The Taming of the Rake

“We’ve moved beyond what you want, Chelsea. You’ve had your opportunities. Three Seasons, and you’re still unwed, and very near to being on the shelf. Papa was much too indulgent of your fits and starts, and you missed a Season as we mourned his passing, may the merciful Lord rest his soul. Now we are halfway through yet another Season, and you have thus far refused the suits of no fewer than four gentlemen of breeding.”

“And one out-and-out fortune hunter who had you entirely hoodwinked,” Chelsea reminded him as she paced the carpet in front of the desk, unable to remain still. Her brother had always been stupid. Now he was both stupid and holy, hiding his fears behind this new supposed devotion, and that somehow made it all worse. She believed she’d liked him better when he’d been just stupid.

“Be that as it may, and there is still a question on that head, if you will not choose a husband, it is left to me to select one for you, as I helped do for your sister. You should be immensely flattered that he has taken an interest, most especially as he has firsthand knowledge of your … your proclivity for obtrusive behavior. I can think of no one finer than Reverend Flotley.”

“You open your mouth yet again, Thomas, but it’s still Francis Flotley’s words that come out of it. I can think of no one worse. I’d rather wed a street sweep than put myself in the power of that religious mountebank. I reach my majority in a few weeks, Thomas, and you cannot order me to marry that … that oily creature. Oh, stop frowning. A mountebank, since you obviously aren’t of a superior enough intellect to know, is a person who deceives other people for profit. Sometimes it is by selling false cures, and for the reverend, it is selling false salvation. You really think he has a direct conduit to God? I hear Bedlam is full of those who think God speaks to them. You could ask any one of them to intercede for you without paying them a bent penny, and I can go my own way.”

“And where would that be, Chelsea?” Her brother was maintaining his composure, something he had struggled long and hard to do ever since he’d nearly died during a bout with the mumps two years earlier, passed to him by one of Madelyn’s wet-nosed brood of brats—It having taken Madelyn a run through a pair of female offspring before she’d succeeded in producing a male heir for her husband, who’d then at long last agreed to leave her alone, so she was free to regain her figure, buy out Bond Street every second fortnight and sleep with any man who wasn’t her husband.

At any rate, and Madelyn’s disease-spreading offspring to one side, Thomas was devoutly religious now, having promised God all sorts of sacrifices in exchange for rising up from what could have been his deathbed, and it had been the Reverend Francis Flotley who had successfully delivered, and continued to deliver, the earl’s messages to God in his name.

Since their father’s untimely death and Thomas’s own near brush with that final answer to the trial of living, the earl no longer drank strong spirits. He did not gamble. He’d given his mistress her congé and was now, for the first time in their marriage, faithful to his wife—who, Chelsea knew, was none too happy about that turn of events. He wore expensive yet simple black suits with no ornamentation. He did not lose his temper. He read the evening prayers in the drawing room each night at ten and retired at eleven.

And he continued to pour copious amounts of money into the purse of Reverend Flotley, who, Chelsea believed, had decided marrying the earl’s younger sister to be a guarantee that the supply of funds would then never be cut off, even if his lordship were ever to suffer a crisis of faith … or meet another lady of negotiable moral standards he might want to set up in a discreet lodging somewhere.

“Where would I be? Are you threatening to toss me into the streets, Thomas?”

He sighed. “I did not wish for it to come to this, but I have sole control over your funds from Mama until you are married. You have a roof over your head because of my generosity. You have bread on your plate and clothes on your back because I am a giving and forgiving man. But more to the point, Francis and I see your immortal soul in danger, Chelsea, thanks to your headstrong and modern ways. I’m afraid you leave me no choice but to make this decision for you. The banns will be called for the first time this Sunday at Brean, and you and the reverend will be wed there at the end of this month.”

Chelsea was caught between panic and anger. Anger won. “The devil we will! You think you almost died, and your answer to that is to sacrifice me? I thought it was only your cheeks that got fat—not your entire head. I won’t do it, Thomas. I won’t. I’d rather reside beneath London Bridge.”

The earl opened the book of sermons and lowered his gaze to the page, signaling that the interview was concluded. But he could not conceal that his hands were shaking, and Chelsea knew she had nearly succeeded in rousing his temper past the point the Reverend Flotley had deemed good for her brother’s soul. “Not London Bridge at least. We leave for Brean in the morning, where you will be made safe until the ceremony.”

