Dearest Rogue

  He’d never before understood what people meant when they talked of breaking hearts.

  Now he did.

  Still. He’d not ever lied to her before and he wasn’t going to start now. “The sun is shining.”

  EVERYTHING WAS BLACK, though Captain Trevillion had told her it was broad daylight.

  Phoebe had expected this to happen one day.

  Of course she had. Her vision had been getting steadily worse for years. Only a mental incompetent wouldn’t realize where it was leading.

  Except… it was one thing for her mind to understand, but it was entirely different for her heart to comprehend. Foolish, feckless thing. Apparently it had held out hope for a miracle.

  She laughed at the realization, though it came out more a gasp.

  He was there at once, her faithful captain, stern and without humor, but always there. “My lady?” He took her hand in his large, warm one, wrapping an arm about her shoulders as if she might fall.

  And really she might.

  “It’s silly,” she said, and swiped at her face with a shaking hand, for it seemed she was weeping. “I’m silly.”

  “Come. Sit.”

  He led her two steps and pulled her down gently to a stone seat, letting her lean into his solid strength.

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t,” he rasped, and if she hadn’t known better she’d have thought he was nearly as shaken as she. “Don’t apologize.”

  She inhaled unsteadily. “Do you know why all my flowers are white?”

  She half expected him to point out the non sequitur, but he merely replied, “No.”

  “The white blooms stood out best for my fading eyesight when I first planted the garden three years ago,” she said. “And of course white flowers are usually the most fragrant. But it was mostly because I thought I might see them better.”

  He said nothing, merely tightened his arm about her shoulders, and she was a little grateful that it was he with her now. Had it been Hero or Maximus or Cousin Bathilda she’d have had to worry about their own pain—pain for her loss. But with Captain Trevillion she had simply a sturdy presence. He wouldn’t break down weeping for her. He wouldn’t try to think of comforting words.

  That at least was nice.

  “It’s so stupid,” she said softly, “to mourn the inevitable. I knew there was no cure. I was the one who insisted Maximus send away all the doctors and miracle workers. I knew…” She couldn’t quite suppress the sob that rose in her chest.

  She covered her open mouth with her hands and gulped quite awfully, shuddering.

  His hand was in her hair, bending her head to his chest, letting her rest there as the tears soaked his shirt. One of his pistols pressed quite uncomfortably into her cheek, but she really didn’t care at the moment. She wept until her face was hot and wet, until her nose was stuffy, until her eyes felt as if they had been sprinkled with sand. When she at last subsided, she could hear the thump of Captain Trevillion’s heart, steady and strong, beneath his chest.

  “It’s a little like death,” she whispered, half to herself. “We all know that we’ll die someday, but believing it is another thing entirely.”

  For a moment the hand still in her hair tightened painfully. Then it was gone, smoothing over her shoulder instead. “You’re far from death, my lady.”

  “Am I?” She twisted her face upward, toward his. “Isn’t this like a small death? I cannot see light. I cannot see anything.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, his voice like gravel, grating and rasping and yet, somehow, comforting as well. “I’m sorry.”

  It sounded… as if he truly cared.

  She frowned, opening her mouth to ask, and heard the door to the town house open. “Oh, goodness. Who is it?”

  “Powers, coming to fetch you,” he replied.

  She straightened at once, touching her hand to her hair, attempting to put it to rights. She must look ghastly. “How do I look?”

  “As if you’ve been weeping.”

  His stolid answer surprised a laugh from her. “I know I look a fright, but you might at least lie.”

  “Do you really require lies from me?” His voice sounded… tired.

  She frowned, opening her mouth to reply.

  “My lady, the dressmaker is here.” That was Powers’s voice, and quite close.

  “Drat,” Phoebe muttered, distracted. “We’ll have to go in.”

  “Indeed, my lady.” He was as unemotional as ever.

  Still she pressed her fingers into his arm as he led her back to the house. “Thank you, Captain.”

  “For what, my lady?”

