The Taming of the Rake (11 page)

“From what I’ve heard, Madelyn, this will not be a new experience for you. And this from a woman who had come home weeping after her wedding night, saying that no woman should endure such indignities.”

Madelyn’s maid, seated next to the reverend, by circumstances forced to share the coach with her mistress, closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep. And deaf.

“With that ham-handed boor you bracketed me to, yes. It was
your wife,
by the way, who explained to me that husbands are rarely proficient with their own spouses, but with other men’s spouses they’re really rather much better.” Madelyn turned to him and smiled.
“Now you sit there, Thomas, and attempt to deduce how she knows
that.
Or even better, pray that your son and heir, if you ever manage to produce one, is cursed with that hook you call a nose, or those horrible ears.”

“My lord, don’t,” Reverend Flotley cautioned quietly, and after a moment the earl lowered his hand back onto his lap. “Women have always bred violence in men. They are the cause of all the world’s ills. We’ve spoken of this at length, my lord. It is my lady’s husband who is lax. She needs to be schooled, learn her place.”

“Learn my
place!
Why, you impudent
nothing!
And you
listen
to him, Thomas? You’ve been listening to him for two long years? You gave up drink and gaming. You don’t frequent the theater or the races anymore, and wear nothing but that dreadful black. You’ve for-sworn mounting a mistress—oh, yes, I know that, too. All this because you promised God? Did God
ask
you for this promise? Or did he ask that wet-mouthed man over there to deliver the message outlining this particular path to salvation? You never once wondered why, if God thought the message so important, He didn’t deliver it directly? And now this…this
creature
has the nerve to sit there and call
me
the cause of all the world’s ills? Thomas, you’ve lost your mind.”

“My lord?” the reverend prompted when the earl didn’t answer his sister. “Remember the many ways a woman may tempt you into sin.”

Madelyn threw back her head and laughed. “
Tempt
him? My God, man, my brother and his ilk
invented
sin. Women had nothing to do with it.”

“That will be enough, Madelyn,” Thomas said at last, clearly clinging to his temper with the last of his strength. This was a test of his new faith, his new path. He would face it and overcome it. Somehow. “I will pray for you.”

“Oh, yes, you do that. You pray for me, Thomas. You pray we catch up with Chelsea tomorrow. And you pray there is a decent inn about to appear in the next few minutes, one with tolerable food and clean beds. Because if I have to spend another
hour
in this damnable coach today, I will spend
all night
inventing new hells for you to visit.”

T
HEY RODE IN SILENCE
for the first two hours, the pall of the simple chapel service fading slowly as they kept to meandering back roads Beau had ridden all of his life, just in case Thomas had left one of his men behind to watch the main entrance to the estate.

Beau wondered if perhaps he was being overly cautious. With a well-sprung coach, fresh teams in the shafts along the way, stopping only to rest and eat and keeping to the established route, he and Chelsea could be standing in front of a blacksmith in Gretna Green in a matter of days. Hell, they might even catch up to and pass the earl and his sister along the way. That would actually be amusing.

Or Beau could be dead, and Chelsea dragged to Brean and her wet-mouthed minister—and that wasn’t quite as jolly a thought. He wasn’t a coward, would stand up to Thomas Mills-Beckman if he should present himself, but Chelsea was another matter. If her brother didn’t value her, someone had to, and it would seem that, for good or ill, Beau was her choice of protector.

Three-hundred-and-twenty miles from the center of London to Gretna Green. He’d read that as he was
plotting their journey. Less from Blackthorn, but not by much. He wasn’t sure they’d travel any faster by horseback, but they would definitely travel safer. The idea of possibly having to leave Chelsea’s mare and his own Pegasus behind at some point bothered him, but Puck knew the route, and after a quick return to London to purchase some proper clothes for Chelsea, he would be following along after them to “tidy up,” as his brother had called it.

Puck and two well-loaded traveling coaches would be traveling the Great North Road, and all that any pursuers would find inside the first coach would be the maddeningly silly and purposely obtuse Puck—his brother was rather looking forward to being stopped, actually—and in the second Beau’s and Chelsea’s trunks, Sidney and Edith, embarrassingly delighted to be included in the adventure.

“You’re being very quiet,” Beau said now, not unaware that he hadn’t exactly been jabbering like a magpie, either. “Are you thinking about ways to murder me for insisting we ride all the way to Scotland?”

She flashed him a smile that both shocked and surprised him. “Oh, no, not at all. I’ve never been anywhere, you know. Well, to London, but that’s all. Everything here in the country is so fresh and beautiful. I don’t think I’d mind if it took us weeks to get where we’re going. Will it take us weeks?”

“At this pace? Months. But we’ll soon be on better roads, I promise. And your brother is a full day ahead of us, probably driving his horses into the ground, which
is very considerate of him. We won’t have to be constantly looking over our shoulders, worrying that he’s catching up to us. I’d say the plan is brilliant, except that this wasn’t the plan at all. And we got a much later start than I’d hoped. We’ll soon have to stop somewhere for dinner, and maybe for the night, as well.”

