The Rake's Mistress (19 page)

‘You are inexcusable!’

‘I am sorry that you should think that.’ Lucas strolled over to the mantelpiece. ‘I confess I forgot
my original motive within a few seconds. Kissing you was long overdue, Rebecca.’

The tension between them spun out and thickened until it was almost tangible, then Rebecca shook her head impatiently. ‘You make me forget… What I really needed to tell you was that Lady Benedict has a glass vase that was engraved by my uncle.’

Lucas’s gaze had sharpened. ‘You are positive?’

‘Certain. There can be no mistake. The style is slightly different from the glasses the spies have been using, but I recognise his work. Someone at Midwinter Bere had commissioned the piece from my uncle.’

Lucas let out a long sigh. ‘Yet Bradshaw has searched both Midwinter Bere and Sir John Norton’s house and neither has yielded a sign of the glasses.’

‘Which leads one to the only conclusion—that the glasses are kept elsewhere.’

Lucas nodded. Unexpectedly he caught her hand. ‘Thank you, Rebecca.’

Rebecca was startled. ‘For what?’

‘For helping us. I understand that there are many reasons why you might not.’

Rebecca tugged gently to free her hand, but he held her tight. He gestured to the sofa.

‘Rebecca… I need to speak with you. Will you hear me out?’

After a moment Rebecca sat down. Her heart was hammering and her legs trembling so much she had no choice.

‘I know that I deceived you badly over my original motive in coming to your workshop,’ Lucas said. ‘I hurt you. It was very wrong of me and I regret the way that I behaved.’

‘You were doing a job,’ Rebecca said. Her throat ached.

Lucas did not take the excuse. He came to sit beside her. ‘That is true, but it is no justification. My instinct told me to trust you and I ignored it. That was my mistake.’

Rebecca did not argue the point. She was achingly aware of his presence beside her although he had made no attempt to touch her. He was making it very difficult to resist him. He had made no excuses; made no attempt to deny that he had hurt her very badly. Silence fell and lingered. Lucas put one hand over her clenched ones.

‘I would never injure you again, Rebecca. I swear it. I want you to marry me. I want it very much.’

Rebecca shivered. He was watching her intently and she was almost unbearably aware of his touch on her hand. His softly spoken words were so persuasive.

‘I cannot.’ The words were wrenched from her.

‘You are still angry with me,’ Lucas said, watching her. ‘I understand that. What happened between us—’

Rebecca made a sharp movement. ‘I cannot blame you for that. I asked you to stay. It was my choice.’

Lucas ran one finger in a silken caress along the line of her jaw and tilted her chin to look down into her eyes. His own were smiling. ‘I admire your candour, Rebecca, but I cannot let you take that responsibility. I could have refused. Knowing what I did, I should have refused.’ His hand lingered against her cheek. ‘But I wanted you too. I needed you…’

Admire. Need. Want
…

Rebecca closed her eyes for a second. She had asked Lucas to stay with her that night because she had been seeking escape, but she had chosen him because she already loved him. Yet he had never pretended that love was what he was offering her. She met his dark, hungry gaze.

‘I love you,’ she said with deliberation. ‘That is why I cannot marry you. Because I have made enough mistakes and I cannot accept second best.’

She saw the stupefaction in his eyes as he took her words in and for a few endless, fragile seconds she waited, knowing that she was hoping for the words she wanted to hear. They did not come.
Lucas got to his feet and took several steps away from her.

‘It is not second best.’ His voice was rough. ‘I
need
you, Rebecca.’

Rebecca shook her head. The disappointment and despair threatened to swamp her. She got to her feet and made blindly for the door. ‘No, Lucas…’

He was there in two strides, easily blocking her way. ‘Do not fight me, Rebecca. You want me as much as I want you.’

It was true, but Rebecca’s mind stubbornly told her that it was not enough. ‘You mistake,’ she said. ‘I want none of this.’

Lucas’s face was white with strain. ‘Let us see, shall we?’

He kissed her with hunger, need, and a blistering passion that shook her to her soul. She did not know if she was strong enough to withstand this onslaught.

‘How much more proof do you need?’ he demanded when he released her.

‘It proves nothing!’ Rebecca said. For a long moment she stared into his eyes. And then she wrenched herself out of his arms and ran away.

