Page 21 of A Remarkable Rogue

“Someone purposefully fired those pistols to startle the team so they would pull hard on the reins. I examined the harness. The ribbons had been cut. All it took was one strong pull by the horses, and they snapped.” The harshness of his expression sent an icy chill crawling down her spine. “The only thing keeping you from being arrested right now is that you haven’t been out of my sight all day.”

Her lips parted wordlessly in stunned horror. Scepter, the Home Office, the Guards—the threats were coming at her from all sides now.

“Tell me the truth now,” he demanded, lowering his voice as her barouche rolled toward them to collect her. “What do you know about the men who have been blackmailing you?”

“Nothing,” she whispered. That was the God’s truth. “They sent boys to deliver messages to me. I don’t know who or why.”

“What did they use to threaten you?”

She refused to answer.

He clenched his jaw so hard that the sinews pulsed in his neck. He let go of her arm and stepped back as the barouche stopped in front of them.

“When you decide the time’s finally come to trust me,” he warned as he moved to his horse’s side, “it might just be too late.”

He mounted his horse. The black gelding pranced uneasily beneath him, sensing Nate’s agitation. He pulled the horse into a tight circle to bring him under control.

“I can’t help you if you won’t let me.” Nate leaned down until his face was even with hers. “I don’t know what secret Scepter has over you, but it can’t be worth being killed for.”

Oh, he was wrong. Her secret was worthexactlythat. Because if anything happened to Robert, she might as well be dead.

“I don’t need your help, Captain,” she rasped out, her voice shaking. “I need you to leave me alone.”

“Until you tell me what you know about Scepter,” he assured her in a tone that brooked no argument, “I have no intention of doing that.”

He touched his heels to the horse’s sides. The gelding lunged forward to canter away from her and back toward Lord Liverpool, who waited amid the circle of guards.

She watched him go, unable to bring herself to call him back. Despite her pounding heart and racing blood, both at the words of his cold warning and at the heat of its delivery, she still couldn’t bring herself to confess.

“My lady?” Jenkins called out to her with concern from the barouche. “Are you all right?”

Sydney nodded, yet Jenkins and her groom must think her mad. Running toward her carriage two nights ago to fling herself inside, a strange man appearing mysteriously inside the compartment with her, then fleeing from St James House yesterday morning as if being chased—and now, after sprinting across Hyde Park like a bedlamite, she stared after the captain like some besotted schoolgirl.

Perhaps shewasmad. Captain Reed was certainly driving her out of her mind.

“I’m fine.” She pulled in a deep breath and forced a smile, half to reassure her driver and half to convince herself. The groom opened the little carriage door and took her arm to help her into the barouche. She stepped up with relief. “Home, please, Jenkins, and—”

She turned for her seat and froze.

On the cushion waiting for her lay a small wooden soldier, a child’s toy painted in bright red and white.

Its head had been snapped off.

Six

Sydney leaned against the open stall door in the Horse Guards stables and lost her breath.

In the soft glow of the oil lamp hanging on a post over the stall, Nate Reed groomed his black horse with a brush in his right hand and a soft cloth in his left until the gelding’s coat shined like obsidian. He spoke softly to the horse, his deep voice so low that Sydney couldn’t make out the words, but the horse’s velvet ears flicked back and forth to catch each soothing sound. His hands slid over the smooth muscles, and each stroke of the brush and cloth was a gentle caress.

She shouldn’t be here, and certainly not staring like this. But she couldn’t look away, neither from the large hands moving over the horse’s velvet coat nor from the man himself who stood there wearing only his stone-colored riding breeches and black boots. His shirt had been peeled off and tossed over the stall wall, and his braces dangled around his thighs. He was bare from the waist up.

Her fingers longed to caress his flesh the same way his hands brushed over the horse. His skin would feel just as warm and smooth, his muscles just as hard…

Inwardly, she groaned.

Why him? Of all the men she knew in theton, all the men she’d encountered in London, why did the one man since Michael who both stirred fires low in her belly and had her longing to be held protected in his arms have to be him, the same man who thought she was a traitor?

Yet she wanted him. Just the sight of him had her craving to run the tip of her tongue over his collarbone and taste the beads of salty sweat clinging to his skin.