Never Had a Dream Come True (2 page)

“Was that an agreement?”

She decided wisely enough to ignore him, and instead she crossed her arms over her chest, bracing herself against his constant teasing. “Could you please just go away, so I can change my clothes in private?”

“No.”

“No?”

He took a step closer to her, forcing her to bend her head backwards to be able to look into his eyes. “No,” he breathed, and something in his voice made her heart skip a beat.

She had never met this Rake before.

Being his niece’s best friend since she was a little girl had made her as interesting to him as a piece of furniture. If he hadn’t any use for her, like fetching him his book or getting him a scone, he mostly ignored her.

She, on the other hand, had stayed as close to him as she possibly could, just in case he would talk to her. Fetching a book was a small price to pay if the man of your dreams noticed your existence for two whole seconds.

But even then he had never looked at her like he did now. It was like
she
was the scone he wanted to eat.

The cold damp chemise made her shiver, and again his eyes darted downwards. “Bloody hell,” he muttered, and her frown deepened.

What on earth was making him groan like this? She followed his gaze and gasped as she realized the source of his interest. The damp cloth didn’t hide anything. Her breasts were just as visible as if she had been standing naked in front of him.

She immediately lifted her arms higher, concealing her bosom from his eyes.

“That’s too bad.” He grimaced disappointed.

“Take your eyes off my person,” she ordered, outraged, and when he looked up into her eyes the raw need in his dark gaze made her blush intensely.

“Why?” he asked, with a pout worthy of a small child.

“Why?” she gasped again.

“I must admit I like it when you gasp.”

“W-what?” she stuttered, not knowing how to handle this strange Rake.

He gave her a slow smile which made her forget to breathe. “Your gasps make you even more enchanting, as your cheeks turn such a pretty pink out of embarrassment.”

She did not know what to say. Or more importantly, she did not know what to think. Was she dreaming? Had Rake, the secret love of her life, just called her enchanting?

Her treacherous heart rejoiced, but this was not the time to celebrate. With a whimper, she reached down, scooped up the blanket from the ground, and held it in front of her.

“G-go away from here.” She was too embarrassed to care about how impolitely she addressed him. All she wanted was for him to disappear and let her collect the scattered pieces of herself again.

“Can’t say I want to,” he drawled softly. He lifted his hand and let a finger lightly trace the edge of the blanket covering her chest.

“Oh, my God.”

His smoldering gaze burnt her as he leaned even closer to her, until his lips almost touched her ear.

“You may call me Rake,” he whispered softly.

His teasing woke her up from her stupor. With another gasp she stumbled backwards until she had put enough distance between the two of them.

“Coward,” he whispered softly, and she glared at him in a desperate attempt to intimidate him, but it only gained her another slow smile and a beckoning with his finger asking her to come closer again.

“No, thank you,” she said icily. “I would prefer for you to remove yourself from this area now. Please.”

“Are you sure?” he grinned, and she nodded most haughtily.

“Yes I am.”

“I don’t mind you changing your clothes in front of me, as I have already seen your entire beautiful person.”

She blushed again but didn’t answer his rakish teasing; instead she nodded toward the lake.

“It seems you have missed that Fanny is in the lake, too. As you can see, she is closing in on us, and as she is dressed just as I am…”

She didn’t finish the sentence, but he got her meaning anyway, and he visibly blanched at the thought of seeing his niece practically naked. His eyes darted to the lake, where Francesca swam with her usual strong strokes toward them.

“Tell Fanny I’ll be waiting for her in the library so she can tell me how much she has missed me.”

He gave the very efficient blanket a disappointed look before he turned and walked toward the castle.

Before she could stop herself, she called out after him, “Coward.”

He stopped mid stride and looked back toward her over his shoulder with one of his perfect black eyebrows arched.

She offered him her best look of feigned innocence which obviously didn’t fool him for a second.

“So, you are trying to play my game?” It wasn’t hard to see he was quite amused. She could tell by the way his left eyebrow arched even more upwards.

