Page 4 of The Steel Rogue

He'd always wanted to be more. But it wasn't to be.

And he'd best come to terms with that fact.

{ Chapter 1 }

Truro, Cornwall, England

June 1825

Torrie moved past the three-story building, her kidskin-gloved hand trailing on the rough of the pitted brick. She ducked between the buildings as men shuffled by in front of her. Tall men. Small men. Lanky men. Portly men.

All of them haggard, dirty. All of them busy, on missions. Hauling goods, pulling rope, dragging livestock.

The putrid smell of fish rotting on the edges of the port hung in the air about her. Or was that the odor from the masses of sailors? So many of them crossing back and forth in front of her it made her head spin.

She leaned to the left, her head bobbing up as far as she could to see further down the wharf.

Buggers.She couldn’t have lost him now. Not in the last crowd that had swept between them, a wave of bedraggled humanity.

She’d followed him all the way from the livery stable by the coaching inn and then down the six streets leading to the waterfront. Followed him without issue, ignoring the leering looks of toothless sailors and the hips thrusting toward her with indecent proposals. And now, she’d looked to her right for one tiny second, taking in the scope of the ships in port, and when she’d looked ahead to find him again, his height easy to spot amongst the sailors, he was gone.

Lost in the masses.

No.The bastard wasn't going to lose her that easily.

Ever since she’d found out he’d been let out of Newgate prison, she’d been tracking him. After traveling north to Northumberland soon after his release, he had veered to the coast and had boarded a ship and disappeared for the last two years.

That ship, theFirehawk, had been elusive to track. She’d heard snippets of sightings of it throughout the years, but never any solid news from her investigator.

So when theFirehawkhad finally come into port in London, she should have been ready. Instead, the news came to her too late. The man had disembarked and been in London for two days before traveling directly to Scotland.

Two days.

Two blasted days.

She had been in London—been in the same city as him for as many as two days, and she hadn’t a clue.

That had been her best chance. For by the time word of theFirehawk’s arrival had reached her at her Mayfair townhouse, the bastard had already been on his way to Scotland. To Vinehill castle—to her cousin, Lachlan. To her childhood home.

And then he had moved on to Wolfbridge Castle. To the home of her other cousin, Sloane, and her husband, the Duke of Wolfbridge.

The bastard had gotten off that ship and went directly to her family.Her family.

Yet he never approached them. Never dropped either of them a missive. He just appeared in their vicinities.

It wouldn’t do.

She needed to know exactly what he was about. And why.

The man was a threat. He had been since the day of the fire nine years ago.

And now he had just traveled from one end of England to the other to haunt her family—an action far beyond the pale. She needed to know why. Exactly why.

Quickly moving past another building in the direction he had been walking, Torrie ducked into a lane between two warehouses and leaned her head out carefully so as to not draw attention to herself. She was at the docks—and the docks were no place for a lone woman.

But there was nothing for it. Her maid, Hilde, hadn't been dressed and ready when she had seen the bastard leave the coaching inn where he had gotten a room once he’d arrived in Truro.

Her investigator had tracked him to Cornwall, and he had still been in Truro when she had arrived. She had secured a room for her and Hilde at the coaching inn he stayed at—with the request it was directly above his—and had spent three nights mostly awake, her ears trained to the floor. Wondering in the long dark hours about what he was doing below her. And plotting.

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