Once a Rake (Drake's Rakes) (40 page)

They had just reached the door when Lady Clarke stopped. “Will you…speak to Artemesia when she returns, Sarah? She will need your strength, I think.” She paused to look about the room, as if memorizing it. “And contact Mr. Clarke. He needs to know.”

George cleared his throat. “Afraid that won’t be possible, ma’am. Martin’s gone.”

Now Sarah stopped and stared. “Pardon?”

George didn’t exactly smile. “Seems he was headin’ up a pretty violent gang of smugglers. Been plaguing the coast for years. When the army came to arrest him, they found that he’d left the country. Jamaica, they think.”

The silence in the room was profound. Had Martin been targeted because of Martin’s connection with the traitors, Sarah wondered, or as revenge from Ian?

“He left Mrs. Clarke behind,” George continued. “She says that she’ll have enough to bring her own estate about. She’d rather not worry about this one as well.”

Sarah lasted until the dowager left the room, then sat hard on a lacquered chair. She lifted a shaking hand to her mouth. It was too much, as if good fairies had suddenly decided to grant her most important wishes. The ones that could be attained, anyway.

She turned to George. “George, thank you. I don’t . . .”

But all she saw there was grief for his brother. George would mourn Boswell most of all. He gave that odd quirk of the head. “He wanted it taken care of,” he said. “So you’d have the chance to make the right choice.”

Sarah startled. “What? Who?”

“Oh,” he quietly said, an eye to the dowager as she climbed the stairs. “One more thing. There won’t be no trial for Corporal Briggs. Pardon my sayin’ so, it only would have hurt you. So Briggs found himself impressed in the Navy and glad for it. You’ll never see him again.”

Then, plopping his hat on his head, he gave her a quick nod and walked out.

From that moment, life changed. An unacknowledged weight lifted. The women put on their blacks and spent their little money on a proper funeral for Boswell, who would now rest with his father in the churchyard. They remained balanced at the edge of poverty, counting pennies and hoarding staples. But once again they worked for themselves. And it appeared Artie would indeed be able to rejoin her friends at school.

Sarah never asked George how he had managed to move Boswell, or if he knew the whole story of Boswell’s last days. She didn’t know how. But from that day on, he stood an even more vigilant friend to the Clarke women.

Nothing, though, lifted Sarah’s loneliness. Nothing filled the aching emptiness Ian Ferguson had opened in her, or made it hurt less. Hard work at least wore her out. So she worked, coming in late to meals and getting up early to repair buildings and fences and prepare her estate for winter. And, one bright autumn day, when the sky turned the exact shade of a certain Scotsman’s eyes, Sarah took up a shovel and walked out to replant Boswell’s roses.

Before she sank her shovel into the loamy soil, she spent a moment considering what Boswell had so loved about this place. With gardens surrounding it and the sea stretched out endlessly before it, it stood almost out of sight of the house. The only sounds she could hear were the soughing of the wind through the firs, seagulls crying like children, the sea contentedly purling up against the shingle beach below. The sea sparkled beneath that high sun like a blanket of gems, and down below she could see some intrepid fossil hunter with his little hammer in hand.

It
was
peaceful, she thought, sinking onto the little bench. She had forgotten quite what peace felt like. So she sat in Boswell’s place and said a final farewell to the man who had tried as hard as he could, and she forgave him for being so human.

She had just picked her shovel back up when she heard the slam of the kitchen door and a woman’s shout. Sarah rose to see Mary Sunday running through the garden, skirts clutched above her ankles. Sarah smiled. What disaster loomed now?

Then she saw Peg follow Mary out the door. “Miz Sarah! Miz Sarah!”

Sarah began to walk their way. “Good heavens, what? Is the kitchen on fire?”

“A carriage!” Mary Sunday squealed. “A fancy one, with a seal and such!”

Before Sarah could even lay down her shovel, Artemesia popped out the door. “Sarah, hurry!” she urged. “It’s coming here!”

