Along Came a Rogue (31 page)

But
she
did. Her family's reputation could be ruined by the scandal, and from the troubled frown on her wrinkled brow, she knew it, too.

She stared at him, as if trying to determine if he would truly destroy her family if she refused, if he would take his pursuit of recognition as a Henley through blood and battle. But he could have saved her the trouble of wondering; he would certainly do just that, if necessary. Recognition of his legitimacy was all that now stood between him and complete happiness with Emily, and he refused to give up the fight.

“I don't want to disparage your family, Lady Henley, but I swear to you I will if I have to. You know the man I am.” He locked his gaze with hers. “You know I will do exactly that if left no other choice.”

For a moment, she didn't move. Then he saw her shoulders sag, and he knew he'd won.

Nodding slowly as she exhaled a shaking sigh, she rose from her chair, and Grey stood, affording her the respect she deserved as a lady. And as his grandmother. Her old body was stiff and moved slowly as she crossed the room to the small desk beneath the window, but the woman was still formidable despite her age, still intimidating enough that few would dare defy her.

She sat with a grace that hinted at the delicate beauty she had once possessed in her younger days and pulled open the drawer to reach for the pen set and paper within.

“I have no idea who your mother was, and I am certain that even Charles did not know he'd gotten a child on the woman.” She scratched the quill across the paper, pausing in her missive to glance pointedly across the room at him. “My son may not be faithful, but he is always careful. I assume that in this situation with you he shall be no different. Be careful in turn with him, then, Nathaniel.”

“I will.” He took the warning to heart, not imagining that the viscount would take well a forced recognition of his bastard son nearly thirty years after the fact. But the man would simply have to learn to live with it.

“I suppose I put off this moment as long as I did because it never would have made a difference before,” she admitted grudgingly, “except to hurt the family. And there
will
be scandal and gossip, be assured of that. All I can do is help control the damage.”

“Be assured that I never wanted to hurt your family.”

Her only acknowledgment of his comment was a small nod of her head and a tight pursing of her lips. It would cause scandal for the Henleys, yet illegitimate children were common among the
ton
. The news would be replaced by some other juicy scandal by year's end, and by then, everyone would have stopped caring about his connection to them.

And God willing, by then, Emily would finally be his wife.

She carefully blotted her signature, then folded the letter and held it out to him. “There—my statement of legitimacy, officially recognizing you as my grandson.”

Giving her the courtesy of not reading it, he slipped it into his jacket pocket. “Thank you.”

Her tired eyes met his with an air of inevitability, as if she'd been expecting this moment for a very long time. And truly, he'd noticed that she'd not struggled with a single word in her written statement, most likely having rehearsed it in her mind for years.

“To avoid as much scandal as possible,” she explained, “we will take the initiative. Charles will quietly recognize you as his son within the next fortnight.”

“How can you be certain of that?”

“I shall
make
certain of it. If he wants to inherit my dower when I die, then he'll have no choice.” She looked at him incredulously, as if he were mad to ever doubt her ability to obtain exactly what she wanted. In this life or the next. “I regret the circumstances of tonight and wish there had been another way. But I do not regret helping you become the man you are. You have done well for yourself, Nathaniel, as successfully as if you had been recognized from the beginning. Better than his other sons, in fact.” She paused, and in the dim light, he thought he could see her eyes glistening. “I wish you and Lady Emily well.”

Standing regally, she reached to take his hand, and he let her. A very small but first step in reconciliation and forgiveness, for both of them.

Emily sat back in her bed, propped up by half a dozen pillows piled behind her, and held her sleeping son in her arms. The love and happiness swelling inside her nearly overwhelmed her.

A baby…she had a baby now, and she could barely believe it. A little wriggling mass of pink flesh and a dusting of dark hair, a tiny upturned nose and full lips beneath long lashes closed in sleep. Blue eyes, like hers. Ten fingers, ten toes—she knew because she'd counted them at least a dozen times since the midwife first placed him in her arms. He was a tiny miracle, and she lowered her lips to gently kiss his forehead and breathe in deep the sweet scent of him. She supposed she should put him back into the bassinet drawn up beside her bed so both of them could get a few hours of sleep, but she couldn't bring herself to let go of him. Not yet. They had been through too much together to part so quickly, even just to lay him down for a nap.

