The Taming of the Rake (21 page)

“No!” she cried out when at last what she was seeking came to her, but then gave in to the inevitable, collapsing against him as she shuddered, as her body clamped and released, clamped and released, turned liquid, took her beyond anyone’s comprehension of pleasure and to a place where there was nothing but him, nothing but her, nothing but this one perfect moment in time as she felt his seed fountain deep inside her.

“I love you, Oliver…I love you.”

S
HE’D BEEN THINKING
about leaving him. Planning to leave him. Sacrifice herself in some cockeyed notion that this would save him.

Despite her performance as a maidservant, she wasn’t quite the actress his mother was. A person isn’t full of mischief and energy one moment, and then yawning and complaining of terrible fatigue the next. Not when the moment in between had contained the knowledge that Thomas was close and coming closer.

Beau acknowledged to himself that, like any man, he could never consider himself an expert on reading a woman’s mind. But he’d concluded correctly that she’d intended to sneak away while they were still here in Gateshead, find her brother, give herself up to Francis Flotley in order to save the man who’d agreed to elope with her to keep her away from her brother, away from Francis Flotley, away from a future that would be, for an intelligent, vital person like Chelsea, nothing less than a living hell.

Yet here she was, asleep in his arms, safe in his arms. He’d held her with him the only way he knew how. With sex.

He wasn’t proud of that.

Worse, she’d told him she loved him. In the throes of carnal passion, she’d said the words. And she’d probably believed them to be true.

She was young and vulnerable, and he was experienced. He’d shown her physical pleasure she hadn’t known existed, and she had confused that with love. Why else would she even consider sacrificing herself in order to protect him?

He wasn’t worthy of that sort of sacrifice. Or any sort of love.

I never should have touched her. I never should have agreed to her plan. I’m the bastard the world calls me. Jack knows that, Puck knows that; we’re cut from the same cloth in so many ways. Nothing more has been expected of any of us.

I should have expected more from myself.

Chelsea stirred in her sleep and attempted to snuggle closer to him, but he carefully disengaged himself instead, pulled the covers over her and left the bed. He couldn’t think rationally while she lay so trustingly against him.

He dressed quickly and quietly, and then sat himself down on the window seat overlooking the inn yard and the dark streets of Gateshead.

He’d be damned if he’d give her back. Because her sacrifice wouldn’t change anything. She’d still end up married to the fanatical Reverend Flotley, and he’d still be the target of her brother’s quest for vengeance. What had happened between him and the earl of Brean had begun seven long years ago and would have continued indefinitely if not for Chelsea’s proposition. Now it had to end.

Chelsea didn’t know how far her brother’s hatred for him had extended over the past years, and Beau wasn’t going to tell her, as it would only appear self-serving, give him more reason to have taken such advantage of her.

Once recovered from his injuries at Brean’s hands, Beau had taken the young Lady Chelsea’s advice to go away, go very far away. He had gone into the army because there was nowhere else for a man like him to go to prove himself. Fighting Bonaparte, he’d thought, would level the playing field, for they’d all be concerned with one thing—staying alive. You don’t inquire as to the circumstances of a man’s birth when you are relying on him to watch your back in battle.

He had eventually found friends there, among the rank and file, along with a few officers, gentlemen. But for those first terrible months he’d been condemned as a coward, the sort who would cut and run at the first sight of the enemy. Twice he’d been brought up on charges, first for theft from another soldier and then for looting. If the fool who had actually placed the items in his rucksack hadn’t talked himself into a corner during questioning Beau would have been convicted and summarily executed.

There had been the rumors. The white feather tacked up outside his field tent. He’d had to watch his own back in battle, for some of his enemy wore his same uniform. Yet it was on the battlefield that he finally distinguished himself, and slowly he had been accepted. All he’d had to do was be reckless and ruthless and insane enough to fight twice as hard and take three times as many risks as any other soldier on the line.