  “For letting me soak your shirt with salt water.” She smiled, though it was harder than usual. “For not giving me platitudes. You’re quite right. I don’t need lies from you.”

  “Then I shall endeavor to give you nothing but honesty,” he replied.

  Which was a perfectly respectable answer, and yet still it made her shiver. She thought suddenly of her family’s description of him. Handsome. Dashing. Strange, she’d never considered Trevillion as a man who might be attractive. He was simply there. A massive shape at her right side keeping her from balls and outings, always on the alert to stop any fun.

  Except that wasn’t quite true, she chided herself guiltily as they made the stone steps. Trevillion had been quite comforting as she’d fallen apart.

  He’d been a friend. She’d never considered him a friend before… and if she had that wrong…

  Well.

  Perhaps that wasn’t the only thing she had wrong about her guard.

  Chapter Three

  Prince Corineus vowed to have his own kingdom one day, so he gathered a dozen brave men and boarded a ship to sail the sea. They sailed for seven days and seven nights and on the eighth day land was sighted: jagged cliffs with only one small safe inlet. But as Corineus saw the shoreline he heard an eerie song, a seductress promising love and lust and everlasting bliss.…

  —From The Kelpie

  Late the next morning Phoebe stood in the front hallway of Wakefield House and pressed a note and a small purse into Powers’s hand. “Now mind you give this to Mr. Hainsworth himself, not one of the shop boys.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Powers said. Her voice was light and pleasing, though she did have a tendency to apply far too much of the patchouli scent she favored.

  “Thank you, Powers,” Phoebe said as she detected the approach of Captain Trevillion’s uneven tread on the stairs.

  “My lady, do you still wish to attend the Ladies’ meeting?” he asked in a raspy voice with skeptical undertones.

  “Ladies’ Syndicate meeting,” Phoebe replied. “And yes, of course I still wish to attend. Don’t try to weasel out of taking me—I have Maximus’s blessing.” Her brother’s blessing to go out, at least. She hadn’t actually informed Maximus where she was going, but she wasn’t about to tell the captain that.

  Was that a masculine sigh? “Very well, my lady.”

  Strong, warm fingers took her hand and placed it on his sleeve. Funny. Had she not been blind, such a touch—bare skin to bare skin—would have been scandalous. Come to that, having a man in his prime follow her about, sometimes without any other escort, would have been the height of impropriety. And yet no one seemed to think anything of Captain Trevillion’s lurking always at her side.

  Blindness had neutered her in the eyes of the world.

  Phoebe huffed to herself as she stepped out into the warm air. The sun must be out today—she could feel it on her skin.

  “My lady?” Trevillion’s voice rumbled next to her.

  “Oh, nothing, Captain,” she said only a little grumpily. No doubt he too thought of her as a sort of mobile doll rather than a woman with blood running in her veins.

  “If there is anything troubling you—”

  “Sometimes I wonder if you should just put me on wheels,” she muttered as they descended the front steps.

  “Good mornin’
, sir, m’lady,” called Reed the footman.

  “Reed,” Trevillion intoned. “You and Hathaway can stand on the back of the carriage, if you will.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Is it really necessary to bring both footmen?” Phoebe asked softly.

  “I think so, yes, my lady. Here are the steps.”

  She edged her toe forward until she felt the first step and then climbed into the carriage. She sat and smoothed her skirts. “It’s only the Ladies’ Syndicate.”

  There was a rustle as Trevillion sat across from her. Despite his cane, he made far less noise than most men as he moved about his day.

  It was quite irritating.

  “The Ladies’ Syndicate meets in St Giles, my lady, arguably the worst part of London.”

  “It’s the middle of the day.”

  “It was the middle of the day when the attempt was made against you on Bond Street.” His voice was deep and even and Phoebe wondered if anything would make Trevillion lose his air of calm disinterest. “Sometimes I think you enjoy arguing, my lady.”

  She pursed her lips. “Well, not with everyone, Captain Trevillion. You’re a very special case, you comprehend.”