Chelsea felt her stomach clench into a knot. He was planning to make her a prisoner until the wedding. “Made safe? Locked up, that’s what you mean, don’t you? You can’t do that, Thomas. Thomas! Look at me! I’m your sister, not your possession. You can’t do that.”

He turned the page, ignoring her.

She whirled about on her heel and fled the room, her mind alive with bees and possibilities … and filled with one thought in particular, a memory that had been conjured up thanks to Thomas.

When she reached the main foyer she told the footman to order her mare brought round and then raced up the sweep of staircase to change into her riding habit before her brother came to his senses and realized that a prisoner tomorrow, warned of that pending imprisonment, should also be a prisoner today.

“So, I’ve been lying here thinking, and I’ve come up with a question for you. Are you ready? Hell and damnation, man, are you even awake?”

There was a muffled and faintly piteous groan from somewhere in the near vicinity, and Beau turned his head on the couch cushion—not without experiencing a modicum of cranial discomfort—to see his youngest brother lying on the facing couch, facedown and still fully dressed in his evening clothes. Although one of his black evening shoes seemed to have gone missing.

“A moan is sufficient, thank you. Now, here it is, so pay attention if you please—how drunk is it to be drunk as a lord?” Beau Blackthorn asked Robin Goodfellow Blackthorn, affectionately known to his siblings and many friends as Puck.

“Sterling question, Beau, sterling. Not sure, though,” Puck, yet another victim of their dear actress mother’s intense admiration for William Shakespeare, replied, lifting his head and squinting through the long, dark blond hair that fell across his face as he commenced staring intently at a brass figurine depicting a scantily clad goddess with six—no, eight—oddly extended and bent arms. At least he probably hoped that was it, because if there were, in reality, only two arms, then he was as drunk as any lord had been in the history of lords. “Twice as drunk as a … a what’s it called? Three wheels, place to pile things. Dirt, stones. Turnips. Wait, wait, I’ll figure it out. Oh, right. A wheelbarrow? That’s it, drunk as a wheelbarrow.”

Beau stared at the half-empty wine bottle he held upright against his chest as he lay sprawled on the matching couch in the drawing room, realizing that he no longer possessed any urge to relieve it of the remainder of its contents. Not if he was still drunk enough to be asking his irreverent and weak-brained brother for answers to anything. Besides, his stomach was beginning to protest, threatening to throw back what had already been deposited in it.

“Still the half-wit, aren’t you, Puck? Wheelbarrows don’t drink. Stands to reason. They don’t have mouths. Remember old Sutcliffe? He once said he was drunk as David’s sow. Don’t know any Davids, do you? One with a sow, remember, that’s the important part. Not enough to know a David. Has to be a sow in there somewhere.”

“David Carney is married to a sow,” Puck said, grinning. “Says so all the time. I’ve seen her, and he’s right. Are we still drunk, do you think? Shouldn’t be, not seeing as it’s light outside those bloody windows over there, and the mantel clock just struck twelve while you were talking sows. Or that might have been eleven. I may have lost count. Or perhaps we’re dead?”

“The way my head is beginning to pound, that might be best, but I don’t think so. Now, back to the point. I’m drunk, you’re drunk. We’re drunk as bastards, surely. But are we as drunk as lords? Can bastards be as drunk as lords?”

“You going to start prattling on again about bastards and lords? Thought we’d done with that by the time we’d cracked the third bottle. Bastards, I have found, can’t be anything as lords,” Puck said, cautiously levering himself upward far enough to swivel about and sit facing his brother. He pushed his hands straight back through his nearly shoulder-length hair, so that he could tuck it behind his ears. “See my ribbon anywhere? It’ll all just keep falling in my eyes otherwise.”

“I could ring for somebody to fetch Sidney. The man owns a scissors, which is more than I can say for your valet.”

“Blasphemy! The ladies would never forgive me. My hair is a necessary part of my considerable charms, don’t you know. If I am to be Puck, then I shall be Puck. Mischievous. A sprite, a magical woodland creature.”

“And none too bright.”