L
ucas stayed quite still for several minutes after the slam of the door had died away. He felt tense and heated and strangely disoriented.

‘I want none of this
,’ Rebecca had said and, although he had proved otherwise in a physical sense, she had still remained obstinately aloof from him. It was as though there was a part of her that he could not reach, a part that stubbornly refused to accept what was between them no matter how he tried to convince her.

Lucas thrust one hand through his hair in a gesture of extreme frustration. He wanted to reach that corner of Rebecca’s mind that she withheld from him. He wanted all of her. She was meant to be his. They both knew it. He loved her…

He stopped dead. It was not a conclusion that he had reached logically, by rational thought. It had burst into his head with the sudden explosion of a shower of fireworks and yet he knew without a doubt that it was true. He loved Rebecca Raleigh.
He had done so for a long time. He had been monstrously slow to recognise his own feelings. He was a fool.

There was a knock at the door and Justin stuck his head around. ‘Tom Bradshaw is here, Lucas. Do you wish to join us in the study?’

For a moment Lucas could not even remember who Bradshaw was, let alone why he was there. Then he recollected that they had asked the man to look into Rebecca’s antecedents and in particular to investigate the motto he had seen on the engraved glasses. At the time he had felt uncomfortable at this latest, small betrayal. Now he felt it was even more distasteful. He did not want to know. And yet he had to know. He had to know everything. He followed Justin slowly out of the drawing room.

‘Well, Bradshaw?’ Justin said expectantly, when they were settled in the study. ‘Do you have information for us?’

‘Yes, your Grace,’ Bradshaw said. He ran a hand over his hair, looking slightly nervous. ‘I apologise for the delay. It took me longer than I had expected to find the information you required.’

‘Cut the courtesies, Bradshaw,’ Lucas said. His nerves were strung as tight as a bow. ‘What is your news?’

Bradshaw looked at him and Lucas felt a lurch of fear as he saw the expression in the man’s eyes. Justin was silent.

‘My lord—’

‘Spit it out.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Bradshaw cleared his throat. ‘The motto, my lord—’

‘Celer et Audax?
’

‘Yes, my lord. Swift and bold. It is the family motto of the Pearce family. The current head of the family is a Sir Gideon Pearce, a country gentleman whose seat is at Bowness in Westmorland.’

Justin looked as blank as Lucas felt. ‘Never heard of him.’

‘No, your Grace.’ Bradshaw shuffled his feet. ‘There is no real reason why you should. Sir Gideon lives quietly and, as far as I am aware, there is nothing notable about him at all.’

‘And Miss Raleigh is related to this paragon?’ Lucas questioned.

‘Distantly, my lord. Very distantly.’ Bradshaw took a deep breath. ‘Bear with me, gentlemen. The Pearces are an old gentry family. During the English Civil War they were split, like many at the time. The father and elder son were for Parliament, but the younger son, Richard Pearce, fought for the King. He went into exile with Charles II after Worcester.’

Bradshaw ran a hand over his hair. ‘He met and married a French Huguenot girl whilst he was in exile and changed his name to hers as a sign that he repudiated his father’s allegiance and all it stood for. He wrote to his father that the only thing that he was keeping was the family motto because he was the only one who deserved it. His father disinherited him as a result.’

‘A man after my own heart,’ Lucas said, with a grin.

‘Indeed, my lord,’ Bradshaw said. His face was still strained. ‘Richard Pearce did not return to England after the restoration of King Charles II. Instead he and his wife went to America and became very wealthy and prominent in New York society.’ Bradshaw consulted his notes. ‘The family supported the British during the Revolutionary Wars, lost all their money and were obliged to flee the country as a result, returning to England nearly thirty years ago. Miss Raleigh’s father, James, became a soldier. For a few years his family lived at Poyntz Manor in Somerset.’

‘Miss Raleigh told me this. She said that her father was killed in India.’ Despite the fact that Bradshaw’s tale bore out Rebecca’s meagre information about her childhood, Lucas still felt uneasy. There was something that Bradshaw had not yet told them, something bad. He could feel its approach with an inevitability that chilled him.

‘He was indeed, my lord. His son Daniel, then fourteen, joined the Navy and his daughter went to London to live with a distant cousin of her mother’s.’

‘George Provost,’ Lucas said thoughtfully.

