The Art of Ruining a Rake (6 page)

He eased and folded his hands over the head of his walking stick. He rocked it to and fro, once again the picture of carefree gentility.

How she envied his calm.

How she despised his indifference.

“My busy little bee,” he said with an amused chuckle. “I’ve come with a request. Before you slice me through for making yet another pointless proposal, let me explain.”

He waited patiently, seeming unaware of the methodical
tick-tock
motion of his walking stick, or her desire to snatch his stick and clobber him with it.

She tightened her arms across her stays. “I haven’t time for games. If you mean to say something, speak. Otherwise, remove your despicable person from my property.”

He studied her calculatingly, visibly changing his tactic. Had he expected her to be glad of his return? When he’d driven her to sacrifice her livelihood right here on this desk? How little he understood her.

“I danced with a young lady last night,” he said, his tone revealing no hint of agitation.

She dug her fingernails into her upper arms and stared mutely at him. What reaction he’d hoped to provoke in her, she could only guess. But she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of her jealousy. Even as she sensed herself blanch, as she felt her brows draw together and eyes narrow with fury, she didn’t speak.

“Not much different from you,” he continued, using a kid-gloved hand to motion toward her face, “with tip-tilted brown eyes and a ripe little mouth. Oh, I wanted her to smile at me. I wanted her to kiss me. I wanted to steal her away into a darkened room and whisper sweet nothings into her ear.”

Lucy almost launched herself across the desk. Before she could betray her fury, she caught herself. She grasped the two wooden boxes and gripped their edges until splinters dug into her skin. It was tempting to fling the heavy crates at his head, one after the other, and hear his yelps of surprise.

But she didn’t do it. She didn’t
have
fits.

“You
scoundrel,
” she said through tightly clenched teeth. “How dare you flaunt your conquests in my face?”

He peered at her with unabashed confusion. In spite of her mounting temper, he remained roguishly at ease. “Am I wrong for wanting
you,
Lucy? Because that’s my life. I’ve thought of nothing else since you left me. No
one
else. Did I see a woman last night and want her? Yes. Was it because she looked like you? I do not doubt it. Has it happened before?” He took a step closer. “I think you know the answer to that. But did I want
you
?” Before she could draw a breath—before she could make good on her desire to launch a crate at his temple—he turned away.

Poignant anguish hit her. He’d
danced
with someone else. Had
eyes
for someone else. Every dark-haired debutante was fair game to him, just as she’d suspected. She was one of many.

And yet, he’d returned to her.

Again.

Why?

From this vantage, only his finely chiseled profile was visible. She hungrily memorized the slant of his aristocratic cheekbones, the apex of his chin. The fullness of his lips as he said, “You used to follow Ashlin around the estate. You were, what now? Five years of age?”

Her grip on her boxes eased.
Any
line of conversation was better than discussing his penchant for brunette lovelies. “I came out of leading strings when you turned twelve,” she grudgingly confirmed.

His lips turned upward as he circled toward her. “Ah, yes. My amusing Lucy-let, bobbing behind us like a plain little Jane. Your brother groaned every time he heard the pitter-patter of your slippers. But soon you were eleven years of age, all questions and mischief, asking after my first year at Cambridge.”

Her heart made an embarrassing turn in her chest. How fine-looking he’d been as a young man returning for the summer holiday! She’d thought him a god, sprung directly from the head of Zeus.

Roman grinned self-deprecatingly, causing another flip in her breast. “Did I have stories fit for a young girl’s ears? What man of eighteen does? But I couldn’t stand to disappoint you. My little Lucy-let.”

She forgot her desire to box his ears—almost. It was so much easier to be incensed with him when he fed her absolute rubbish. But
this.

How could any woman resist tales of herself as a silly child, as relayed by the man she’d adored?

 
“And then?” she prodded, disturbed by the faintness of her voice. She ought to be immune to his attempt to draw her into his seductive web.

Clearly, she was not.

“And then?” he repeated with a provoking grin. “You aged just enough to become intolerable.”

Flustered laughter bubbled. She raised her fingers to her lips. The same fingers that, only moments earlier, had been preparing to gouge his merry blue eyes out. “How impolite!”

His grin broadened. “No self-respecting man can endure a fifteen-year-old girl’s fancy, Lucy. Surely I can be forgiven my inattention to you then.”

She sobered instantly. He must know she had more reason to refuse him than that.

Her hand rested on the edge of the box. This time, the wooden crate steadied her as her fight drained away. “If you think I rejected your suit because you didn’t love me when we were children…”

He held his arms outward, humbly presenting himself to her. The veritable rake claiming to be reformed. “You idolized me as a little girl. I think you were sweet on me last Season. I will not just
forget
that I made love to you yesterday. Let me court you properly, Lucy. Please.”

Her heart fluttered. Like a trapped bird, she wanted to escape. He was an adder, sinewy and deadly, his words a paralyzing venom. She would never admit how long she’d waited to hear him say such things and mean them.

But he couldn’t possibly be in earnest. She must be strong. Sensible. Roman Alexander loved no one but himself.

She shook her head, mournful to reject the words she’d yearned to hear for almost half her life. “Yesterday, you were adamant in your claim you’d loved me for ages. Last night, I became a woman you could easily replace with another. Today, you beg me to remember the boy who ignored me as a girl. Forgive me if I am not persuaded.”

With two strides he moved closer, until his thighs pressed against the front edge of her desk. Touching her through the wooden framework that conducted his pent energy along its grain. “You misunderstand me. I could dance a thousand dances. Make love to a hundred raven-haired sirens. None of them would know me as you do. I have loved you since the day of your come-out ball. There
is
no one else, Lucy. There has never been.”

