Read Along Came a Rogue for Free Online

quickly.
    “Then answer me this.” He lowered his head until his eyes leveled with hers, until his face hovered so close he could feel her trembling breath shadowing his lips. “Where are all your servants, Mrs. Crenshaw?”
    She froze, the only movement a momentary widening of her eyes, a deepening of the fear in their wild depths. The look of a caught prisoner.
    “I’ve been here for a while now, and no one could have missed that gunfire when we arrived. Where are your footmen and grooms?” He took her chin in his fingers and held her so she couldn’t look away. “And do not lie to me.”
    She stared warily at him, as if trying to decide exactly how much she could trust him. Then she answered, the single word tearing from her in a hoarse whisper—“Gone.”
    He couldn’t possibly have heard her correctly. “Pardon?”
    “My husband was killed in a riding accident five months ago,” she whispered, as if terrified of being overheard. “But there were other…incidents. The servants feared for their lives. Half departed the night of his death, the others were gone by his burial. A handful remain, and if they hear gunfire, believe me, they will not come to investigate until it is long over.”
    Grey stared at her, unable to fathom the creature before him and the situation she described. Was she really spinning ghost stories and expecting him to believe them?
    He straightened away from her, yanking her fingers free from his coat. For a moment, her hands stayed in the air, as if still grasping for him, before she lowered her arms to her sides to bury her hands in the pockets of her baggy pelisse.
    He shook his head. “Your parents never mentioned any of this. Thomas never said a word.”
    “My family doesn’t know.” She drew a ragged breath, her gaze training on his chest. “Andrew died last fall when the weather was too bad for them to travel to his funeral. Then, the time was simply never right to tell them about the servants.”
    Never right? For God’s sake, she’d been widowed and abandoned by her staff, and the time was never right to ask for help? “Mrs. Crenshaw—”
    “I was unwell,” she interrupted. “Andrew’s death was such a shock—I fell ill. And then…” Her voice trailed off, and whatever she had been about to say was lost. “But I’m better now. In fact, I plan on closing up the house and returning to London next month, when the roads will be passable and when I’m feeling stronger.” But the words came far too smoothly, too practiced, and her eyes lifted to his, as if searching for proof that he believed her. “And now you know everything.”
    That was a laugh. He’d barely scratched the surface of the secrets being kept here.
    “As you can see, there’s nothing to concern you, but I cannot accommodate guests. Nor do I feel up to traveling…even as much as I want to see Thomas.” An aching grief passed over her face before she averted her eyes, and she drew a shaking breath, her hands wrapping in her skirt. “So when will you be leaving, Major?”
    “Tomorrow.” He stared at her, grimly noting all the obvious signs of fear and unease she so openly displayed. “First light.”
    Her shoulders sagged, and a soft sigh of relief escaped her. “I’ll have Yardley bring the letter to you at the inn—”
    “Oh, no,” he interrupted with a forced calmness he didn’t feel. “You misunderstand me.”
    Her eyes darted up to his. Sudden panic made their blue depths resemble a storm-tossed ocean. The tip of her tongue darted out nervously to wet her lips, and he watched, fascinated by the little movement. He placed his hand on the wall beside her shoulder and leaned in closer, close enough to see her pulse racing tantalizingly in the hollow at the base of her throat.
    The brat , he reminded himself again. Thomas’s sister, which meant she was as good as a sister to him, too…a sister who just happened to have amazingly plump breasts.
    “I’m not leaving without you.”