  She thought she heard a huff that might’ve been quiet laughter, but it was drowned in the rumble of wheels as the carriage set off.

  “Truly I’m honored, my lady.”

  “As you should be.” She fought to suppress a smile. She always felt a sense of accomplishment whenever she got her stern captain to play. “Tell me something. I’ve noticed that you favor Reed above the other footmen. Why is that?”

  “It’s a simple enough matter, my lady. Reed used to be a dragoon under my command. When he left His Majesty’s service, I recommended Reed to your brother as a good man, loyal and not afraid of a hard day’s work. His Grace was kind enough to take my recommendation, my lady.”

  “Ah! How easily a mystery is solved.” The carriage rocked as they turned a corner, and Phoebe caught a fragment of song from without as they passed—probably the singer had a hat out, hoping to make a few pennies with her voice. “Was he with you in the dragoons for long?”

  “Since he first took the King’s shilling, my lady,” Trevillion replied. “Some five years, if I recollect correctly.”

  “And how many years were you in the dragoons?”

  There was a pause and she thought, not for the first time, how awful it was not to see the face of the person she spoke with. Was he surprised at her question? Offended that she asked such a personal query? Or saddened by the thought of a career he no longer had? Such a simple matter, easily answered with but a glance.

  “Almost twelve years, my lady,” he said at last. His voice was entirely emotionless and she could get nothing from it—save that its very lack of emotion meant he felt something strongly.

  She cocked her head, considering. “Did you like it?”

  “My lady?” Oh, now his voice was ever so faintly censoring. That was interesting. Why had she never asked him these questions before?

  “Being in the dragoons? Commanding men—you did command many men as a captain, didn’t you? Doing… whatever it was you did?”

  “I commanded twenty to fifty men, depending on our assignment,” he replied.

  And now he commanded only her. She realized suddenly what a comedown in life this work must be for him.

  But he continued, “I did whatever my King ordered me to,” and for a moment she thought that was all she was going to hear about his time in the dragoons. Then he unbent a little. “We chased smugglers along the coast for many years, but in the last several my regiment was assigned to London, specifically to find and catch gin makers and other miscreants in St Giles.”

  “Really?” She frowned as she realized she knew very little about this man. Good Lord! She’d spent six months, day after day, with Captain Trevillion and yet she’d never asked him the simplest questions about his background. Phoebe felt a stab of shame before she leaned a little forward, determined to right her past lapse. “That seems a very specific area to patrol.”

  “Yes.” His voice was dry. “But then we had a very specific order—from an important member of Parliament.”

  “From… you don’t mean my brother?”

  “I do mean your brother, my lady.”

  “He has always hated gin making to a quite unhealthy degree,” Phoebe muttered to herself. “So you’ve actually known Maximus for years?”

  “His Grace and I have been acquainted for over four years.”

  “I had no idea you were such friends.”

  The pause was small but marked. “I would not describe our… association as such, my lady.”

  “What? As friendly?” Phoebe asked. “I assure you, I’ll not think the less of you, Captain, for succumbing to the weakness of friendship.”

  “Your brother is a duke, my lady—”

  “And yet he still blows his nose.”

  “—and I am only a former dragoon from—” He stopped abruptly.

  She leaned forward, her curiosity piqued. “From where, Captain?”

  “Cornwall, my lady. I see we’ve arrived at the orphanage.”

  And the carriage shuddered to a stop.

  “Don’t think this conversation over,” Phoebe said pleasantly as she gathered herself in preparation for exiting the carriage. “I have many more questions to ask you, Captain Trevillion.”

  As the carriage door opened she heard a resigned sigh from her protector.

  Phoebe bit back a smile. She enjoyed riling the stoic dragoon captain, but she couldn’t help wondering: why that slight hesitation over his origins?

  THE HOME FOR Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children was, at first glance, an unprepossessing place for an introduction into fashionable society. Eve Dinwoody descended the carriage with the help of her manservant, Jean-Marie Pépin, and glanced up the street.

