Once a Rake (Drake's Rakes) (15 page)

“Tell me about the soldiers,” he asked, his voice a hiss. “They searched?”

“Oh, yes. Very thoroughly, until Lady Clarke returned home to vanquish them with an episode of vapors that scattered sheep four farms over.”

He chuckled. “So that was what that terrible noise was. I thought it was the banshee coming to announce my death.”

“You are Scottish, Colonel,” she reminded him, the silly banter effervescing in her veins. “Hold this.” He did. “The banshee only warns the Irish.”

His eyes opened, clear, water-blue, and they were laughing. “My great-gram was an O’Hanlon,” he said. “It’s well known the banshee follows the O’Hanlon clan.”

“Good,” Sarah said. “It will save me from wasting my time keeping watch down here. I can just listen for her to give me the news.”

He chuckled. “Ye are a cold woman, Sarah Clarke.”

She stopped, glared. “I told you . . .”

“And I’m ignoring you, lass. Wheesht, how can a man bare his chest to a lady and remain on formal terms?”

She should say no; she knew it. Instead she focused on getting him wrapped so she could retreat to a safe distance.

“Your Mr. Stricker was everything you promised,” she said, hating that she sounded breathless. “I cannot think how he should be believed over you.”

“Stricker is a viscount’s whelp.”

“As are you.”

He shook his head. “I’m also a Scot who’s made no bones about his allegiance. Scots are valued for throwing against cannons. Not for much else. I canna think ye’d understand.”

She huffed. “Try not to be absurd. Of course I understand. Society believes bastards should be drowned at birth, like unwanted kittens. No person is wanted less.”

He frowned up at her. “Your husband wanted you.”

She smiled. “He wanted my dowry. My father was a man with deep pockets and an even deeper reservoir of guilt. Both have seen me this far.”

Stupid girl,
she thought, frowning.
You sound like a whiny child.

She was going to turn away then, ashamed at her lapse, when Ian took her hand. Her head snapped around and she stared. She shouldn’t have. His eyes were so gentle, suddenly. So warm, inviting her in. His hand was strong and protective.

“Fiona and Mairead get nothing from their friendship with you,” he said, “but I think they’d have my liver and lights if I hurt you. And there might not be as much to recommend me, but lass, I’d be your friend as well.”

She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. She was going to weep, and that was inexcusable. And yet she couldn’t seem to draw back the hand that suddenly seemed so warm in his. She couldn’t break the odd current that connected them. “You would say anything right now,” she said, trying desperately for humor. “You have yet to be fed.”

His grin was conspiratory. “Och, from what ye said, that’s ta be no treat at all.”

She smiled back, her eyes burning. She had no place to put this awful feeling, this nameless, faceless yearning.

She was lying to herself. It had a face, which made it hurt all the worse.

“I would like to be your friend, Ian Ferguson,” Sarah said, and thought how like a vow it sounded. “If you, worthless Scot that you are, will be mine.”

And then he did the most daft thing she had ever seen. He lifted her hand, and without looking away from her, kissed it. Sarah flushed to her toes. How did she survive such a thing? She felt as if she were being crushed.

“Wheesht, lass, ye’ve gone and done it now,” he said, and Sarah thought he sounded a bit unsettled himself. “Ye’ve put yourself in the power of the mad Fergusons.”

She had to turn away. “Not so powerful,” she said, bending back to her work. “You’re the one sitting on the floor, after all.”

He chuckled, and then winced, focusing Sarah’s attention right back on his wound. On his torso. On her hand, which she finally retrieved to smooth the linen beneath it, which did nothing to ease her distress. If anything, it made it worse.

Sarah tried so hard to ignore the ridges of muscle and bone that crossed Ian’s massive chest, or how tight his belly stretched beneath her fingers. He was so very masculine. Taut and well muscled and intriguing with soft red hair that spread across his chest and trailed down his torso. She so wanted to play with it, to measure the expanse of his chest and cradle those shoulders. To stroke each nick and scar with her fingers as if she could ease pain long gone.

