Willoughby 03 - A Rogue's Deadly Redemption (23 page)

“Do you know what blasted time it is? Robert, you—what is that horrendous smell?”

Marcus looked like hell. He wore a dressing robe, his hair hadn’t been combed and a drink rode his hand as though permanently attached.

Robert stood in his brother’s entry way, a mess of blood and God-knew-what tracked into the pristine room. The butler had been shocked at the pounding upon the door at such an unrespectable hour but after Robert had shoved open the door, he’d hurried to get Marcus.

“I need your help.” He had no time to waste.

“You’re…” Marcus stared at him. “You’re covered in muck. And blood.”

“Not mine. Mostly.” He had a few minor knife wounds somewhere. “You told me to ask for help, and I’m here. I’m asking.” Even if the very action ate at his insides.

Robert flicked a hand at his brother’s dressing robe. “I’ll explain on the way. Get dressed.” Morning had come too quickly, and Robert knew that precious minutes remained until the sun was full in the sky. Every minute delayed meant a greater chance of Edwin being discovered, even in the disgusting space he’d left him in.

Marcus hadn’t moved. “What have you done this time?”

“Damn it, we must hurry.”

“What have you
done
?”

“This isn’t about me!” he yelled. “It’s Edwin. He’s… He… Bloody hell, Marcus, I am
asking for help
. But I need it now.”

“Why?”

“Edwin is dead.” He spoke with the flat rage that simmered just underneath everything. “He’s dead, and I need you to help me get his body to a safe place.”

“After Cary died on the street because of you, you come in here demanding I help you move a
dead
man
? Whatever you’ve gotten yourself into, you can get yourself out of it.” Marcus turned, walked down the corridor.

Robert dogged his heels, ignoring the sharp edges of pain that embraced his every move.

“I didn’t know what I’d done when you came to me before.”

Marcus whirled into Robert’s face. “You left him to die on the street!” His roar was hoarse, filled with a torment Robert couldn’t fix.

“I didn’t leave him. I was
taken
. If I’d had a choice, I never would have left him.”

“No? You didn’t care that he was dead. Or how I might find out.”

“I didn’t know Cary, I couldn’t remember him. Or you.
Anything
. I remember now. I remember all of it, everything.”

“I don’t give a damn about what you need now. Get out.”

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it? Me to come to you when I have nowhere else to turn and everything to lose, just to give you the opportunity to turn me down. You are a cold-hearted bastard, the spawn of our mother.”

“You don’t know a thing about our mother. You don’t understand a bloody thing about what I’ve done for you. How I helped you.”

“You never helped me,” Robert yelled back, even as Cary’s cryptic words came to him. “You were too busy accepting her adoration, her accolades, watching her treat me worse than the muck I smell of now.”

“I was protecting your ungrateful ass. You never knew the mother that Cary and I did. We kept you from that person. The one who lost her temper and threw vases at our heads. The one who thought nothing of pouring boiling water upon our backs, then two days later, couldn’t bear the thought of spending two minutes out of our presence.” Marcus heaved in a breath. “You should be grateful she ignored you. Grateful we never let her turn her obsessions your way.”

“I spent my life protecting you. Helping you. And you’ve spent a lifetime hating me for it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Of course you don’t. That would mean you were wrong. If you gave me one shred of respect, it would mean the years you’ve spent trying to provoke me—and don’t deny it, we both know it’s true, would have been in vain.” Marcus spread his arms open. “Your entire life’s work of debauchery and gambling—everything I’ve read about you in the papers, all for a hollowed out cause. That life you led killed our brother and now Edwin. How many lives lay on your shoulders, Rob?”

Robert flinched. His brother’s revelations flayed open his beliefs, the walls and causes he’d built in his head to justify every move he’d made but they did nothing to stem the anger and bitterness. “How the hell was I supposed to know? All I knew was that not one person in my family cared if I lived or died.”

Marcus looked down at the blood on his hands. “Are you dying now?”

“No.”

“Good. See? I care. Now get the hell out.”

“You’re blaming me for something I didn’t know?”

“I’m blaming you for Cary’s death.”

Robert stared at Marcus’ retreating back, knowing he deserved it, knowing he’d played a large part in destroying any efforts Marcus and Cary had made. Robert hadn’t been able to accept them, and now it was too late.

The hard truth crushed him under the weight of regret. Regret that he hadn’t been able to…

Edwin.

He hadn’t been able to help Cary. But he had to help Edwin.

Without another word, he turned away. He would find a way, damn it. There had to be someone. He had servants. He would ask…bloody hell. He’d pay someone. He didn’t need to grovel.

But he did need to protect Lily.

His steps faltered. Images flashed: Lily held by those men, Lily on the ground.

Lily, dead.

Muttering a curse, he followed after his brother into his study.

Marcus stood at his desk, his head down, his hands flattened on the desk as though the pain he’d caused Robert by upending Robert’s childhood beliefs echoed inside himself.

Robert fought the demons that wanted to nitpick. Argue. Whatever it took to provoke his brother. Marcus had been right. It was their never-ending battle—of wit, of pain, of seeing who could disregard the other first.

“I’m not leaving. I have to protect Lily, and that means I need you.”

“To clean up your mess.”

“Is it your intent to make me grovel? Now who is playing games? You won’t let harm come to my wife to spite me.”

Marcus walked to the wall where he jerked on a long rope. But that was all the ground he gave in this silent war of theirs. “How does this involve her? How did Cary die? Or Edwin?” His tone held a bleak sadness Robert had never thought to hear from his brother, the Marquess.

