The Taming of the Rake (17 page)

She watched his eyes, how they seemed to darken as he slid one finger inside her, lightly brushed the pad of his thumb across the small, tight bud that seemed to pulse with a life of its own.

She hadn’t known, had never known. Would never have known, she was certain, if not for him. He was showing her who she was, what she was meant for, born for.

She’d known the basic premise of the thing; she wasn’t some innocent fool. The man pushed himself inside the woman, planted the seed and the woman nurtured it until the child was born. But that was mechanics. This was…this was
everything.

She raised her hips to him, her gaze intent on his reactions, her own response intensified because he seemed pleased with her.

The sunlight slanted down through the trees, shining on his blond head, warming both their bodies. The grasses were soft, fragrant as the weight of their bodies released the sweet scent of the small purple flowers that grew between the grasses.

She saw it all. She saw none of it. Because there was really only Beau.

And what he was doing to her.

With her.

The heat inside her grew and then redoubled. His fingers moved in ways that satisfied, yet kept her yearning for more. She knew there was more; her body was crying out for more. More.

She closed her eyes, giving herself up to sensation. “So good…so good…”

“Do you want me now, sweetings?” he asked her softly, slipping two fingers up and into her, advancing and retreating, hinting at what was to come if she said yes.

There was no shame. No shame. She could tell him anything, he could do anything. In the darkness of a bedchamber. Here, in the sunlight. Anywhere. She would take all that he could give, give all that he asked of her. “I do. Yes. Please…”

“Not yet. There’s more I can give you…more I want to give. Will you let me? Do you trust me?”

She opened her eyes, looked up into his face. Saw the passion there, and perhaps something more. She didn’t know what he wanted, but it didn’t matter. Not when he looked at her that way, as if she were somehow precious to him. As if what they were doing, feeling, was completely separate from what they, either of them, had imagined even a few short minutes ago. More than just their bodies, the pleasure of the act. Some nebulous thing that had sprung up, unexpected.

Something much more glorious than mere pleasure. And yet, somehow frightening. If she said yes, would
she be simply giving him her body, or would she be giving something she could never take back?

She searched his eyes. She lifted a hand to touch his cheek.

She nodded her head.

He kissed her then, a long, slow, sweet kiss that brought quick tears to her eyes. She held him, felt the warmth of the sun on his bare back, rubbing her palms up and down the sleek length of him, shocked to feel the hard ridges of old scars.
Thomas,
she thought, a white hot anger slicing straight into her heart.

Chelsea pulled Beau closer, almost as if she could take his ancient pain from him, erase the humiliation, all the hurt, inside and out, he’d had to deal with for so many years. Her vehemence shocked her, but she believed what she thought with all of her heart:
If Thomas dares to touch him again, I will kill him with my bare hands.

Beau continued to kiss her, take her mind away from all thought as he moved his mouth along her body, stopping here and there, to linger, to touch, to taste. She welcomed each new intimacy, marveled in the feeling that he was worshipping her body…and perhaps her, as well.

Something wonderful was happening. New and strange, and yet utterly reasonable. Of course he would kiss her there…and there. Touch her there.

She melted beneath him, became pliant, quite nearly boneless, allowing him to shape her, mold her, lift her.

Put his mouth on her.

She held her breath for the longest time, not realizing what she was doing until her lungs cried out for air. Feeling…feeling. All but weeping with wonderment.

“Oliver.”

He took her over the edge…

“M
UCH AS
I
APPRECIATE
a day without that coach, Thomas, and although the shops look promising, why won’t you tell me why we are staying another day in Leeds?”

“Madelyn, I did tell you. We have had a problem with the coach. That’s all you need to know.” If he told her more, she’d laugh, he knew she’d laugh. Damn Beau Blackthorn, he had to have been behind this!

“Oh, really? Then I suppose I shouldn’t ask where you’re taking yourself off for then?”

The earl looked at his sister, feeling a kindness for her he didn’t know he possessed. She was beyond salvation, yet for the most part seemed to be happy in her own way. The same, he supposed, could be said for Chelsea. They really weren’t all that terrible. His parents could have had two more sons, and he’d now be paying out his blunt to educate them, send them on Grand Tours, save them from the moneylenders when they gambled too deep. He would know that they’d be rejoicing that his wife had yet to provide him with an heir, while hoping he might conveniently break his neck while taking a fence with his horse, clearing the way for the second son. He’d spent enough years watching his father, eager to wear that dead man’s boots.

So, all in all, that they were girls wasn’t that terrible in itself. He didn’t
hate
them. He didn’t hate
all
women, as Francis seemed to do. A pious hatred, often backed by scripture, but hatred all the same. The man was beginning to make him nervous.