He’d enlisted as an ordinary foot soldier and departed the king’s service a lieutenant, a feat reserved for gentlemen. Along the way he had gained the respect of his fellow soldiers, and learned that the earl of Brean had been behind the rumors, the accusations, calling in favors from friends and even paying for others to make deadly mischief.

Clearly, if they had not been in London, the earl would have killed Beau that fateful day. At the time, Beau had thought that was because the man loved his sister. But that hadn’t been the case at all. He had simply despised Beau for who, and what, he was.

All the while he’d served, Beau had plotted his revenge. He was going to stay alive, return home, and once there, he would destroy Thomas Mills-Beckman, completely and utterly. When the man was down to his last farthing, he would send him a letter explaining what he’d done and enclose a loaded pistol so that Brean wouldn’t have to go to the trouble of finding one before he blew his brains out all over his study walls.

Madelyn had been long forgotten. She’d been the fantasy of a young idiot. But Thomas Mills-Beckman had killed something inside Beau that day, his youth, his naiveté some might say, and for that he would pay.

He’d told Chelsea he’d only been amusing himself, that his actions against her brother were mere pranks. He didn’t know if she believed him or not, and at the time he hadn’t really cared. His bleeding of Brean had been slow and not as satisfactory as he would have liked, and Chelsea had dropped into his hands unexpectedly, but was definitely not unwelcome.

He could try to convince himself that he wasn’t a bad man, because he had attempted to talk her out of her plan, but he knew the truth. His protests had been less than halfhearted. Now he saw himself as he really was. Over the years, his plan for revenge had become an obsession, blinding him to right and wrong as he refused to see anything other than Brean’s destruction.

Without more than a passing thought to what eloping to Gretna Green with him would mean for her, he’d gone ahead. With the plan, with the grand adventure, with the seduction of the earl’s virgin sister.

And he’d been wrong. He’d started something he never should have begun, and now he had to finish it. It would soon be time to pay the piper, take his punishment. Puck had fought him on it when he’d told him what he’d decided, but he’d finally agreed to help. It was the only way to protect Chelsea.

It would be a gamble, and he could lose, but Chelsea would be safe.

Everything hinged on getting to Scotland without encountering Brean…and on not allowing Chelsea to know his plan.

M
ADELYN DREW
her shawl around her shoulders as she quietly made her way down the dark corridor toward her assigned chamber of the inn. It was past three, and she craved her bed. Her own bed, her own new sheets.

But what a happy surprise it had been to discover Viscount Watley had stopped at this same inn. And without his jealous wife in tow, no less.

He’d been on his way north, to sit by the deathbed of his great aunt, the one with the surprisingly fat inheritance earmarked for her favorite nephew, but George had assured Madelyn that the old biddy would linger on for at least another week, not that she cared, since none of that money would ever find its way to her. Although he had offered her a pair of diamond earbobs if she’d allow him to turn her on her knees like a hound bitch. Men must lay awake nights, thinking up such nonsense.

Although it had been rather fun…

“Madelyn.”

She turned her head toward the voice, to see her brother approaching, looking rather the worse for drink, his horrible black jacket hanging open over his not inconsiderable belly, his unfashionable black cravat undone. She remembered when he’d been neat, trim, if not any more handsome. Now he looked as if he’d just come from a strangely raucous funeral.

“Thomas?”

He put a finger to his lips. “
Shhh.
Don’t want to wake the crow. Here, hold this.”

He held out a bottle and, amazed, she took it, clutched it to her breast.

“There you go. Looks natural on you, Maddie,” he said, grinning. Then he took her hand and led her toward one of the doors, having some difficulty with the key but eventually gaining entry and pulling her in behind him.

Once inside, he relieved her of the bottle, using it to motion her to the fireplace and the pair of uncomfortable-looking chairs that bracketed it.

“Thomas,” she said, pointing out the obvious, “you’ve been drinking.”

“Damn straight I have. I’d be whoring, too, but the barmaid said I was too drunk to keep up my end of the bargain. Clever minx, yes? Keep
up
my end?”

She couldn’t believe her eyes or ears. “Thomas, what is going on?”

