Wicked Rake, Defiant Mistress
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‘Please, my lady. You are risking your neck for naught but a few baubles and a handful of guineas.’
She winced. As her father’s sergeant in the army and later his steward, Martin would have given his life for her father. Now he held doggedly to his promise to serve his children, but she couldn’t ask him to take any more risks. Not when everything she touched went wrong. ‘It would serve William best if you returned to Castlefield. Keep an eye on the house. Make sure the bailiffs don’t steal anything.’
‘And let you risk your neck alone?’ Martin glowered and shook his shaggy head. ‘Your father always said you was a handful.’
A tomboy, he meant. Too competitive for a girl. Too impetuous, Father had said, when Mother defended her. And she’d been so sure she’d show William how well she could handle things in his absence. Pride had definitely ended in a fall. And if she didn’t do something soon, she’d drag the rest of the family into the pit.
Garrick groaned and sat up on the floor of the carriage. Cursing, he pulled himself on to the seat and investigated the bump behind his ear with his fingertips. A knot as big as an egg. Blast the woman.
A comely female at that, if he hadn’t been mistaken. He recalled the spiralling heat between them and her delicate trembles beneath his touch with a searing jolt of desire. For one heady moment, he’d thought he’d wooed her out of her villainous purpose. He might have, too, if she’d been alone. His luck was definitely out. First he’d taken the bit between his teeth to tell Uncle Duncan the bad news, and then he’d been robbed.
Head aching, he probed the tender spot on his scalp. Brandy might help. He fumbled in his cloak pocket and pulled out his flask. He rubbed some of the alcohol on the lump, hissing at the sting, then took a swig. The servants must have been terrified.
The abominable pounding in his head increased. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the squabs, uttering a sigh when, some twenty minutes later, the carriage crunched on gravel to a gentle stop.
Beauworth Court.
Johnson pulled open the door and let down the steps. ‘My lord? Are you all right? I darsen’t stop on the road.’
‘I’m perfectly all right,’ Garrick said, forcing a smile.
He allowed the coachman to help him out of the carriage and glanced at the house. Stone lions guarded the wide granite steps to the front door. Columns, illuminated by torches, rose up to the first floor with Palladian grace and the lower windows blazed with light. Uncle Duncan must be entertaining. Garrick bit back a groan. Merde. He really did not want to be here.
‘Dan,’ he called out. ‘Bring my coat, please.’
Dan jumped down with alacrity and dived into the coach for the garment. ‘’Ere, my lord.’
‘Good. Stay close to me.’
The gravel stabbed into the soles of his feet as he hobbled up to the front door. ‘Damn, blasted wench.’ Why the hell she had stolen his boots he could not imagine.
On cue, the door opened. The butler, a slick-looking fellow Garrick didn’t recognise, stared down his nose. Recovering swiftly, he stepped back with a bow. ‘Welcome home, my lord.’
Hah. ‘Thank you.’ He handed over his greatcoat and headed for the arching sweep of staircase leading to the first-floor chambers.
A door opened. Light spilled from the dining room. A heavily built figure, his military bearing obvious, strode purposefully across the black and white tiled floor. Duncan Le Clere, his father’s cousin, and Garrick’s trustee for twelve more months.
Dan ducked behind Garrick as Le Clere’s stern gaze took in the scene. ‘The devil. What is the meaning of this?’
‘Got held up.’ His uncle stiffened. ‘By highwaymen.’ Garrick chuckled at his pathetic humour.
Le Clere quickened his pace. ‘Are you injured?’ He must have caught a whiff of the brandy because he recoiled. ‘Or drunk? Is this one of your pranks?’ Nothing slipped past Uncle Duncan with regard to Beauworth and its heir.
‘I might be a trifle foxed, but I am fully in possession of my faculties, I assure you. The damned rogues relieved me of my valuables and my boots.’
Two more men hurried into the vestibule: Matthews, the Beauworth steward, and Nidd, his father’s ancient valet who did for Garrick on the rare occasions he came home.
‘Johnson told us what happened,’ Matthews said. ‘These villains need teaching a lesson.’
And the beefy Matthews was ready to mete out the punishment. The thought of the saucy little wench in his hands did not sit well in Garrick’s stomach.
‘Send for the constable,’ Uncle Duncan said, taking in Garrick’s stockinged feet with raised brows.
‘Not tonight.’ Garrick put a hand to his head and winced. ‘The morning will be soon enough. Right now, I’m for bed.’