“You’ve collected quite a road map of the war here,” she said, her voice unforgivably wobbly.

He didn’t look away. “Ten years worth. It’s hard to miss a target my size.”

“What is this from?” she asked, touching a stellate scar almost under his arm.

He shivered and she yanked her hand away. “That was from shrapnel going over the wall at Badajoz.”

“And this?” A long, puckered slice just above his belly. An inch lower or higher and he would surely have been dead.

“Dragoon’s blade. Busaco, I think…no, Vimeiro. Quite a scrap, that.”

She shivered herself, thinking of how often he had been close to death.

“You are a good soldier,” she told him, not knowing how else to acknowledge his tenacity and strength and courage.

He shrugged. “It was the only way to support the girls.”

Sarah looked up to see the ghosts in his eyes. She felt them all the way to the pit of her stomach. “Surely there was an easier way.”

“Not for a bastard from the streets of Edinburgh.”

She shook her head, thinking of the damage done to the Ferguson children. “If only the marquess had found you sooner. He could have saved you from this.”

If only their father had not been such a monster that their mother had spent her life hiding them from him.

“I would have fought no matter,” Ian said. “The only thing he could have changed was my rank. But it’s pointless to speculate. The old bastard didn’t bother to come looking for us until the girls were almost full-grown and my mother long dead. Fat lot of good he did us then.”

“He did,” she insisted. “
You
did. Fiona and Mairead are safe. They have status and wealth and a family, where before they only had you . . .”

“And I wasn’t much to brag of.”

“Don’t say that!” It should have amused her that she defended him. For so long she had disdained Ian’s place in his sisters’ lives. But one look at these scars told Sarah just what he had sacrificed to keep them safe, and she hurt for him. She wanted, suddenly, to protect him. Not only from physical scars, but those that had scored his soul.

“I was wrong before,” she said, clenching her hands. “I should never have said those things to you. You did everything you could to support your sisters until they had a chance for more.”

He shook his head. “Do you know the condition I found them in when I finally got leave to look for them after my ma died? Do you know where I found them?”

“Of course I do. Fiona told me. They were living under the South Bridge.”

“Do you know what it’s like under that bridge, Sarah? It’s darker than this cellar. No light, no air, no hope. No bloody help from anyone. Just crowded together like vermin. That is what I left them to.”

His face was raw with grief. Sarah couldn’t bear it. “You did not,” she insisted, reclaiming his hand. “You left them in a mid-level apartment on North Gray’s Close. Fiona should have told you your mother’s illness ate up the money you sent. She confessed as much to me when she told me what an amazing brother she had.”

Sarah couldn’t look away from the bottomless pain in Ian’s eyes. It was all she could do to keep from wrapping him in her arms like a child.

She did the best she could. She lifted her other hand and cupped that rugged cheek. “You risked your life for ten years so they never have to risk theirs. You got them into Miss Chase’s. Do you know what I would have given for one person who loved me so?”

He shook his head. “I’d like to take credit,” he said. “But I was nae the one got the girls into the school. I was the reason they went.”

She retreated, hands in her lap. “What do you mean?”

He stared at her for long moments. “Do you know why
you
were there?”

She frowned. “I told you before. Because I was incorrigible.”

He was already shaking his head. “No, it wasn’t. There was only one reason you would have been sent there. Do you know who your father was, lass?”

“My father?” She suddenly felt as if she were fighting a surprise current. “What would he have to do with it?”

“Do you?”

She looked away. “As a matter of fact, yes. When I was very young, my adoptive parents snuck me in his side door on my birthday to pay obeisance. His wife was far kinder than she should have been. She was certainly kinder than he was.”

Sarah remembered a smiling, sunlit woman with a soft voice and still hands. She also remembered wasting far too much time wishing for that mother. But those wounds were too old to inflict sharp pain. For a long time now, they had done no more than ache like worn muscles.

