Once a Rake (Drake's Rakes) (27 page)

Oh, Lizzie.
Tears burned her eyes.
You knew. You knew all along.

“Sarah?” Ian asked, reaching a hand out to her. “Do you know what this is about?”

She lurched to her feet and looked out into the darkness. “Jack Absolute is a character in a play. The Rivals, by Sheridan. My—” She stopped, swallowed, started again. “My friend Lizzie Ripton managed to sneak a copy into school, and we used to do readings of it up in our dormer. We thought it quite salacious. And although she always wanted to play the part of Mrs. Malaprop, we made Lizzie play Jack Absolute. It just seemed so…appropriate. After all, Lizzie is the sister of a very proper duke.” She drew another uncertain breath. “Lizzie is telling us to come to her home. To Ripton Hall, the estate of the Duke of Dorchester.”

“And the fairies?”

She sucked in an unsteady breath. “The Fairy Steps are a secret way into the manor house.”

“And you know where they are.”

She closed her eyes. “I do.” And Lizzie had known it. “I will take you that far. And then I am coming home.”

Even saying that hurt, now worse than ever. There was a long silence, punctuated by rustling leaves, the faint bite of dissipating smoke, a dog barking in the distance. The stars were out now, throwing the earth into deeper shadow. Sarah could see a faint gleam wash the color from Ian’s hair. She still couldn’t see his expression, but she could almost hear him thinking. Reformulating his plans.

“I’m afraid I canna let you go home, Sarah,” he said.

“You have no choice,” she said, steeling herself against herself. “I helped you. I hid you. I will lead you to your friends. That is all you can ask of me.”

“It’s not for me,” he protested. “It’s for you. Don’t you understand? I can’t let you win this argument, lassie. Until I can clear my name, you run the risk of being arrested for helping me. Do you want your family to suffer the same thing? You’ll be much safer with me, and the others will be much safer without you. I’m sorry. Ye’ll stay with me wherever I go.”

“No,” she insisted, feeling the panic ignite in her chest. “I cannot. I am not being difficult, Ian. I swear. But it is impossible for me to go farther than the entrance to the Fairy Steps.”

“I willna argue with you, lass.” He was furious. She could feel it pulsing off him.

“You’re not thinking,” she insisted, trying any argument but the truth. “If you keep me away from my home, no matter the reason, what reputation I have will be lost, and that will reflect on the rest of the house. It will ruin Artie’s chances.”

“Even if you’re invited to stay with the Duke of Dorchester?”

His arrogance took her breath. “Do you always make such crackbrained assumptions?” she demanded. “How can you possibly think the Duke of bloody Dorchester is going to welcome a bastard into his home when Princess Charlotte is expected?”

It was the wrong thing to say. Ian’s head snapped up. “The Princess?”

She felt as if she were smothering. “The reason your friends are at Ripton, I assume. The duke is holding a house party for her.”

His grin was mad, his arms thrown wide. “Well, that settles it, doesn’t it? How better can your reputation be protected? As for your presentability, if there are Rakes at that party, there is no question that you’ll be welcome as long as we deem it necessary. Now, get on the horse or I’ll throw you there myself.”

She didn’t even remember turning away from Ian or throwing the loop of rope onto the ground where it lay like a dead snake. Suddenly she was just stalking down the hill, tears of frustration and fury burning her throat. She couldn’t go with him, and she couldn’t explain. She might as well just go home.

She made it to the road before she heard Harvey’s plodding steps behind her.

“Don’t be a child, Sarah,” Ian said, sounding unforgivably as if he were chastising an infant. “We don’t have time for it.”

If only she could get back to Fairbourne, she thought. She could simply walk west until she saw the ridiculously ornate posts the last baronet had topped with Italian marble. Turn in, walk up to the house, and resume her life. Regain her heart.

Except she was very afraid her heart no longer lay at Fairbourne.

“If you refuse to listen to me, “ she said, “it is pointless for me to continue. Go on your own. Follow the signs to Beaminster and then to Cerne Abbas. The Hall is on that road. You cannot miss it.”

