Page 90 of A Remarkable Rogue

The knot in her throat strangled her so she couldn’t answer. She’d seen him interact with Robbie, and she knew he would do exactly that.

Just as she knew that wasn’t the real reason she wouldn’t marry him.

“We’ll give him brothers and sisters to play with, Baroness. A full family of our own.” His voice was filled with emotion, and his hands shook, although he tried to steady them by lacing his fingers together between his knees. “I want that with you, Sydney, more than anything.”

She closed her eyes tightly against the wonderful temptation he offered to create a real home and family together, the kind she’d once dreamt of having. Butmarriage… Marriage meant surrendering to the power of a husband, to his command and control, socially, financially, and legally.Always.She knew well the kind of hell a woman’s life could become at the hands of a husband. Rowland had taught her that. Only when she’d become a widow and escaped the humiliation of her marriage, the threats and abuse, had her life truly become hers.

“You taught me that life needs to go on, Sydney,” he cajoled as softly as the night surrounding them. “That itmustmove on. And you need to do the same.”

She shook her head. How could she explain her fears to him, an army captain who was used to charging into battle? How could he ever understand the feeling of utter powerlessness and helplessness when a person’s life was not her own? Emotional control with Michael, parental control with her mother and father, matrimonial control with Rowland—it made no difference whether the power was freely given or forcibly taken. When a more powerful person could bend another to his will…

“No,” she answered with as much resolve as she could muster, even as her heart shattered and a single tear slid down her cheek in the darkness. “I will not marry you.”

Silently, he sat back, and his eyes narrowed on her in the shadows. The tension between them pulsed through the tiny compartment like the electricity of an approaching storm.

For a long while, silence stretched between them, broken only by the sound of the horses’ hooves and the rolling crush of the carriage wheels against the road. Outside, the carriage lamps were extinguished as the horses picked up speed on the main road, allowing the light of the full moon to guide them. Inside, their faces were washed dark by the shadows.

“We’re meant to be together,” he said quietly, yet the determination in his voice made her quake. “What we’ve been through together—the trust we’ve built between us—that proves it.”

Her voice was equally low, matching his in intensity in this fierce argument being waged in whispers. “To do as you’re asking—the implications for both me and Robbie, and for you, too… To lose all I’ve gained during the last two years—Iwon’tgo back there.”

“I’m not asking you to go back. I’m asking you to go forward.”

She was thankful the shadows were too thick for her to see his face and the emotion playing across his handsome features. It would have undone her. Her heart might be losing the battle, but she couldn’t afford to lose the war.

“Do you love me, Sydney?” He reached across the compartment to rest his hand on her knee. “The truth.”

“Yes,” she breathed so softly the word could barely be heard by her own ears.

“And do you believe that I love you?”

“Of course.”

He pulled his hand away from her and leaned back against the squabs. “Then this matter is far from over.”

Andthatwas exactly what frightened her.

Twenty-Seven

London

Two Days Later

Sydney found herself staring at Nate. Again.

She tore her gaze away from him as he crouched before the massive stone hearth in the octagonal main room of the Armory and stirred up the coals with a poker. She forced her attention back to the book she’d taken from the shelves in a half-hearted attempt to spend the evening reading until she grew sleepy enough to join Robbie upstairs in the bedroom…and to distract herself from knowing Nate would leave the Armory in the morning to hunt down Hawking.

Robbie was being tucked in for the night by Sergeant McTavish. The sergeant was not having an easy job of it, Sydney was certain, given Robbie’s uncontrolled excitement at being in the Armory. Although the old structure had been renovated—complete with bedrooms on the tower’s second floor, kitchens in the former basement magazine, and all the comforts of a proper manor house—the place had immediately conjured up fantasies of medieval castles and fortresses for the boy. That was to be expected, she supposed, given the crenellated battlements and the twin portcullises that guarded the narrow entryway. A portcullis system that still worked, apparently, given McTavish’s stern warnings to Robbie not to dare touch the wooden levers that would send the two spiked gates crashing down.

McTavish watched Robbie like a hawk, never letting him out of his sight—never letting him stray more than ten feet away, in fact. No mean feat given all the pent-up energy bursting out of the boy after two days of being cooped up inside the carriage with only Nate’s stories of the army and whatever games Sydney could invent to keep him entertained.

The old sergeant was patient with Robbie, and it was clear from the way Nate greeted the man upon their arrival this evening that he held the same respect for the former enlisted man that he did for Wellington. Perhaps even more. The easy friendship between them made her feel relaxed and safe.

McTavish never asked why Nate was hiding in secret in the Armory with a baroness and her child, nor did Nate volunteer any information. Yet she was keenly aware that the former sergeant suspected something more between them than the story he’d been given—that Nate was simply providing a personal guard for the evening. Just as she suspected that McTavish had volunteered for bedtime duty tonight in order to give the two of them time alone.

But she could have told him to save himself the trouble.

Since she’d refused his proposal in the carriage, Nate had seemed more distant than ever. Most annoyingly—or at least she told herself she was annoyed so she would be angry at him rather than in anguish—he hadn’t attempted to kiss her or touch her at all during the remaining hours of the carriage ride.