The Steel Rogue: A Valor of Vinehill Novel Page 22
The footman came around to let out the stairs and Roe shifted his cane away from the door and leaned forward, opening the latch.
Torrie stepped out of the carriage, her look dropping from the tall turrets of Vinehill Castle to her cousin and his wife standing before the massive front door.
A smile as wide as the sun cut across Lachlan’s face. “You’ve come home, lass. Tis well past time.” He stepped forward and wrapped his thick stumps of arms around her, lifting her off the ground, his Scottish burr warm in her ears.
A laugh bubbled up her throat as he swung her about.
“Lach, give your cousin some space—she doesn’t need to be squashed before she even steps inside.” Evalyn, Lachlan’s wife, poked him in the back with a chuckle as she moved to his side.
Lachlan glanced over his shoulder at his wife and then with a grumble, set Torrie to her feet, her boots crunching onto the gravel of the drive. “Sloane said you needed time, but this was too much for my liking.” He pointed with a thumb over his shoulder to the castle. “I sent the staff inside—they came out, wanting to welcome you, but Eva didnae want them to overwhelm you.”
“They—they wanted to welcome me?” Torrie’s forehead wrinkled.
“Of course, lass.” A frown set on his face. “Oh, you are worried on the time after the fire?”
She nodded.
“You were a handful. But you were also in pain.” He waved his hand in the air. “So that’s forgotten. What’s important is you’re here now. Home.”
“Sloane did tell you this is just for a visit?”
Lachlan shrugged his shoulders. “A man can hope.”
The right side of her face lifted in a crooked smile. “Just a visit. My husband wanted to meet you.”
“Speaking of which, I wasnae pleased to miss the wedding, lass.” Lachlan’s head tilted down, scolding her just the same as he’d done when they were children. “We would have traveled to London for it.”
“I know—it was quick and I’m sorry. I would have loved to have you there, but we wanted to get married sooner rather than later.”
The gravel crunched behind her and Roe stepped beside her. He’d left his cane in the coach and she could see the pain radiating up from his leg into his eyes. It’d been three months since they landed in London and his leg was still not healed, but getting there.
Lachlan’s hazel eyes shifted from joy to furious in the heartbeat it took for his look to shift to Roe.
He turned fully to Roe, his arms clasping together into a wall over his chest, his face stone. “This be the bastard that put you through hell?”
Torrie couldn’t suppress a grin. “This be him.”
Impossibly hard looks passed between the two men. Roe taking her cousin’s scrutiny and returning his own.
Lachlan opened his mouth first. “I’m not inclined to like you.”
Roe offered one nod. “Most aren’t.” He looked to Torrie, then centered his stare on Lachlan. “But I am inclined to like you. You saved Torrie once when I was too weak to do so. For that, you have my unending gratitude.”
Lachlan’s left eyebrow cocked. “The fire?”
“Aye. The fire.” Sincerity shone in Roe’s grey eyes. “You were told I had nothing to do with setting that farm ablaze?”
“I was advised as such, yes.”
Roe’s mouth tightened into a hard line. “But I think what is even more important for you to know is that everything in my life since that moment has been focused on Torrie—to an unhealthy degree, if I admit to it. I would gladly die for this woman by my side. A thousand painful deaths, if deemed.”
Evalyn reached below her husband’s crossed arms and pinched his side. “Lach.”
Lachlan glanced down at her, a sigh on his lips. He looked to Roe. “But as you come recommended by both this one”—he nodded toward Torrie—“and my sister, and the other bane of my existence—Wolfbridge—I humbly have to welcome you to my home.”
“Humble.” Evalyn snorted a chuckle and threaded a hand under Lachlan’s right arm, tugging it loose from his chest. “Humble is not Lachlan’s forte, Lord Glenford. You will have to forgive us for the suspect welcome my husband just extended.”
“It is Roe, my lady.” His look shifted to Lachlan. “And I understand—I am more than grateful for every person that sees it their business to look after my wife—and she has a lot of you.”
Lachlan chuckled, though no smile lifted his mouth. “Wolfbridge got to you?”
“As did Sloane.” Torrie said. “As did Rory and several other of the Scots you sent to help us. I am not to be touched, yet this brave soul has dared to do that very thing, Lach.”
Lachlan stared at Roe for a long breath and then the slightest smile cracked through the granite of his face. “Then he has enough mettle for me, Englishman or not.”
~~~
Roe stared out at the rolling green hill descending from his toes, craggily grey rocks jutting up from the ground, crystals of frost holding onto each blade of grass. The land went on forever from this vantage—far, far from the sea. Just as he liked it.
It was beautiful country. Crisp and clear.
He straightened his back—attempting to catch his breath from the lunging steps he’d been taking—as he watched a golden eagle frolicking in the winds above the valley before him.
He understood the land now in a way he never had before in his younger years when he had traveled through it—now that he could see it through Torrie’s eyes. How the smell of the dirt, how the rocks under his feet, how the lochs and the fields and undulating earth could get into his bones.