“Sarah, stop it!” Ian snapped, grabbing her arm.

She tried to pull away. He wouldn’t let her. Again, like in the cellar, he simply swept her into his arms and silenced her with a kiss. Again, thought and objection vanished. Her emotions raging, she grabbed him hard and kissed him back, open-mouthed and hungry, with tongue and teeth and every inch of her body pressed so tightly to his she was surprised she didn’t push him back onto the ground.

Lightning struck. Blood surged and thickened, and her heart, struggling to keep up, thundered in her ears. She felt his great, hard hands wrap around her and hold her frozen, felt the pounding of his heart against her breast and the intrusion of his cock against her belly. Oh, sweet God, she wanted him. She wanted to simply disappear into him, needing nothing but this fire, this exquisite pain his kiss woke in her chest, her belly, the hollow inside her that had never been filled. She wanted to weep with it, to sing, to shriek like that fabled banshee, as if calling her own death.

She had no idea how she did it, but she pulled away. He resisted, claiming her mouth, cupping her head against him so she couldn’t move. But when she protested, pushing against his massive chest, he stopped. He was gasping for air, just as she was, and trembling like beech leaves in a high wind. Sarah shuddered at the strength of his passion. She closed her eyes against the need for him and laid her head against his still-heaving chest.

“You cannot…keep ending arguments like that,” she protested weakly.

His surprised chuckle reverberated through her, like the hum of the earth itself. “Can you think of a nicer way?”

She smacked him with her open hand. “You don’t have time for nice, Ian. You need to get on before you’re caught.”

“And you need to come with me.”

“Ian . . .”

He pulled back, glaring down at her. “Do you think I
liked
terrifying your family? Do you even remotely believe that I consider this all a farce, or my decision to bring you with me to Ripton is a capricious whim? These are killers, Sarah. They are relentless, and they are merciless. And I will
not
leave you behind to face them. And even if I had ever thought to do so, how can I allow you to remain alone to face your cousin? He has shown his hand. He doesn’t have the nerve to hurt the other women. But you are a different matter altogether. Now be a good girl and resign yourself to your fate.”

Tears welled in her eyes. She lifted her hand to his whiskery cheek. “And don’t you think I would go willingly if it was better to do so? I
cannot.
I cannot show my face at Ripton Hall, and all the Rakes in the world will not change that.”

“Why the hell not?” he demanded, peering down on her. “Why are you in such a fidge over having the Duke of Ripton invite you to stay for the weekend?”

Suddenly so weary she struggled for her next breath, she scrubbed at her face. “Ian,” she said. “The Duke of Ripton will never allow me inside his home, and if you ask it, you will only make things worse. If you force the issue, I will find a way to stop you. And your insisting that I go changes nothing.”

“Why?” Ian asked, his voice sharp with impatience, holding her by the arms. “Do you think they’ll eat you?”

She sighed, bile burning her throat. “I think he will turn me away, just as he has the last two times I breached the walls. Or he will have me arrested, just as he’s threatened.”

“But why?” Sincerely bemused. Seriously concerned.

She sighed, out of options. “Because, you nodcock. He’s my brother.”

Chapter 14

Ian looked as if she’d struck him. “He’s what?”

“Ian, it is not complicated.” She stepped away again, praying for a bit of reason, not sure whether she was hurt by his confusion or amused by it. “The duke is . . .”

She never got the chance to finish. Suddenly Harvey lifted his head and whuffled. Sarah and Ian turned in the same direction, dead silent, waiting.

There. Horses. A herd of them, it seemed, racing along Uplime Road from Lyme.

“Oh, no,” Sarah breathed, frozen. “What are they doing here?”

Ian didn’t answer. He just grabbed her around the waist and threw her onto Harvey’s back. Swinging up behind her, he kicked the horse into motion and turned up the hill. Below, a troop of soldiers thundered past without pause, and it looked as if riding right alongside the lieutenant, was Old George.

“You arranged this?” she asked Ian.

He shrugged. “I think George was a bit early. It means we must be off, lassie.”