Uncle Duncan’s lips flattened. He glanced toward the dining-room door. ‘I expected you for dinner. It takes more than a contretemps with the lower orders to keep a man from his duty.’
‘Johnson said they struck his lordship on the head,’ Matthews said.
The hard expression on Le Clere’s face dissolved into concern. ‘I’m sending for the doctor.’
The doctor who would poke and prod and wonder. Garrick put up a hand. ‘A small lump, nothing more. I’ll be well by morning.’
The broad back stiffened. ‘A knock on the head, Garrick…I’m only thinking of your welfare.’
‘Don’t fuss.’
Le Clere recoiled. ‘But your head, Garrick…’
A black emptiness rolled out from the centre of Garrick’s chest. He knew what Le Clere was thinking, knew from the wary look in his eyes what he feared, and Garrick honestly couldn’t bear it.
Garrick rubbed his sore knuckles. Le Clere hadn’t yet heard of the latest débâcle. ‘I’m sorry, Uncle. I know you mean for the best, but I do not need bleeding or quacking tonight.’
His uncle blew out a breath. ‘As you wish. But if there is any sign…’ He had no need to finish the sentence; his gentle smile said it all.
Garrick nodded. ‘I’ll see the doctor.’
‘So be it,’ Le Clere said. ‘I cannot tell you how good it is to see you come home. There is much to be done, much to learn in the next twelve months, my boy.’
Hardly a boy. And the rest of it would wait for the morning. ‘Good night, Uncle. Oh, and I brought my tiger.’ He gestured to Dan, who moved closer to Garrick.
Uncle Duncan glanced at Dan with pursed lips. ‘He belongs in the stables.’ He waved off Garrick’s response. ‘We will talk tomorrow when you feel better. I must attend my guests. Take good care of him, Nidd. Matthews, I’ll see you in the library later.’ He hurried back to the dining room. The stolid Matthews bowed and wandered off.
Nidd’s cadaverous face was anxious. ‘He worries about you, my lord. You know how he is.’
Garrick sighed. ‘Yes, I know. But I wish to God my father hadn’t tied up my affairs so tightly.’
‘You were but a babe then, my lord. He never dreamed he and your mother would go so early.’
A regretful silence filled the empty hall. It pressed down on Garrick’s shoulders with the weight of a granite mountain. He started up the stairs.
In Garrick’s chamber, Nidd eased him out of his coat and went to work on his waistcoat. Garrick gestured at the boy hovering by the door. ‘My wits were begging. I should have sent him to the stables with Johnson.’
‘Leave him to me, my lord. I’ll see he gets there. Johnson was only saying the other day as how he could use more help.’
That was another thing. Why so few servants in the house? In the old days there had been a footman stationed in every corridor. Was something wrong? Did he care?
Sometimes he did, and then the old anger he worked hard to contain erupted.
He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, seeking distance. ‘Take him now, Nidd. I can manage the rest.’ Since he had no boots to be pulled, undressing presented no difficulty. He opened his eyes as Nidd headed out of the door with his hand on Dan’s bony shoulder. ‘Tell Johnson to treat him gently. He’s had a rough go of things.’
Eyes closed, he unbuttoned his waistcoat. His fingers sought his fob. Gone. He stared down at his right hand in horror. His signet ring, a family heirloom handed to him by his dying father, had also been stolen. Rage surged in his veins like a racing tide. This time he let it flow unchecked.
To lose the family signet ring now, when he’d finally made his decision. Damn the woman to hell. Damn him for falling under the spell of her kiss.
He pulled off his shirt and glared at the tester bed with its carved insignia of the Beauworth arms, the shield and white swan, a motif repeated on the moulded ceilings here and in the dining room. The same as the insignia engraved on his ring. He would have it back if he had to search the length and breadth of England. And when he found the woman, she’d rue the day she’d crossed his path.
Chapter Two
The next morning after an early breakfast, Garrick traversed the second-floor gallery and made his way down the sweeping staircase. Marble pillars rose gracefully to support the high carved ceiling above a chequerboard floor he couldn’t look at without cringing. He took a deep breath, determined to keep his composure. He was twenty-four, not a scared child. Nor would he allow his uncle’s cautious solicitude to get under his skin.
He knocked on the library door out of courtesy and entered. A polished oak desk dominated one end of the long room. Immersed in the papers before him, Uncle Duncan did not look up.