The heir and the spare.

Robert was the spare now.

That thought pierced his heart so quick, so hard, he had to suck his breath in and straighten so he wouldn’t double over.

“I will explain,” he managed, “but we have to get Edwin
now
.”

“I’ll send men to clean up your mess. But we’re also sending for the constable—”

“No.”

“You are hardly in a position to bargain, brother.”

“I am not here to bargain.” Robert stuffed down the annoyance and stepped forward. “Damn it, Marcus. Will you make me beg? For her life, I will.”

Just then, the butler entered. “Yes, my lord?”

“Hasgood, I have a rather grizzly request, I am afraid,” Marcus told him. “My brother and his valet were attacked, and while he escaped, his valet lost his life. I need you to engage an undertaker. Take some footmen with you and ensure that he collects the body for his family.” Marcus grabbed a pen and sheet of paper from his desk and handed it to Robert. “My brother will write the address.”

“Very good.” To Hasgood’s credit, he didn’t muster an expression of any sort. He took the paper and without reviewing it, turned.

“Hasgood?”

“Yes, my lord?”

“I shall guess that whomever you send to that address will need to be well armed.”

“It shall be done.”

Marcus turned to Robert. “There. Now, you’ll tell me what this is all about. What have you done?”

“Lily first.”

“I can’t protect her until I know what the threat is. Talk.”

“You aren’t going to like it.”

“When do I ever like what you have to say?”

“Rarely. This is no exception. No, I take that back. This is a grand exception, because it will give you justification for every rotten attribute you have ever ascribed to me.”

“This day is turning around then.”

Robert paused. At one time, telling his brother what he’d done had seemed a lark. Now, regret reared with a vengeance. Telling his brother the truth would sever any threads of family that remained between them.

“Speak up already,” Marcus snapped. “You are wearing my patience, and where you’re concerned, I have precious little.”

“There are men threatening Lily’s life, my life, if I don’t continue to work for them.”

“What sort of work?”

“I engrave copperplates.”

“For what?”

“To create banknotes.”

When his brother continued to stare, Robert added, “Forgeries, Marcus. I create copperplates for forgeries.”

“The hell you do.”

“I’m certain my spot is already reserved there, but yes I do. I’ve done it for two years. And I’m good. Damn good. Good enough that they refuse to let me quit.”

Marcus’s hands laid flat on his desk and he tilted his head down, dragging in a long, slow breath. “Do you have any idea what this means? I am on the bloody committee to stop the bloody forgeries.”

“Yes, I recall meeting them. Nice chaps.”

“Is everything a game to you?” his brother roared. He came around his desk and strode up to Robert. His fist struck with little warning, but Robert stood like a man and took it.

His head whipped from the blow. “I deserved that.”

“Damn right you did. This is a
hanging
offense, you stupid idiot.”

“I don’t utter the notes.” As soon as he said the words, Robert knew he’d lived down to the insult of stupid idiot. Amazing how often he aimed so low where Marcus was concerned.

“So it’s acceptable to create the plates that allow the notes to be printed, but passing such notes yourself, uttering them would be sinking to another level? How you justify such nonsense is beyond me. What you are doing is illegal.”

“Truly? Oh, well, thank you for telling me. I shall stop now.”

“Damn it, Robert! This is not a joke. You could be hanged for this.”

“Don’t you think I know that?”

“Then why? Why would you be so stupid? You have always thrown yourself into one idiotic thing after another without one thought of the consequences.”

“I knew what I was getting into. I knew what was at stake.”

Marcus strode toward him and shoved his hands against Robert’s chest. “And what? You didn’t care? No, I know. You thought you were above it. That it couldn’t touch you. Stop acting like you are the only person in this world.” He gave another shove. “We are—I am your goddamn brother, and you should have come to me. Was it money? Did you do this for money?”

Just as Marcus reached up, Robert snapped a fist up. “Shove me again, and I’ll lay you flat.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

They stood nose to nose. Robert’s arm pulsed with the need to push the boundaries. He felt heady at seeing the anger he saw in Marcus’s eyes. No matter what he’d done, Robert had never been able to yank him out of the normally cool, calm and imperial persona he wore like his best dinner jacket. He’d never been able to make him
care
.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

Marcus frowned. “Tell you what?”

“The truth about Mother. Why did you keep it from me, let me believe all these years it was you?”

His brother’s mouth dropped. “How many times have I attempted to contact you? To invite you over? Good God, Robert, once you became an adult, you refused my attempts. All of them. Was I supposed to tell you when you were a child? When you couldn’t understand? When was the right time?”

“At some point in my life,” Robert countered. “You have no idea what I believed, what I thought.”

“You refused to talk to me. Perhaps I was wrong, but I thought it better for you, as a child, to think your mother didn’t have time for you rather than to know how she railed about hurting us or any of the other terrible things she did. I wanted your life to be free of that burden.”

The haze that had covered Robert’s vision whenever he’d viewed his past, his brothers, started to clear. With the slashes of regret came a surprising sentiment toward Marcus, something he never thought he would feel.

He, the inconsequential brother had made a fool of Wayfair, and should Robert’s activities become known…it would ruin Marcus.

That righteous need that had fueled Robert’s direction had disintegrated somewhere in between facing the deaths his actions had caused, putting Lily’s life in danger and learning that his brother had been protecting him for his entire life.

“Who knows? How far did this go?” Marcus asked.

“Because all that matters is perception?”