She couldn’t seem to turn away from the direction of Fairbourne, as if she could help the women simply with her worry. Harvey crested the hill and Ian again pulled him up. “You said you would get me to the Fairy Steps,” Ian said. “Will you do that?”

For a long moment, still facing west, she held her silence. She wanted to tell him no. She wanted to tell him to go to hell. She wanted to wrap her arms around his waist and sob into his shirt front, because he didn’t understand, and she couldn’t explain.

Was there any place on earth she craved more than Ripton Hall? Was there any place that gave her more pain? Maybe someday she would be allowed to walk back in the front door without footmen chasing her down. Maybe she could embrace her sister without fear of punishment. Her sister, Lizzie, who, it seemed, had known all along of their relationship. Maybe…someday.

“Yes,” she finally conceded. “I will take you as far as the Fairy Steps. Beyond that, I would not be welcome and no help to you.”

“We’ll figure it out as we go, Sarah,” he said.

Before she had a chance to argue, Ian gathered the reins, gave Harvey a nudge, and set him to an easy trot east across the rolling farmland. They reached another coppice, the trees only identifiable as even darker shadows. His one arm tight against Sarah’s waist, Ian walked Harvey through the thick darkness as if he could see.

“Tell me about the Fairy Steps,” he said, his breath a warm breeze in her hair.

A delicious chill chased down her body, briefly stealing her attention. She shuddered with the pleasure of it. It took her a moment to recover her senses.

“There is a secret way into Ripton Hall,” she finally said. “Caves. No one is sure who did it, but steps have been carved, tunnels expanded. The dukes have been using them since at least Elizabeth to sneak out for a bit of fun and religious rebellion.”

“How did you learn about them? You didn’t live there, did you?”

“No. I was adopted by the Reverend and Mrs. Tregallan, distant relations. He held one of the duke’s livings in a nearby village.”

It had been the duchess who had found Sarah in that orphanage. Her real father’s wife. Sarah had only been three, but how could a child forget such a vision of elegance? A tall lady with soft hands, such gentle eyes, and a stern voice when turned on adults. One of Sarah’s most precious memories was holding the duchess’s hand as they walked out of that fetid, stinking place. She had been fascinated by kid gloves ever since.

“Sarah?”

Startled, she realized she had been silent for a while. “I believe I told you before that when I was a little girl, the Tregallans would take me up to visit the duke’s house. I don’t remember ever meeting the duke or my brother. The duchess, however, was kind.”

Amazingly so, considering the fact that Sarah had been born only a month before Lizzie. Sarah remembered Lizzie from the visits. Two or three times the vicar had misjudged his timing, and the duchess had still been with her little girl, a tiny, plump thing with the same ruffled dresses and shining blond hair as her baby doll. Sarah remembered that particularly, because she had thought them something magical.

She had once even tried to talk to the little girl. Mrs. Tregallan had lectured her for days on her presumption. Bad girls didn’t deserve to make friends with the daughter of a duke. Sarah almost smiled. A bad girl
had
made friends with the daughter of a duke, though. Good friends.

“Was that when you heard about the tunnel?” Ian asked, his voice soothing in the dark. “When you were taken on your visits?”

“We used to leave by the Fairy Steps to sneak out when we overstayed our visit.”

She had been so frightened of that dark, dank tunnel with the wan lantern light that shuddered over the walls, and the chitter of bats following them into sunlight. She had sworn never to step inside again.

“When did you find out?” Ian asked. “About your father.”

“When I was at the academy. I always knew I was someone’s by-blow. I never thought to ask whose. But when I was admitted to school, the Tregallans made sure to impress on me the difference between myself and the other girls. Especially Lizzie.”

Do not ever presume to bring yourself to her attention,
Mrs. Tregallan had ordered, thin lips taut.
You are only able to attend at the sufferance of the duchess, and she will not want her husband’s by-blow to sully her daughter’s good name.

But Mrs. Tregallan had been wrong. Lizzie
had
acknowledged her. Dear, solemn Lizzie, to whom she had never been able to say good-bye.