Page 68 of Along Came a Rogue

Illegitimacy? Anger flared through him. After Emily’s lie this afternoon that he wasn’t good enough for her, he had no patience left for anyone implying that he’d overstepped his station. His eyes narrowed icily. “I never attached—”

“Let me be clear.” Her chin raised impossibly higher, her eyes sharp. “I have always held a special affection for you, Nathaniel, and I have always wanted the best for you, including using my influence to make your way easier.”

He glared at her, not knowing what to say to that. Not knowing whether he should thank her or toss her out on her bony, aristocratic ass.

“But I will not let anyone ruin my family’s name and reputation by unleashing spurious gossip. Not even you, Nathaniel.”

He forced through clenched teeth, “I am not unleashing—”

She slammed her cane against the floor. “The Henley family name is unsullied, and I intend to keep it that way until my last breath!” Spinning on her heel, she stomped from the room, pausing in the doorway to glance back at him with a final warning. “Leave the past alone, and be happy with what you have.”

He stared daggers after her, hearing the thump of her cane into the foyer and out the front door as Hulston scurried to open it.

What the hell was that about? He let loose a curse that would have sent the dowager’s head spinning. One that did, in fact, make Hulston gasp in the hallway.

He stormed from the drawing room and charged up the stairs three at a time. Blasted aristocrats and their pretentiousness! Damn their arrogance! And for what reason were they special, except to be squeezed from the right woman’s womb in the right birth order? Wealth and position unearned. Wholly undeserved. Yet thinking they had the right to reign over everyone else, bending them to their will.

He tore at the buttons of his waistcoat, ripping away two as he hurriedly peeled it off and then set to removing his shirt. The viscountess had always been generous to him. But he’d be damned before he allowed anyone to hold his life hostage, to tell him what he could or could not have.

Including Emily.

She would marry him, and he would protect her. No matter what he had to do to convince her, no matter how long it took, he wasn’t giving up without a fight.

Chapter Twelve

June 1816

Three Months Later

Reynard Crenshaw raised the teacup to his lips. “I must say, I was quite surprised by recent events.”

So was I, Emily thought wryly, balancing her own untasted cup of tea on her knees as she sat across from him in the drawing room of Chatham House. Although shocked and terrified would have been a more accurate description. Even now, eight months pregnant, she wasn’t used to the idea that she might be carrying a marquess.

As if reading her daughter’s worried mind, her mother reached a hand across the settee and squeezed her elbow reassuringly. But the gesture did little to comfort her.

Emily hadn’t wanted to attend tea with Mr. Crenshaw, who was Andrew’s second cousin and for now the heir presumptive to the late Marquess of Dunwich. The last thing she wanted to do was dredge up bad memories of what happened at Snowden Hall or remind herself of how much danger she and her baby were still in, even though no additional attacks had been made since she arrived in London. But her mother insisted, reminding her that she would need all the help and support she could get from the Crenshaws once her baby was born, especially if it was a boy.

Although, truly, she found the man surprisingly pleasant, given the awkward circumstances.

“I am only a banker,” he explained unassumingly, a faint smile of self-deprecation on his lips. “I find all this a bit overwhelming.”

Emily couldn’t help but smile faintly at that, because she’d been just as overwhelmed herself. And certainly, he’d led a quiet existence until he was notified seven months ago that Andrew Crenshaw was dead and that his entire life would be changing forever, only to be told again when she arrived in London that an unborn baby might now stand between him and the inheritance.

“And so,” he continued, “I hope that you will excuse any confusion or misunderstanding on my part as we go forward.”

Her mother smiled. “Only if you excuse any from us.”

He chuckled softly at that, and Emily found herself liking him a great deal, this distinguished man in his late forties, with gray at his temples and a humble bearing. “I very much doubt I will have to do so, Your Grace.”

Despite having a future as uncertain as Emily’s, he gave no impression of malice toward her, just as she saw nothing in him to suspect he was responsible for Andrew’s murder or the attack against her and Grey.

His son Harold, however, was harder to read. The young man sat quietly at the side of the room and spent most of the afternoon staring out the window. Bored.

An only son in his last year at Cambridge, Harold had yet to determine a career for himself. A few questions asked by her mother at the beginning of the tea to make him feel welcome revealed that he was not interested in a military commission nor a living in the Church. Nor did he seem thrilled to pursue banking with his father, which appeared to be the only choice left to him should Reynard not inherit.

Overall, he appeared sullen and distant, resentful of having to attend the tea instead of spending the day with friends on St. James’s Street, and Emily had been relieved when he withdrew to the side of the room to be by himself.

“And now, Lady Emily—” Reynard sent her a warm, friendly smile and pulled her attention back from his son. “We wait for your baby to arrive. In the meantime, I shall enjoy getting to know you and your family better.”