Beyond her bedroom windows, dawn arrived over the city, the dark night fading away into muted blues and pinks beneath the growing light as the sun inched higher. She couldn't help but feel as if the whole world was holding its breath, waiting for the new day to break, and that a new part of her life was dawning along with the morning.

A knock sounded softly at her door, but her gaze never left her baby's sleeping face. She smiled as he stirred in his sleep, his little fist lifting to his mouth to suck on his fingers.

“Emily.” Heat swirled down her spine at the sound of her name, spoken in a deep, reverent tone.

She glanced up to find Grey standing in the doorway, his chocolate eyes warm as he took in the sight of her and the baby in the morning light.

“Dear God,” he breathed hoarsely, a softly stricken expression on his handsome face, “you are so lovely.”

She knew she looked a fright, wearing only her dressing gown and a fresh night rail she'd tugged on after her bath, with her hair pulled back into a loose chignon at her neck to keep it out of her way. And she was certain her face appeared just as tired as she felt.

“I'm a mess,” she corrected, flushing with embarrassment.

“Not to me. To me, you're the most beautiful woman in the world.”

Her throat tightened with emotion. Smiling at him, her eyes gleaming, she lifted the sleeping bundle in her arms. “Look what I have,” she teased, wonder audible in her voice. “It's a baby.”

His lips tugged upward. “So I heard.”

“Would you like to meet him?”

His eyes flickered warmly over the baby as he stared at the little bundle in her arms. “Very much.”

Slowly, Grey came forward and sat on the edge of her bed. She turned slightly to bring her son between them. Carefully, he pulled down the baby's soft blanket with his forefinger and stared in astonishment.

“So small, yet so perfect,” he whispered. He drew his fingertip along the curve of the baby's chin. When he touched the pink lips, the baby opened his mouth and instinctively tried to suckle his finger.

She heard him catch his breath, saw the mix of love, pride, and utter amazement flash across his face. Her heart melted with overwhelming love, that something this small, this helpless and vulnerable, could stir such emotion in him.

He blinked hard and cleared his throat. “Have you given him a name?”

“Stephen.”

“Stephen,” he repeated quietly. “Edward Westover had an older brother named Stephen.”

“Kate told me. Do you think Edward will mind?”

“Not at all. Stephen was a good man, and he deserves to be remembered. It's a fine name…Hello, Stephen.”

The baby's tiny hand clasped around Grey's finger, and he made a soft mewling sound in his sleep.

Grey chuckled. “I think he likes it.”

“Good.” She nodded, adjusting a tiny bootie on the baby's foot. “Family is important.”

“Yes, it is,” he agreed in a soft murmur, an odd tone to his voice she couldn't quite place.

“He has Thomas for an uncle, and I would like Edward and Kate Westover to be his godparents.”

“They'll be honored,” he assured her.

She paused in her fussing with the bootie to flick her gaze up to his for only a beat before returning to her son. “When I said surrounded by family, I did not necessarily mean my parents, you understand.”

He laughed and shifted to slip his arm behind her, finding a way to hold both of them in his arms. He placed a soft kiss at her temple.

“As for the baptism, I'm certain my mother will insist it be held in St. Paul's, but I know she won't understand when the bishop calls out Stephen's name. Family is important,” she repeated for emphasis, “and so he is being named after his family.” She whispered, finally raising her eyes to his. “Stephen
Nathaniel
Crenshaw.”

His lips parted in stunned surprise. “Emily—”

“I thought that I could let you go, that letting you go to Spain was the best choice for you,” she rushed out quickly, “but I was wrong. When I asked for you last night after the baby was born and you weren't here—I couldn't bear it, Grey.” She reached for his hand as it rested on the mattress beside her, her trembling fingers lacing through his. “I need you, Stephen needs you…and you need us.”