“You’re stalling.” Torrie tightened her red cloak across her chest as she stepped beside him, stopping to watch the bird in the sky.
“I’m enjoying.”
A gust of chilly wind lifted the strands of dark hair about her face, teasing them across her brow. Her hair was down, free, just as he loved it.
She looked at him. “Tell me what Des’s letter said—that’s who the letter was from this morning, correct?”
Roe met her gaze. “He took over the Firehawk in Spain and brought it back to England.”
She nodded. “I guessed as much. We were gone so quickly from port I didn’t have time to talk to him.” Her gaze lifted to him, her gold green eyes curious. “And you still haven’t told me what the Box of Draupnir is. Why it’s so important.”
His bottom lip jutted up in a frown. “That—that I still cannot tell you about.”
“Why not? The danger is passed, is it not?”
“It is. But the story of the box isn’t my tale to tell.”
“Who’s is it?”
“Des’s tale. I don’t know how it ends.”
She sighed. “So when will I hear it?”
Roe shrugged. “The next time we see him, I imagine.”
“Soon, I hope?”
“I believe so, but one can never promise anything on the sea.”
She slipped her hand into the crook of his elbow, tugging. “Come, you promised me one last round.”
She pointed to the wide flat ground where they had been walking about in circles. Every day, Torrie would do her dipping walk, and every day she would make him stretch and work with lunging strides on his still mending leg. Pain. But pain was healing at this point.
“Or we can call it done for the day.”
She chuckled. “I do love that you grumble so about the exercises but you still do them.”
“I do them for you.”
“I know. That’s why I love them.” The beam of her smile cut through the grey of the day and she hopped away from him, turning around and walking backward as she tried to entice him back to the well-worn figure eight path they’d worked into the ground during the last months at Vinehill. “Plus you need to make sure your legs are working fine for all the chasing about in your future.”
“You’re going to run from me? You know I’ll catch you, crooked bone or not.” He darted forward, grabbing her about the
waist.
Squealing, she twisted in his arms to face him, the warmth of their breath turning into puffs of steam in the air between them.
“No, not me.” Her hands came up between them, her fingers gripping onto the lapels of his coat. “Someone much, much smaller than me.”
For a long second, confusion set into his eyes. Confusion that shifted into disbelief. “No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Yes.” She laughed, nodding.
He grabbed her tight about the waist, swinging her in the air, his leg be damned. “No—a babe?”
“Yes.” Her laughter cut into the cool air about them. “A thousand times yes.”
He set her down onto her feet.
It wasn’t good enough.
He flipped her legs up into his arm and went down on his good knee, laying her on the ground and moving over her, cutting off her laughter with a kiss to take her breath, her very soul from her.
He pulled up slightly from her face, wanting to take in her gold green eyes sparkling, the glow radiating from her.
Her hands went up around his neck. “The ground is cold.”
“But I am warm. And you have your cloak.” A lascivious smile lined his lips. “And we are alone, for a change. So I will fix the ground.”
She shrieked as he flipped them over, his shoulders digging onto the cold ground so she could be high above it. Her legs straddling him, she shifted her cloak so it was a hood of heat over them, and her hands drifted down his chest, lower and lower. “You’re right, we are alone. And you know it will get worse when we settle in at Glenford with all the children of Rising Giles about.”
He nodded, a gleam in his eye. “We’ll have a wing, but yes, definitely best to take advantage now. And every time we come up to Vinehill.”
“You like it here?”
“I do.” His hand lifted, twisting into her dark hair by her left temple. “But even more so, I love you here. This is where your soul comes from.”
She looked up, her gaze drifting about the landscape. “My soul may come from here, but it lands with you, Roe. Always you. You are my home, wherever that may be.”
He reached up with his other hand and dragged her down to him, his lips finding hers.
She broke the kiss, a smile teasing her lips against his. “How is it that we now belong in more places than we have time to live in?”
“Because as long as we’re together, we belong anywhere, Tor.” His mouth met hers, their breath tangled.
Finally, he knew it, in his heart, in his soul, that he had left the in-between forever. For he now lived every day with one goal—to be worthy of her love.
And he was.
~ From K.J. Jackson ~
Thank you so much for reading! My next full book is about Des, of course, and that darn box. Be sure to check out the sneak peek below of The Heart of an Earl, Box of Draupnir.
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I found you and you found me—let’s not lose each other! Finding readers that like your work is hard, but if you’ve gotten this far, hopefully you liked The Steel Rogue, and the entire Valor of Vinehill series and want to read more by me. Because of the constant changes in social media, the BEST way to keep up with my latest works is through my newsletter. So be sure to sign up for my VIP List for news of my next releases, sales and freebies. You’ll get my FREE starter library when you sign up—three full-length books!
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Don’t miss my other books
Historical Romance
If you haven’t already, be sure to check out my other historical romances—each is a stand-alone story and they can be read in any order (here they are in order of publication and series):
Hold Your Breath
Stone Devil Duke, currently free!
