Page 8 of A Remarkable Rogue

She choked back an anguished sob as the memory returned with a vengeance, and she struggled to keep her breath against the desolate pain. He was no longer her baby, and she could never claim him as her child. Doing so would destroy any chance he had at a respectable future as part of society.

But she wouldneverlet any harm come to him again, not from her parents or society. Not from blackmailers who used the secret of his true identity to manipulate her. Not even from her. And certainly not from a handsome cavalry captain whose very presence was enough to place both their lives in danger.

Whatever she had to do to protect Robert, shewoulddo it. He belonged to her now, and she would die before she’d let anyone take him away again.

***

Nate slowed to a stop in front of the Fleet Street alley as the church bell tolled three times. The appointed hour, the appointed place, and from the size of the shadow standing in the damp darkness, Clayton Elliott had beaten him here. The only places Nate could meet with the Home Office undersecretary and newly commissioned general who was overseeing his mission were in secluded areas around the city like this, where they could be certain not to be overheard.

But something was wrong. Nate sensed it in the way his old friend stared unmoving into the darkness of the alley, in the way his hand rested on the pistol he kept hidden beneath his greatcoat.

He stepped up next to Clayton and followed his gaze. A small candle burned on the cobblestones at the far end of the alley, just bright enough to reveal the dead man who had been pinned to the wooden wall of the warehouse with metal rods driven through all four limbs. A puddle of blood spread out from the man’s feet.

Nate swallowed down the bile rising in his throat at the scene in front of him. Scepter had done a lot of evil things in their march toward revolution, but this…

“Who?” Nate asked quietly. The corpse’s face was unrecognizable.

Clayton turned and faced the street. “Major Thomas Barnes.” He tugged at his leather gloves to hide the shaking in his hands and anticipated Nate’s next question. “We didn’t serve with him. He was in America in the last dustup there.”

Thank God.Nate didn’t know how he would have borne it if one of the men from the Armory had been killed. Especially like this.

He joined Clayton on the footpath of the wide street. Both men had seen far worse atrocities during the wars against Napoleon, but to see such brutality here on English soil shocked them to their cores.

“He was Scepter’s mole in the Home Office,” Clayton muttered, squinting against the cold drizzle as he looked away to scan his gaze down the street.

“Are you certain?”

“He wore this.” Clayton opened his palm to reveal a key-shaped pin. It was Scepter’s sign, and the same key-shaped symbol had been discovered on all the group’s leaders whom the men of the Armory had found and stopped from carrying out plans for revolution.

Now, apparently, they were murdering their own.

“Why kill him like this?” Nate asked beneath his breath.

“Perhaps he’d threatened to reveal their identities to the Home Office if they didn’t pay him more or give him more power within their organization.”

“What makes you think that?” Nate made a terrible guess. “Is his tongue missing?”

“No. It’s not missing.” Clayton paused. “It’s still in Barnes’s throat where the murderers stuffed it after cutting it off.”

With one last grim look at the figure in the shadows, the two men walked casually through the drizzling darkness toward the Thames, as if doing nothing more than going from one gambling hell or stew to another. They had no choice but to leave the poor bastard hanging on the wall like that, to let some drunken sailor or whore stumble across him and report his murder to the authorities. Their mission to stop Scepter had to remain secret.

“And Lady Rowland?” Clayton asked, his deep voice as low as the rain drizzling around them. “What did you discover?”

Nothing.Except that she was a beautiful, challenging woman who frustrated the daylights out of him. “The evening was not productive,” Nate admitted grudgingly. That was the only answer Clayton would receive. “But I plan to keep pressing her for information.”

“You’ll tell St James?” Clayton asked, yet it was more of an order than a question.

Nate nodded, clearly not happy to be that messenger. The less he had to do with his half brother, the better. But Clayton had picked Nate and Alexander Sinclair to carry out his mission against Scepter specifically because the two men could be in contact with each other without raising suspicion. He also knew their mutual dislike and distrust of each other would create a competitive streak that would push them toward finishing the mission.

“Continue to follow Lady Rowland and stay as close to her as you can,” Clayton ordered as they reached the embankment and started down the stone steps toward the black Thames below. “Report back if you learn anything. You know how to reach me.”

Then he stepped into a waiting wherry and gestured to the boatman, who shoved the long boat away from the steps and out into the river’s fast current. Nate did the same with a second boat.

The two men glided into the night in opposite directions, although both their thoughts were on the exact same place they’d been for the past month.

On stopping Scepter.

Three