She leaned forward to touch her lips to his, closing her eyes as she willed with every ounce of strength left inside her for him to realize how much she loved him, how much she and her son needed him. How she couldn't tolerate the thought that the sun might rise tomorrow to find him far away from her.

For a moment, he didn't move, and then his lips began to gently caress hers. His mouth slid along her jaw to her ear before he shifted away from her.

“I didn't mean to upset you last night.” He looked down at the baby and ran his hand over Stephen's smooth head. “I wanted to be here, but there was a woman I had to find.”

“Oh.”
A woman.
A hollow pain panged in her chest. She gave a soft sniff and tried to hide the jealousy that flashed white-hot through her.

He grinned. “My grandmother.”

Her heart skipped, not understanding. “Grandmother?”

With a firm nod, he withdrew a folded paper from his jacket pocket and held it out to her.

She stared at the note, barely able to breathe from the stunned surprise cascading through her in waves. “What is that?” she whispered.

“A birthday gift for you and Stephen.” He looked deeply into her eyes. “Read it.”

With trembling fingers, sensing the enormity of the moment, she took the note and read the elegant handwriting. A single sentence with a signature beneath…A gasp tore from her throat. This was
impossible
!

Her eyes flew up to his, her fingers tightening against the note so hard she wrinkled the paper. She fixed her gaze on his face, on trying to find sense in what he was showing her.

“Viscount Henley?” she breathed.

“Yes.”

“No!” With a fierce shake of her head, she shoved the note back at him. “I love
you
, Grey. I don't care who your family is or is not—it holds no importance for me. I don't need that declaration to build a future with you.”

“I know,” he told her softly. “But it will make that future easier, if you still want me.”

Tears gathered on her lashes as she admitted, “I've wanted you since I was sixteen, from the first time I laid eyes on you.”

He reached into his pocket again, this time to withdraw the engagement ring he'd offered her three months ago. The tiny ring of diamonds and sapphires shined in the morning sunlight as he tenderly slipped it onto her left hand and raised it to his lips to kiss it.

“I love you,” she whispered past the knot of emotion in her throat.

“You'd better.” With a wolfish grin, he murmured, “Because now that I've got you, I am never letting you go.”

Smiling through her tears, she lifted the baby toward him. “Hold your son, Nathaniel.”

As she placed Stephen into his arms, his chocolate-brown eyes found hers. In their warm depths she saw their future stretching out across all the years before them. Together. “I love you, Emily.”

“You'd better,” she purred his words back to him, leaning in to kiss him over their sleeping son, “because I am never letting you go.”

L
ord Chesney?” Jensen's voice cut through the midmorning stillness of the stables behind Chatham House. “Are you here, sir?”

Inside the end stall box, Thomas Matteson, Marquess of Chesney, stilled, hoping the butler would simply leave and not interrupt his morning. The same morning he'd so carefully arranged by giving the grooms time off to attend Tattersall's. He let the silence of the stables answer for him, interrupted only by the restless shifting of horses in their stalls and a pawing of hooves. One of them snorted in reply.

But Jensen persisted in ruining his morning. “Sir?”

Stifling a curse, Thomas stepped into the aisle and closed the door firmly behind him. He brushed the straw from the sleeves of his maroon riding jacket. “What is it, Jensen?”

“A visitor, sir.” The portly butler hurried forward, silver salver in hand.

Thomas fought not to roll his eyes at Jensen's formality. An employee of the Matteson household for nearly twenty years, the man took his position seriously, even during times like these when the duke and duchess were at their country estate and Thomas was the only family member in residence.

And he was in residence precisely
because
his mother and father were not, turning Chatham House into bachelor's quarters until they returned in January. Yet Jensen and the rest of the London staff continued to serve with the precision of a military regiment, taking pride in their positions in a duke's household even while the duke was away.

And while the old lord was away, the young lord would play…or at least that had been his plan. But it was deuced hard to do when the staff followed his every move. For heaven's sake! Yesterday morning he caught Cook spying on him to make certain he ate breakfast.

Most likely, their close attention came upon orders from his mother. He would have found her concern endearing if it didn't aggravate the hell out of him. And it was damned grating that nearly everyone he interacted with these days—including the household staff, apparently—still thought of him as fragile. As still not fully recovered. As
broken
.