“Will you tell me who he is?” Ian asked.

“No.” She met his gaze head-on. “I will not. My father is dead. I haven’t been welcome in his home in a long time. Besides, I cannot imagine what he would have to do with any of this.”

Ian ran his hand through his tumbled hair. Suddenly Sarah realized he was shivering.

“Oh, heavens,” she gasped, her scissors clanging into the pail. “You’re freezing. Let me get you covered up and fed. Then we shall have time to satisfy my curiosity.”

His answering smile was telling. Rueful, a bit relieved. Warmer than the moment warranted. Just the sight of it incited a like warmth, a longing for what wasn’t hers. Sarah tamped it down, like every other wish she had ever had, and got to work setting out his meal. And then she felt even worse, when Ian fell to eating as if he’d been starving. He didn’t even seem to notice that Peg’s stew was gelatinous or that her fairy cakes would have sent the wee creatures crashing to earth. He just sighed in appreciation and downed the rest of the tea.

“Next time,” Sarah said, “I shall just slaughter Willoughby and drag him down here for you to enjoy at your leisure.”

His grin was brighter by far. “No, you won’t. You could nae kill that beast if you were all starving and the reaper was at your door.”

Sarah sniffed. “I should never have named him.”

“You dinna live merely from him and his get, do you?”

“No. We have sheep and a few milch cows and goats for cheese. And we have acreage planted in wheat. And you met our hens.”

“It sounds prosperous.”

“Not for a long time,” she said, and settled herself next to him on the blanket. “Now. You are warm, treated, fed, and safe. I have an entire ten minutes before I am expected back. I believe I am owed a story.”

She shouldn’t have pressed. She could see he was wearing thin. But with evening coming on and his fever inevitably climbing, she had a nasty suspicion this was the last time she would get sense from him for a while.

Finally Ian shrugged. “Fair enough, lass. But I can’t tell it all. Too many lives would be at stake. Especially yours.”

She felt unaccountably betrayed. “You think I would share the information some evening as parlor chat?”

“I think it is better that if you are pressed you have nothing to say.”

She tilted her head. “And that includes your sisters and the academy?”

Again he paused. Again she battled a flush of resentment.

“I don’t have the right to expose the people involved,” he defended himself, as if he could hear her. “No more than I have the right to put you in harm’s way. The people we are seeking wouldn’t hesitate a second to harm you for information.”

Finally there was nothing left to do but nod. “Will you tell me what you can?”

His smile was rueful. “It’s actually quite simple. All the students at the academy are relatives of gentlemen in government service. Men who might hold sensitive positions. One of the ministers realized that a man’s family—especially his vulnerable sisters and daughters—could make him vulnerable to attack or blackmail. It was decided they could be best protected in a boarding school.”

Sarah was gaping now. “Miss Chase’s was supposed to be a…safe haven?”

Ian smiled. “Exactly.”

The idea was so ludicrous she almost burst out laughing. “Who exactly chose it?”

“I know this will go no further.”

Not unless she ever met the man. She had a lot to say to the nodcock who thought Miss Chase competent to protect innocent girls.

“His name is Baron Thirsk,” Ian said. “He is Miss Chase’s cousin. I was assured that there was no more secure place for the girls than Miss Chase’s. There hasn’t been a girl kidnapped or threatened since Thirsk began sending them there.”

Instead of the men, it had been the girls who had paid the price. But she couldn’t tell Ian that. He didn’t need to know what a hellhole the academy had been until Alex Knight swept through and replaced Miss Chase with a no-nonsense director named Miss Barbara Schroeder.

Alex.
She blinked. “You don’t mean to tell me that Alex Knight is in a sensitive position. Why, he’s in no position at all.” She smiled. “Unless you count being a member of Drake’s Rakes. But I don’t think profligacy is the kind of sensitive position you were speaking of.”