Page 28 of A Remarkable Rogue

“No…” Baker glanced around at the dark shadows of the alley and those clinging to the house. “The baroness returned from an outing last night around midnight.”

An outing to see me. Nate kept his expression carefully guarded despite the skip of his heart. How much did Baker know? “You followed her?”

“No, sir.” Guilt flickered shamefully across his face. “The lady sneaked away somehow. I didn’t see her leave. I didn’t know she was even gone until she returned.”

“It’s all right.” Relief coursed through him. The last thing he needed was for the Horse Guards to know that Lady Rowland had dressed in boys’ clothes to sneak into their own stables last night to find him. “I know where she went.”

But his assurance didn’t seem to put the sergeant at ease.

Nate frowned. Baker was one of the young men who had joined the Guards since the end of the war. A slew of slots had opened to men who would never have been considered when Wellington was still fighting Bonaparte. But the lad was ambitious, followed orders, and still naïvely believed that war and armies actually brought peace. He was also irritatingly young, not more than nineteen or twenty, while at twenty-seven Nate was now one of the oldest captains in the barracks. It was time he, too, moved on and left the Guards to the younger men like Baker.

As soon as this mission was over and the Home Office paid him his reward, he would do just that. Then he’d never have to worry over—or dream about—Sydney Rowland again.

“Head back to the barracks and get some rest,” Nate ordered and gave the sergeant an appreciative slap on the back. “Send Reynolds to relieve me in eight hours.”

Baker tugged at his hat in an abbreviated salute, then hesitated. “Captain, we haven’t been told anything about this assignment. Why are we watching the baroness?”

“Penance,” Nate muttered grimly.

Baker blinked. “Sir?”

“Never mind. Go get some sleep.”

“Yes, sir.” The young man glanced over his shoulder one last time, then quickly headed down the alley, around the corner, and out of sight.

With a heaving sigh that fogged the cold air, Nate stared up at the town house. Sydney was in there somewhere, and if he possessed one grain less of resolve, he would have been inside with her.

Last night, when he’d looked up from his horse and found her standing in the stables, he’d thought he was hallucinating. The baroness in boys’ clothing, alone with him in a horse stall, for God’s sake…Of coursehe thought he’d been hallucinating, the same way he’d seen Sarah’s ghost everywhere he looked for the first few months after her death, the way he thought he heard a baby crying even in the middle of battle.

But Sydney wasn’t a ghost, even if the frustrating woman was haunting him. She was flesh and blood, warm and real, and it had taken a bucket of cold water over his head to make him believe it.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough cold water in the Thames to make him stop wanting her. He’d called upon every ounce of restraint he possessed not to rip those ridiculous boys’ clothes from her body and take her right there against the stable wall. And when she’d invited him home…Sweet Lucifer.

Worse, she tempted him with more than those red lips, full curves, and stormy green eyes. She’d done what he hadn’t yet had the courage to do—she’d taken a lover after her husband’s death. She’d found a way to quench the need for arousal and release, a way to fend off the lonely nights.

But Nate wasn’t selfish enough to bed her. How would he ever be able to lose himself in another woman without feeling the guilt of betraying Sarah, especially when he’d disappointed her in so many other ways for which he could never forgive himself?

A movement caught the corner of his eye, and he froze. A dark form slid through the shadows of the side garden toward the rear of the house.

Crouching low, Nate moved silently across the service yard toward the garden. He slipped through the shadows still clinging to the base of the tall stone wall and was helped by the thick bushes and bowers decorating the walk that curved around the house toward the front portico.

He stopped at the back corner of the town house, then reached his right hand into his left sleeve for the knife he kept sheathed there. He held his breath and waited.

A large man slinked past in the shadows. Nate freed his knife and lunged.

He shoved the trespasser against the stone wall and pinned him there with his left forearm across the man’s upper chest. The knife blade lay against the thug’s throat.

“Who are you?” Nate demanded through clenched teeth. When the brute hesitated to answer, he pressed the knife just far enough into his throat to cause pain but not enough to cut the skin. A warning.

The intruder’s eyes bulged, but he knew enough not to move. Nowhere near the age of the boy messengers whom Scepter had sent before, he was gray at his temples with leathery skin wrinkled from years of hard work in the sun and large biceps beneath a frayed coat. He reeked of fish, sewage, cheap ale—a dock worker hired from one of the seedy pubs lining the Thames, not a professional killer.

Nate pressed the knife deeper into the man’s throat and repeated, “Who are you?”

“William Murker,” the man gurgled with spittle running down his chin. From the way he shook and stared with fear-filled eyes, he was very surprised to find Nate here. Clearly, he hadn’t expected the house to be guarded.

“Why are you here?”

Murker’s gaze darted toward the rear of the house as if searching for someone. A partner? Yet Nate kept his eyes fixed on the attacker. He had a knife, but this thug dominated him in physical size.