While the Duke Was Sleeping (The Rogue Files #1)(5)

“Yes, yes, of course, Mrs. Barclay.” Her nape prickled, her gaze narrowing on the broad back of the Scot as he moved to climb inside the carriage with the duke.

Oh, no, he was not!

The two men had been engaged in fisticuffs. How did she know it wasn’t his intention to climb into that carriage and finish off the duke? Perhaps he would smother him with his coat the instant the doors shut? Or simply use one of his giant paws on his throat and squeeze the life from him? He couldn’t be trusted alone with His Grace. That was for certain. She wouldn’t permit it. She could not. There was no way she would leave the duke at the brute’s mercy. Of course she would be accompanying him.

“Hold there,” she called, lifting her skirts and chin in a simultaneous move she hoped looked haughty and proper. She might not be highborn, but her mother had been gentry and her father had bred her to be dignified and self-respecting. In this moment, those lessons served her well. “I’m coming with you.”

He looked down at her, one eye red and puffy, fast on its way to bruising. Blood seeped from his lip and yet all combined he still managed to look imposing. Not the least bit weak or vulnerable as any other person in his condition would appear. He was attractive, she grudgingly allowed. At least some females would consider him to be. Not Poppy. “That’s not necessary.”

“Oh, I think it is.” She climbed up into the carriage ahead of him without assistance, determined that he not leave without her and confident that he would if she gave him the slightest opportunity.

He followed, joining her inside. Since the duke was reclining on the opposite side, the Scotsman sat directly beside her, his muscled thigh aligning with her own. She recoiled from the contact.

He started to shut the door. She reached across him and put a hand on his arm, stalling him from closing the hack’s door. “In fact, I don’t see how it is necessary for you to join us.”

“You don’t?” he asked mildly.

“No. I don’t.”

“I estimate there is a lot you do not see, miss,” he retorted in that rumbling growl of his.

She straightened against the squabs and twisted on the seat to better glare at him, not liking the disdain he treated her to and emboldened by Mrs. Barclay’s faith in her. She would protect their patron. “You’re fortunate that I don’t send for the Watch for your hand in this day’s deeds. Now get out.” She pointed imperiously to the door.

“How soon you forget that I saved your life. Was that not part of this day’s deeds, too?”

She inclined her head slightly. “I thank you for that, but that does not signify when it comes to the matter of your presence here with the duke.”

He tried to shut the door again.

She pushed on his hard forearm, trying not to let the sensation of the ropey sinew beneath his clothing distract her.

“I’m not going anywhere,” he growled. “I have every right to be here.”

“Indeed?”

“Indeed,” he retorted, mockery lacing that word and curling through her like burning parchment. “I am his brother, after all.”

She snorted and rolled her eyes at that bit of absurdity. “Ha. Very amusing.”

He stared at her in utter seriousness. Her breath froze in her chest. Dear heavens. He was not jesting.

She looked from him to the duke and back again, for the first time noting there was quite some similarity between the two men. Her stomach sank. Oh, no. This man was the duke’s brother. She glanced down to where she clutched his arm in a vise. Oh, no . . .

She released her hold and blinked, falling back against the squabs. “Oh.”

He slammed the door shut and rapped on the ceiling of the hack. The coach lurched forward. She swallowed the sudden lump that rose in her throat. It stung to consider that perhaps he did belong here. More than she.

Autenberry had a brother.

It felt wrong that she hadn’t known that very basic fact about him . . . about the man she claimed to so ardently admire. She closed her eyes in a pained blink and shook her head in self-disgust.

I didn’t know he had a brother.

Of course she didn’t know that. She didn’t know anything about him. Oh, she liked to think she knew a great deal about her precious duke, but that was all part of the fantasy in her head.

“Very well,” she murmured in surrender, accepting his presence as the coach rolled into motion.

She studied him in the sudden silence, wondering why she had missed the resemblance in the first place. She chalked it up to the chaos surrounding their first encounter.

One corner of his mouth kicked up as though tempted to smile. “Very well,” he echoed, sounding so blasted pleased with himself that she only felt more foolish.

She glanced at the sleeping duke and then back to his brother beside her, scooting as far as she could and craning her neck to evaluate him.

He was . . . dark. It was the first word that leapt to mind. Ironic considering his hair was a deep gold. But it wasn’t his outward appearance that made her decide this. Darkness exuded from within him. He had fought Autenberry with savagery, his greatcoat whipping around his gleaming Hessians as though brawling in the streets was the most natural thing in the world to him. Because it probably was.

His very size set him apart from other gentlemen of the ton. Even before he opened his mouth to speak in that brogue that felt like the drag of ermine on her skin, she knew he was different.