“It was a lovely service,” Chelsea told him. “Everyone shared such wonderful stories about the marchioness. But what was everyone so upset about when we first entered the chapel? Your mother seemed nearly fit to burst, as my maid would say, before your father whispered something to her and she seemed better.”

He probably promised her something if she didn’t make a scene, perhaps new costumes for the troupe,
Beau thought, knowing he was being unkind. His mother had a right to be upset. He supposed.

“You saw the single red rose on top of the casket?”

Chelsea nodded. “Yes, I did. There were so many flowers, but that one was tied with a black ribbon. It was the only black I saw, save for your mother’s gown. You all were upset about a rose?”

“Not the flower. What it meant. That rose was from Jack. He was there. Probably in the middle of the night, knowing him.”

Chelsea jerked on the mare’s reins in her surprise and had to quickly get the horse back under control…which she did firmly and competently, proving that she was a capable rider, something Beau had already concluded on their first mad dash out of London.

“Are you saying your other brother came to the
estate, was even inside the family chapel, and didn’t show himself, say good day to everyone, or give his condolences to his father, but then just snuck away again?”

“Yes, I’d say that fairly well sums it up. I’d also say my brother is an ass, but we all handle our circumstances in our own way. I think I have come to grips with my lot in life, mostly thanks to spending several years fighting on the continent, and I’m fairly content now living a quiet life, taking care of my father’s estates, occasionally visiting London.”

“Tormenting my brother,” Chelsea added.

“I didn’t say I don’t amuse myself from time to time,” Beau reminded her as she rolled her eyes. “In any event, Puck feeds on his bastard status, I swear it. The moment Napoleon was back in his cage, Puck and his quarterly allowance were off to Paris where, to hear him tell it, he is the darling of Parisian Society. It’s only by chance that he’s here in England now, and he’ll be heading back overseas soon. He makes a great business out of being a wastrel, silly and useless, but I happen to know he’s also quietly working for our government.”

“Oh, good. I really do like him, and I’d hate to think he’s just another well-dressed grasshopper, fiddling through life. But what does he do for the government? The war is over for good now, isn’t it, with Bonaparte recaptured?”

“There will always be Bonapartists, I’m afraid. They managed to free him once, remember, and no one thought that would happen. But I agree. At some point Puck is going to have to come home and stay
home. Our father handed over the deed to one of the unentailed estates to him just before Puck visited me in Grosvenor Square. He’s very upset about it.”

“Why is that?”

The roadway changed from dirt track to crushed and compacted stone. They could increase their pace now, and make it to the village he’d chosen for their first night before it became fully dark. Tomorrow they’d ride more, talk less, but he couldn’t seem to rouse himself into any sense of urgency at the moment, knowing the earl was already barreling along the Great North Road.

“I’m not sure. It was also my birthday, and we spent much more time drinking to the day than we did talking about our lives. Puck also told me that Papa wanted me to come to Blackthorn before I set out to inspect any of the other estates, which was my plan before his summons—and before a certain young lady rushed into my drawing room, upbraided me on several counts and then proposed marriage.”

Chelsea shrugged her slim shoulders, clearly unashamed at his teasing. “If that’s the way you wish to see the thing, I won’t argue with you. Except to remind you that without the rotting grapes I never would have even thought about you, let alone
proposed
to you. So you’re not entirely innocent in this, Oliver.”

“And I will take my punishment like a man,” he teased her, watching her eyes as she sorted through that statement. Then he sobered. “I did take my father aside earlier and ask him what it was he wanted to tell me.”

“And now you’re going to tell me? Because, you
know, I won’t give you a moment’s peace until you do. I abhor secrets.”

“Is that so? In that case, abhor this—he didn’t tell me. What he did say was that he’d always promised himself that when I turned thirty—that birthday of mine, remember—he would tell me something that would change my life, although I was not to tell my mother I knew, or to hate him too much. However, now that Abigail is gone everything is even more important, yet also changed somehow, especially since you and I are entering into a marriage of convenience—my mother is very against it, you know, and not only because she’s too young to be a grandmother. In any event, now he thinks he might not tell me for another year, because the time isn’t right and he still has to convince my mother. How’s that for maddening?”

“Delicious? Infuriating? And you merely said that was fine with you, you were in no great whacking rush to know what it is that he’s been waiting thirty long years to tell you? God, Oliver, maybe you are a dull stick, just like Puck keeps saying. Again, rotted grapes being the exception, I suppose. I mean—aren’t you even curious?”

He was. And he wasn’t.

