I Kissed a Rogue (Covent Garden Cubs) (33 page)

At least there was one bright spot in her day—the rain had stopped.

“Hallo, there!”

Lila started as a man rounded the front of the coach, eyeing the horses with what looked like appreciation. He wore a wide hat, a thick coat, and boots up to his knees.

“Bad day for a drive. Did you lose your coachman?”

“Yes,” Lila answered. “But it’s no loss.”

“Help!” Valencia screamed, kicking at Lila from inside the coach.

The man raised a brow and tried to peer past Lila. “You look like you’ve had quite a day, miss.”

Lila could only imagine how she looked after a night in the rain and woods. “I’m not a
miss
. I’m Lady Lillian-Ann, daughter of the Duke of Lennox.”

“I see.” He took off his hat. “Mr. George Longmire.”

“Longmire!” Finally, the fabled Longmires. “Brook Derring told me you would help.”

“You know Sir Brook?”

“Help!” Valencia yelled. “Help! She’s abducted me.”

“Ignore her,” Lila said. “Sir Brook is my husband.” For the moment, at any rate.

She explained the situation as best she could, and though Longmire looked less than pleased at the prospect of holding a duchess prisoner, he agreed. He locked Valencia in the cellar and left Lila with Mrs. Longmire while he rode back to search for Brook.

Valencia screamed and cursed below them, and Mrs. Longmire attempted to make tea and hold a conversation above the noise. Lila judged Mrs. Longmire to be in her early forties. She was a small woman and a little jumpy, but she kept a clean, cheery home. She settled Lila near the fire, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, ignoring Lila’s protests that she would ruin the blanket with all the dirt on her.

Finally, warm teacup in her hand, Lila said, “Mrs. Longmire, you needn’t pretend this is not strange on my account.”

“Oh, we all need a touch of excitement now and then.” She sat across from Lila and sipped her tea. Below them, Valencia railed at the injustice and threatened all manner of retribution. “Perhaps we can save our conversation for another time,” Mrs. Longmire suggested in a shout.

“Very sensible of you, Mrs. Longmire,” Lila shouted back.

She sipped her tea, allowing the warmth to infuse her. In a few moments, Brook would come and this would all be over. She could go back to her life—her life before Vile Valencia—and he could go back to his. The scandal of her stepmother’s treachery would far outweigh the humiliation of her annulment.

Brook would be out of her life. All she would have were memories.

She felt as though they were Athens and Sparta at the end of the Peloponnesian War from the dry book she’d finally finished. Her time with Brook had been like the Golden Age, and now it was ending. All their battles and no real winner.

She closed her eyes against the sting of tears. She’d been a fool to fall in love with him. She’d been a fool
not
to fall in love with him, but she couldn’t go back. She could only go forward.

Alone.

* * *

Brook looked up, squinting at the sound of hoofbeats. He’d managed to evade Beezle’s dagger thus far, but his strength was flagging. If Beezle’s clumsy thrusts were any indication, he was at the end of his reserves as well.

Beezle turned toward the sound of the approaching horse as well. It wasn’t the coach. Even if he hadn’t seen the rider approaching, Brook would have known it wasn’t Lila and the coach. His sense of panic at having lost her again didn’t diminish. For all he knew, she could have been lying dead on the side of the road.

Beezle slashed at him again, and Brook jumped aside. The dagger caught his coat and ripped the wool before it came loose and Beezle spun around with the force of his jab. Brook was through playing. He had to find Lila. He needed the approaching horse.

Before Beezle could spin back to swipe at Brook again, Brook slammed into him, knocking him forward. Beezle jumped around, seeming to sense Brook’s growing determination. He crouched and jabbed. Brook braved the tip of the knife to close in on Beezle, close enough to stick one foot out and hook it around Beezle’s ankle.

Too late, the arch rogue realized his mistake. He’d left his legs unprotected. He went down, and Brook went after him. The two men fell to the muddy ground, Brook reaching for Beezle’s waving hands to control the knife. Beezle tried to scurry away, and Brook caught his knee, pulling him down. He rose up, ready for Beezle’s next attack, but the man didn’t move.

Brook rose slowly, staring down at Beezle, whose chest rose and fell in jagged bursts. With one booted foot, he turned the man over. The dagger hilt protruded from Beezle’s chest, just below the heart. He’d be dead in a matter of minutes.