“Ha! So you say. But still, much better-looking and virile, and definitely more amusing. Every maiden’s dream, although I’ve not much time for maidens. They demand so much wooing, and once you’ve finally got them into bed they don’t know what they’re doing. By and large, a dreadful waste of time.”

Beau had also sat up and placed the wine bottle on the floor, next to the table positioned between the pair of couches, so that he could better rub at his aching head. “Is that it? Are you done now? Because there are times I think you’ll never truly grow up. I left and you were a child, and I came back to find you older, yet no wiser.”

Puck merely shrugged, clearly not taking offense at his brother’s words, as a less confrontational fellow would be difficult to locate within the confines of England. “You long for acceptance where there is no acceptance. Brother Jack would spit in the eye of anyone who dared to call him respectable. And I? I applaud myself for my complete indifference to it all. I have more money than any ten men with rich appetites would ever need, thanks to our guilt-ridden father. I have been educated and dressed up and taught to be mannerly, and there is nothing left for me to aspire to than to be happy with my lot. Which, brother mine, I am. Besides, you and Jack are deadly serious enough for all of us. Some one of us should have some fun. You look like hell, by the way. I must remember to give up strong spirits before I reach your age.”

At last, Beau smiled. “You’re only four years my junior, and at thirty I’m far from tottering about with one foot hovering over a grave.” But then he stabbed his fingers through his own thick shock of sun-streaked blond hair. “Although, at the moment, I might consider it. I don’t remember the last time I felt like this. You’re a bad influence, little brother. One might even say noxious. When do you return to France?”

“Hustling me back out the door only a few days after I’ve come through it, and after only a single night’s celebration of my return to the bosom of my wretched family? Papa keeps this great pile for all of us, you know. Why, I might just decide to take up permanent residence in London. Wouldn’t that be fine? Just the two of us, rattling around here together, driving the neighbors batty to know that there are now two Blackthorn bastards in residence rather than just the one. Never be all three, considering Black Jack won’t come within ten miles of the place.”

Beau attempted to straighten his badly wilted cravat. “Oh, he’s been here. Haughty, grumpy, scowling and bloody sarcastic. Don’t wish him back, if you don’t mind. Neither of us would like it.”

“He would have made a fine Marquess, aside from the fact that you’d be first in line. And if our dearest mother had deigned to marry our doting papa. There is still that one other niggling small detail.”

“Jack wouldn’t take legitimacy if someone were to hand it to him on a platter. He likes being an outlaw.”

Puck raised one finely arched eyebrow. “You mean that figuratively, don’t you? Outlaw?”

“God, I hope so. Sometimes, though, I wonder. He lives damn well for a man who refuses our father’s largesse. I’d reject it, as well, if it weren’t for the fact that I do my best to earn my keep, running all of the Blackthorn estates while you fiddle and Jack scowls.”

“Yes, I admit it. I much prefer to gad about, spending every groat I get and enjoying myself to the top of my bent, and feel totally unrepentant about any of it.”

“You’ll grow up one of these days. We all do, one way or another.” Beau got to his feet, deciding he could not stand himself one moment longer if he didn’t immediately hunt out Sidney and demand a hot tub to rid him of the stink of a night of dedicated drinking with Puck.

“He’s lucky with the cards? The dice?” Puck persisted, also getting to his feet, triumphantly holding up the black riband he then employed to tie back his hair.

“I don’t know. I don’t ask. Jack was never one for inviting intimacies. Now come along, baby brother. We need a bath and a bed, the both of us.”

“You might. I’m thinking lovely thoughts about a mess of eggs and some of those fine sausages we had yesterday morning.”

Beau’s stomach rolled over. “I remember when I could do that, drink all night and wake clearheaded and ravenous in the morning. You’re right, Puck. Thirty is old.”

“Now you’re just trying to frighten me. Ho, what’s that? Was that the knocker? Am I about to meet one of your London friends?”

“Acquaintances, Puck. I have no need of friends.”

“Now that is truly sad,” his brother said, shaking his head. “You had friends, surely, during the war?”

“That was different,” Beau said, his headache pounding even harder than before. “Soldiers are real. Society is not.”

