A Rogue by Night
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by Kelly Bowen
Excerpt of Duke of My Heart © 2016 by Kelly Bowen
Cover illustration by Kris Keller
Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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First Edition: May 2019
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ISBN: 978-1-4789-1862-2 (mass market), 978-1-4789-1863-9 (ebook)
E3-20190301-DA-PC-ORI
E3-20190222-DA-NF-ORI
Table of Contents
Cover
Book Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Discover More
An Excerpt from DUKE OF MY HEART
About the Author
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Acknowledgments
Once again, a heartfelt thank-you to Stefanie Lieberman, my agent; Alex Logan, my editor; and everyone at Forever who works so hard on my behalf. Each book is a team effort and mine is second to none.
And a special thank-you to my readers and the entire romance community. You have made this journey one of joy.
Chapter 1
Dover, England, 1820
The bullet wound, as far as bullet wounds went, was not dreadful.
The bullet had caught her patient at the top of the shoulder, punching a messy hole in flesh and muscle, but not shattering bone. The icy cold of the sea had slowed the bleeding and the fact that he had been half-naked and shirtless at the time meant no remnants of fabric would be caught deep in the tissue. More concerning was the long gash that ran beneath the bullet hole, across the muscles of his upper back. The gaping, bloody edges would require a substantial number of stitches, and unlike the bullet wound, neither the cold nor the sea had slowed the bleeding much.
“Jesus, Kate, are you trying to kill me all over again?” The question was accompanied by a groan.
Katherine Wright increased the pressure she was applying to the wound, watching as the linen turned scarlet in the pool of lantern light. “Maybe I should.” She kept her voice steady, though inside she was shaking with fury. “If only to keep the damn soldiers from having the satisfaction of doing so.”
From the front corner of the cottage, her father wheezed, his laughter made ominous by the rattling in his lungs. “Stop your whining, lad, or your sister might just decide to get careless with her wee knives.” The meager light from the hearth illuminated his wizened profile.
There were a couple of snickers from the rest of the men crowded in the tiny abode who had carried her brother in. Most of the men she recognized, a couple she had never seen. Katherine glared up at them, and the snickers faded. She wished she had drawn the heavy curtain she’d put up in the center of the cottage for those times when she and a patient needed privacy.
“Get out,” she ordered the lot of them.
In response, they scuffed their feet and looked uncertainly between Katherine and her patient.
From where he lay facedown on the table, her brother lifted his head and tried to look back at her. “There’s no call for—”
“Stop talking, Matthew, or I’ll let one of these loggerheads sew you up. And then you’ll have a scar of the likes you don’t want to consider.”
Matthew’s forehead came to rest on the table again. His dark blond hair was still wet and twisted strands fell forward against the sides of his face. “I’m told women like their men with scars.”
“Women like their men safe,” she gritted out through clenched teeth, still glaring at the assembled crowd. “Not shot and at the wrong end of a blade.”
Matthew grunted. “Kate—”
“Off with you then, lads,” her father said, his voice like gravel. “Let her do her work. Go home, keep your heads down, and let the soldiers chase their tails for the rest of the night. Matty will be right as rain by morning.”
The men muttered but obeyed the order, and one by one they vanished soundlessly into the darkness. Katherine knew they would each go in a different direction, slipping through the blackness like wraiths in the night, evading the blockade men and patrols who hunted the coast for prey. Since she’d been a child, she had watched as smugglers deliberately scattered, men with generations of experience behind them. She had watched her father do it. Watched her brother do it. When she had gotten older, she had done it as well.
But occasionally, they weren’t as invisible as they thought. And the proof of that was still bleeding all over her table.
“They didn’t follow you here, did they?” Katherine asked her brother. “The soldiers?”
“Don’t be daft.”
“I’m not being daft. I’m being careful. Something you might want to do more of.” She peeled back the linen and grimaced at the gaping wound, though the bleeding was starting to ebb. She despised deep cuts like this. Forget the deeper damage to the muscle tissue; wounds like this could fester.
“We lost them in the tunnels.” Matthew’s words were muffled against the table.
“You’re sure? If you were bleeding, you’d have left a trail—”
“I’m sure, dammit.”
“How did they know you’d be in that cove?”
“Someone must have tipped the patrols off,” her father answered.
Katherine glanced up at her father. He had stood and pulled back the heavy fabric covering the small window at the front of the cottage, peering out into the darkness. Wrapped as he was in the bulky blanket, he almost looked like his brawny former self. Before he’d been shot. Before his lungs had weakene
d and deteriorated.