Brook tried to summon regret, but none came. Beezle had died in the dirt, exactly where he belonged.

The horse and rider approached cautiously, and Brook glanced up. He knew the man, but he couldn’t place him for a moment.

“Are you, Sir Brook?”

Brook nodded, wiping some of the mud from his face. “Longmire?”

“That’s right. He dead?” He nodded at Beezle.

“Close enough. I need your horse. My wife—”

Longmire held up a hand. “She’s at my house, safe with Mrs. Longmire. We locked up the duchess in the cellar. I hope we did right.”

They’d locked a duchess in their cellar? The Duchess of Lennox? That had been the Lennox coach he’d seen.

“I just need to see my wife,” he said, aware it wasn’t the answer Longmire wanted. It was the only answer Brook could give. He needed Lila. He had to see her, touch her, hold her, know she was unharmed.

Nothing else mattered.

“What about him?” Longmire said with a nod at Beezle’s body.

“He’ll wait.”

Longmire nodded. “Climb on. We’ll go directly.”

It was less than a mile, but it seemed an eternity before the small house on the hill came into view. Brook dismounted before the horse had come to a stop. He could hear a woman’s screaming from the yard, and he didn’t wait to be invited inside. He ran for the door and burst inside.

Now that the rain had stopped, the cottage was darker than the yard, and it took Brook a moment to make sense of what he saw. Finally, he realized he was in a small hallway with stairs before him. A door on his right was open, and through it he saw a woman rising from a worn but comfortable chair. He went toward her, toward the heat of the fire and the scent of chamomile from recently steeped tea.

“Sir Brook.” The woman curtsied. “I covered her with the blanket. She was exhausted.”

Brook turned and then fell to his knees. Lila lay curled under a thin blanket, head on the arm of the chair, mouth slightly open. Her cheeks were rosy from the warmth of the fire. She was beautiful, even with the smudges of dirt and the matted lock of hair falling over her neck.

He had to tell her he loved her. He had to tell her he didn’t want an annulment.

The woman screamed again, and Brook realized it must have been the duchess in the cellar.

Lila would have to wait.

Longmire entered and Brook steered him back out again. “I need to borrow your horse as far as the posting house. I need to go to London. I need Bow Street or a magistrate. Hell, if that’s who I think it is in your cellar, I may need the king himself. Will you take care of her for me?” He nodded toward the parlor and his sleeping wife.

“Of course, Sir Brook. And we keep the other locked in the cellar?”

“Until I return, yes.” He glanced at the parlor again, at the faded yellow chair where his wife slept. “I’ll be back for her.”

At least that was what he intended before he returned to London and everything went wrong.

Twenty

Six weeks later

The meeting was an inconvenience. Lila hadn’t wanted to attend, but she hadn’t attended the last one, and Brook had refused to grant the annulment. He’d rescheduled and insisted she be present.

Lila couldn’t think why. This separation was what Brook wanted. He didn’t need her in his solicitor’s office on Bond Street. Her father could sign for her. Her father was all too happy to sign for her.

The duke, Lila, and her brother were eager to put the events of the last several months behind them. Valencia was in gaol, awaiting trial for attempted murder. The duke was in shock, Colin was drinking too much, Ginny asked for her mother daily, and Lila seemed to be holding the entire family together.

Thankfully, Beezle was dead, and she did not have to fear him any longer. Lord Liversey, a member of the House of Lords, had been accused of ordering the death of Mr. Fitzsimmons, the MP from Lincolnshire she saw murdered. Apparently, Fitzsimmons and Liversey worked together, and when Fitzsimmons found information damaging to Liversey, the other man paid Beezle to kill the MP.

The Duke of Lennox hated scandal, and she had inadvertently put them in the middle of it.

She looked at her father, sitting straight and rigid in the red leather chair opposite the tidy desk in the well-appointed room. He held his walking stick with both hands, his knuckles white on the silver handle. He did not need to be kept waiting for Sir Brook. He needed—they all needed—to leave London for a few months and travel to Blakesford, where they could lick their wounds and start over.

