Page 1 of When the Rogue Returns
PROLOGUE
Amsterdam
1818
DARKNESS HAD FALLENa while ago. Eighteen-year-old Isabella Cale clung to her new husband Victor’s neck as he carried her into her old room at her sister Jacoba’s house. Isa hadn’t wanted to come here, but it was safer than having Jacoba look after her in their apartment. She didn’t want her sister nosing around for the imitation diamonds that Isa kept hidden from her husband. And Victor refused to leave Isa alone while she was sick.
She winced. She hoped this pretense of being ill succeeded. And that he never found out it was a sham. It had been hard enough to keep it up all day, when she was supposed to have been working at the jeweler’s shop, but Victor’s concerned glances now made it even more difficult. After only a week of marriage, the last thing she wanted to do was deceive him.
But she had no choice. It was for his own good. And hers.
“Are you sure she’ll be fine?” Victor asked Jacoba as he laid Isa gently in her old bed.
“She just needs rest and coddling.” Jacoba pulled the covers up over Isa. “She’s had these awful sore throats since she was a girl. They never last more than a week. You were right to bring her here. It’s not good for her to be alone.”
Her older sister’s soft words used to make her feel safe. But that was before their clockmaker father had died six years ago. Before Papa’s apprentice, Gerhart Hendrix, had married Jacoba and taken them in. Before Gerhart had begun gambling.
Isa and Jacoba were no longer as close as they once were.
“I’m not so ill that I’ll expire while you’re at the shop,” Isa told Victor in a raspy voice.
Victor worked temporarily as a night guard at the jeweler’s where she was a diamond cutter. Since their conflicting shifts didn’t allow them much time together, it had been pure bliss staying home with him today. Well, except for the pretending-to-be-sick part.
Shadows darkened Victor’s lovely hazel eyes. “I’m sorry to have to leave you, but at least Jacoba can look after you.”
Oh, how she wished she weren’t too much of a coward to tell him the truth! But it would devastate her if it changed what he thought of her. Better to avoid the problem entirely.
If she could fool her sister and brother-in-law with her “illness” for just one night, it would all be over tomorrow. Then Victor would never have to learn of her family’s insane scheme to steal the royal diamond parure from the jeweler’s shop.
A lock of wavy hair the color of rich oak dropped over his brow as he bent to kiss her forehead. “I wish I didn’t have to leave you alone, but with the prince’s guard coming—”
“I know,” she said, cutting him off before he could reveal that the royal diamonds would be leaving the shop tomorrow. Jacoba mustn’t learn that the chance to steal them would be gone after tonight. “You may not have your post much longer, so you have to work while you can.” His post would end in the morning, when the jeweler handed the royal jewels to the prince’s guard.
“Iwillfind work after this,” he said resentfully, “even if the jeweler doesn’t keep me on. Don’t worry about that.”
“I’m not,” she hastened to reassure him. He was such a proud man, and she hadn’t meant to wound him. Besides, who wouldn’t hire Victor? And the jeweler was an old friend of his mother’s; the man would surely findsomeway to keep Victor on. “I have faith in you.”
Victor looked only slightly mollified by her words. “You’re fretting oversomething. I can tell.”
“Don’t be silly.” Had she been that transparent? Oh, Lord, she had to get him to leave, before she gave too much away. She forced hoarseness into her voice. “And if you don’t go, you’ll be late.” His shift began at 8P.M., when the jeweler went home. “Don’t worry about me. I’m in good hands with Jacoba.” She practically choked on that lie.
But he didn’t seem to notice as he tucked the covers about her. “I’ll come fetch you in the morning when I’m done with my shift,Mausi.”
She winced at the German endearment. Victor often used foreign words—he spoke Dutch, Flemish, German, English, and French fluently, which impressed her. But she didn’t like being called “little mouse.”
Probably because shewasa mouse, in every respect. She looked like one—nondescript brown hair that defied curling, boring brown eyes, and hips that were a touch too wide for her small bosom—and she acted like one, too. She would much rather cut diamonds or design jewelry than argue or make a fuss. It was how she’d landed in this mess in the first place.
It was also why she lay here silent while he headed for the door. She ought to call him back, tell him the truth, face the consequences. But it would be so much easier just to bluff her way through this night. Then she’d be free of her family’s machinations forever.
Because she wasnevercreating another imitation parure. She wouldn’t have made this one if Jacoba and Gerhart hadn’t convinced her that they could sell it as a legitimate copy and earn some good money out of her talent for creating false diamonds. If she’d known they would take it into their heads to use it to commit a crime...
Stifling a groan, she turned onto her side and watched as Victor went out with Jacoba into the hall, murmuring instructions on how to care for his wife. He wassohandsome, her husband, and so kind. She lived in terror that he would find out about the Hendrixes’ sordid plans and her part in them.
Her throat tightened. How had she even managed to snag his attention? He was a lion to her mouse. His many scars told her that he’d suffered a great deal during his three years in the Prussian army. And the pain of fighting at Waterloo still lurked beneath his clear hazel eyes. She suspected he had other dark secrets—he didn’t talk about his childhood or his family—yet he took each day as it came, persevering through whatever agonies lay in his past.
Meanwhile, she lay here pretending to be sick. Oh, what she wouldn’t give to be courageous and reckless, to stand up to Gerhart whenever he droned on about how he’d saved her and Jacoba from certain ruin after Papa died. It was true, but why should it mean that she had to risk her own happiness and safety? And why couldn’t she justsaythat?
Because then Gerhart would shout at her and shout at Jacoba, and she hated the shouting. And the stony glances. And the reminders that she wouldn’t even have her position at the jeweler’s if Gerhart hadn’t encouraged the talent for jewelry making and diamond cutting that she’d inherited from Papa.
