Page 87 of Along Came a Rogue

At some point during the evening—he’d lost track of the time—Dr. Brandon arrived at Edward’s personal request. The old physician’s distaste at being called out for something as unclean as female matters was apparent, but not even the illustrious Dr. Brandon would refuse a summons by the Duke of Strathmore, so he spent the evening discussing hunting and politics with Emily’s father downstairs in his study while the midwife and the duchess tended to Emily. Her mother paced her own vigil in the hall.

Hedley had sent word that Harold Crenshaw had been sewn up by the surgeon and delivered to Newgate to await trial. In the confusion, Yardley had gotten away, but his men found her fleeing north toward Scotland and brought her back to London, putting her into the same prison as Crenshaw.

Emily and her baby were finally safe.

If all went well with the delivery. Despite the young duchess’s optimism, Grey had clearly seen concern in her eyes during the reports she’d given them, the last one nearly two hours ago. The baby was early, and with Emily being so thin, carrying so small…

He paused in his pacing to briefly close his eyes. Not the baby—please, God, not the baby! If anything happened to the baby, he didn’t know how Emily would ever be able to bear it.

“Cognac.” Edward held out a glass to him. The single word was not a question. Only the colonel was capable of making the offering of a drink into an order.

Mumbling his thanks, he took the glass and watched as Thomas circled to the far end of the billiards table to take his shot. He and Edward had kept up a running game of billiards all night between their barbs at Grey’s expense. But apparently, despite all their teasing and outer appearance of bravado, they were just as preoccupied over Emily as he was because Grey could count on one hand the number of balls either of them had successfully sunk all evening.

“Worried?” Edward asked, cutting into his thoughts.

“No.” He frowned into his cognac. “Terrified.”

“You should be.” There was no teasing in his former colonel’s voice now, no sarcasm. “You’re about to gain a family.”

As he watched Thomas lean across the billiards table to take a second shot, Grey felt his throat tighten with emotion. He’d dreamt about having this since he was a boy but never truly thought he ever would. To be part of a family with a wife, brother, child—although he wasn’t the father, in his gut he felt as if the baby were his, already loving it as much as any father could. Good God, he shook from the enormity of it all.

“If you’re worried about Chatham and the duchess, you should know that they’re coming around,” Edward confided in a voice low enough so Thomas couldn’t hear that they were talking about his parents.

Grey glanced at him over the rim of his glass. “Is that so?”

Edward nodded. “Her father no longer wants to kill you.”

“Well.” He took another swallow and answered wryly, “That’s something, I suppose.”

“Makes for less interesting family dinners, however.” Edward clapped his shoulder. “He won’t stand in your way now.”

Nothing stood in his way now. He would see to that. He would marry Emily and have a family with her.

And yet…

“I know she was lying before, the reason she gave for refusing my proposal, but damnation, Edward, she’s not wrong,” he admitted quietly, staring down into his brandy. “My past can only cause problems for her and the baby.”

“That’s not true.”

“She’s the daughter of a duke—”

“A widow,” Edward reminded him.

“Who might be delivering the next Marquess of Dunwich as we speak,” Grey countered grimly. “And I’m a former army officer and son of no one, with a well-honed reputation for being a rake.”

“You’re a major. That counts for a lot.”

He grimaced. “Not enough, not when that’s all I am. If I had a family name to go with rank, if I were the second or third son of a peer or a landed gentleman…”

He ran a frustrated hand through his hair. There was no point in contemplating what could never be. Viscountess Henley was right—he’d made a fine life for himself, a far better one than he ever should have had, and he had no right wishing for more. But what he found himself wishing for more than anything was to make Emily happy, and he wanted to prove to her that he deserved her. In every way.

But his chest burned with the impossibility of it. A man couldn’t change his past. God knew he’d spent his entire life trying to do just that.

“You’re more than you think. A major with enough money to keep her in comfort, the hero who saved her life—”

“An orphan,” he admitted grudgingly. “I lied about being a blacksmith’s son.”

A dark flicker of surprise registered on Edward’s face. Only for a moment, but in that beat, when his friend’s eyes narrowed on him, Grey saw betrayal.