  The home sat square in the middle of St Giles, on a lane too narrow to allow for the passage of a carriage—they’d had to stop at the end of the lane. Even in daylight the extreme poverty of St Giles hung like a dark cloud over the place. A beggar in rags so tattered it was impossible to tell his or her sex sat slumped against the corner of a house. Across the street from the carriage, a woman shuffled by, her head and back bent under an enormous covered basket, while a lone child, bare from the waist down, stood and frankly gawped at the fine carriage.

  They must have seemed like gods descended from Olympus to the poor boy, Eve thought with pity. Hastily she fumbled in her pocket for the purse hanging inside her skirts and withdrew a penny. She held it out to the naked child and he darted forward, snatched the coin, and scuttled away.

  The home itself was a large, new brick building with wide front steps. Nonetheless it was obviously a working institution, with few of the architectural flourishes common to charity buildings. Yet this was where the Ladies’ Syndicate for the Benefit of the Home for Unfortunate Infants and Foundling Children met—and the Syndicate was composed of some of the most influential women in society.

  Among them her sponsor.

  Eve turned to watch Amelia Huntington, Baroness Caire, step from the carriage. The elder lady was just entering her seventh decade, but her beautiful face was hardly lined. The only possible sign of her age was her snow-white hair—though Eve had heard that Lady Caire’s hair, like her son’s, had turned white in her youth and therefore wasn’t the result of age at all. She wore an elegant deep-blue frock—the exact shade of her eyes—trimmed with black lace on the sleeves, on the square neckline, and in a tiny row down the bodice.

  “They live like rats here,” Lady Caire murmured, not without sympathy, as she glanced about. “That’s why I always bring a brace of sturdy footmen with me.” She nodded to the footmen accompanying them, one in front, one in back. “You were wise to bring your own man.” She glanced thoughtfully at Jean-Marie. “He’s quite exotic, isn’t he?”

  Jean-Marie’s skin was a glossy black, he stood over six feet, and w
ith his white wig and silver-and-white livery, he was striking.

  “I no longer find him so.” Eve didn’t bother correcting Lady Caire’s assumption that Jean-Marie was her footman. She fell into step with the older woman as they made their way down Maiden Lane to the home. “I must thank you again for the kindness of an introduction to the Ladies’ Syndicate.”

  “My pleasure, naturally,” Lady Caire drawled without smiling, her eyes cold—a reminder that she’d been pressured to bring Eve to the meeting today.

  Eve mustn’t forget that fact. She had no friends here, not truly. Carefully, she drew her lips into a small, polite smile as they both started up the wide steps. More carriages had stood at the end of the lane, suggesting that the other members of the Syndicate had already arrived.

  Eve took a deep breath as the door to the home was opened, smoothing down her dove-gray skirts. Black and cherry-pink flowers were discreetly embroidered at her shoulders, on the elbows of her sleeves, down the front of her bodice, and the on edges of her wide overskirt. Underneath she wore cream skirts—simple and elegant. She was fashionably dressed, at least, though she’d never been—nor would ever be—fashionably pretty. A very correct butler stood in the doorway, which was a bit odd for a foundling home, but Isabel Makepeace, the wife of the home’s manager, had been a wealthy widow before her second marriage.

  “Good afternoon, my lady, miss,” the butler said, standing aside. A black tomcat sat by his feet, for all the world as if welcoming visitors as well.

  Suddenly a barking whirlwind erupted from the back of the house. A small white dog, snapping teeth bared, ran at them. Eve couldn’t still her involuntary step backward, jostling into the butler.

  Then Jean-Marie was in front of her, scooping up the nasty thing and holding it against his chest. It immediately quieted, licking at his chin.

  “I do apologize!” the butler exclaimed. “Dodo does bark quite loudly, but she never bites, I assure you.”

  “Think nothing of it,” Eve said, trying desperately to steady her voice. “The animal merely startled me.” She smoothed down her skirts and nodded discreetly to Jean-Marie, who was firmly holding the awful creature.