He lost his smile, lowering his chin toward his chest. “I don’t know. Am…am I a bad man, Maddie?”

“Oh, is that all? Yes, of course you are. But no worse
than most, Thomas, really. If God were going to rain down fatal rounds of mumps on every bad man in England, the island would be populated only by women and small boys.”

“I made promises. To God, you understand. If he’d let me live.”

She rolled her eyes. Clearly her brother intended to be a maudlin drunk this evening. Well, if he began to weep into that horrid cravat, she was leaving! “I just ten minutes ago called on God myself, but we all invoke his name at some point or another, for one reason or another. It was the desperation of a moment for you, Thomas, and soon forgotten, if not for that damned Flotley and his fire and brimstone.” She looked at him closely. “But you’re beginning to see that now, aren’t you?”

“He said I could be saved if I just listened to him and changed my ways. Although you’re going to roast in hell. Sorry, Maddie. He told me that it was your sin that prompted mine. With Blackthorn, you understand.”

Madelyn half rose from her chair. “Oh, he did, did he? I’ve half a mind to…no, it’s probably too late, and the sight of the crow in his nightshirt might turn my stomach.” She subsided into the chair once more. “And how was it
my
sin?”

Thomas took a long drink from the bottle. “He said that if you hadn’t encouraged Blackthorn with your womanly wiles, then none of what happened would have happened.”

“Really? I put the whip in your hand, did I?”

The earl shrugged. “Women do that. They goad. Chelsea goads me with her impertinence. Women are the root of all evil. Wars. Pestilence.”

“And yet I’ve caught him out looking at me at times these past days as if he’d like nothing better than to
sin
with me. Thomas, you have been taken in by a charlatan, don’t you see that? And a disturbingly licentious one at that. He’s been leading you by the nose, and probably dipping his hands into your pockets with regularity. You’ve always been such an idiot.”

“But…but my immortal soul…?”

She laughed in real amusement. “The devil with your immortal soul! He’ll probably have it eventually in any event now that the veil of stupidity apparently has been ripped from your eyes. Now, can’t we simply drop the crow in a ditch and return to London?”

He shook his head and sighed. “No, I can’t do that. I need to be sure that would be the right thing to do. I’ve come to depend on his judgment in some things. Some things he has taught me seem…good. I need to sort them out, I suppose, the wheat from the chaff, as it were. I nearly died, Maddie…I nearly
died.
And I nearly killed someone—thanks to you. We must continue on until we find Chelsea in any case. I won’t make her marry Francis, not now, and I need to tell her that before she throws herself away on that bastard.”

“My brother, the saint. This alone, I must tell you, has made the discomforts of this trip worthwhile. It’s certainly no secret that I’ve never much cared for you, Thomas, but I dislike you less tonight than I ever have
before. We’re rather alike, you know. As for Chelsea? She’s too pretty by half, and that annoys me, but she’ll never hold a patch on me, so I should perhaps be more forgiving. But what if she’s already married to him? Will you make her a widow?”

Thomas turned his head to stare into the dying fire. “I don’t know. That’s part of what I need to sort out. I…I did some bad things, things you don’t know. There must be some place between what I was and what Francis has told me I must be. I don’t know…”

“I suppose you could simply disown her if you think that’s the
middle,
” Madelyn said, knowing that her threats to do the deed herself had been all bluster. She was deathly afraid of pistols. “And I suppose you and I are already well on our way to being laughingstocks anyway. But do you know something, Thomas? If you truly mean to at last throw off your sackcloth and ashes, we two could set London on its ear. The Bad Breans? I rather like that, much as you disgust me at times. Pass over that bottle, Thomas. We need to consider this…”

B
EAU AND
C
HELSEA
had overslept, which wasn’t unreasonable, seeing how busy their previous day had been.

Dawn had come and gone, and now they were sharing a breakfast in the room, waiting for Puck to return from his reconnoitering of the town, just in case Brean had shown up late last night. It was even possible that they’d have to remain hidden here until dark before heading back to their own inn, or simply moving on toward York.