Sarah could see nothing on the lane, but she trusted the servant’s grapevine. Reaching around to untie her work apron, Sarah quickly followed Mary Sunday back across the garden. “A seal, hey?”

“A crest!” Artemesia panted. “Old George just rode up to warn us. It should be here any minute.”

Feeling an odd sense of uneasiness, Sarah led the household inside. She was expecting no one who painted a lozenge on his door. She couldn’t imagine anyone like that ever approaching, unless Martin had come home. By now she knew better than to expect anyone else.

By the time she had washed up and made it to the foyer, Parker was just tugging open the front door. There was no question. Four perfectly matched grays were pulling an elegant coach to the house, its panels decorated in a very elaborate crest. Artemesia sighed in ecstasy. Sarah tucked her hair beneath her cap and twitched her skirt straight.

“Oh, who could it be?” Artemesia whispered in dread tones. “I wish
Maman
were here. She would know what to do.”

Sarah smiled, deciding to forebear reminding Artemesia that Lady Clarke wasn’t the only one in the house who knew how to greet someone with a title.

Then she recognized the crest. She froze in the doorway, completely speechless.

“Oh, my stars,” Artie gasped behind her. “The Duke of Dorchester.” She squealed. “A duke! A
single
duke! Oh, I look perfectly
frowsy
in black. What will he think? What should I say? How low do I curtsy? Oh, Sarah, I think I’m going to faint.”

Sarah spun around on her. “If you do,” she warned. “I shall step right over you. Now take a breath.”

They stepped out onto the portico together just as a footman jumped down from the back to pull down the steps. Suddenly Sarah was afraid that she was the one who would faint. Her brother was climbing out of the carriage, and he was smiling.

It wasn’t a bright smile. More a polite rictus. But he was here. And he was dressed for a formal call, impeccably turned out in a corbeau kerseymere coat and buff trousers, his hair brushed into a Brutus and at least six watch fobs dangling from his waist.

“Your grace,” Sarah greeted him with a proper curtsy, which Artie duplicated.

“Sarah, my dear,” Ronald said, climbing the steps toward her. “I believe I have a pleasant surprise for you.”

She wasn’t paying attention. There was someone else getting out of the carriage. Someone clad in a scarlet uniform jacket. Someone with shoulders the size of tree trunks and eyes the color of an autumn sky.

“
Ooooh,
” Artie sighed. “Look at those
knees.
”

Ian was in the uniform of the Black Watch, and his kilt swung at his knees as he walked, just as Sarah had always known it would. Stepping up beside Ronald, he gave her a crisp military bow.

Sarah was almost surprised she recognized him. He was a different person than last she’d seen him. Tailored, trimmed, barbered, and bathed to within an inch of his life, he embodied the dignity, the valor, the spirit of the Highland Brigades, and she thought she might weep.

She held out her hand. “Welcome, Colonel. You have retained your commission?”

Bending over her hand, he nodded. “I did, thank you, ma’am. Would it be possible to speak with you?”

Sarah couldn’t seem to come up with an answer. She was still trying to overcome the flash of heat his touch set off, to quiet her thundering heart.

It was Artie who saved her. “Of course you can,” the girl said, waving them up the stairs. “I don’t know what’s come over Sarah, but come, please, join us for refreshments.”

Sarah kept staring. Where was her wild Scot? What had happened to the man who had laid waste to her peace of mind? Where had that mad grin gone?

Why was he here?

“Oh, um…yes.” She stepped back to let them past. “Please come in, your grace. Colonel.”

Ronald trotted up the steps and held out his arm for her. “You truly wish to be that formal with your brother, Sarah?”

Sarah almost collapsed on the spot. Ronald grabbed her hand, laid it on his elbow, and all but pulled her into the house. Behind them, Ian repeated the offer for Artie.

“Brother?” the girl whispered, her voice shrill. “What does he mean?”

Sarah finally came out of her stupor. Leading them all into the Rose Salon, she made formal introductions, which left Artie pink-faced and stuttering.

“We heard about Sir Boswell,” Ronald was saying, sounding quite sincere. “Mother and Elizabeth send their most sincere condolences. If there is anything we can do, please let us know.”

