The Taming of the Rake (4 page)

“Wait a moment.”

Chelsea closed her eyes for a second, swallowed her
fear once more and then turned around. “Yes? Has the penny finally dropped, Mr. Blackthorn? I’ll excuse you, considering your drunken state, but you really shouldn’t have taken much past three. If I’d gotten to nine, I’d have needed to reassess my opinion of you.”

Beau got to his feet, waving a hand in front of him as if erasing whatever she’d said as not worthy of a response. “Why did you come here? Alone? Not just to crow over me that you know what game I’ve been playing with your brother. And more importantly, why do I get the feeling that you’re not here to help me as much as you’re here to help yourself? Wait—don’t answer yet. Sit, drink your wine, and I’ll go stick my head in a basin of cold water and clean up some of my mess, in the hope it clears my head.”

“Yes, all right,” Chelsea answered, once again taking up both her seat and the wineglass. She didn’t really drink wine; she’d ordered it for him, believing he’d need it after he’d heard what she had to say. “But we should be leaving here within the hour, and even that will probably be cutting it too fine for comfort.”

“Leaving? We? As in, the two of us? Oh, really. And to travel where, may I ask?”

“You’re wasting time, Mr. Blackthorn. My brother is far from an intellectual, but he isn’t completely stupid, either. He’ll soon be out and about, looking for me, his newfound docile nature stretched to the breaking point. Oh, and to that end, although it is reminiscent of barring the barn door after the cow has escaped, I suggest
you have my mount and groom removed from in front of the building.”

“I’ll order that,” the other Mr. Blackthorn volunteered, halting just inside the doorway, a thick slice of bacon in his hand. “Shall we have the fellow bound and gagged, Lady Chelsea, or simply sat down somewhere and told to stay put? Beau, brother mine, clearly you’ve been holding out on me. I had no idea you led such an interesting life.”

Beau grumbled something Chelsea was too far away to hear—which was probably a good thing—and headed for the stairs, bounding up them two at a time.

“Good, he’s gone. Now we two can get to know each other better, as it appears you and my brother are up to some sort of mischief. Or is it just you? He is looking rather harassed. It’s his age, you understand. Can’t hold his drink anymore, either. It’s a curse, old age. I have just now, over a plate of coddled eggs, vowed never to succumb to it.”

“My mount, Mr. Blackthorn,” Chelsea told him, smiling in spite of herself, for Mr. Robin Goodfellow Blackthorn had the most engaging smile and way about him. “And after you’ve gone off to do that, please order your brother’s horse saddled and have his man pack a small bag for him. A traveling coach would be much too slow and easily spotted for our needs for now, I believe. We may also, now that I have a moment to reflect on the thing, needs must keep to alleyways until we’re clear of London.”

The man opened his mouth, clearly to ask her what
she meant, but she merely pointed behind him, to the foyer. “This is life or death, Mr. Blackthorn, so there is no time for me to stand here and applaud your silliness. Go.”

He went.

Chelsea took a sip of the wine.

It didn’t help; she was still shaking.

M
UCH TO THE CHAGRIN
of his valet, Beau refused to take the time to sit and be shaved, opting for a quick wash at the basin, a brief encounter with his tooth powder and a rushed combing of his hair as Sidney helped him into a clean white shirt before handing him fresh linen and buckskins and then throwing up his hands in disgust and quitting the dressing room.

Beau was still having difficulty believing that Lady Chelsea Mills-Beckman, sister of his nemesis, was downstairs, sipping wine in his drawing room. Sans chaperone, clad in a rather startlingly red riding habit and clearly expecting him to go somewhere with her.

Lady Chelsea Mills-Beckman. Knowing things she shouldn’t know. Cheeky and impertinent as she’d been as a girl…and hinting of helping him revenge himself on her brother.

While helping herself. He shouldn’t forget that. Women with ulterior motives were the norm rather than the oddity, he’d learned, and as this woman was also intelligent, he would have to be doubly on alert.

“Well, that could be considered by the less discerning as a bit of an improvement, I suppose,” Puck said,
entering the dressing room to lean one shoulder against the high chest of drawers as he visually assessed his brother. “I have reconnoitered your visitor, grilling her mercilessly for details. She informs me whatever is going on is a matter of life or death. Worse, she seems astonishingly immune to my charms, which would have me descending into a pit of despair were it not that I’m secretly delighted that she has targeted you rather than me for whatever it is she’s planning. Not that I’m not here to help.”

Beau snatched up a neck cloth and hastily tied it around his throat. “Your enthusiasm for throwing yourself down in the path to protect me nearly unmans me,” he grumbled, realizing he’d just tied a knot in the neck cloth—rather like a noose.

“You’re welcome. Disregarding female enthusiasm for melodrama, do you think she’s right? The brother is a nasty piece of work, as I recall. Are you sure you wish to become embroiled in whatever she’s prattling on about?”

“She’s in my house, Puck.”

“Our house, not to quibble about such a small point. But, as I am also here, I believe I should be apprised of whatever the devil it is I’ve somehow become embroiled in myself, if only by association. She’s ordered me to hide her horse and groom, and then to advise Sidney to pack a bag for you, as you will be leaving within the hour. Which, naturally, begs the question—where are we going?”