Chelsea had protested the second option, and when he pressed her, muttered something about not leaving her tooth powder behind, of all things, and in the end Beau had agreed to send Puck to gather their few belongings and bring them to the hotel.

That seemed to satisfy her.

He watched her as she ate, her appetite seeming to have returned, as well as the light in her eyes. He’d congratulate himself for both, except that he did not underestimate the effect clean, dry sheets and edible food could have on a person. She’d already spoken about having a tub sent up if they did decide to stay for the remainder of the day, as the soap at this fine establishment
was bound to be fragrant, the water wonderfully warm and the toweling thicker than a sheet of paper, softer than a bristle brush.

Edith and Sidney had yet to arrive, as Puck was traveling more quickly than the second coach, but Chelsea hadn’t said a word about how wonderful it would be to have the services of a maid for at least one day…which meant that he had to swallow down his own frustration at having to forgo Sidney’s clucking attention and his way with a razor.

She was…adaptable. Wonderfully so. She fit herself in with her surroundings rather than fighting them, and never complained. Puck had gone on for the space of five solid minutes this morning about the futility of finding a properly coddled egg in all of England.

Finally, she put down her fork and looked across the small table at him. “Will he challenge you to a duel?”

Beau roused from his musings. She certainly did have a way of getting straight to the point.

“Your brother? Hardly. He’s rather averse to fair fights. Having two burly footmen hold a man down while he wields a horsewhip is more in line with your brother’s level of courage. That, and other methods we won’t discuss. In short, let’s not talk about Thomas, if you don’t mind. I’ll deal with him when I must, but that doesn’t mean he should be constantly occupying my thoughts. Or yours. There are other, more pleasurable ways for us to pass the time.”

“Oh, no, Oliver. You won’t divert me a second
time. We’re going to talk. If I have to hold you off at gun point.”

“Now that would be interesting. All right, what would you care to talk about?”

“Thank you. I would care to talk about Jack, of course, which shouldn’t surprise you. And Puck. And your mother. And why you all and your father allow her to be such a tyrant.”

“Hardly a tyrant, Chelsea. She is what and who she is, that’s all. I came to terms with that long ago. She made certain all three of us are well provided for. Except for Jack, who refuses our father’s assistance.”

“He said he doesn’t belong at Blackthorn,” Chelsea said, pushing back from the table and retreating to the window seat, as if she wished to prove her point that they would talk and nothing more. “Why would he say something like that?”

The statement had surprised Beau, as well. “You’d have to ask him. Jack’s always been closed as an oyster when it comes to talking about himself, or about any of us. He said more last night than I’ve heard him say before, and we know that wasn’t much.”

“He called Puck a fribble. I think he was insulted.”

“It would take far more than that to insult Puck. He knows who he is.”

“And you know who you are,” she said, pulling up her legs onto the cushion and tucking her skirts around her. “Who are you, Oliver?”

“A man unused to answering questions like that, I suppose,” he said, admiring the way the sunlight
streaming through the window turned her hair into a bright halo around her face. “We won’t see her often, you know. If that’s what is concerning you.”

She looked at him in some shock. “It’s that obvious.”

“Women rarely like my mother. Then again, she doesn’t much care for her own sex. Especially if they’re younger and more beautiful.”

“I didn’t say I don’t like her. After all, I barely met her,” Chelsea protested, and then she shook her head. “But just think, Oliver. If she hadn’t been so selfish, you would be your father’s heir.”

“And, as would probably have followed, also your brother-in-law.”

“Oh.” She frowned. “Yes, there is that again, isn’t there? Thomas would have thrown himself on your neck, delighted to have Madelyn marry your title and wealth. You did have a lucky escape there in some ways, I suppose.”

Beau threw back his head and laughed. “I agree. Especially when, after you’d finished being an interfering brat, I began thinking I’d wed the wrong sister.”

Her eyes softened for a moment, but then she lifted that adorable chin. “You won’t get me into that bed again, Oliver, not while I still have so much more to ask you.”

“Are you quite sure? Puck won’t return for at least another hour.”