Thomas hated Beau Blackthorn and had for a very long time. He hated him because he had just lain there that day, silently taking the whipping Thomas had handed out to him, not begging nor pleading, and then gotten up and walked away.
Walked away!
Walked with his head held high along the streets of Mayfair, causing more than one man—including Thomas’s own father—to say that one had to wonder who was the gentleman; the one wielding the horsewhip while assisted by two footmen, or the one who had borne the brunt of the assault.

Francis said it was a sin to hate Blackthorn. Thomas wondered about that. But at times it seemed that his unwillingness to say he was sorry for what he’d done that day…and the rest…was keeping him from the salvation he had been seeking. But if that was true, why had God only sent Francis to tell him so? As Madelyn had pointed out, if it was that important, why hadn’t the good Lord come to him directly?

And why the rest of it? No women, no drink, no amusements? Didn’t the Lord want him happy? Look at Madelyn. A sinner, yes. But, in her own way, happy.

I didn’t want to die. I’d just come into the earldom, and I didn’t want to die. God should understand promises made under such duress. I was sick, I wasn’t
thinking clearly. If I hadn’t met Francis, what would my life be like now? What would all our lives be like now? Did I force Chelsea into this elopement with Blackthorn? Is this all my fault? Is
this
God’s judgment?

“Thomas! Stop staring at me like that. You look uncomfortably like a fish. It was a simple question—where will you be all day?”

“Does it matter?” he asked, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a purse. “How much do you want?”

“Why, Thomas, you make it so easy. Are you sickening for something? Never mind.” She reached out and took the entire purse and then quickly made for the front door of the inn, her maid scurrying after her, attempting to open a parasol.

Thomas turned and entered the taproom. Ale had been a good beginning, but the innkeeper had promised he had a few fine bottles of burgundy his lordship might enjoy…

B
EAU SAT
in the taproom of The Baited Bear with the young Romeo, having arranged with the innkeeper to keep the boy well supplied with home-brewed beer.

Jonathan had been a reluctant drinking partner at first, insisting that he would stand outside Emily’s bedchamber door until his bones dried up and turned to ashes unless she agreed to speak with him. She was his love, his life. He was nothing without her.

But he was beginning to show signs of changing his mind.

“So there are the customary streetwalkers, you’re saying, to be avoided at all costs, and then the courtesans—above my touch, those, yes? It is the
lorettes
I am to be safest with, since they’re clean, but not so demanding? How much would you say it would cost to set up one of these ladies for a week or two?”

Beau shrugged his shoulders as if the question was of no importance. “It’s Paris, Jonathan. Nothing is cheap, but everything is for sale. Now, in Brussels there’s a bit more government involvement, so you need to be careful there, and in Berlin? Ah, Berlin. And even better— Italy. Schooling is one thing, my new friend, but there’s
many a London gentleman who owes the women of the Continent for their most useful education. But you don’t need to hear all of this. After all, you’ll be here, with your Emily, all safe and married.”

“Hmm?” Jonathan seemed to shake himself out of some private reverie. “Oh! Oh, yes, I’m going. I mean, no, no I’m not going. Dashed dull things, Grand Tours. Fine enough in m’father’s day, but I’ve no time for it. O’course my friend Bertie, he says he’s going, too, but he’s still a boy, you know, green as grass, and he’d probably need to know about such things. So perhaps you should tell me more about—Italy, you said? Bertie talked about Greece. All these statues without heads or arms. Seems silly, and dashed dull. But if you’ve been, then you’d know. What are the women like in Greece? They do have arms, right?”

“We can talk more about that later. For now, Jonathan, you’ve a young lady upstairs,” Beau said, sensing that the boy’s head would soon be making a close acquaintance with the tabletop, so he’d better strike while he could. “What are we to do about the fair Emily?”

“Doesn’t want me,” the boy said, instantly maudlin, reaching again for his mug. But maudlin didn’t last. “Made that plain enough, didn’t she? You know,” he went on, pointing a rather unsteady finger in Beau’s direction, “I may have been a little hasty there. Seemed a fine notion at the time. Runnin’ off, racing for the border, papas in hot pursuit. Dashed roman…romananant…dashed jolly good fun.”

“Alas, some ideas are more appealing in theory than
in practice. Women are like that, more often than not,” Beau agreed. “Damn, man, I hate seeing a fellow gentleman pushed against the wall by a conniving female. Man to man, women can turn a man inside out and then ask
why
we’re inside out—they can’t help themselves, I suppose. Perhaps I can help you.”

Jonathan’s chin, which was in the process of searching out the tabletop, lifted. “You could? You could get me shed of her? I mean, not that I want to be, you know. Shed of her. I think. Cries all the time. Makes nasty remarks about how I handle the ribbons—as if she knows better? But now here I am, stuck with her. Got to do the honor-ara…honororit…got to do the right thing.”

