Page 6 of Along Came a Rogue

Mary Matteson sobbed and cupped her palm against his cheek as she sat beside him on the bed. “I’m here, Thomas. Father and I are both here.”

His eyes remained closed, but he licked his dry lips as he slowly woke. “I’m sorry…I’m so sorry…”

“No, darling, no.” She leaned over to kiss his forehead as fresh tears rolled down her cheeks. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t—”

He tried to move to reach for her, but the ties held him down.

She pulled back and glared accusingly at Grey through tear-glistened eyes. “Get these things off him!”

Anger pierced him at the indictment on her face, mixing with the horrible guilt he already carried for having to tie down his best friend in the first place. But he held his tongue and said nothing, knowing now wasn’t the time to defend himself to Thomas’s parents. And not in his sickroom.

“Mary,” Chatham told her, “he wouldn’t be tied down if Dr. Brandon didn’t think it necessary.”

Instead of reassuring her, his explanation only made her weep harder.

Thomas’s eyelids fluttered open heavily, taking all his strength to open them. “Don’t cry, Mother,” he whispered. Then he rasped out, “Water…please.”

Mary nodded and reached for the pitcher and glass on the stand beside the bed, but her hands shook so violently that she nearly spilled it.

“Here, let me.” Grey stepped forward and took the glass from her, then carefully slipped his hand beneath Thomas’s head to raise it from the pillow. He held the glass to Thomas’s parched lips and tipped it just enough that he could take several swallows, then eased his head back down onto the pillow.

Unfocused, Thomas’s blue eyes swept around the room. Bewilderment flashed across his pale face. “Emily…?”

“She’s coming as soon as she can,” Grey assured him with the lie, knowing the truth would only upset him. That most likely she wouldn’t come at all. During the past two years, Thomas and Emily had fallen out and rarely communicated, although Thomas had always refused to say why exactly other than that Emily had gotten married. “The weather is bad up north, and she can’t travel yet. But soon.”

His answer didn’t calm the agitation in Thomas’s eyes. “I need her, Grey…I need Emily.”

Grey stared down at him, his chest ripping open painfully beneath Thomas’s soft pleading. He was still so weak, with the loss of blood leaving his skin nearly transparent and his muscles still too fragile to move from bed. Every breath was a struggle.

“Bring the brat to me…please…”

Grey nodded, not trusting himself to speak. He knew what he had to do.

“We’ll send our own coach and escort for our daughter, Major,” Chatham interjected. “This is none of your concern.”

Grey ignored him and cast a glance at Edward, whose solemn expression signaled his complete understanding of the unspoken question that passed between them. He nodded once.

Turning on his heel, Grey strode from the room, through the house, and out the front door. His jaw was set hard, his mind determined.

“Send a message to Arthur Hedley at the Horse Guards,” he ordered the groom who brought out his horse from the stables, then tossed the man a coin to make certain the message was delivered. “Tell him to follow me north to Yorkshire.”

Knowing the former sergeant would catch up with him by nightfall, he mounted his horse and set off. Thomas wanted Emily by his side, so that was exactly what he would do. Put her at Thomas’s side.

No matter what it took to get her there.

Chapter Two

Yorkshire, England

Snowden Hall. Thank God.

After three days of hard riding, Grey gratefully turned his horse down the lane toward the large Yorkshire farm where Thomas’s sister lived, with Hedley falling into a trot beside him. Three days of near-constant riding through miserable rain and unseasonable cold, stopping only when the night grew too dark to travel on—all because Thomas had asked him to fetch his sister, and Grey would have moved heaven and earth for him.

Although, he thought, grimacing as he glanced up at the thick, darkening clouds that promised more icy rain by nightfall, he hadn’t realized that moving heaven and earth meant riding into hell. But he wouldn’t rest until he delivered Emily Matteson Crenshaw to the Chatham House doorstep.

Without warning, a bullet tore into the tree trunk inches above his head. The wood splintered with a loud pop.

Christ! Dropping from his horse to the ground, he rolled behind the stone wall edging the stable yard of the white stone house and reached for the pistol beneath his coat.