Page 7 of A Remarkable Rogue

“Henry Everett,” he pressed gently, the tone of his deep voice encouraging her to trust him. “Why?”

“I’m not telling you anything, Captain.” She sniffed with all the regal haughtiness she could summon, given the throbbing of her pulse and the brandy stain on her skirt. And given how her life was shattering around her. “Your threat to hand me over to the Home Office is an empty one.”

His jaw clenched. “I assure you that—”

“If you had any proof of my involvement with Mr. Everett beyond our business arrangement of his gambling debts, then the Home Office itself would have arrested me by now.” Fear churned the sickening in her stomach into anger, but she wouldn’t let him cow her. “They wouldn’t have surprised me at the faro table the way you did. For all I know, you have no connection to them whatsoever.”

“Believe me, I am far more connected to them than I want to be.” A frustrated breath accompanied that. “But you’re right. The Home Office wouldn’t have come for you at the club. They would have dragged you kicking and screaming right out of your home, hauled you off to Whitehall, and tortured you to get answers, if necessary.” Despite the harshness of his words, his voice was calm and oddly cajoling. “Be grateful it was me who came after you tonight and not them.”

She swept her gaze over him. He looked like nothing more than a roguish society gentleman with the shadows falling across his handsome face, with his eyes staring at her so heatedly that her toes curled inside her slippers. This man was a wolfish soldier in sheep’s clothing.

Enough.She was tired of being frightened and constantly on edge, tired of being sick with worry about Robert’s safety and whether the secret of his existence would be revealed.

Enough of all of this!

She banged her fist hard against the roof. Pain shot up her forearm, but she bit her lip against a wince, determined not to let him see her weakness. She’d never letanyman see her weaknesses or gain a position of power over her again.

“Jenkins!” Another hard bang on the roof. “Jenkins, stop now—please!”

The driver pulled back the team and brought the carriage to a halt.

“Lady Rowland,” Captain Reed forced out between clenched teeth, “if you think—”

“We are done,” she said with such resolve that she shook with it. “So either arrest me or leave. You will get nothing else from me, I promise you.”

The door opened, and a puzzled tiger appeared in the doorway in the dim light of the lamps. His mouth fell open to find a man sitting inside who had not been there when the carriage rolled away from the club.

“This is not over,” Captain Reed warned.

“Yes, it is.” Defiantly, she locked eyes with his. “Because Iwillhave to be tortured before I share anything with you.”

The captain stared at her, unmoving and silent, for a long and uncomfortable moment. His carefully masked face didn’t betray any of his thoughts, not even when he finally gave her a polite bow of his head and stepped slowly from the carriage into the dark street.

“Home, please, Jenkins,” she called out to the driver as the tiger shut the door and hurried back to his seat.

The driver sent the team forward.

“I can only help you if you put your trust in me,” Captain Reed warned quietly through the window as he walked beside the carriage for the first few feet. Thankfully, he made no attempt to climb back inside.

“I don’t want your help.”I want to be left alone.

She turned her face away into the shadows as the carriage picked up speed, and he finally moved away. She couldn’t help but look behind, but he’d already disappeared into the darkness.

To be left alone… That was all she wanted, all it seemed she’d ever wanted her entire life—no, just since she was eighteen, since that terrible day when her fiancé Michael died. He’d been taken from her only for so much more to be stolen from her in the aftermath.

She’d wanted nothing more than to control her own life and make her own decisions, to no longer be forced to bend to the will of anyone. Every prayer she’d whispered to God during that horrible time had ended with that plea…Make them leave me alone!

Two years ago, her prayers had finally been answered when John Rowland died. She didn’t know if God had taken pity upon her or if Lucifer simply needed a willing assistant in the fires of hell, and she didn’t care which. The husband she’d never loved—and who certainly had never loved her—lay in the churchyard and could no longer humiliate or demean her, could no longer force her to his will.

Now her newfound freedom was once more being ripped away. What was that old saying, that when God wants to punish people, He answers their prayers? He’d punished her by freeing her from the prison of her marriage, only to plunge her into the fresh hell of blackmail and treason.

Her husband told someone about Robert, she was certain. That was the only way the blackmailers could have known about him. The old bastard had found a way to control her even from beyond the grave.

She screwed her eyes shut against the pain. Dear God, would she never be free?

The only salvation she had was knowing that Robert was still safely hidden away in the countryside. And for the moment, that he was still safe.

Her beautiful baby boy… She smiled wistfully as her fingers reached up to the locket at her neck. He wasn’t a baby any longer. Robert was six now, although in her heart, she would always think of him as that pink and wrinkle-faced baby whose tiny hand grasped so tightly around her finger when she held him to her breast, when he slept nestled on her bosom. Even when her parents pulled him from her arms and took him away at just three days old—