While Garrick waited, memories curled around him like comforting arms. He could almost hear the sound of his father’s voice, the feel of his arm heavy on Garrick’s young shoulders as they poured over maps or Father told him stories of military engagements.
On a warm spring day like today, the bank of French windows leading to the balcony would have been thrown open, a breeze heavy with the scent of roses from the garden beyond billowing the heavy blue curtains into the room.
He hated the smell of roses.
Garrick blinked, but the recollections remained imprinted in his mind like a flame watched too long: a young boy wide-eyed with imagination, his father, jabbing at the air with his cigar to emphasise some important point of strategy, until Mother chased them out into the fresh air. How his father’s face lit up at the sight of her as she swept in, her powdered black hair piled high, her hands moving as she talked in her mix of French and broken English.
Mother. Like an icy blast from a carelessly opened door in mid-winter, the warmth fled, leaving only a cold, empty space in his chest. Hell. He would have sent Le Clere a note if it had not been cowardly.
It seemed to require every muscle in his body, but somehow Garrick slammed the door on his memories. He locked them away in the same way his father’s old maps were locked behind the panelled doors of the library bookcases and focused his attention on Le Clere instead. Uncle Duncan, as Garrick had called him since boyhood, had grown heavier in the past four years. His ruddy jowls merged with his thick neck. His hair was greyer, but still thick on top and he looked older than his fifty years, no doubt dragged down by responsibility. As if sensing Garrick’s perusal, he raised his flat black eyes. Garrick resisted a desire to straighten his cravat. Damn that the old man could still have that effect on him.
‘Well, Garrick.’ The deep voice that had once reached to the far reaches of a parade ground boomed in the normally proportioned library. Garrick winced as the harsh tone reverberated in his still-sensitive skull. ‘What can you tell me about these villains that set upon you last night? This is the second time they’ve robbed a neighbourhood coach.’
Le Clere took his responsibilities as local magistrate seriously, but Garrick was not going to let the morons who stood for local law and order frighten off the cheeky rogues before he recovered his property.
He shrugged. ‘They were masked. I barely caught a glimpse of them before I was struck.’ He was certainly not going to admit being bested by a woman and he trusted Johnson to say nothing about that kiss. Damnation. Was he smiling at the memory?
A sour expression crossed his uncle’s face. ‘I had hoped you would be of more help. The last man robbed babbled on about a ghost.’ He inhaled deeply. Garrick recognised the sign. Control. Uncle Duncan hated it when things did not go according to plan. Apparently in command of himself once more, Le Clere smiled. ‘No matter. I am simply glad you are here, ready to devote yourself to duty at last.’
The old man’s hopeful expression twisted the knife of guilt in his gut. He didn’t like to tell him that the command to come back to Beauworth and take up his responsibilities had tipped the scales on his decision.
‘I’ve decided to join the army.’
Le Clere sat bolt upright in his chair. ‘You can’t mean it.’
The anger, always a slow simmer in his blood, rolled swiftly to a boil. He let it show in his face. ‘I certainly do.’
Bushy brows snapped together. Red travelled up his uncle’s neck and stained his cheeks, the same signs of anger he experienced himself. The old man opened his mouth and Garrick awaited the parade-ground roar that had cowed him as a boy, but now left him cold. Le Clere inhaled a deep breath and when he finally spoke, his voice rasped, but remained at a reasonable pitch. ‘What brought about this sudden decision?’
‘I found one of Father’s campaign diaries in the library in town. I’d forgotten how much he loved serving his country. I want to follow in his footsteps.’
Le Clere slammed a fist on the table. ‘I should have burned them. Your father should never have risked his life in that manner, neither should you.’
‘Father never got a scratch.’ Only to come home and die in a hunting accident. Garrick rose to his feet. ‘I have made up my mind. There is nothing you can say to convince me otherwise.’
Le Clere sagged against the chair back. ‘All these years I’ve worked to safeguard your inheritance and you treat it as if it is nothing.’ He pressed his fingers against his temple.
More guilt. As if he didn’t have enough on his conscience. ‘I have to go.’
‘Why?’
‘You know why.’
‘Nothing has occurred since that incident at school. You’ve been all right. Got it in hand.’
It. The Le Clere curse. Something they’d never spoken of since the day Garrick had learned what it meant.