Beau shrugged into a hacking jacket and took one
last, quick look at his reflection in the mirror above the dressing table. “
We
are not going anywhere,” he told his brother. “Whatever the mess, I brought it on myself by being idiot enough to think I was a cat, toying with a mouse. I should have let it go, Puck, years ago. But, for once, it’s my idiocy, not yours. You’re not involved.”

“What? You’d leave me here to face the wrath of the brother? I think not. If I’m not to go with you, I’ll inform Gaston to pack me up and I’ll be back off to Paris. The weather is better, for one thing, and the food at least edible. I damn near cracked a tooth on that bacon our cook dared serve me. We should sack him.”

Beau turned on his brother. “You do this just to annoy me, don’t you?”

Puck pushed himself away from the dresser. “Yes, but I’ll stop now. You’re much too easy to rile, you and Jack both. Takes the joy right out of a fellow. I was listening from the terrace, you know, and heard most of what she said. You’ve really been quietly ruining the earl? I’d say that was brilliant, except that Lady Chelsea found you out, so you couldn’t be overly credited for subtlety. Comparing you to Machiavelli? Hardly. And now your pigeons seem to have come home to roost.”

“We can’t know that. Not unless the damned woman left her brother a note before she ran off. Because she did run off, Puck, that much is obvious. It’s what women do. Without a thought to anyone else perhaps not agreeing to become an actor in their small melodrama.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Puck agreed as he followed Beau down the hall to a small room he used as his private
study. “She would have been better off applying to Mama. She dearly adores a melodrama. But when I left her to come to town, she was about to begin a tour of the Lake District with her troupe. I hadn’t the heart to tell her she’s getting a little long in the tooth to play Juliet, but as long as Papa finances the troupe, she has her pick of roles and no one gainsays her. Are you listening to me? What are you doing messing around in that cabinet?”

Beau turned back to his brother, the wooden case that held a pair of dueling pistols in his hands. He then opened a long wooden box kept on a sideboard and pulled out both the sword and belt he’d taken to war with him and a short, lethal-looking knife kept safe inside its sheath. “See that these are taken downstairs, if you please. I probably won’t need the sword, but I know I’ll want the knife.”

Puck frowned as the weapons were thrust at him. “Really? Would you be wanting me to hunt up a piece of field artillery as well while I’m at it? You really think the brother will come here, don’t you?”

“I was unprepared once, Puck. That won’t happen again. Now, take yourself off and do what you said you were going to do—get yourself prepared to return to Paris. This may all come to nothing, but the girl knows things she shouldn’t have guessed, and I’m going to believe her until she says something that changes my mind. Damn, what a morning—if I’d known this last night I wouldn’t have crawled so far into the bottle with you.”

“Yes, of course, blame me. It was a terrible thing, how I held your nose pinched shut and poured three bottles of wine down your gullet as we celebrated your birthday.”

“In case you’re about to add that the woman downstairs is some sort of birthday present from the gods, let me warn you—don’t.” Beau left his brother where he stood and headed downstairs to where Lady Chelsea was now pacing the Aubusson carpet, slapping her gloves against her palm.

She was, upon reflection—something, according to her, he didn’t have time for—a startlingly beautiful woman. He remembered that, as a child, she’d shown a promise of beauty, but that he’d believed she’d never hold a candle to her sister. Time had proved him wrong.

He’d seen Madelyn a time or two on his visits to London since his return from the war, driving in the park in an open carriage. The years had not been kind to her. She’d developed lines around her mouth, which seemed pinched now rather than pouting, and the nearly white-blond hair aged her rather than flattered her. She looked like what she was—a haughty, clearly unhappy woman.

He’d learned she had taken lovers over the years, sometimes without employing enough discretion, and her reputation, as well as her standing in Society, had suffered. For that, she blamed her brother, and the two of them had not spoken since their father’s death. She also probably blamed Beau, as well, for her fall began only after what he thought of now as The Incident.

But Beau had taken little satisfaction from any of Madelyn’s problems. To him, justice had been served up very neatly to Lady Madelyn for what she had done.

It was Thomas Mills-Beckman who had yet to feel justice come down on his neck. Hence the cat, toying with the mouse’s purse strings.

And now, pacing his drawing room, full of cryptic statements and offers to help him administer that justice, was this intriguing and maddening young woman, fallen into his hands either like a ripe plum or as the agent of disaster, clearly wanting to get some of her own back on her brother and eager to use Beau to help her.

“My brother tells me you assured him that we are embroiled in something very serious. Life or death, I believe he said—or perhaps that was you saying it? I’ll admit I’ve begun to lose track.”

She stopped pacing and looked at him, her blond head tipped to one side as she ran her clear blue-gray gaze up and down his body as if he were a horse she was considering purchasing. “You look somewhat better. Are you sober now?”

“I believe I’m heading in that general direction, yes. At least enough so that I want to make it clear to you yet again—I do not know this Reverend Flotley. I did not arrange to have him introduced to your brother, so if the rest doesn’t bother you—the smell of spoiled grapes notwithstanding—perhaps you wish to rethink whatever it is you believe you can do for me and go away. Quickly.”