She flagged against the boxes. Her weary heart couldn’t take much more of this impassioned tripe. Surely this
was
tripe, seasoned and served with a liberal helping of unreliable memories.

His vivid gaze held hers. “Believe me when I say I would not have come to Bath were it not for the possibility of your forgiveness. Allow me to make amends. Please.”

She sucked in a breath. She didn’t have to
believe
him. But there was something undeniably wonderful about having a self-assured man throw himself at her feet. Something empowering and strange and delightful.

What more restitution did she need than the satisfaction of knowing she’d brought a notorious rake to heel?

“Very well,” she said, making the difficult decision to remove her boiling resentment from its cookstove. The damage was done. Allowing her resentment to simmer would only lead to thoughts she didn’t want to think, and emotions she didn’t want to feel.

She had more important things to do with her limited energies than nurture a long-standing grudge. In a few short hours, she must be away from Bath. She had nowhere to live but in Trestin’s house, unless she was able to devise a new scheme while in Gloucester, where she was to pass Christmastide with her sister and brother-by-law.

Lucy abandoned her wooden defenses and walked around her desk to face Roman head-on. “I forgive you. Gratifying though it is, I’ve no need of more groveling from you.”

His melancholy disappeared. Because Roman, above all things, was an actor. She ought never to forget it.

“Thank heavens,” he said, collapsing into the nearest chair. One leg bent at the knee; the other stretched before him as he rested his chin on his fist. “You’ve no idea of my relief. I couldn’t bear another day of you being cross with me.”

A sentiment so full of masculine conceit, she couldn’t help but issue an acerbic laugh. “As if I have nothing on my mind but you!”

He glanced up in surprise. “Haven’t you?”

She cast her hands into the air to indicate her treasured office in disarray, and the greater building that had been her home. “This was my school. My life’s work. Now I have nothing.”

He watched her with a bewildered expression. But how could he understand her despair? He did nothing useful with his time. Even his seat in the House of Lords stood empty, and all he was required to do for that was turn up.

She flattened her hand against the plank of her desktop. “I had this school. It was my passion. Now it shall be…I don’t know. A haven for girls with more sense than I’ve shown. And me, destined to become a woman without meaning, a burden to those I love best.”

Roman frowned and turned his face to rest his cheek against his hand. “Ashlin won’t see you that way.”

“He won’t,” she agreed. “He thinks I should be content with my watercolors and my needlepoint. Forgive me if I desire more from my life than days of sitting idle.”

Roman continued to watch her with an unfathomable expression. “Such as?”

She sighed. “I don’t expect
you
to understand why I crave a living of my own.”

His frown deepened as he struggled to comprehend. “Surely you don’t begrudge your brother his birthright.”

She crossed her arms and peered down at him. “My role should not be dictated by someone else, simply because he has been declared lord over me.”

Roman straightened. Bloodless lines formed at his lips. “Those who are born to rule must be allowed to do so.”

An odd sentiment for him to have. “As Lord Antony manages Plymbridge Hall?” she asked, referring to his younger brother.

Roman laughed darkly. “Tony is absolutely certain God sent us down in the wrong order.”

Her battle to remain indifferent ended there. She understood his frustration better than most. Certainly, she’d never lived up to her brother’s expectations. She even felt a touch ashamed she’d needled Roman about it earlier. “If Lord Antony is a tyrant, it’s only because he’s jealous.”

Roman tilted his head quizzically. “Do you think so?”

A question she might be able to answer without revealing too much of the years she’d spent cataloguing his every movement. She smoothed her skirts and nodded. “You remember my youth. Let me tell you what I recall about Lord Antony’s. Even as a boy, your brother spent his days in the offices. When I toddled behind you and Trestin or chased Lord Dare and Lord Constantine through the heather, he was never with us, was he? I think it must have been very lonely, knowing such responsibility at a young age.”

Roman bit the end of his thumb. Then he looked up. “But is he jealous? Of me?”

She wanted to say yes, yes, of course he was. Roman was beautiful and charming and the dashing lord every young lady dreamed of marrying. Even her.

Yet his flaws were numerous enough and significant enough they couldn’t be set aside, no matter how she wished to soothe his pride.

She chose her answer carefully. “Lord Antony raised himself to be the heir, yet he must know that eventually you will marry and produce a child. How can he
not
feel resentful? He has no property of his own. As an elected official, his true place is in the House of Commons. Listening to lectures is a very dull existence for a man who loves to be in the thick of things, who loves to be needed.”

Roman nodded slowly. His eyes locked with hers. “Am I not needed, then?”

She reached out to reassure him that he was desperately needed, but quickly withdrew her hand. “
We
need you.”

His fair-haired brows rose with interest. “Oh?”

She scrambled to redact any impression
she
needed him. “Brixcombe. Boredom is the bane of country existence.”

He pulled a dissatisfied face and looked away. “Is that all I’m worth? For an enjoyable evening, invite Lord Montborne to call?”

His discontent was palpable. But why? Wasn’t this the life he’d chosen for himself?

She
wouldn’t marry him, no matter how handsome and enthralling she found him. As unlikely as it seemed, perhaps she’d caused him to doubt himself. “Have you spoken to Lord Antony about this?”

Roman shuddered. “We’re men, Miss Lancester.”

“You’re brothers.” When it was clear her point was lost on him, she couldn’t help but throw her hands upward in exasperation. “Very well, don’t
tell him. What are you doing to right things between you?”

Roman regarded her with a helpless expression. “What can I? Tony has the estate wrapped around his finger. Now there is the matter of the quarry. I did try, Miss Lancester, but there is simply so much
work
.” He pulled another face, this time one of utter misery.