Sarah found herself staring again. What in the devil was going on?

She regained her sense to find them all clustered in a group by the settees. “Your Grace, Colonel Ferguson, may I formally present my sister, Miss Artemesia Clarke? Artemesia, His Grace the Duke of Dorchester and Colonel Ferguson.”

The men bowed. Artie gaped like a yokel. “You’re…
oh
!”

Ian flashed her his best smile. “Aye, lass. I am. Oh. I’m glad ta see ya fared so well from my last visit.”

Unable to take her eyes from Ian, Artie bobbed again.

“I think the duke, the colonel, and I need to speak privately now,” Sarah said, gently guiding the girl to the door. “After that, Artie, I believe tea sounds wonderful.”

Even when Sarah closed the door, Ian kept his distance, waiting for Sarah to sit before taking the settee opposite and balancing his busby on his knee. Ronald kept his feet. Sarah didn’t know what the two of them were about, but suddenly she was having trouble breathing.

“I know you must be surprised,” Ronald said, fiddling with his watch fobs. “Fact is, Sarah, the duchess and I have spoken. We think it long past time you were acknowledged by the family. Can’t hurt father anymore. Can’t possibly mistake you for anybody else. We would be delighted if you would come visit Ripton.”

The last time Sarah had seen her brother, he had been deserting her to an assassin. The sudden
volte-face
was too much for her to take in. Gaping a bit herself, she turned to Ian for an explanation.

“Discretion and valor, lass,” he said, his eyes too grave for Ian. He looked nervous, by God. “The man’s trying to make amends. But only if you say so.”

“And if I do not?”

Ian shrugged. “He takes a long vacation in the Antipodes for his part in the smuggling of French spies.”

Ronald reddened unpleasantly. “I had no
idea
…,” he protested, as if it wasn’t the first time.

“I think you had an idea when you left me with that woman,” she said. “I think you knew just what she was, and yet you abandoned me to her.”

“She would have hurt my mother!” he protested, and Sarah was frustrated to realize that he actually sounded distressed. “Lizzie and Maggie and Caroline. How could you expect me to sacrifice them?”

She couldn’t, of course. And she wasn’t certain she would have been any braver.

Still, for just a second, Sarah was tempted. Didn’t she deserve some revenge for all those times he had threatened her? For the insults and banishments? For selling her into marriage so he didn’t have to acknowledge her?

It would mean so much to her, though, to normalize relations. She could actually visit Lizzie. She could get to know her other sisters.

Oh, she didn’t understand any of this.

“All right,” she heard herself say instead. “Amends are made. What now?”

Ronald actually slumped against the mantel. Pulling out a crisp monogrammed handkerchief, he mopped his brow.

“I am doing it for Lizzie,” Sarah told him. “And the duchess. Not for you.”

“And what about me?” Ian asked.

He actually startled Sarah. She looked up to see that he had gained his feet. “What
about
you?” she asked, her voice breathy and frightened.

She had the most unnerving urge to run out that door before he said another word. She couldn’t bear many more cycles of hope and disappointment. She couldn’t bear, she realized, to see him if he was only going to leave again.

“All right, duke,” he said, not looking away. “Ye’ve done y’r job. Awa’ wit’ ye.”

Sarah’s view was taken up with Ian. Only Ian. She suddenly felt as if her heart would explode. “If you’ll step outside, your grace, my sister by marriage would be delighted to serve you tea in the Oriental Salon.”

He must have gone. She didn’t know. “Why did you do this?” she asked, her voice trembling and uncertain.

He stepped closer. “Help the duke see the light? It was the right thing to do.”

“Fustion. No one has been able to convince him to do the right thing since he was in short coats.”

He shrugged, his movements stiff. “It’s much easier to make the right decision if the alternative is being arrested for treason.”

“Then you made him do this.”

He shrugged. “I but offered encouragement.”

“I assume you also had a hand in Martin Clarke’s arrest and Corporal Briggs’s new career.”