‘That is so. Glass engraving,’ Bradshaw added, ‘was one of the professions of Miss Raleigh’s Huguenot ancestors.’

‘It all seems perfectly straightforward and blameless,’ Justin said, his eyes narrowed shrewdly, ‘so what is it that you have not told us, Bradshaw?’

Bradshaw took a deep breath. ‘When Richard Pearce changed the family name in 1652 it was not to Raleigh, your Grace. That is a much more recent fiction. Since the seventeenth century that family name has been De Lancey. Miss Rebecca Raleigh was born Miss Rebecca De Lancey. Her brother is Daniel De Lancey, smuggler, pirate and suspected French spy.’

There was a silence in the Duke of Kestrel’s study.

‘Good God,’ Lucas said softly. He was remembering all the little details that came together to create the damning whole: the way that Rebecca had told him the truth of her childhood whilst leaving out the most important aspect—her name and identity. He thought of all the images of the sea that lived in her engravings and decorated her studio,
he remembered her panic when he had found the note and the money from her brother, and the way she had pretended to know nothing of Daniel De Lancey’s ship or current whereabouts. He let his breath go in a long sigh. He was not sure if he was angry or disappointed or merely disillusioned, but he knew now that Rebecca had never completely trusted him and that his hopes that matters might change between them were based on sand.

‘What is Daniel De Lancey’s history?’ Justin asked quietly.

‘He left the Navy at the age of nineteen, your Grace, and for a while there was no word of him,’ Bradshaw said quietly. ‘He first came to the government’s notice as a privateer some five years ago when he captured a French ship off Calais. These days he sails the east coast between Kent and Suffolk. There have been countless attempts to catch him. All have failed. It is rumoured he deals in smuggled goods and piracy, and also that he is a French spy.’

‘Is there any foundation to that rumour?’ Lucas questioned sharply. He could not help himself. ‘Given his family’s previous loyalties to the Crown, it seems unlikely.’

Bradshaw shrugged. Lucas could tell that he thought he was clutching at straws. A privateer sold himself and his services indiscriminate of loyalty.

‘With De Lancey there is never anything firmer than rumour, my lord,’ he said. ‘There is also a tale that he passes information to the Admiralty when it suits his purposes and for that reason they have not tried too hard to catch him of late.’

‘That, at least, may be corroborated,’ Justin said, reaching for pen and ink. ‘I shall send to the Admiralty immediately.’

Lucas rubbed his eyes. The facts were stacking up in his mind like dominoes, one leading inexorably to the next. ‘This fits rather too well to be coincidence, does it not?’ he said bitterly. ‘We have French spies smuggling information abroad. We have a privateer lying off the coast, we have a glass engraver who has provided the cipher and…’ he sighed ‘…now I have brought Daniel De Lancey’s sister to Suffolk!’

Justin raised his brows. ‘I do not believe you should jump to any conclusions, Luc—’ he started, but Lucas cut him off.

‘It is not a question of jumping,’ he said bitterly, ‘more a matter of stumbling blindly over the truth. Miss De Lancey has played me royally for a fool. She and I will have settlement over this. Now.’

He ignored Justin’s measured suggestion that he should wait a little as though he had not heard it, and took the stairs to Rebecca’s room two at a time. He could hear the low murmur of voices from behind the closed door and when he flung it
open without ceremony or even the courtesy of knocking, Rebecca’s maid scuttered away like a terrified mouse.

‘Lucas?’ Rebecca was sitting at her dressing-table. She had already undressed for the night and was in a silky peignoir of a deep plum colour that made her hair look rich and coppery. Lucas looked at her. She looked puzzled and innocent and very, very desirable. His insides twisted.

‘Tell me about your brother,’ he said. He saw a flicker of bewilderment cross her face—and saw the tiny flicker of fear grow.

‘I have told you before—’ she began.

‘No, you have not,’ Lucas said. ‘Tell me about Daniel De Lancey.’

Rebecca did not deny anything. She put down her silver-backed hairbrush very slowly and met his eyes in the mirror. ‘How did you find out?’ she asked.

‘Tom Bradshaw has a way of discovering these things.’ Lucas had thought his feelings in turmoil, but now he found that he was furiously angry. He gripped her by the shoulder, forcing her to her feet. She yielded with a little gasp.

‘Lucas—’

‘Were you ever going to tell me?’ Lucas demanded.