Lila stood, pacing the room, her slippers shushing on the Turkey rug as she pretended to peruse the law volumes on the lengthy bookshelf. How she craved the peace and solitude of Blakesford. There, she could cry without interruption. She could weep over Brook like a foolish schoolgirl until she had no more tears, until every thought of him didn’t stab her heart like a thousand tiny needles in a pincushion. Why did he want to see her? He was the one who’d left her. He’d returned to London and hadn’t even said good-bye. A magistrate had taken her statement and then a hired coach had returned her to Lennox House. Before she’d left, she’d insisted on checking on the mother cat and kittens one last time. They had been gone from the cottage, as had Brook.

She shouldn’t have been surprised he’d abandoned her. Despite their lovemaking, despite their whispered confidences in the dark, Brook had given her no illusions. He’d been clear that he didn’t hate her, but he didn’t want her either. Not permanently.

“You should have spoken to him when he came to call at the town house,” her father said, breaking the oppressive silence in the room.

Lila glanced over her shoulder. Her father was angry. A duke should not be made to wait.

“I should have,” she said. But she’d been too much the coward when he’d finally called on her, several days after she’d arrived home. She’d feared he’d take one look at her swollen and bruised face and turn away. She feared he’d say exactly what he would say today—
I want an annulment
.

She expected it, but she wanted it done and over. She could not see him because worse than the look of disgust when he saw her bruised face, worse than hearing the demand for an annulment from his lips, was her own weakness. She did not trust herself to hold on to her dignity. She’d still wanted him too much, and the danger that she’d break down, declare her love, and beg him not to leave her had been very real indeed.

She’d tamped the urge down now, and it had faded like the bruises. But she was still tender, in flesh and spirit. She could face Brook Derring without dissolving into hysterics, but watching him sign the papers to be permanently rid of her would scar her heart forever.

She would never love again, and perhaps that was just what she deserved.

A floorboard creaked and the low rumble of men’s voices floated into the room. Lila spun around, uncertain what to do with herself. Stand? Sit? On the chair? The couch?

And then the door opened, and the Earl of Dane entered. Lila dropped a curtsy, nodding as he said something she could not hear. The blood whirred too loudly in her ears because just behind Dane was Brook. He stepped in after his brother, his dark eyes going directly to her and holding.

His mahogany-colored eyes were as unreadable as ever. They seemed impenetrable pools of hardness in a face already replete with sharp edges and flat planes. He’d shaved for the meeting. She’d grown used to the light brown stubble interspersed with blond, and the clean-shaven jaw made his face look almost soft. It wasn’t only that he’d shaved. His hair was slightly longer than the severe style she’d seen him wear during their brief marriage. He hadn’t cut it, and it had begun to curl in a way that made her want to tangle her fingers in it.

Best not to think along those lines though.

She dropped her gaze from his, but that was a mistake. It allowed her to observe his clothing. He’d dressed for the meeting as well. He wore a dark blue wool coat, a stiff, white cravat, a cream waistcoat, buff breeches, and highly polished riding boots. She couldn’t fail to notice how lean and muscular his body looked in the tight breeches. Considering she knew just how wide his chest was and how broad his shoulders, the snug fit of the coat did nothing to curb her imagination.

Her gaze flicked up to his again, and she saw what she’d been too overwhelmed by his initial presence to note before. He had shadows under his eyes. He might have shaved and dressed well, but he was not sleeping. Dare she believe it was because he missed her? More likely he was anxious to be rid of her and worried she would make the annulment process more difficult than necessary.

Brook’s gaze drifted to his brother, and Lila realized the earl was speaking. “Mr. Scott will be here in a few moments. He regrets that he has been detained.”

William Scott, brother of Lord Eldon, resided over the consistory court that issued annulments in London. Thankfully, Brook had arranged to have everything completed privately in the office of his solicitor, a Mr. McKinnon.

Dane had walked around the desk. “In the meantime, I suggest we all partake of McKinnon’s fine whisky. I hear it’s his own family recipe.” He opened the solicitor’s desk drawer with an air of one familiar with the furnishing’s contents, and placed two glasses and a bottle on the desk. Lila knew she was not expected to partake, but she wondered who else was to be excluded.

The room was too silent, and when Dane poured the whisky, the clink of the bottle on the rim of the glasses made her jump. Lila tried to think of something to say, something to ease the tension. She should have been able to say something to her husband, the man she’d been in bed with just a few short weeks ago. But he seemed like a stranger to her now. And what use were pleasantries when what she really wanted to know was why he had left her without even saying good-bye. Did she not deserve that much at least?