“It doesn’t matter what you do,” he told her in a quieter, somewhat shakier voice. “I look at you and I wish I could thank Mr. Green for giving me that brooch.”
Tears welled up in her eyes. He was more than she deserved. She smiled and breathed again.
“Is there anything else I should know?” he asked, smiling with her and taking her hand.
She couldn’t tell him about being a Horseman. She couldn’t! Not now when he was smiling at her and the wind was blowing his hair across his face against a backdrop of azure sky. She would never ride as a highwayman again. She would give it all up and spend her days raising money for others, not stealing it. And having his babes.
She was too ashamed of her gravest sin to confess it. And she hated herself for being a coward.
“No,” she told him. “There is nothing else.”
*
Sebastian Alexander, Baronof Surrey, sat in the sunniest spot of Preston’s private solar and sipped his wine. He crossed his hosed legs and examined the smudge of dirt on his shoe while John deVille gave an account of what happened last eve in the small village where Charlotte’s friend, Rosie, lived.
“You ordered them to burn it down?” Sebastian asked Preston nonchalantly. He was glad Charlotte would hear of his robbery last night and realize he was too far away to have anything to do with killing her friends.
Sebastian had grown up with an abusive father. The rat scum wasn’t even his real father. When Sebastian finally had had enough beatings, he killed him. He’d done many bad things, but he didn’t betray his friends.
“Aye. And now you see why,” Preston railed. “She was with him yet again—after what he did to me! I should kill you, deVille,” he said turning to him. “For letting her and her investigator live!”
“You called for Charlotte’s death?” Sebastian asked, not hiding his surprise.
“Aye! John! Ride back to that village and finish her. She has given her allegiance to someone else. She may have told him everything.” He turned his pale face to Sebastian. “I’m not a monster. I will cry for her.”
“Amanda!” he shouted next. “Where in the bloody hell are you with my tea!”
“Tell me, deVille,” Sebastian said, sparing the man a glance as he was leaving. “Where was Lady Charlotte while you were killing her friend’s husband?”
“I do not know, my lord. I saw her after I returned from one of the other houses. She was standing with the investigator. He was bare-chested and barefooted. And he had blood on him. He is most likely the one who killed my men.”
“Why do you suppose he didn’t kill you?”
“I…I do not know—”
“Why would a man who shot our esteemed viscount,” he turned to offer Preston an indulgent smile, “and killed three men on his own last night, let you live? Why,yousaid earlier that ’twas as if he were on a rampage. Yet, he didn’t harm a hair on your head. Why do you suppose that is?”
“I don’t know, my lord. “Perhaps he—”
“Did you not spend time with him in your prison cell?” Sebastian asked him and slipped his gaze to Preston. He watched him grow infuriated.
“You are working for him and spying on me!”
“No!” deVille cried out “I don’t know why he let me live!”
Preston didn’t wait to hear anything more. He called in his guards and ordered that deVille be taken outside and shot.
He left, kicking and screaming and glaring at Sebastian. Hmm, the baron thought, deVille didn’t seem to mind the thought of killing Charlotte. Now he couldn’t.
Sebastian put down his cup of wine and rose to his feet.
“Where are you going?” Preston demanded.
Preston would never admit it, but he was in love with Charlotte and her being with Michael Pendridge was driving him mad. Though he thought nothing of his own unfaithfulness with Miss Amanda Beasley and several others.
Personally, Sebastian didn’t care what Preston did; if he lived or died. He’d started the Horsemen with Preston, but the viscount received all the glory from the men. He treated Sebastian like a favored pet instead of his equal. But favored pets, like him and Charlotte, knew how to get what they wanted from him.
“Sebastian!” Preston demanded. “Where are you going?”