‘No.’ He stared at his bruised knuckles. If his cousin Harry hadn’t pulled him off the bullying bastard beating Dan with a pitchfork, Garrick might have been facing charges of murder instead of spending every penny of his allowance to pay the man off.
‘I see,’ Le Clere murmured, his brow furrowing. ‘Then you’ve wasted these past few years. Learned nothing of the estate. The war cannot continue much longer, surely, and when you come home I may not be here. I’m getting old, Garrick.’
Garrick tugged at his collar. ‘I’m going.’
‘Wait until my trusteeship is over. Twelve months is not such a long time. Learn all you can. Set up your nursery, get an heir, then go with my blessing.’
The older man’s anxiety hung in the air like a sour London fog. If it hadn’t been impossible, Garrick would have sworn he smelled fear. He could not let his uncle sway his purpose. Staying in England as he was, a shortfused powder keg waiting to go off at a stray spark, was asking for trouble.
‘I’ve made up my mind.’
Le Clere ran a hand through his hair. ‘What if you are killed? What will happen to Beauworth?’
‘Cousin Harry is the heir.’
His uncle stilled. He seemed to have turned to a block of granite. His face reddened. The veins in his neck stood out above his neckcloth. Dear God, was he going to have an apoplexy? ‘Uncle, please. Don’t upset yourself.’ Garrick strode for the table beside the hearth and poured a glass of brandy from a decanter. He took it back to Le Clere. ‘Drink this.’
His uncle accepted the brandy with a shaking hand. It hurt Garrick to see the liquid splash over the side. Le Clere took a long swallow. He stared into the bottom of his glass. ‘How long will this visit last?’
He’d planned only to collect his mare and bid his uncle farewell. The loss of the signet ring meant a delay. It must be there for Harry. At least his cousin didn’t carry the Le Clere taint in his blood.
‘A week.’ Plenty of time to run the little vixen to earth.
Uncle Duncan straightened. ‘Then we will use what little time we have to good purpose.’
Inwardly Garrick grimaced. If the old man hoped to use the time to change his mind, he was in for more disappointment. More guilt. Ah, well, if he was going to be here anyway…‘All right.’
Le Clere beamed. ‘Good. Very good. Let us get started right away. After all, we don’t have much time.’
Garrick hid his sigh of impatience. What he really wanted to do was question the local people about the thieves. It would be hours before he could make his escape. ‘I’m looking forward to it.’
Eleanor bore most of the weight of the basket swinging between her and her twelve-year-old sister, Sissy, as they trudged through Boxted toward their cottage. After the hour’s walk from Standerstead on a fine spring day, a trickle of sweat coursed down between her shoulder blades.
Her stomach tightened. Time was running out and here she was having to spend it buying supplies instead of doing something about her predicament.
As they passed the Wheat Sheaf across from the village green, a tall man with broad shoulders in snug burgundy velvet stepped into their path. The Marquess of Beauworth. No one but the local lord of the manor would cut such an elegant figure in the humble village of Boxted. And he looked lovelier in bright sunshine than he had beneath the moon.
Eleanor’s heart skipped and her breath caught in her throat as she fought not to stare at him, tried to pretend he wasn’t there. But when he bowed with elegance and a charming smile, she could pretend no longer. She halted.
‘Good day, ladies.’ His deep voice sounded intimate, seductive.
A disturbing surge of exhilaration heated her cheeks and sent shivers tingling from her chest to her toes. The man was downright dangerous if he could do all that with a smile. And she did not like the puzzlement lurking in his amber-lit brown eyes. Please, don’t let it be recognition.
She bobbed a small curtsy. ‘Good day, my lord.’
‘May I help you with that heavy basket, miss?’ he asked.
Before Eleanor could respond that he need not trouble, Sissy piped up with a cheeky grin and a look of relief in her dark brown eyes. ‘You can help me.’
Eleanor groaned inwardly. Why couldn’t the child hold her tongue for once? ‘Sissy, please. You must excuse my sister, my lord, she is too forward.’
‘Why, I believe she is just truthful. It would not be at all out of my way, you know.’ With a smile warm enough to melt an icicle in mid-winter, he grasped the handle of the basket.
Fate in the shape of a black-haired imp had taken the decision out of Eleanor’s hands. ‘Thank you, my lord.’ She released the handle and he hefted the basket as if it weighed nothing at all.
‘It is a remarkably fine day, is it not, Miss…?’
‘Brown. Ellie Brown, sir, and this is my sister, Sissy.’