“Does it matter? Abigail has died, my mother is in residence at least for the next several weeks, I suppose, and then life will go back to where it was. Oh, and in case the mice in that head of yours are galloping ahead to next year when we’re out of mourning, and you’re thinking perhaps Adelaide will finally agree to marry
her Cyril, let me remind you of something. It is not permissible in England for a man to marry his dead wife’s sister.”

“No! Are you saying to me that someone actually made up a
law
about that possibility? What sort of person even thinks about such things, let alone takes the time and energy to interfere with other people’s lives by actually making a
law
about it?”

Beau gave a short laugh. “Probably the same brilliant minds that wrote the Marriage Act all those years ago, and made Gretna Green and other Scottish border towns the scene of more English marriages than half the churches in London. The road ahead looks empty, Chelsea. Let’s pick up the pace for a bit, shall we?”

C
HELSEA EASED
into the chipped and rather battered tub in her room under the eaves, thankful that another long day was over. She ached all over, even in places she hadn’t previously been aware she possessed.

Each day, they’d risen early, downed a quick breakfast and ridden until midday. And then they’d ridden again, sometimes cutting across country, sometimes daring to travel for several miles along the Great North Road itself, until she’d not reacted quickly enough and had nearly been run down by one of the mail coaches barreling along as if the hounds of hell were after it.

Beau had been so sweet when he’d yelled at her.

She’d found little to suit her in any of the village shops along the way, and nothing at all in the way of a riding habit, so that the day they reached Scotland and
outfoxed Thomas with their marriage would be the day she would hand her increasingly grubby riding habit over to someone with orders it be burned in the kitchen grate.

“You wanted to see the countryside,” she reminded herself—grumbled to herself was more like it—now as she picked up the thin, rough washing cloth that did not hold a candle to the lovely large sea sponge she’d left behind in Portland Place. There were no piles of scented bubbles, either, and the water had barely topped tepid even before she’d climbed into the tub. “And now that you have, you may never want to see it again, at least not from horseback.”

She didn’t even know the name of this village, which looked very much like the last village, and the one before that, and the one before that.

The journey wasn’t turning out to be quite so romantic, in fact, as it had seemed in theory. Much of the food was inedible, the sheets damp and today they’d been caught in a sudden downpour that had left her with her teeth chattering by the time Beau could consult his map and make this unplanned stop at the Rusty Gate or the Mist Over The Middens, or whatever this fairly decrepit wayside inn was called.

And he’d been so
jolly
about it! There must be something about seeing a woman with her hat sodden, the jaunty feather in it drooping over her eyes, that delighted something in men. And if he’d called her a
good sport
one more time while they’d searched for the inn as rainwater seemed to unerringly find its way down
the back of her collar, she had thought she might have been forced to throttle him.

Men were such boys. He probably had been purposely prolonging his search for the inn, more on the lookout for a few muddy puddles he could wade in instead.

Still, there was one thing she liked very much about their unorthodox journey. She liked getting to know Beau away from London, away from his strange parents, away from what many would call the trappings of civilization.

For one thing, he had a fine voice. She still wasn’t quite sure about some of the words he’d used in one of the songs he’d sung for her—she was rather sure he’d altered them somewhat to protect her sensibilities, or something—but they’d spent a pleasant hour or more during one of their cross-country interludes singing together.

And when he’d sung “Greensleeves” for her, so quietly, so sorrowfully, she’d actually had to blink back tears, not that she let him see how he had affected her.

Sometimes they’d ridden in silence, but it was never a strained silence. It was a comfortable silence, as if they had known each other for a long time, and didn’t feel the need to make conversation just for the sake of courtesy.

Of course, they could have been having one very interesting conversation, that of when he was going to stop looking at her in that way he had and
do
something
about it. But that wasn’t the sort of question she should ask. Probably.

He’d allowed her an entire mug of locally brewed ale at one of the inns, and she’d slept more soundly that night than any night in her recent memory and woke only when he banged his fist against the door the next morning and informed her it was time all slugabeds were up and moving again.

And at each inn, he insisted on a tub of hot water for her bath, no matter how late their arrival.

Bastard, she had decided, was only a word for
the parents were not married,
and not a description of the man himself. She’d heard Thomas more than once say things like, “That bastard was using fuzzed cards, I vow it,” or “What a bastardly thing to do.” But that was as wrong as calling Thomas a
gentleman
simply because his parents had said their vows before witnesses. In either case, the child was no more than the product of the union; the child had been in no position to dictate terms.

“I like him,” Chelsea informed the large yellowish lump of soap as she rubbed it between her hands in a vain attempt to raise some lather. “It was enough at first that I could use him to thwart Thomas, and that I didn’t actively dislike him, as I do Francis Flotley—but this is better. And I think he likes me, too, or at least seems to tolerate me well enough. Besides, when it gets right down to it, his strange family is no better or worse than my own strange family. Why, we’re possibly the sanest of either bunch, if that means anything. We could both
do worse. Or perhaps a lot better, if he’d stop being such a gentleman.”