“The French are much more generous in their outlook. To them, I am very nearly a pet. A highly amusing pet, naturellement. My bastard birth rather titillates them, I think. And, of course, I am oh, so very charming. Ah, another knock, followed closely by a commotion.” Puck headed for the foyer. “This becomes interesting. I’d think it was a dun calling to demand payment, but you’re entirely too deep in the pocket for that. Let’s go see, shall we?”

Beau opened his mouth to protest, but quickly gave that up and simply followed his brother into the foyer. There they saw a woman, her face obscured by the brim of her fashionably absurd riding hat, quietly but fiercely arguing with Wadsworth.

“Wadsworth?” he said questioningly, so that his Major Domo—once an actual sergeant in His Majesty’s Army—turned about smartly, nearly saluting his employer before he could stop himself.

“Sir!” he all but bellowed as he tried to position his fairly large body between that of the female and his employer. “There is someone here who demands to be seen. I am just now sending her on the right-about—that is to say, I have informed her that you are not at home.”

“Yes, well I suppose we needs must give that up as a bad job, mustn’t we, now that I’ve shown myself. Or do you think she’ll agree to go away now?”

“She most certainly will not,” the woman said from somewhere behind Wadsworth. And then a kid-riding-glove-encased hand was laid on Wadsworth’s elbow and the man who had once single-handedly subdued a half dozen Frenchmen during a skirmish by means of only his physical appearance and commanding voice—and the bloodied sword he’d held in front of him menacingly—was rudely shoved aside.

The woman’s gaze took in the two men now before her, sliding from one to the other. “Oliver Blackthorn? Which one of you is he? And the other must be Mr. Robin Goodfellow Blackthorn, as I hear the third brother is dark to your light, unless that’s simply a romantic statement and not fact. Such an unfortunate name, Robin Goodfellow. Did your mother not much like you? Oh, wait, you are Oliver, aren’t you?” she said, pointing a rather accusing finger at Beau. “I believe I recognize the scowl, even after all these years. We must talk.”

“Gad, what a beauty, if insulting,” Puck said quietly. “Tell her she’s wrong, that I’m you. Unless she’s here to inform you that the bastard has fathered a bastard, in which case I’ll be in the breakfast room, filling my belly.”

Beau wasn’t really listening. He was too busy racking his brain to remember where he’d ever seen eyes so strange a mix of gray and blue, so flashing with fire, intelligence and belligerence, all at the same time.

“You remember me, don’t you?” the young woman said—again, nearly an accusation. “You should, and the mumps to one side, you’re a large part of the reason I’m in such dire straits today. But that’s all right, because now you’re going to fix it.”

“She said mumps, didn’t she? Yes, I’m sure she did. I’ve been abroad for a few years, brother mine. Are they now in the habit of dressing up the Bedlamites and letting them run free on sunny days?”

“Go away, Puck,” Beau said, stepping forward a pace, putting a calm face on his inward agitation. “Lady Chelsea Mills-Beckman?” he inquired, positive he was correct, although it had been more than seven long and eventful years since last he’d seen her. But why was she here? And where was her maid? Maybe Puck was right, and if not quite a fugitive from Bethlehem Hospital, she was at least next door to a Bedlamite; riding out alone in the city, calling on him, of all people. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Ah, so you do remember me. And there’s nothing all that pleasurable about it for either of us, I assure you. Now, unless you are in the habit of entertaining your servants with aired laundry best discussed only in private, I suggest we adjourn to the drawing room. Not you,” she added, pointing one gloved finger at Puck, who had already half turned to reenter the drawing room.

“Oh, yes, definitely. You heard the lady. It’s you she wants, brother mine, not me. I’m off, and may some merciful deity of your choosing protect you in my craven absence.”

“Wadsworth,” Beau said, still looking at Lady Chelsea, “the tea tray and some refreshments in ten minutes, if you please.”

Lady Chelsea stood her ground. “Wadsworth, a decanter of Mr. Blackthorn’s best wine and two glasses, now, and truth be told, at the moment I really don’t much care whether you please or not. Mr. Blackthorn, follow me.”

She then swept into the drawing room, leaving Wadsworth and Beau to look at each other, shrug and supposedly do as they’d been told. That was the thing with angry women. Experience had taught Beau that it was often just easier to go along with them until such time as you could either locate a figurative weapon or come up with a good escape route.