“My lord.” Jensen presented the card with as much flourish as if he stood in the gilded front hall of Stonewall Abbey rather than in a stable with his shoes dangerously close to a pile of manure.

“Better watch your step, Jensen,” Thomas warned as he took the card. “This isn't the foyer.”

He watched with amusement as the proud butler slowly took a step backward.

Then he read the embossed name on the card. “The Earl Royston?”
Odd.
Why the devil was that man here?

“I've put him in the drawing room, sir.” Jensen hesitated and cleared his throat as if dreading telling him, “And Lady Emily is taking tea in the morning room.”

His lips curled grimly. Yet another person set on ruining his morning, apparently. “My sister is, is she?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell Royston I'll join him in a moment.” He arched a brow. “And please tell my sister that she has her own London town house and should bloody well stop haunting mine.”

“Yes, sir.” Despite the curt nod of his head, Thomas knew the portly butler had no intention of passing along
that
message.

Straw rustled inside the stall behind him, and Jensen furrowed his bushy brows. “Should I call for one of the footmen to help you with your horse, sir?”

“No need.” He waved off the offer. At the sound of more rustling, he added, “Just a filly I've been attempting to break.”

With a shallow bow, and careful to miss the manure, Jensen turned smartly on his heel and retreated toward the house.

Thomas waited until the butler was out of sight before opening the stall door. Folding his arms across his chest, he leaned against the post and looked at the woman standing inside.

“Just a filly you've been attempting to break, am I?” Helene Humphrey, the young widow of the late Charles Humphrey, pouted with mock peevishness as she brushed at the straw clinging to her riding habit. The same habit that just moments ago had been pulled down to her waist and bunched up around her hips as she'd straddled him in the hay. “How positively uncomplimentary of you, Chesney.”

He shrugged. “You're the one visiting my stables, Helene.”

“And where else am I supposed to take such a fine morning ride?” She turned her back to him so he could fasten up her dress.

He did as she wanted and fastened her up—of course he did. He was a gentleman, after all, and a gentleman always helped his lover freshen her appearance after a tryst, even if she made assignations with half of London society and had just ridden him off six feet from a pile of horse shit. Having settled into wealthy widowhood with all the restraint of an opera diva, Helene thrilled at indulging in a string of dalliances, including those she'd risked before Humphrey died.

That was why he enjoyed bedding her. With Helene, a man got exactly what he saw…no secrets, no surprises. Just a beautiful and eager woman with a hot mouth and a cold heart.

“One of these mornings, we really should put you onto a horse.” As he fastened the last button, he lowered his head to brush his mouth against the side of her neck. “I've got a new gelding you might like.”

With a wicked smile, she turned in his arms and reached down to cup his cock. “Why would I want a gelding,” she purred, “when I've got a stallion?”

Her fingers caressed him through his riding breeches, more in possession than desire. Drawing a breath through clenched teeth, he reached down to grasp her wrist and pull her hand away. He didn't like to think of himself as providing nothing more than stud service. Even if the implication were true.

“At least your guests have good timing.” She stepped back and tugged at her gloves. As with the hat, she'd kept her gloves and boots on the entire time he'd been inside her. Mercifully, she'd discarded the riding crop. “Ten minutes earlier, and I would have been extremely put out.”

Ten minutes earlier.
He would have been annoyed, but would he have truly cared?

His chest tightened with disquiet. Good Lord, had his life really come to this? Pre-appointed tumbles in a horse stall with a woman he didn't even like, done more to release the acute uneasiness that pounded relentlessly at him than for physical pleasure?

Just one year ago, his life still possessed meaning. He'd felt alive then, and he never would have sought out a woman like Helene. In public, he had moved at the center of society, taking advantage of all the benefits that life within the peerage afforded, concerned with nothing more than fast horses, faster women, and the odds in the book at White's. But in private, he'd served as a War Office operative, his skills highly valued and his work important, and his life was filled with purpose.

Until everything had gone so horribly wrong. Right in Mayfair, of all places. That was the evening when he learned the difference between being alive and truly living.