He took a step back toward her, and she gasped, horrified. She gave a quick glance at Francesca, who now had reached the shore, and he hesitated.

He obviously didn’t want to see his niece with as little clothing as Penny, and with one last lingering look toward her, which she ignored blushingly, he continued on his way toward the castle.

“Was that Rake?”

Francesca’s voice, filled with joy, cut through Penny’s thoughts, and she gave her friend a nod and a reassuring smile. Her friend squealed with delight and hastened to dry herself. After diving into her dress, she rushed off toward the castle, where her uncle had promised to await her.

With shivering fingers Penny put her own dress back on, ignoring the still damp chemise. Slowly she walked toward Chester Park, her head filled with irrational thoughts, none of which made any sense.

Her deep sigh echoed as she walked through the portal leading into the grand courtyard. For as long as she could remember, she had lived for the day Rake would finally see her as the woman she had become. Every night she had dreamt about how he would come to her vowing to die if she didn’t give in and make him the luckiest man ever by marrying him.

And today he
had
seen her. He had told her exactly how attractive he found her.

And all she wanted to do was cry.

Why did he do this to her? Why?

His timing couldn’t be worse, as she finally had decided she couldn’t waste her life and happiness on a dream that would never come true. Francesca had nagged her about this for years, and in the end Penny had to give in. She too realized Rake would never be hers. At least not as she wanted him—desperately in love with her.

And that was the sole reason why yesterday she had accepted Thomas Bedford’s wish to court her.

She sighed, defeated.

For the first time in months she longed for her family. If they only could come home, so she could leave Chester Park. Leave Rake.

She desperately needed to escape and save her poor heart from being shredded by him. He was, after all, a well-known scoundrel and a devoted libertine. But more importantly, she knew he had never been able to resist a challenge, and stupidly she had presented him with one by calling him a coward.

He was the man of her dreams and the sole possessor of her heart. If he gently demanded her, how would she ever be able to resist him?

Lady Francesca Darling slept soundly in her bed, even though it was five o’clock and too late for an afternoon nap. She didn’t stir when Penny pulled the heavy curtains from the large windows to let the warm August sun in.

For a moment Penny stood still, watching her friend. Francesca slept safely, without noticing she had an intruder in her bedroom.

Such trust amazed her.

But then, if you were surrounded by a large family who adored you beyond reason, there was not much to worry about, she thought with a tender smile.

She climbed into the bed and stretched out beside her friend, nudging her now and then to wake her up. But Francesca wasn’t so easy to wake up when she took a nap, and in the end Penny had no choice. She pinched Francesca. Hard.

With a loud groan, Francesca woke up and put a hand on the pinched part of her arm. She winced before opening her eyes to face her gruesome attacker.

“You!” she said with contempt. “I should have known it. No one but the evil and heartless Lady Penelope de Vere would wake up a sleeping beauty by almost wrenching her arm off.”

Penny laughed and ignored her friend’s obvious desire to falling asleep again. Instead she grabbed one of the pillows and hit Francesca in the face with it.

“Ouch,” her friend muttered from beneath the pillow before she stretched like a cat, yawning until her jaws creaked.

This wasn’t the first time Penny had the doubtful pleasure of waking her friend, as Francesca had a thing for sleeping. If she could find time to spend in her bed, she would use it.

“It’s a beautiful afternoon out there, and here you lie in your bed, wasting it completely.”

Francesca muttered something inaudible, apparently not as fascinated with the beauty of the day as her best friend was.

“What time is it?” she mumbled, before putting the pillow back over her head.

“Almost five,” Penny enlightened her cheerfully, happily ignoring the outraged gasp from her friend somewhere under the pillow.

“Five?”

“Yes, five.”

Francesca growled at Penny, who again ignored her friend’s irritation. She snatched the second pillow away too, and put it with the other in a neat pile at the floor. Then she covered them with the thick bedspread, stolen without mercy from her friend.