“What was it tonight?” she asked Matthew. “Silk? Tea?”
“Brandy. From Boulogne,” he replied. “The patrols were hidden on the beach, waiting for us to retrieve it. Didn’t see them until it was almost too late.”
“Almost?” Katherine asked angrily. “Dammit, Matt, do you have any idea what your back looks like?”
“It was hard to run in the surf, at least until I got deep enough to swim. But I drew them out, and they couldn’t run either. The other boys got away clean, and that’s all that matters.”
“You matter. Your life matters. And you almost lost it—”
“Those men, those boys, are my crew, Kate. My responsibility. What kind of leader am I if I don’t lead?”
“You said that you would stop doing this, Matt.” Katherine pulled a candelabra closer and reached for her suture kit. “You promised me.”
Her brother mumbled something unintelligible into the table.
“What was that?”
“He asked how you think we’re all to eat if he stops,” her father said harshly from his post at the window. “How we’re supposed to keep a roof over our heads and coal in the hearth in winter. How we’re going to pay for the medicine you keep stuffing down my throat every time you get the chance. That all takes coin, lass.”
Katherine set her kit aside. “I earn—”
“You earn the occasional chicken,” her father said wearily. “A handful of carrots, or a measure of dried herring if you’re lucky.”
“I can’t not help someone who needs me,” she snapped.
“Aye, I know that. And you’ve a rare gift for healing, and this parish and its people desperately need you, especially now. But they have nothing, and thus, neither do you.”
“You almost died at the hands of the king’s men, Father. Five inches is all that kept Matthew from dying tonight from another soldier’s bullet. You—” She stopped, trying to keep her voice from rising. “You speak of having nothing. If the two of you die for the sake of a bale of smuggled tobacco or a tub of brandy, then I’ll truly have nothing.”
“I’m not so easy to kill.” Her father was still looking out into the darkness.
“And neither am I,” Matthew added irritably from the table. “French artillery and guns couldn’t do it. A handful of leftover Englishmen with inferior weapons and high-strung horses will not be able to do what the French could not.”
Katherine suppressed the urge to throw something. “Are you not hearing what I’m trying to say? I—”
“Douse the light,” her father said, his voice hard with urgency. “We’ve company.”
Katherine immediately blew out the candles surrounding the table. She reached for the lantern hanging above her head on its hook and extinguished that, too, fear spiking and making her pulse pound. “Soldiers?”
“Can’t tell.” Her father shuffled across the darkened space, illuminated now only by the dim light struggling from the hearth. He stopped beside the only other window in the cottage, on the far side of the door, and eased back its covering.
Katherine moved slowly around the table, reaching for the long curtain that hung from a rope across the center of the cottage and drew it closed. The heavy fabric concealed the rear of the cottage from the view of anyone at the door, but it would be a poor solution in the face of a regiment of soldiers hunting for a smuggler.
There was, however, a space beneath the floor, big enough for a man to crouch in, accessible from a trapdoor. She eyed the corner of the bed that her father and brother shared, just visible in the gloom. It would need to be pushed away from the wall, and the threadbare rug peeled back if she were to get her brother hidden.
She took a step closer to her brother. “You need to hide.”
“There’s not time. Get me the rifle.” Matthew staggered to his feet, swaying slightly and reaching for the edge of the table to steady himself. His breathing was shallow and labored.
He kept a rifle near the cottage door, always loaded with fresh powder. Though Katherine doubted very much that Matthew would be able to manage the heavy weapon in his state. And she knew that her father couldn’t.
Without considering what she was doing, she slipped past the curtain, stole across the dimly lit space, and snatched up the gun.
“Single horse and rider,” her father warned from the window.
That was better than a posse of soldiers, but it still didn’t bode well.
“Bring that damn gun back here,” her brother whispered weakly. She saw the curtain twitch and knew he was watching her.
Outside, the sound of boots on the packed earth was faint but unmistakable.
Katherine swallowed hard, raising the gun to her shoulder and leveling the muzzle at the door.
“Jesus Christ, Kate, get away from that door and bring me the gun.” Matthew’s demand was both faint and desperate.
“Do what he says, lass,” her father pleaded.
“Sit down before you fall down, Matthew,” Katherine murmured in a voice that sounded surprisingly steady in her own ears. “You’ve lost a lot of blood. Keep the curtain closed. And you stay where you are, Father.”