And his life had become a living hell. Unconsciously, his hand reached for his side, for that spot just above his hip where the bullet hole still hideously pocked his skin.

“Next Thursday morning, then, for our usual ride?” She trailed the end of her riding crop suggestively along his shoulder as she stepped past him into the aisle to leave. “Although, I have
so
been wanting to try riding bareback.”

He grabbed her around the waist and pulled her back against him. He'd found release with her just minutes ago, but he was still restless, still oddly unsatisfied, and recklessly sought one last moment of distraction with her. “When it comes to being bareback, Helene,” he murmured as he nipped at her earlobe, “I suspect there's nothing you haven't already tried.”

He drew a soft moan from her as his hand fondled her breast through her riding habit, and his cock flexed. Did he have time to take her again? Nothing more than a quick, desperate diversion, certainly, yet one that would keep at bay the rising anxiety for a little while longer.

Giving a throaty laugh, she slipped out of his arms. “Insatiable!” she scolded with a teasing smile and smacked him playfully on the shoulder with the riding crop. “But I'm due for breakfast, and you have guests waiting.”

Then she sauntered away, shooting him a parting look of a heated promise for their next morning ride. Her hips sashayed wide with every step from the stables and down the narrow back alley to her waiting carriage.

Blowing out a harsh breath, he stalked toward the house with hands clenched in frustration. Not over Helene. Frustration over— Christ!
Everything.

However much he knew he should be grateful for still breathing and moving, the long and painful recovery, coupled with the public exposure of being shot, left him nervous, desperate, anxious. An unexpected movement or shadow could send his heart racing and his breath panting, and the rush of adrenaline through his body would rattle him beyond control.

He ran his fingers through his black hair, cursing them for shaking. The War Office wouldn't give him another field assignment now. He'd become too conspicuous for espionage work. Too
wounded
. And both because of the shooting and his position as the duke's heir, the military refused him any sort of commission. Even the damned admiralty rejected him, for God's sake.

Apparently, he wasn't even good enough to drown.

Yet he couldn't bear the thought of returning to the life he'd led before he joined the War Office, when he had nothing to do but wait for his father to die so he could become a duke. After fighting against Napoleon on the Peninsula as part of the Scarlet Scoundrels of the First Dragoons, he found little meaning in being a society gentleman. In the past few months, he'd worked his way through all the pursuits enjoyed by the quality…horses, gambling, women. Until nothing was left. But he felt just as empty as before.

No wonder so many men gambled away their fortunes, became drunks, or turned into rakes who sported in ruining young women—they were bored out of their blasted minds.

When he thought about what little that life held for him and the darkness now edging his existence, he doubted he could survive. He'd managed to hang on to his sanity during the past year only by clinging to the hope that he had connections in the government who could help him get back into fieldwork.

Jensen opened the front door as he bounded up the steps and strode inside the town house. He paused at the foyer table to sort quickly through the morning mail, searching for one particular message, one specific—

He saw the letter, and his heart skipped.

Earl Bathurst.

With a nervous breath, he broke the wax seal to scan the message from the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, the man responsible for overseeing the War Office and his last chance at returning to the field. But each sentence caused the uneasiness to grasp out for him again, to clutch and strangle at him with its claws, and his heartbeat sped sickeningly as the blackness crept in around him.

Bathurst had refused his request for another assignment. He remained unconvinced that Thomas had recovered enough to continue his work.

As the ghost pain pierced him, he covered his side with his hand, even knowing that the wound was completely healed by now. He pressed his eyes closed to concentrate on his breathing. Slow, steady, controlled—

“Anything I can help you with, sir?” Jensen was at his side.

Opening his eyes, he covered his humiliation with a shake of his head. “Just put all this in the study, will you?”

He tossed the unwanted letter onto the pile and turned away. He would deal with it later, once he was alone and could fully absorb the refusal of this last desperate attempt for life. But now the Earl Royston waited upstairs in the drawing room for him, and he had to appear to be normal in front of his father's acquaintance from the Lords, no matter how painful the engulfing blackness in his chest.