“Yes, you dug yourself quite the hole, old boy. Still, you’ve been with Mrs. Claridge and myself the whole time—or near enough so as not to matter. We both will vouch for the fact that you and Emily were never alone.”

Jonathan was now looking so eager for rescue it was almost embarrassing to watch. “You’d do that? That would go a long way with the squire. Hunts, you know. Never shoots anything, not once that I ever heard of, but he could get lucky. I’m a lot larger than a hare.”

And with a slightly larger brain.
But only slightly, Beau thought. He pulled his watch from his pocket and made a business out of opening it, consulting it. “Why, it’s no more than seven o’clock. What a full day we’ve had, hmm? Did I tell you, Jonathan—I may have seen your respective sires while I was in Gateshead earlier. How about this? How about I go to them, explain everything and bring them back here? Emily could be
on her way home, which it would seem would make her happy, and you could be on your way to Paris, and the
lorettes.
With the war at last over, the Continent is crawling with fine young gentlemen like yourself. Ah, the memories, they will last you a lifetime. I envy you the adventure.”

“I do, too,” Jonathan said solemnly. “M’father’s a good man,” he then went on more brightly. “He knows what’s best for me. Yes, I’ll do it. I owe it to him to go. Don’t I?”

“Absolutely,” Beau said, getting to his feet. “You owe it to somebody.” Then he left the now slumbering Lothario at the table and headed off to find Chelsea, to give her the good news.

He found her in his assigned bedchamber, curled up on the window seat, politely gnawing on a chicken leg. It was all he could do not to take her in his arms and carry her over to the bed. Worse, he could tell she knew that. He was fast losing control of any part of his life. She looked toward him hopefully.

“He’s agreed,” he said shortly, reaching for his hat.

“He has? Oh, Oliver, how wonderful. How did you manage it?”

This could be tricky. He wasn’t sure she’d appreciate his tactics. “I described some of the glories he would see on the Grand Tour.”

“Well, of course. That was good thinking. The churches in Paris, the Colosseum in Rome, the remnants of the ancient Greek civilization. It’s one thing to visit our museums, or look at drawings in books, but
to see such things in their natural settings? Who could resist such grand enticements? Will he be traveling to Egypt, do you suppose?”

Beau kept his expression neutral but not without effort. “I don’t know. Happily, the glories I did describe seemed to suffice. Um…will you be all right until I return?”

She rolled her eyes. “I won’t go wandering off, I promise. I would have stayed in here this afternoon, if you had but left the key with Jonathan. But how was I to know Emily wouldn’t allow me in my own chamber?”

“I understand your dilemma, but I don’t like that you were moving about the inn all day, unaccompanied.” He had become very protective of her, he realized.

“And met next to nobody,” she assured him. “It’s a funny little inn, isn’t it? So cut up, with so many twists and turns inside it? And I do believe that either the innkeeper was lying to you, Oliver, or all of our fellow travelers have slept the day away save for that nosy woman who wanted to call in the constable to help Emily, but she and her three daughters already departed. I’ll be fine.” Then she smiled. “But you could hurry back.”

He hadn’t the heart to tell her he’d decided that the nosy woman was a madam, and her daughters the prostitutes in her charge, or that they’d left now because they’d serviced the needs of the inn guests and were on to their next stop. It was clearly time to ferret out a higher class of inns.

“Minx,” he said, dropping a kiss on her forehead and
feeling rather content. Almost self-satisfied. He was a lucky man. “For all I know, Puck may have arrived in my absence. I left messages for a
Monsieur
Robin Goodfellow at every establishment in the town.”

“Your brother? So you really think he could have caught up with us by now?” Chelsea uncurled herself from the window seat and stood up, her expression delightfully eager. “With our trunks? With
clean clothing?
”

“Thanks to the rain and our extra night on the road, yes, it’s possible. Now, aren’t you going to ask more about your siblings? By rights, they should have been and gone, possibly even already awaiting us at the border. Perhaps something unfortunate happened to them.”

“Nothing really unfortunate ever happens to Thomas.” But then she smiled and added, “Unfortunately. Although I doubt he is very happy with Madelyn’s company. And you can’t be sure they would stop for a night in Gateshead, can you?”

“No,” Beau admitted. “It’s just that most do. As I told you, resting before the last mad dash. Hiring fresh teams. After all, there are only a few more logical stops between Gateshead and the border. Your brother is going to have some trouble there, by the way, especially if Puck is going to be able to get ahead of him. I took care of Gateshead.”

“You took care of what? What is Puck going to do?”