“Perhaps later,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand, and Beau had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing again. It certainly hadn’t taken her
long to learn the ways of a woman, or him very long, come to think of it, to become as close to a groveling idiot begging for her favors as any lovestruck youth.

Women had no idea of the power they wielded.

Or perhaps they did.

“Is that agreement, or a promise? I’d like to be straight on that, as you have explained the difference.”

“Do all men and women have discussions like this?” she asked him. “Because I find them…disconcerting.”

“How do I answer that? Do I tell you that the women I’ve been with over the years were none of them known for their conversation?”

She rubbed the underside of her nose with the side of her index finger. Probably to hide a smile, because a smile would reveal that she knew just what he meant, and nice girls didn’t know that sort of thing. But then she seemed to think again and surprised him with her frankness. “Am I…very good at it?”

He could pretend that she’d asked about her conversation, but that probably would only serve to make her next question more pointed, and he was already feeling uncomfortable enough.

“I would say so, yes. And you could only improve with practice, which is why I mentioned that we do have some—”

“Yes, I thought I was rather good. My methods of seduction were, I mean,” she said quietly. “I had to make my ruination complete. You couldn’t be allowed to consider handing me back so that Thomas and Mad
elyn could make up some fiction that I had only been visiting a sickly aunt, or something.”

Beau sat himself down beside her on the window seat. “Damn, woman, I feel so
used,
” he said, earning him a look that might possibly have melted iron.

“Stop that. I just thought I should tell you that it wasn’t so much of a sacrifice as I initially thought it would be. Losing my virginity, I mean. So I’m guessing that you’re also very good at it. Not that I am requesting a list of your conquests, because I’m not.”

“How you relieve my mind.”

“I didn’t relieve your mind very much last night, did I? When I told you that I love you. You kissed me, very nicely, but you didn’t say anything. But that’s all right, really. I shouldn’t have told you. I’ve made things even worse for you now, haven’t I? In fact, I’ve done nothing but complicate your life ever since I walked back into it. Haven’t I, Oliver?”

“Chelsea, what is all this about? I thought we’d settled everything last night. You’re not going back to Thomas, and I’m not going to renege on my promise.”

“Because you hate him, or because I love you?”

Beau opened his mouth to deny her words, but then realized he was probably walking into a trap. If he said he didn’t hate Brean, then why was he still here, unless he loved her in return? If he said he did hate the man, then why should she stay? No woman who believes herself in love wants to know that she is nothing but a means to an end.

He took both of her hands in his. “Chelsea,” he began
slowly, “men and women enjoy each other. It’s all right that you…enjoy what we’ve done. That I have, as well. That enjoyment doesn’t have to have any other name put to it. It just—it just is what it is. A part of life.”

She pulled her hands free, turned her face from his. “You think I’m stupid, don’t you? Gullible. Fanciful.”

He shook his head. “I think you’re young, and that I should be lined up against the nearest wall and shot. Chelsea, look at me.”

She only turned her head a little, looking at him out of the corners of her eyes. “Now you’re going to tell me that we rub along together fairly well, and that we both get what we wanted from this elopement, but that you would rather not have me looking for more than that because you are prepared to give so much, but not any more than that. Why is that, Oliver? What should it matter to you if silly young Chelsea has perhaps mistaken passion for love? Or is it that you don’t believe there is any such thing?”

Beau stood up and crossed the room, then turned on his heel and came back to stand in front of her. She had to stop thinking of him as anything more than her revenge on her brother. Not forever, but for now. He had to be able to know she wouldn’t do anything stupid when Brean finally confronted them, the sort of reckless thing women do when they believe themselves to be in love—like saying she’d leave with her brother if she thought Beau’s life might be in danger.

“I believe there is such a thing as love,” he told her, hearing the bitterness in his voice. If he kept the
discussion to his family, there was no need to feign that bitterness. “But not as you suppose it, Chelsea. Love is a weapon or a weakness, depending on who has it, who wields it. It serves only to make you controlled or controlling. It turned my father into an ass, an ill-advised calf-love damn near got me killed, and you were about to sacrifice yourself for me because your supposed love for me turned your mind to mush.”