Her eyelashes flickered down. ‘I thought about it.’

‘And?’

‘And decided probably not. It was not my secret to tell.’

Lucas’s hands tightened. ‘Do not give me that! This has all been a huge conspiracy from the start, has it not?’

Rebecca’s eyes widened with what appeared to be genuine shock. ‘I do not know what you mean.’

‘Come now! Your uncle did the engraving for the Midwinter spies,’ Lucas spat out. ‘Your brother is a privateer, no doubt in the pay of the French. And you—’

‘Yes?’ Her gaze defied him. ‘What about me?’

Lucas let her go with a gesture of repudiation. She stumbled back and almost tripped over the stool. Her vulnerability just made him all the more angry. ‘You knew all along, and played me like a fool,’ he said.

‘Did I?’ Rebecca swept away with an angry swish. ‘How strange. I thought that it was
you
who deceived
me
in order to gain information from me rather than the other way around.’

‘And, in fact, all along it was you who has deceived me to
keep
information from me,’ Lucas countered. ‘So we are equal, sweetheart.’

Rebecca looked disdainful. ‘Oh, no, we are not, my lord! The only reason I omitted to tell you about this was to protect Daniel.’

Lucas strode across to the window, moving with a repressed fury. She seemed so honest and yet he could not be taken in by any more of her lies. Was it only a half-hour before that he had realised he loved her? It felt like a whole century.

‘Next you will be telling me that it is mere coincidence that brings you here to Midwinter!’ he said bitterly.

‘No!’ Rebecca’s eyes flashed. She drew the peignoir close about her throat and Lucas could see that her hands were shaking. ‘It was you who brought me here to Midwinter, Lord Lucas. I did everything in my power to avoid it.’

‘Because you did not wish to draw danger to De Lancey?’

‘Exactly.’ Rebecca stood braced as a bow. ‘I am no traitor who schemed with my brother in order to come to Midwinter as part of our treasonable plan, my lord! I told you from the start that I knew nothing of the spies!’

Lucas spun around. ‘You told me some things and neglected to tell me many others. Why should I believe you now?’

He saw Rebecca whiten though the look in her eyes was still defiant. ‘So you do not trust me,’ she said.

‘You have not answered my question.’

In reply she came very close to him, so close that he could smell the scent of jasmine on her skin and see the pale violet shadows beneath her eyes.

‘You should believe me because I have done everything I could to help you since I have been here,’ she said.

It was not enough. Lucas held her gaze, his eyes hard. ‘Have you been in contact with your brother since you came to Midwinter?’

‘No!’ Rebecca’s expression was as clear and honest as it always had been, but there was a spark of anger burning in the depths of her eyes as she searched his face.

Lucas broke away. He felt a white-hot anger for her, but in some odd way he felt even more angry with himself and out of the depths of his despair and his misery he dragged the words.

‘I am wondering,’ he said, ‘just what you would have been ready to do to keep me from the truth. You invited me to bed with you. You even told me you loved me. There were not many things that you were not prepared to do, were there, Miss De Lancey?’

Rebecca turned so pale that he thought she would faint and he instinctively put out a hand to steady her, but she knocked it aside.

‘You disgust me, Lord Lucas,’ she said between shut teeth. ‘Get out of my room. I never wish to see or speak with you again.’

He went.

It took Rebecca ten minutes to dress again. She did not call the maid. She had never needed one. Her first inclination—to walk straight out of Kestrel Court, never to return—had not withstood the obvious conclusion that the Kestrels would never let her go. There was only one thing to do and that was to take the fight to the enemy.

Even so, it took every ounce of her courage to go down the stairs and knock on the door of the study. There was the low murmur of voices from within but, to Rebecca’s inexpressible relief, when the door opened it was to reveal Justin Kestrel talking to a man she had never seen before. Of Lucas there was no sign. Rebecca felt almost faint to be granted such a respite. She had only managed to get this far by blocking all thoughts of Lucas and his final words from her mind, and she knew that once she started to think of him she would be completely lost.

‘Miss Raleigh.’ Justin Kestrel did not seem particularly surprised to see her. He turned to the man at his side. ‘Thank you, Bradshaw. We shall speak again.’

‘Your Grace.’ The man gave Rebecca an unmistakably curious glance as he went out. Justin gestured Rebecca to a seat.