Heartless (The House of Rohan 5)

She let out a long-suffering sigh. “That would take too long. A footman would answer, he’d have to go to Richmond, and then Richmond would need to find someone to rouse the wet nurse. Go yourself.”

Another man would have been affronted but Brandon simply grinned. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and a moment later he was gone, leaving her alone with the snuffling babe. She leaned back, rocking, murmuring softly to the little one, and together their bodies warmed to each other, relaxing in the shadowy room. He’d come back. The baby would sleep. And they would be alone together, with the memory of those heated moments in the salon fresh in their minds. What if he touched her again? What if he didn’t?

Brandon had needed an excuse to leave her. Watching the infant root at her breast through the thin cotton shift had been far too arousing, and she was an inconveniently observant female. He had little doubt she’d notice his condition, and whether her reaction would be fear or disgust, he didn’t want to go there. And if she responded with interest. . .

He’d been unable to sleep. When the gentlemen had eventually joined the ladies in the salon he’d been informed that Mrs. Cadbury had retired for the night due to her early departure the next day.

The hell with that, he’d thought. She wasn’t going anywhere until they’d had an honest talk. He’d made a royal mess of it all, when he’d only been wanting to do the right thing and then get the hell out of there. Now, for the first time in his memory, he found he was thinking of someone other than himself, someone who felt like she belonged to him, someone he wanted, not just her body, but her heart and soul and brain.

He wanted to pound something, perhaps his own thick skull. Charles would have been even more worthy of a pummeling, but he’d already been banished. Brandon couldn’t even acquit his closer brother of wanting the best for him—Charles’s only interest was in securing the land next to his for his family. He knew perfectly well that Brandon had no interest in the English country estates he already owned, much less those of Harry Merton, the man who had almost killed him and so many others. He wanted nothing to do with it, and Charles would somehow manage to secure it, sly bastard that he was.

Brandon didn’t want to be thinking about Harry Merton or his sister. He wanted to think about Emma Cadbury, wearing the thin nightdress, a shawl trailing from her shoulders, her bare feet peeping deliciously from beneath the hem.

In fact, he’d been lying in bed, in the midst of a truly immoral fantasy about her, one hand wrapped around his cock, when he’d heard the baby crying and gone in aid of the situation. It had been organized chaos, with Benedick trying to hush everyone, Nanny and the nursemaids clearly in the midst of some power struggle, and the poor little infant wailing her head off. At any moment he’d expected his sister-in-law to charge in, but not even her baby could rouse her from her long-denied rest.

Things had settled down relatively swiftly, and everyone returned to their beds until an hour later the cries came again, cries he’d been doing his best to deal with when Emma had entered the room, looking only slightly the worse for wear, her thick, black hair tumbling down her back, her feet bare, her shift too thin for the chilly air and his peace of mind.

Christ, he had to get out of there, get back to Scotland, before he did something he regretted! He was half-tempted to simply scoop her up and take her with him, which wouldn’t go over too well with his fiancée, he thought sourly, moving through the halls as swiftly as his bad leg would let him as he followed orders and went for the wet nurse.

It wouldn’t take much to finish things up—Benedick was probably more than ready to see the last of him. Tomorrow he would ignore the temptations pulling at him and head back to Scotland until the time came for his marriage ceremony, assuming he couldn’t avoid it. Neither he nor Miss Bonham spent time in society—no one would expect them to make the rounds that an average engaged couple normally would. In fact, he might insist on holding the wedding in Scotland. He wanted the business handled with the least amount of disruption—anyone could marry them in Scotland, and then she could go back home a safely married matron and he wouldn’t have to think about her again. He had no intention of ever living with her. No intention of bedding her either, though he supposed he might have to, sooner or later. She was too meek, too pale, too. . .

Too not Emma. Jesus, he had to get out of there!

It was relatively quick work to arrange for the wet nurse, and he started back slowly, favoring his leg, but even so, he reached the hallway outside the nursery before anyone else did. To his astonishment there were no howls of fury, no baby screams of despair. Just a soft voice, almost inaudible, singing.

He pushed open the door, and he froze, unable to move. He’d faced down charging lancers, deranged Moghuls, murderous Afghan tribesmen, and the fathers of innocent girls. Nothing compared to this.

Emma was sitting in a chair, the baby in her arms, rocking gently. She was smiling down at the dozing infant, and she looked like a Madonna as she sang an old Welsh lullaby, one he knew as well as he knew his own name, even as everything else in his life seemed suddenly upended.

Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee, all through the night,

Guardian angels God will lend thee, all through the night.

Soft the drowsy hours are creeping

Hill and dale and slumber sleeping

I, my loving vigil keeping

All through the night.

Her voice was beautiful, clear and sweet and low, and it danced through his brain, through his body like a wicked taunt. He knew that voice, that sound, that lullaby, and the knowledge went through his body like a bolt of lightning.

He’d heard it before, from a woman who had sat by his bed, night after night, holding his hand while he fought against a death that had seemed so enticing. A woman who had talked to him, made him laugh, kissed him, made him want to live again. A woman who had disappeared when he’d needed her most. His Harpy.

She sat there, all innocence, as if she hadn’t been lying to him for days now, as if she hadn’t been acting a part, pretending there was no past, nothing between them. She hadn’t forgotten—he knew that full well. So why had she lied?

No wonder he’d been like a moonling over her. His mind may not have remembered that dark, confused time, but something more elemental had. She had come to mean so much to him back then it had almost frightened him. She was his nebulous dream for the future, his reason for enduring the vicious pain and shattered bones. She was his hope, and then she’d taken it away, gone between one moment and the next. He’d ended up ensconced with his family, the last few weeks of his life vanishing, concentrating instead on the opium pipe and draining his brother’s cellars, concentrating on decadence and indolence and the darkest of desires.

He tried to die, then, by any means necessary, but it was already too late. She’d been with him long enough to nurse him past the danger point, then abandoned him with nothing to live for, and he’d survived in broken fury.

He’d even gone to look for her one day, when he’d made himself sick on the foul stuff he was taking, when he’d seen things at the gathering of the Heavenly Host that he could never scour from his memory. His orders from their anonymous ruler had been disturbing enough that even he had balked, and he’d gone out, lame, staggering, in the early morning rain in search of her at St. Martin’s Military Hospital.

How could he have forgotten all this? The insidious power of the opium had even more wide-ranging consequences than he’d realized—she had vanished, along with his time in that miserable hospital, in a puff of sweet-scented smoke.

He never should have been sent there in the fir

st place, of course. If he’d been properly identified when they shipped him back to England he would have been taken up by his family and given the kind of care the brother and son of peers should receive. By the time he awoke in that crowded, stinking ward, awash with the screams of pain and the misery all around him he’d said nothing, pretending to have no memory, simply awaiting death.