“Oh, Oliver,” she said, her voice thick with sorrow. “Is that really how you think love works? As a weapon? A weakness? Do you really believe that love makes you either a villain or a victim? That’s so sad.”

“But I shouldn’t worry, because you’re going to correct me? Drawing on your vast store of experience, I’m sure.”

“Now you’re simply being facetious. It’s easier to be angry with me, isn’t it?”

He nearly said yes but stopped himself in time. “What do you want me to say instead, Chelsea? That I don’t believe in love? Because I’d tell you that you’re wrong, I believe it exists. I also think it often does more harm than good.”

“Because I was considering going to Thomas and asking his forgiveness if he promised not to hurt you? But don’t you see? I did this to you, I put you in this untenable position. It’s only fair that I try to fix what I did wrong.”

“The hell it is! A few days ago you couldn’t have cared what happened to me, as long as you got what you wanted.”

“Yes, all right, I’ve admitted that, horrible and selfish as it sounds. That was then, Oliver.
Before.
But now I—”

“Now you love me. Isn’t that wonderful? And to prove it, you’ll throw your life away. No, what you’ve actually done is to prove my point, Chelsea.”

She was crying openly now. “You’re twisting everything I say!”

“I can only do that because neither one of us has the faintest damn idea what love is. Do we, Chelsea? I took you to bed. I gave you nothing more than any man could have given you. Allow me, please, to know at least that much. We enjoyed each other. That’s something much more basic than love. You don’t sacrifice yourself for what I gave you, you don’t throw your life away—you go find another man to satisfy you.”

Chelsea slowly got up from the window seat and walked over to him, her eyes now a cold, blue ice.

“All right, Oliver,” she said, her voice calm, eerily calm. “If that’s all it is, for me, for you—
satisfy
me. Right now. Just use me as I use you, both of us knowing that there’s nothing more to it.”

She’d called his bluff. She saw straight through him. God, she was magnificent!

“Chelsea,” he said, nearly pleaded. “Don’t do this.”

“Don’t do what? Not so long ago, you suggested we had time before Puck got back. We still have time. I’m sure I still have a lot to learn about the ways a woman can be…
satisfied.
And you’re such a brilliant teacher, aren’t you? No? Well, then, perhaps I’ll just go find
someone else. After all, according to you, one man is as good as another. But don’t worry, Oliver, I won’t make the same mistake twice. I won’t give a damn for him any more than you think you give a damn about me.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.”

“Oh? Am I twisting your words now? Then what did you mean, Oliver? Tell me.”

She’d tied him in knots. He’d tied himself in knots. “I don’t want you to give me your love. Not now, not yet,” he admitted quietly. “I don’t know what to do with it, and I don’t know how to give it in return. We both still have things to learn, Chelsea, and if we’re lucky, time to learn them. If I tell you that I’d kill any man who dared to try to touch you, and that I think my life would be over if you left me—would that be enough for you for now?”

She raised her hand to cup his cheek. “Yes, Oliver, I think that would be enough for now. And I promise, I won’t leave you. I will completely forget any idea of sacrificing myself in an effort to save you from Thomas’s wrath. Perhaps because I love you, or perhaps just so that we don’t ever fight like this again.”

“And that’s a promise, that last little bit, and not just an agreement?”

“Only if you kiss me,” she said, just as a key turned in the lock and Puck opened the door only far enough to slip inside and lock it behind him.

“No time for that, kiddies. I came back to announce my success, only to see Brean and his sister and some near skeleton in a ridiculous black frock coat in the
lobby, asking questions about you, if anyone remembers having seen you,” he said shortly, as Beau and Chelsea stepped back from their embrace. “The earl’s throwing coins around as he asks, so it probably won’t be long until he has answers. I hope you’re feeling particularly brilliant today, brother mine, because we’re in the soup now, considering he may have seen me, and I look enough like you to be—ha!—your brother.”