There was a soft tap on the door, and the latch creaked. The door opened a crack. Katherine felt her brows draw together, even as she adjusted her grasp on the stock. Soldiers would not have knocked first. At least not that quietly.
“Mr. Wright?” The voice was low and male. The door swung open a little farther, and a tall figure carrying a bulky bag of some sort ducked carefully into the cottage. “Mr. Wri—” He stopped abruptly, and Katherine guessed he had finally seen her silhouetted in the firelight. And the gun she was holding.
From the side of the room, her father muttered something under his breath and moved from the window. He ducked past the man and shoved the door closed, though not before he scanned the darkness beyond. “Dr. Hayward,” he said by way of greeting. “Welcome.”
“Mmm,” the doctor replied drily, gazing at Katherine. “I’m not so sure I am.”
Katherine lowered the gun and set it back against the wall. She put a hand out to anchor herself, the tension abruptly broken and leaving her a little more wobbly than she’d like. She tried to will her heart back into a normal rhythm.
Not a soldier, but a doctor. One who spent his summers in Dover with his family and saw to a great deal of the county’s medical needs while he was here. Katherine had never actually met him in the short time that she’d been back, but she’d seen him at a distance, usually accompanied by pretty young women who seemed to hang on his every word. Which wasn’t surprising because Dr. Hayward was not only a doctor, but a baron as well. A wealthy, widowed baron. Which was surprising.
And made no sense to Katherine at all. Because rich, titled men did not labor in such professions. They did not lower themselves to toil in a field hallmarked by disease and blood and gore. They didn’t spend time worrying about people who did not possess an address west of Haymarket, London. And they certainly didn’t prowl the back roads of Dover on a night like this when the air was heavy with the promise of rain.
Which, altogether, made the baron’s sudden presence here inordinately suspicious. She wasn’t about to test the doctor’s discretion recklessly. Who knew what Harland Hayward—Baron Strathmore—did or didn’t know about what went on along the shores of Kent County? And where his allegiances might lie? To king and country or to the peasants who struggled to survive both? Baron Strathmore was a grand lord, after all.
He was certainly not one of them.
Katherine deliberately did not look back to where her brother remained concealed. “What do you want?” It was abrupt and rude, but with Matthew still bleeding behind her, she needed this baron-turned-doctor to leave.
“Miss Wright, I presume?” The baron hadn’t moved from where he stood in the shadows. Nor did he sound the least bit offended by her utter lack of decorum. “Your father has told me a lot about you.”
Katherine’s eyes narrowed. W
ell, her father certainly hadn’t returned the favor. She hadn’t even realized that he was well acquainted with the baron. Everything she knew about Strathmore she had gleaned from gossip as she worked. Strathmore’s youngest sister was the new Countess of Rivers. His oldest sister was a bloody duchess. They all stayed at Avondale House, the imposing manor outside of Dover, perched on the cliffs overlooking the sea. A nest teeming with grand titles and insufferable pomposity, no doubt.
She shot a glance in her father’s direction, but he ignored her, concentrating on relighting the candles, though not fast enough for Katherine’s liking. She wanted—needed—to see this Lord Doctor clearly, to see his face and read the nuances of his expression.
“Yes,” she replied finally into the silence, acknowledging her identity but ignoring his suggestion that he was familiar with anything about her. “Again, I’d ask what you want—”
“He’s come to help you, lass,” her father grumbled as he bent to retrieve the lantern and set to lighting it again.
“If you need it, of course,” Strathmore added, sounding merely pleasant and polite.
Katherine was not at all prepared with a story to explain Matthew’s bullet wound to his lordship any more than she was prepared to trust Strathmore with the truth. “I have no idea what you’re talking about—”
A crash reverberated through the room, and Katherine spun. The table behind the curtain had upended and torn the fabric from its moorings. On top of the heavy wool, caught in the table legs, Matthew was inelegantly sprawled.
“That,” the baron said in that annoyingly calm way of his. “I was talking about that.”
Katherine jerked into action, cursing under her breath and hurrying forward. She dropped to her knees beside Matthew. In the soft light, she could see that his eyes were closed, his face pale. A dark, rusty stain was smeared over the surface of the wool where it had come into contact with his wound as he fell. She cursed again and pushed the crumpled fabric away from where it had bunched across his hips.
On the other side of the overturned table, her father hovered above her with the lantern, a worried expression on his face. “Is he all right?”