Beau smiled in spite of himself. It had been a costly idea, but he still considered it to border on the brilliant.
“I told you I had a plan. While I was checking in at all the hotels and inns, I also stopped at every coaching stable and hired all their teams for the next three days’ time. Puck will do likewise from Gateshead on west as he travels to Gretna Green. There will be many a pursuing parent who will find himself stymied until his own team can be rested and he can move on. We may have put a halt to one runaway marriage, Chelsea, but we are probably aiding a dozen more.”

Chelsea’s mouth opened and closed several times before a rather evil light began to dance in her wonderfully spectacular eyes. “Why, Oliver, that’s quite mean. You’re brilliant!”

“I rather thought so, yes. I believe you may be marrying a man with a devious mind.”

She shrugged her shoulders dismissingly. “Then we are very suited on that front, I suppose. Shouldn’t you be leaving? I told Emily you were going to fetch her papa to her and she’s turned back into a watering pot, although she assures me that now her tears are happy tears. Whatever they are, I’m afraid I have little patience with them. That’s another reason I’m sure to stay right here until you return with the anxious papas.”

“At which point you will join us and assure them that Emily has been properly chaperoned at all times?”

She gave an audible sniff. “That would be protesting too much, Oliver, and only invite questions as to who
we
are. No. I’ve given it quite a lot of thought, and I believe I have found a better way. I have a plan.”

Beau scratched at a spot behind his left ear. “And am I going to like it?”

Now she smiled, and he realized that he had once again lost control of the situation. He was doing that a lot with Chelsea. Soon she’d have him entirely tamed, sitting at her feet, purring in the hope of a pat on the head, a treat. How low he had sunk in just a few short days; even his own brothers would probably not recognize him. Surprisingly, this did not seem to bother him.

“That doesn’t signify, Oliver, as you don’t have to like it. I do.”

Well and duly chastised, and not minding that so much, either, Beau gave her a jaunty salute and left the room, sticking his head back in two seconds later to point out that she had yet to lock the door.

She stuck out her tongue at him.

He went off to the stables, wondering how long it might take to wipe the smile from his face.

C
HELSEA WAS VERY MUCH
aware that Beau was standing close beside her as they faced the baron and the squire in the nearly empty taproom—the small inn did not stretch to private dining parlors. He had her back, that’s what his presence told her, even though he did not know what she had planned. There wasn’t a moment that passed that she didn’t like him more and more.

What they’d done last night, what they’d done just today—that was separate. That was…fortunate. It was more important to her that she liked him, and that he seemed to like her. After all, they could be married for
decades, and people did have to converse with each other from time to time, even if for the most part they maintained separate lives.

If he were coarse in his language, or chewed his food with his mouth open—as her brother was prone to do—she could not abide being in the same room with him for above a minute, no matter how lovely their moments in bed. If he looked at her as if the sight of her gave him dark, lascivious thoughts, or was devoid of humor—both of which described Francis Flotley—she might one day be forced to do as Jonathan’s mother had done and take a flit.

But she and Beau rubbed along so well together. It was almost uncanny. She would have thought, had thought, that all they would really have in common was a mutual dislike for Thomas.

Beau put his hand on her back and gave her waist a small pinch, as if he’d noticed that her mind had been wandering as the squire, his face florid and quite unlovely, had been claiming that he wanted “satisfaction from that reprobate upstart who’d ruined his daughter.”

Yes, she supposed she’d let the man rant long enough. Now it was her turn.

“You demand?” she said, pulling herself up to her full height. She was, after all, the daughter of an earl, even if these two fools weren’t to know that. They only had to know that she knew how to intimidate; she’d learned at the feet of masters of that particular art. She’d seen her mother reduce the Brean Major Domo to tears with only a look and a few choice words. “You
demand?
And who are you to dare to presume any such thing, sirrah!”

The squire screwed up his apple-red face and leaned his head forward, as if he could not quite believe what his ears had just delivered to his brain. “How…how
dare
I? Me?”

“Yes, you,” Chelsea told him flatly. “You, who allowed your motherless child to be teased and bullied by her sisters, and did nothing. You, who allowed them license to
lie
to her, make her believe that a few curious kisses meant she could even now be carrying that boy’s child. Have you no idea what goes on beneath your own roof? You’re not a fit parent, sir. You’re not fit to keep those fine hounds over there. You are, in fact, a disgrace.”

Beside him, the baron sniggered. Clearly, just as Chelsea had thought, there was little love lost between these two men; one not wanting his son to marry beneath him, the other seeing his expectations for an advantageous marriage being crushed in the dust. Why, the squire was probably only coming along on this journey in order to be assured his daughter had made it over the threshold. All the rest was simply bluster.

Chelsea immediately turned to the baron, secretly rejoicing that the man seemed to shrink slightly as she leveled her stare at him. “And
you
. Oh, I’ve heard all about you, sir. Shame on you!”