. “The best way to help her
is by allowing my husband to work,” the physician’s wife
said.

Grey tried to comprehend where the
woman might have come from, but his mind felt fuzzy as if he’d
drank too much. God! He wished he were sloshed and this were a bad
dream. Seeming to understand his shock, the woman took him by the
arm and guided him out of the room, talking to him in low tones as
she led him down the hall and into a study.

He fell, more so than sat, into the
chair she offered, and when she poured a full glass of whiskey and
pushed the glass toward him, he didn’t hesitate to drink. The woman
hurried from the room, and he dropped his head into his hands. He
loved Madelaine, probably since the day he’d met her in Golden
Square. He was an idiot. He should have listened to her. She wasn’t
conspiring to murder them. She’d saved them.

He rubbed his stinging eyes and sat
back in the chair. He’d failed her. He should have married her the
minute he’d found out her father was in trouble. He should have
protected her. Was he to forever be wrong about those he loved,
losing them one by one as punishment for being an idiot?

Without her, he was nothing. He turned
the ring on his finger, duty warring against love, desire against
honor. Without hesitation, he yanked the ring off his finger and
threw it against the window. It smacked the glass then clattered to
the ground. His father had probably just flipped over in his grave.
Grey loathed himself for his betrayal, but he’d live with the
guilt. What he could not live without was Madelaine. And now, he’d
do everything in his power to protect her.

He sat that way, unable to move,
unwilling to think about anything but willing her to stay alive,
until the creak of the door alerted him to someone entering the
room. Edward dragged into the room and slumped into the chair
opposite Grey. With his lip cut and swollen, his eye blackened and
a nasty gash on his forehead, it appeared he had put up a fight
before being captured by the man in the warehouse. Edward’s
eyebrows puckered together, a deep crease appearing between his
eyes. He glanced around the room, got up and came back toward Grey
holding a towel.

“
Your shoulder is
bleeding.”

Grey looked in surprise at his
shoulder. He’d forgotten a bullet had skimmed him there. He slipped
off his shirt and surveyed the wound. Not bad. Not nearly as
dangerous as Madelaine’s wound. Pouring some of the whiskey from
the crystal decanter onto the towel, he blotted the towel against
his shoulder and clenched his teeth against the pain. Once he felt
the wound numb, and decided it was clean enough, he shrugged his
shirt back on and regarded Edward. “Did you know that
man?”

“
I used to.” Edward
reached for the decanter with a trembling hand and sloshed whiskey
into Grey’s glass. Edward pulled the glass toward him, picked it up
and downed the liquid. “How is Lady Madelaine?”

Grey struggled to control his
emotions. “The physician is working on her.”

“
The physician is called
Plumbe.”

Grey didn’t give a damn what the man’s
name was as long as Madelaine lived. “Tell me about the man in the
warehouse.”

Edward’s gaze fell to the desk. “His
name was Sutton.”

“
I thought he was
dead?”

“
Apparently not.” Edward
leaned forward. “It seems Sutton didn’t appreciate being left for
dead in France.”

“
He told you
that?”

Edward nodded. “That and more. He told
me how he planned to kill me. I was to be burned. Since Father had
been our leader, Sutton felt I deserved the most painful death as
his heir.”

Grey couldn’t suppress the shudder
that took hold of him. “And Madelaine?” Grey wanted to kill the man
with his bare hands. It was too bad he was already dead. “What did
he want Madelaine for?”

“
He wanted to kill her in
front of her father, so Stratmore would die twice as he deserved.”
Edward shrugged. “Sutton’s words not mine. According to him,
Stratmore would suffer watching his daughter die, suffer knowing
his name was disgraced, and then get what he deserved by being
hung.”

Grey gripped the desk, his knuckles
turning white. “How the hell did he plan to get Madelaine into the
tower, kill her, and then take her body back out so no one would
know she was dead before Stratmore was killed?”

“
I don’t know.” Edward
scrubbed a hand across his face then winced when his fingers
brushed his bruises. “Sutton was deranged. Broken mentally. And God
help me, Grey, I can’t help but wonder if the king hadn’t commanded
Father to pull Stratmore out of France if we could have saved
Sutton,
and
Stratmore,
and
Pearson.”

“
Pearson? Did Sutton kill
Pearson?”

Edward reached into his coat and threw
something on the desk. The gold ring rolled for a moment before it
stilled. Grey didn’t have to pick it up to know it was Pearson’s.
“Sutton set Stratmore up.” Grey’s mind whirred with the
realization.

“
Yes.”

“
But how did he know what
Stratmore had done in taking the king’s list? How did Sutton know
his plan had a chance in hell of working?”

“
That’s a good question.
The obvious answer is he had someone on the inside of the castle
working for him. Someone in a position to hear things. Any
ideas?”

“
Not a bloody one.” Grey
rubbed his throbbing temples. “I’m having a hard time thinking on
this right now.”

“
It’s all right. I sent
Gravenhurst back to Windsor to try to ferret out who Sutton had
working for him.”

“
What about Gravenhurst’s
leg? And getting the bullet out?”

“
There’s no bullet. He
twisted his ankle when he dodged the bullet meant to kill him.
He’ll be like new in a few days. What about you?”

“
What about me?” Grey
would never be the same again if Madelaine died. There would be no
“like new.” He would rather be dead too.

“
What are you going to do?
What do you plan to tell the king about Lady Madelaine?”

Grey’s heart thudded so hard he had to
resist the urge not to rub at his chest. “What did Gravenhurst
say?”

Edward’s eyes narrowed
into slits. “He said to ask
you
. That he had no knowledge of
what Lady Madelaine did or did not know in regard to her father and
his stealing of the king’s paper.”

Grey would kiss Gravenhurst the next
time he saw him. Well, maybe not kiss him, but drinks and thanks
were certainly in order. True, he’d not told Gravenhurst in words
what Madelaine had tried to do to help her father, but surely his
friend had judged her by Grey’s actions toward her. Yet,
Gravenhurst was allowing Grey to decide for himself what should be
done. It was akin to giving his blessing and promising
silence.

“
Lady Madelaine had no
knowledge that her father stole the paper from the king. She’s
innocent. And I plan to tell the king exactly that.”

Edward’s eyebrows rose. “You’re
sure?”

Grey nodded.

Suddenly, Edward reached across the
desk and clasped Grey by the hand. “Father would be proud of the
man you’ve become.”