‘Miss Brown, Miss Sissy Brown.’
He bowed politely to each of them in turn as if they were gentry and not simple village misses. If it was possible, her heart beat a little faster. For the first time in weeks, she felt valued. Her cheeks flared hotter than before. Lord, what would he think?
‘You have just come from the market?’ he asked.
‘Yes, my lord. For baking supplies.’
‘Ellie makes the best biscuits in the whole world.’ Sissy added, ‘I think she should sell them.’
Eleanor wanted to put a hand over her sister’s mouth. She was far too ready to confide anything to anyone. She quelled her irritation as the Marquess smiled winsomely at the vivacious child peeping admiringly up at him. Clearly he applied his charm to any female who crossed his path. She resented the pang of something unpleasant in her chest as he directed his lovely smile at Sissy.
‘I hope I might try some one day,’ he said.
Outwardly polite and ineffably charming, while inside there lurked the worst sort of rake. A man who had done untold damage to her family. The strangely weak feelings she had around him were inexcusable. She scowled at Sissy behind his back.
Seemingly impervious to Eleanor’s stare, Sissy gave a little skip. ‘Perhaps you would like to buy some.’
Now the child sounded like a merchant. Access to Beauworth Court might solve their problems, but not at the cost of involving her innocent sister. ‘Silly girl. The Marquess will not be in the habit of purchasing food.’
‘Very true, Miss Brown, but I will mention your talents to Mrs Briddle, our cook.’ His dark gaze searched her face. Against her will, her gaze roved over the elegant lines of his bronzed features. Definitely foreign looking. And that French accent made her toes curl. Mortification dipped her stomach. This must stop.
‘Miss Brown, I have the strangest feeling we have met,’ he said. ‘Before I went away to school, perhaps?’
Surely he would not recognise her as Lady Moonlight. ‘It is not possible, my lord.’ How breathless she sounded. She inhaled deeply, willing her pulse to stop its gallop. ‘We only moved here recently.’
‘In London, then?’
‘I’ve never been to London.’ Fortunately she hadn’t. With the deaths in her family, her come-out had been postponed for three years in a row and if she didn’t sort things out soon, would probably never occur. Not that she minded. Primping and simpering had never suited her temperament.
‘We lived in Hampshire—’ Sissy announced.
Eleanor gave her a little pinch to stop the flow of words.
‘Ouch,’ Sissy cried. She rubbed her arm and glared balefully at Eleanor.
Eleanor bent over her. ‘Oh dear, have you hurt yourself?’
‘No. You—’
‘Good.’ She straightened ‘This is our cottage, my lord.’ She pointed at the last dwelling in the row of five. Beyond it, fields of hay and ripening corn spread as far as the eye could see. ‘Thank you so much for your help.’ She took the basket from his grasp. ‘Come, Sissy.’
Uncomfortably aware of his gaze on her back, Eleanor kept her shoulders straight and her eyes firmly focused on her front door. She would not look back. Next time they met, she would be ready for him and his winsome smile.
Like a connoisseur of fine wine, Garrick savoured the gentle sway of Miss Brown’s hips and her proud carriage as she negotiated the wooden plank across the sluggish stream running alongside the road. As if she’d forgotten him completely, she opened the gate and walked up the short path through the unkempt patch of garden.
With guinea-gold hair pulled back beneath her plain straw bonnet and her serious expression, she presented a delicious picture of demure English womanhood. Somehow she put the sophisticated ladies of London in the shade. Prim and proper as she seemed, the confused blushes on the creamy skin of her face indicated an interest. None of his former loves had ever coloured so divinely. Although her wide-set, dove-grey eyes set in an oval face observed him coolly enough, they warmed to burnished pewter when she smiled with a heartstopping curve of two eminently kissable lips.
How extraordinary to find such a beauty in sleepy Boxted.
The feeling that he knew her remained. He combed his memory without success. Eventually he would remember. Miss Ellie Brown was not a female a man would easily forget. Not when the mere sight of her had pulled him away from his purpose at the inn. An instant attraction that was not plain old-fashioned lust, so swift to rouse when he’d kissed Lady Moonlight. Rather, the purity shining in her face had evoked a different kind of admiration. Not one he’d had much experience with. And yet the spark of innocent passion he’d sensed running beneath the modest appearance offered an irresistible challenge, even if it could result in no more than harmless dalliance for a day or two.