And Beau did long for escape, craven as that might seem. The moment he’d recognized Lady Chelsea the memory of the last time he’d seen her had come slamming into his mind, rendering him sober and none too happy to be thinking so clearly.

His reunion with Puck had given him the chance to relax the guard he’d so carefully built up around himself. They’d laughed, definitely drunk too much and Beau had realized how long it had been since he’d allowed himself to be young and silly.

Only with his brother could he joke about their bastard births, make light of the stigma they both would carry for all of their lives. Puck seemed to be dealing with his lot extremely well, although he had attacked the problem from an entirely different direction.

Where Beau thought to gain respect, if not acceptance, Puck had charmed his way into French Society.

Jack? Jack didn’t bear thinking about, as he seemed to be a law unto himself.

But no matter the path Beau had chosen, he knew he’d come a long way from the idiot boy he’d been seven long years ago. He’d put the past behind him—except for what he believed to be the one last piece of unfinished business that had brought him to London—and he would rather the door to that part of his life remain firmly shut.

Shut, and with Lady Chelsea firmly on the other side. She with her childish teasing and then her sympathetic tears. If anything could have taken him to his knees that day, and kept him there, it would have been the sight of her tears.

“Sir?”

Beau turned to look at Wadsworth, snapping himself back into the moment. “Yes?”

“Are we going to do what she says, sir?” The man screwed up his face for a moment, and then shook his head. “Got the air of a general about her, don’t she, sir?”

“That she does, Wadsworth,” Beau said, at last turning toward the drawing room. “That she certainly does….”

CHAPTER TWO

HE HADN’T REALLY CHANGED in seven years. Except that he definitely had. He seemed taller, appealingly thicker in muscle, she supposed. He still carried his arrogance with him, but that had been joined now by considerably more self-assurance. His cheeks seemed leaner, his jaw more defined. He’d been only a year older then than she was now, and had obviously lived an interesting life in the interim.

He’d impressed her then, silly as he’d been in his embarrassing calf-love for Madelyn, uncomfortable as he’d looked in his ridiculously over-tailored clothes, gullible as he’d been when she’d teased him. Vulnerable as he had been, lying in the street as Thomas had brought the whip down over his body, again and again.

She’d had nightmares about that terrible day ever since. She assumed Mr. Blackthorn had, as well.

But the years had made him a man. Going to war had made him a man. What had happened that fateful day in Portland Place had made him a man. Then, he had amused her. Now, just looking at him made her stomach rather queasy. He was so large, so very male. Not a silly boy anymore at all.

Perhaps she had acted rashly, coming here. No, she definitely had acted rashly, considering only her own plight while blithely believing he would grab at her idea with both hands, knowing immediately that she was helping him, as well.

But there was nothing else for it. She had done what she’d done. She was here, an unmarried woman in a bachelor household, and probably observed by at least two or three astonished members of the ton as she’d stood at the door and banged on the knocker. Oh, and her groom and horse were still just outside, on the street.

She couldn’t have been more open in her approach if she had ridden into Grosvenor Square shouting and ringing a bell.

Now she had to make Mr. Blackthorn—or Oliver, as she’d always thought of him—understand that there was no going back, for either of them. She may be frightened, suddenly unsure of herself—such a rare occurrence in her experience that she wasn’t quite sure how to handle it—but she would not allow him to see her fear.

“You look as if you’ve been dragged through a hedgerow backward,” she told him as she stood in the middle of the sumptuously furnished drawing room, pulling off her kid gloves, praying he wouldn’t notice that her hands were shaking. “And you smell none too fresh. Is this your usual state? Because if it is, my mind won’t change, but you will definitely have to.”

He reached for a jacket that was hanging over the back of a chair and then seemed to think better of it, remaining in front of her clad only in his buckskins and shirtsleeves. “Much as it pains me to disagree with you, Lady Chelsea, I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. Bastardy has its benefits as well as its drawbacks.”

She rolled her eyes, suddenly more comfortable. He might not appear vulnerable, but clearly he still carried the burden of his birth around with him; it must be a great weight he would choose to put down if he had the chance. “Are you still going on about that? You are, aren’t you. That’s why you’ve been slowly ruining my brother.”