Unmasking the Marquess
My Captain, My Earl
Lords of Fate
Worth of a Duke
Earl of Destiny
Marquess of Fortune
Lords of Action
Vow
Promise
Oath
Revelry’s Tempest
Of Valor & Vice
Of Sin & Sanctuary
Of Risk & Redemption
To Capture a Rogue, A Logan’s Legends Novella
To Capture a Warrior, A Logan’s Legends Novella
The Devil in the Duke
Valor of Vinehill
The Iron Earl
The Wolf Duke
The Steel Rogue
Box of Draupnir
The Heart of an Earl
Paranormal Romance
Flame Moon #1, currently free!
Triple Infinity, Flame Moon #2
Flux Flame, Flame Moon #3
~
The sneak peek of The Heart of an Earl, A Box of Draupnir Novel…
{ Chapter 1 }
Caribbean Waters
August 1814
Home.
Home to his wife. To his child.
The child he never met, the child born seven years ago. A boy. A girl. He didn’t know.
All of that—all of that time—robbed from him. Ripped away from him by battles that bloody well weren’t his to fight.
Desmond Phillips stared out at the waves cresting, salt spray cutting into the air with the brisk wind that had caught the sails. Just beyond the tip of Barbados, the land retreated behind the ship.
Good riddance.
He spun to the railing behind him, bending over as his right fist clenched, the mangled knuckle of his ring finger bobbing awkwardly under his taut bright white skin. The knuckle that had never mended properly.
His look lifted and he forced his stare on the horizon—on eastward. Forward. He needed to concentrate on that. Forward to home.
Out there, only weeks away, his family was waiting for him.
“Lord Troubant, Lord Troubant.” A cabin boy called his name, dodging busy sailors as he ran across the main deck to the forecastle where Des stood.
The lad waved a letter sealed with black wax as he ran. With the hop of youth, the boy scampered up the ladder onto the forecastle deck and skidded to a stop in front of Des.
“What is it?”
“For you, m’lord. Captain Youngling told me to give it to ye. They found it in the bundle from the gov’ner’s office.”
Des’s eyebrows drew together. He’d been crimped into servitude on an American warship for the last seven years. No one was sending him mail.
“You are certain?”
The boy nodded. “Captain said the gov’ner’s note mentioned it had been in his vault.” He thrust the letter out to Des.
With a nod, Des took the folded missive with his name on it from the boy’s grip.
Weathered, the edges were crinkled, the paper crisping during the days—probably years—that it had sat in the vault. But the seal was still in place, un-cracked. “Thank you…your name?”
“Georgie, sir.”
Des managed a forced smile, the motion foreign to his lips. “Thank you, Georgie.”
The boy nodded and scampered down to the main deck, disappearing toward the captain’s quarters. Captain Youngling had had the boy running from place to place since they had set sail—too many passengers and not enough cabin boys to serve them.
Des looked at the cream vellum clutched in his hand. The seal. Black. Insignia of a wolf head imbedded deep into the wax.
Wolfbridge.
His brother-in-law had to be wondering where in the hell he was. He’d probably been chasing after Des for the last seven years and had sent letters to all corners of the empire.
He was coming.
Finally.
Home.
The very first thing Des had d
one once he’d stepped foot into Bridgetown was to find a ship leaving for England. Off one ship and onto the next. Luck had been on his side for the first time in forever, a passenger ship leaving Bridgetown within the same day on the tide.
Des hadn’t even had time to eat. One quick stop at the governor’s office, new clothes, and then onto the Primrose.
Des cracked the black seal, a shake setting into his hand. He’d hoped against hope that they hadn’t declared him dead. That Corentine hadn’t found a new husband. A new father for their child.
But she was beautiful and full of life and it was only right that she would have moved on with her life. He’d known when he married her that she would always catch other men’s eyes. Her sparkling wit alone had him constantly fighting off other suitors. It’s why they had married so young—he couldn’t stand the thought of traveling to the East Indies and leaving her behind with the jackals.
Des sucked in a deep breath, the thick humid air sponging into his lungs. He had to steel himself against that possibility. His wife with another man. Wolfbridge could very well be reporting that eventuality to him.
He unfolded the letter, focusing on Wolfbridge’s scrawling script.
Dated: June 1807
Simple. Direct.
Where in the hell are you?
The tone changed.
I am devastated, as I know you will be as well. Corentine has died in childbirth.
His breath, his heart stilled. His eyes running over the line again and again and again.
No.
Not his beautiful wife. Not his love. Not Corentine. She couldn’t be dead. No.
No.
His legs dropped out from under him, the world spinning.
He staggered to the railing, collapsing against it, sliding down to the wood planks of the deck, the letter crushing in his hand.
He was on his way back. Home. Finally. On his way back to her.
And she was dead.
Pain swept through him in a tidal wave, crushing, suffocating him to the deck until there was nothing but numbness in his bones, in his heart, in his soul.