When Francesca’s maid Nell joined them a bit later, her mistress was already dressed and enduring Penny’s rather harsh tugs through her hair. “What are you doing, Miss Penelope?” Nell rescued the brush from Penny’s incapable hands. “You know you are to stay away from Miss Francesca’s hair!”

“I just wanted to help.”

Nell’s frown intensified. “I told you to let Miss Francesca’s hair be, didn’t I? Last time you handled that brush, you succeeded in tangling her hair so much it took me a whole afternoon to undo your handiwork.”

Francesca, now more awake, ignored her irritated maid and looked at her friend in the mirror with a concerned frown of her own. “Why are you waking me up this early, by the way? Has something happened?”

Penny shook her head, her lovely violet eyes filled with laughter. “Just because I dragged you out of bed before seven doesn’t mean something bad has happened. Maybe I just wanted your company.”

“Is this about Uncle Rake?” Francesca asked, giving a resigned sigh and rolling her eyes at her maid via the mirror.

“No.” Penny sat down on the bed and tried to look as though nothing could be farther from the truth. But her friend knew her too well.

“Of course it’s about Uncle Rake.” Francesca sighed again. Defeated. “It always is.”

“I have a suitor.” Penny felt a desperate need to change the subject. For the first time, she did not want to talk about Rake. And especially not about what he had said that morning.

She had spent the afternoon in her bedroom, pondering how to tell Francesca about the encounter. But in the end she had decided not to tell her at all. She wasn’t really sure what actually had happened between her and Rake.

All she knew was that he finally had seen her. The mere thought of how he had looked upon her made her blush again.

“Do you now?”

Francesca’s obvious disinterest was quite telling. Penny hid a smile. Her guess was that her friend was a bit tired of hearing about Rake.

“Yes, I do.”

“And how on earth did he propose this time?”

Penny didn’t care about her friend’s indifference. She was too used to it, after all, since she had been in love with Rake for so many years and had told Francesca all about it repeatedly.

“There was no proposal of marriage.”

Francesca mumbled something inaudible as she reached for a scone from the tray Nell had so kindly brought with her.

“Yesterday, with your grandparents’ blessing, I accepted Thomas Bedford’s wish to court me.”

“That’s nice.”

Penny shook her head, smiling. Francesca wasn’t listening to her at all, and for the tiniest moment Penny thought about not enlightening her friend.

But as Thomas now was quite a large part of her immediate future, she wanted Francesca to know more, preferably before dinner, when Penny would have to face Rake again.

“Thomas Bedford.”

Penny’s announcement broke through Francesca’s scone-eating indifference. “Who?”

“The man I agreed could court me.”

“What?”

“I see I have your attention now.”

Penny grasped her skirt nervously, twisting the delicate fabric while ignoring Nell’s pointed looks.

“What
are
you talking about?” Francesca’s voice was high-pitched with surprise. “What have you done?”

“I have told a very decent man I will accept his courtship of me, and your grandparents have given us their approval.”

Francesca looked ready to burst with madness. Her eyes glanced around as if not knowing what to focus on and she stood up and sat down again repeatedly. Nell, more sensitive to situations than her harsh looks would indicate, silently left the room and closed the door behind her.

Several minutes went by before Francesca regained her wits enough to hold herself still. “What
are
you talking about? When did this happen? And Thomas Bedford? Boring Saint Thomas?”

Penny knew better than to try to answer Francesca before she had thought it all through. Her friend had never been a good listener until she had her own thoughts named and categorized correctly.

Francesca threw her hands out in despair. “How could you do this to me? How could you do this to yourself? Next year we are off to London for our debutante Season. We have looked forward to it for ages, and you plan to get married before that? How can you do this to us?”

“I’m not marrying him, and I still plan to go to London next year. I’ve only told him that he can officially court me. Your grandparents made it most clear to him that there would be no talk of engagement or marriage before I have done my first Season.”

Francesca’s eyes narrowed as she gave Penny a look that made it quite clear she did not believe a word of what her friend was telling her. “As if my grandparents would agree to this! They would never.”