Page 54 of What A Rogue Wants
What could he do now? He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding, a white ring against the dark night. The thoughts he’d pushed away earlier when speaking with Edward came to the surface. He winced, reality setting in. He had to give up the one thing he had come to want more than anything in his life.Madelaine. He didn’t want to endanger her, and he could never turn his back on what his father had expected him to do. It seemed what he wanted and what life gave him would forever be at cross purposes. Leaning over, he lay his hand first on his mother’s cold headstone and then on his father’s. “I’ll make you proud.”
Once Grey returned to the house, he grabbed a bottle of whiskey and headed up the stairs to his old room. He tugged off his coat and cravat then sank into a deep chair. In one day he’d lost his mother, his father, and the woman he was coming to love. He tilted the bottle and drank deeply, searching for the same numbness for his mind that the snow had offered his body.
For the next couple of weeks, Grey worked by Edward’s side to set their parent’s affairs in order and to make sure their death was indeed an accident. Once the accident site had been combed and surveyed and every piece of broken carriage had been sifted through and studied, the misfortune of their parent’s tragic deaths couldn’t be denied. Once they found the shattered wheel, which Edward belatedly remembered Father had put off repairing, and they studied the snow-slick road which still showed signs of the tracks that had sent the carriage over the embankment, they both agreed it wasn’t murder.
After working so closely with Edward, Grey now felt more a part of the household than he ever had before. How bloody ironic. Bitterness filled him. The bitterness ebbed after a few days, and thoughts of Madelaine replaced it. The last thing he wanted to do was think about Madelaine and having to face her, or his parents’ death, or having to go back to Court and break the news to Liz. He fought back reality by doggedly filling his hours with a thousand tasks followed by hours of training in weapons with Edward at the end of each day.
His barrier against reality would have been perfect if it wasn’t for the thoughts that slipped into his dreams. Waking night after night drenched in sweat, recalling some way or another he had purposely hurt his father or remembering his promise to Madelaine to return for her was going to be the death of him.
He took to drinking several glasses of whiskey a night in an effort to have a dreamless sleep, but when he realized how much whiskey he’d consumed after only two weeks, he ceased drinking all together. The dreams returned in violent force, so when he woke now, he’d stalk to the ballroom and spend the silent hours between dark to dawn practicing with weapons, until he felt sure he was just as good as his father would have expected.
Some nights, he saw Edward prowling the halls, or walking aimlessly outside in the gardens in the snow. They didn’t acknowledge each other. To do so would have been to acknowledge their demons. Edward’s glazed-eyed look told Grey his brother welcomed avoiding reality just as much as he did. It was easy to keep putting off the inevitable confrontation with Madelaine and Liz, because the thought of it made him ache deep inside where he’d not known he was capable of hurting.
In the third week, Gravenhurst sent a letter informing them the king was still in Kew recovering from a sudden bout with madness, but that His Majesty was on the mend. The news reinforced, in Grey’s mind, his decision to stay at his brother’s home until the king was fully recovered. Only the king could give word for Grey and Gravenhurst to leave for France, and the last thing Grey wanted to do was go back to Court and have to stay and wait for the king to give the order.
Once at Court he’d want to deliver the news to Liz, speak with Madelaine, and then need to leave immediately for France. Seeing Madelaine day after day, while knowing she would one day soon lie in another man’s arms, become another man’s wife would be like a knife in the gut. Reality waited like an obedient dog. On the morning of the fourth week, Gravenhurst arrived before dawn waking Grey from a troubled sleep.
Grey dressed hastily and met Edward and Gravenhurst in the library.
Gravenhurst was never one for niceties, but this morning he didn’t even offer a greeting before he thrust a letter at Grey and one at Edward. Both men read in silence for a moment. Grey’s heart roared in his ears. After a moment, he met Gravenhurst’s steady gaze. “Do you know what this letter says?”
“Of course. I’m to go with you to Lancashire.”
“Lancashire?” Edward glanced at both men. “Why does the king send you there?”
“His letter to you doesn’t explain?” Grey asked.
“He expressed his sincere sorrow for our parents’ deaths and bade me to find Pearson immediately. What does your letter say?”
Grey handed the letter to Edward. His brother’s face soon mirrored the skepticism Grey felt. “I don’t believe Stratmore is a traitor to the king.”
Grey let out the breath he’d been holding. “Neither do I,” he agreed, glad his brother had voiced the same opinion about Madelaine’s father. Grey glanced at Gravenhurst, the most cynical man he knew. “What about you?”
“When my uncle murdered my father, I learned no man is above treachery if the circumstances are right.”
Edward waved the king’s letter in front of Grey and Gravenhurst. “What paper is the king talking about that has gone missing?”
Grey raised a questioning eyebrow at Gravenhurst. “Did he tell you?”
“He did. But you may do the honors, since you were there.”
Grey quickly explained about the new code Stratmore had created and about the meeting where the duke had shown the king and Grey the code. Then haltingly, he told Edward of the king’s spell that day and the madness he’d written about with the angels telling him things and needing to execute his administrators.
By the time Grey was finished, Edward’s complexion was pasty. He walked over to the study door, shut it, and turned back to Grey. “That was damned foolhardy of the king to write down some of the missions he planned to assign us. Even if he was simply practicing the code.”
Grey nodded. The rest of what the king wrote hung between them like a deadly snake. Was Edward going to ignore the king’s other words? Grey couldn’t do that. “We have to find that paper and destroy it. It could be used to prove the king is mad.”
Edward’s eyes narrowed. “Was temporarily confused. Under a spell.”
“Alright. Temporary madness. That could do grave harm if not monitored.”
“We’ve been monitoring him, Grey. That’s part of your job as one of us.”
Grey’s jaw went slack. “I had no idea.”
A sardonic smile tugged on Edward’s lips. “It’s not something I think the king wished to tell you, unless the need arose. He’d hoped his spells were over.”
“Yet they’re not. So where do we go from here?” He wasn’t sure what Edward wanted from him, but he wanted to do what his brother expected. His father would have wanted no less.
