When a Rogue Meets His Match - Elizabeth Hoyt Page 0,158

more tempting of the two.”

The baron swayed as he tried to focus on King. “Devil spawn,” he slurred. “Tempting the unwary with your evil ways.” He shifted against the wall. There was a wide pool of blood beneath his leg now. “You can’t prove I did any of that.”

“I suppose I can’t. Any more than I could prove my innocence back then either,” King said. “In the breath it took for you to utter a handful of words, I became an unnatural killer.” He stepped closer to the baron and stopped in front of him. “And against your word, mine was powerless.”

“Then what? You’re goin’ t’kill me now?”

“That ship has long sailed,” King said. “Or at least, that is what my smugglers in Dover would say in a situation like this.” King tossed the smith’s hammer to the side with a deafening clatter.

“I shoulda killed y’too,” the baron garbled.

“Perhaps you should have. But you didn’t.”

“Y’can’t leave m’like this,” Marstowe panted.

“Alone, you mean? The way I was left after you killed my brother? After you told my father and my mother that it was I who had wielded that hammer in a fit of jealousy?” King stepped back and extended his arm to Adeline.

She took it without hesitation, and he covered her hand with his other one, gripping it as if he was afraid she might disappear.

“Goodbye, Uncle.”

Chapter 13

King knew when she had slipped into his rooms by the ghost of movement reflected in the dark windows.

He didn’t stop playing, just let the music wash over him, his fingers moving of their own accord. While Evan had been the artist, King had been the musician, the notes flowing effortlessly from his mind to his hands. When he’d been four or five, the baron and baroness would trot him out from time to time to play for guests, the collection of people making all the right noises of approval as he dutifully executed a preselected piece. As he got a little older and his parents had become impatient with his frivolous obsession with music over more suitable pursuits like Latin and maths, riding and fencing, he’d been forced to sneak in time at the pianoforte whenever he could. And then after, when he’d been taken from his home in Hanover Square, there had been years and years when there had been no music at all.

It was why, when he’d bought Helmsdale, he’d had a pianoforte installed in his bedroom. It was a Broadwood grand, enormously expensive, and King would have paid five times that amount for the luxury of playing whatever he wished whenever he wished, uncensored and undisturbed.

Yet when Adeline sat down next to him on the long bench, he didn’t feel disturbed. He simply finished the sonata, drawing out the waning notes.

He rested his fingers on the ivory keys. “I have locks on my door.”

“That weren’t locked tonight.” She placed a finger on a key in front of her and pressed down, a single note reverberating through the room. She was wearing a loose, belted robe the color of the sapphire she had once tried to steal, the neck snug at her throat, the sleeves almost too long for her arms. The simplicity of the garment was more evocative than anything else she had ever worn.

“No,” he agreed. “They weren’t.”

She withdrew her fingers from the keys. “The Darling brothers departed with their cargo an hour ago for Edinburgh,” she said.

King nodded. “There will be a rumor soon that the baron returned to Virginia, humiliated and defeated by his inability to find his missing fortune.” He traced the edge of a key with the pad of his finger. “I thought that this part would be easier. I thought that the rage and revulsion would be replaced with…satisfaction. Elation. But being back in those stables with him was like living everything all over again, and all I could feel—all I can feel now—is grief.”

Adeline’s hand came to rest gently on his leg, but she didn’t speak.

“It was my fault Evan died,” he said. “He died trying to spare me from what he had endured for years.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Adeline said fiercely. “You were a child. And you were betrayed by the very people who were supposed to keep you safe.”

“I told them,” he said. “My mother and father. Told them what had happened when they found me with Evan, covered in his blood, my clothes torn, my breeches ripped.” He covered her hand with his. “They told me that I must