“I can’t. I think we both know it’s already too late for
that,” she said and then sighed. “We really don’t have time for this, but I have truly burned my bridges just by coming here so openly, and yours, as well, which I’m sure I don’t have to point out to you. I’m sorry for that, at least a little bit, but I had no other choice open to me. I left my brother a note explaining every—”

Beau slammed his fist into his palm. “I knew it! Why do women always feel they have to explain themselves?”

She straightened her slim shoulders. “I was not
explaining
myself, you daft man. I couldn’t allow my maid to take the brunt of Thomas’s anger, not when she helped me tie up some of my belongings and met me at the corner so that I could strap them onto my saddle without anyone being the wiser that I was leaving.”

“Oh, yes, of course. I can see the wisdom of that. He won’t turn her out without a reference now, not when you’d clearly cowed her into doing what you’d asked.”

“Oh,” Chelsea said quietly. “I hadn’t thought of that. But I didn’t tell him where I was heading. I’m not stupid.”

“Wonderful. The girl assures me she’s not stupid. Tell me, Mistress Genius, did you happen to confide your destination to your maid? Because, were I said maid, staring the loss of my position in the teeth, I do believe I’d try to save myself by being of assistance to my employer.”

Chelsea glared at him. “I could truly begin to dislike you.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Beau said, looking longingly at the wine decanter. “How long before he misses you
and comes racing hotfoot over here, brandishing a pistol and demanding I present myself?”

Chelsea glanced assessingly at the mantel clock. “We should probably be going.”

“Yes. Going. And where would it be that we should probably be going to, madam? Oh, and one more small thing.
Why?
Why me? Why am I going to be helped by you, and how am I going to assist you? My mind is still a little fuzzy on those two points.”

She looked toward the clock once more. “We don’t have time for this now.”

Beau crossed his arms over his chest, prepared to stand his ground for the next fortnight. That she should wish to flee her brother’s household was commendable. That she should involve him in her escape? Not quite as laudatory. “Make time.”

“Only if you come with me now,” she told him, heading for the foyer and then unerringly turning toward the rear of the house. “Your brother has ordered your horse saddled, and both mounts await us in the stables. If we keep away from the main thoroughfares, I’m sure we can be clear of London before Thomas can pick up our scent and kill you.”

“Oh, this gets better and better,” Beau said as Puck, never to be left out of anything even remotely exciting, joined them as they passed through the green baize door that led to the servant area of the mansion. “One minute I’m fairly happily contemplating my life through the bottom of a bottle in celebration of my birthday and my brother’s return from France, and the next I’m running
from someone else’s irate brother, who may already be on his way over here to save his sister from the clutches of a man
who hadn’t even remembered her existence a mere hour ago.
”

Chelsea stopped just at the doorway to the kitchens and turned to face him. “Shut. Up. I’ve been trying to tell you since I arrived, but you keep interrupting me. Now we have to leave, unless you really are stupid enough to want to face Thomas while you’re still so obviously intoxicated. And obnoxious, as well, although I have begun to doubt that will change much even once you’re sober again.”

“I take it all back, brother mine,” Puck said, snorting. “I think I’m beginning to like her.”

Chelsea pressed her palms to her cheeks, seemed to perhaps be counting under her breath for a few moments, and then dropped her hands to her sides and let out a breath.

“One, my brother did you a great, unforgivable harm seven years ago. Two, he is by nature a very stupid man—and easily led, as you seem already to have ascertained on your own, hence the spoiled grapes. Three, just after our father died, Thomas became very ill and thought he was going to die before he could enjoy the fruits of our father’s labors now that he was earl. Four, he truly believes that Francis Flotley came into his life as a gift from God, the same God Thomas had made all manner of promises to if only the good Lord would allow him to rise from his sickbed. Five, Francis Flotley delivered Thomas’s promises to God, personally—yes, I
know that’s insane, so you can stop making those odious faces at me—and now Thomas is not only still stupid and easily led, but he thinks he is on some holy path, and in charge of
my
soul, which he is not! Seven—”

“I think you skipped six,” Puck corrected helpfully. “Sorry,” he added quickly, when Chelsea glared at him.

“Six,”
she said heavily, “because I have chosen not to marry any man Thomas could like, he has decided to take me to Brean first thing tomorrow morning, lock me up and then marry me to Francis Flotley as soon as the banns can be read. In order to save my inferior female soul.”

“Seven,” Beau interrupted, holding up his hand, “as you were clever enough to ferret out that I am responsible for your brother’s financial plagues of locusts—don’t ask, Puck, just listen—you assumed, incorrectly, I might add, the reverend to also be one of my inventions. So that, eight, it is now my fault that you are to be bracketed to the man. Ergo, I am responsible for saving you from this fate, which I, nine, will somehow do by escorting you out of London with your brother in hot pursuit and out for my blood. For which, ten, you will offer me some sort of favor in return. To which, one, but not to worry because my list is quite short, I say no. Thank you for the honor, putting my head on the chopping block the way you have, but no.”