The Last Days of a Rake (2 page)

To plot someone’s downfall while they are unaware carries a thrilling, dangerous weight, and the power can be as intoxicating as a fine brandy. All the way to Miss Susan Bailey’s family home in Kent, Lankin pondered the approach, the seduction, the surrender and his triumph. By defying time-honored traditions, he thought, working up his courage (which, in truth, was flagging) he was striking a blow against societal expectations and all the traps set by scheming chaperones and duplicitous maidens to snare unwary, unsuspecting young men into precipitate marriages. As much as he liked the young lady, he was not about to commit to a lifetime of harnessed plodding.

Miss Susan Bailey had a father, though he was rarely seen at the London gatherings planned to promote social intercourse. He left those matters to the chaperone he paid to guard his daughter’s most valuable commodity, her diamond-bright virtue. Lankin’s welcome by Mr. Bailey was gratifyingly hearty. He was given the best guest suite, with another room for his valet, then directed outdoors, where the young lady was spending the beautiful summer afternoon. A chaffinch hopped from hedge to hedge, chirping a merry greeting, as he found the object of his intentions in the garden with her sketching.

Miss Susan Bailey was as beautiful and luminous as Lankin remembered, innocent of any knowledge of his intentions. Gowned again in green, her blonde hair topped by a coquettish bonnet adorned with nodding pinkish flowers, she prettily cocked her head as she studied the object of her artistic endeavor, an enormous Grecian urn picturesquely tilted to spill out nasturtiums.

When she caught sight of him approaching, her cheeks suffused with a charming mantle of pink, and her blue eyes glowed. She threw down her sketching pad and rose, clasping her hands to her breast, inadvertently making the modest mounds swell above the square neckline of her walking gown. A more flattering and promising welcome he could not have imagined.

He suggested a walk, and she demurely agreed.

“I’m so pleased you decided to accept our invitation and come down to Kent, Mr. Lankin,” Susan said, as the couple strolled in the garden within view of her chaperone, who sat in a wicker chair on the terrace knitting.

“How could I stay away,” he said, sharpening the cutting edge of his charm, “with the lure of you, as fair a vision as I could ever imagine, welcoming me at the end of a long ride?” It had just occurred to him that even here in the country, in her home and with the more relaxed prospect of walks and rides and forest trails to explore, he could still lose the bet. Though his welcome had been warm, and Susan was still herself, gracious, sweet, smiling and lovely, she was just as well guarded in the country as she had been in town.

“But I thought you would…stay away, I mean,” she said, as she looked down at her gloved hands clasped together. “After our wonderful time during the season—dancing, walking, sharing so much—you refused my papa’s invitation to come stay. I…I was worried that you thought I had designs on your freedom.”

He glanced over at her then, as she slyly peeped at him from under the brim of her bonnet. She did indeed have such designs, he knew it in that instant, even as she looked hastily away, donning an expression of modest ingenuousness. She was scheming, no doubt with her papa’s aid, to entrap him. He hadn’t been sure before because she was delicate and never hinted at such an end, but that was just evidence of how capable she was in the bloodsport of husband-hunting. A veritable Diana with a cupid’s bow. His resolve hardened; not for him the marital leg hold. “My dear Miss Bailey, do you think I would ever do you the dishonor of believing you had designs?” he asked, deliberately obscure.

She glanced swiftly over at him and examined his expression with narrowed eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Such a plan would exhibit the utmost in indelicacy, would it not? Plotting to catch a husband, like any common little schemer. You would never stoop to such folly.”

She was silent, her eyes wide, and he decided it was his opportunity to begin a little trickery of his own. He assumed an expression of musing, furrowing his brow. “And aside from that, how could I betroth myself to a lady with whom I have shared only conversation?” he asked.

“I…I don’t understand,” she said, stumbling over her words.

He heard the indecision in her voice and knew that, contrary to her words, she did understand him, even as she said she didn’t. It was the moment to press his advantage. “We men are weak creatures, Miss Bailey. We crave the fulfillment of our physical needs, even as the ladies in our lives crave the ethereal food of tenderness and adoration.”

There was silence. He glanced toward the terrace and noted that the dragon was sleeping. Her knitting had dropped to the ground and her chin rested on her deep bosom. He took Susan’s arm and steered her toward a leafy bower beyond the hedges at the bottom of the knot garden. She did not protest.

In the shade of an elm, he turned her to face him and looked down into her blue eyes. “Susan, I care for you,” he said, with no prevarication.

Her breath caught, and she stared up into his eyes, her lips parted. “Oh, Mr. Lankin!” she whispered.

“But I fear that we would marry without ever knowing how well-suited we are, one to another.”

Marry. The word caught her undivided attention. She trembled and sagged toward him. She truly was the loveliest creature, all plump pink lips, rosy cheeks and delicious, cool blue eyes. He pushed her bonnet back and some stray tendrils of golden hair came loose from her coronet, lifted to frame her oval face by a breeze that infiltrated the bower. Lowering his face to hers, he touched her lips with his, reverently at first, but then with more urgent passion, until she cried out and struggled. He released her immediately and stepped back, doing his utmost not to show how moved he was by the sweet contours of her form and the breathless feel of her soft mouth against his.

“Mr. Lankin!” she protested, touching her lips with one gloved hand.

He gazed steadily at her—she stood staring back at him, her bosom heaving with emotion, tears trembling in her eyes—and acknowledged his own tenderness toward her, and something more, the yearning passion that held him captive, with desire in his loins and affection in his heart. There was a yawning precipice in front of him, a great, gaping maw, and the signpost at the lip said “Marriage”. Two words from him would have catapulted him into the abyss; if he had said, ‘Marry me’ in that moment, it would have all been over. He was an honorable man (was he not?), and would have held to his word if he offered marriage.

Wisely—or unwisely?—he held his tongue.

She was confused and torn. He could see it, and felt the indecision emanating from her in waves like heat reflected from a pane of glass in the sun. He let the silence stretch, for he needed the tension to build between them, so he could lead her one more step down the path toward his goal rather than toward hers. If Susan made one step down his path, she would become invested in the outcome as much as he, even if she felt it would have a different end than the one he anticipated. If she was wise, she would hold fast on her own road to marriage and respectability.

But she fancied herself in love, or perhaps she really did love him. Who can know a woman’s heart? There is so little to tell between the appearance and the truth of love, that few men can tell the difference.

She stepped toward him again, put her hands on his shoulders and said, “Edgar, do you truly care for me?”

“Can’t you tell?” he said, pouring all the trembling yearning in his body into his tone. “Susan, how could I not? You’re the only woman I think of, day in and day out!” Not one word was a lie.

“What do you want from me?” she asked, her gaze clouded with confusion.

So far, he had been completely truthful, but he didn’t think his goal could be accomplished by maintaining that honesty. He watched her eyes. They narrowed, and, for the first time, he realized she was perhaps a better judge of character than he had given her credit for being. If that was the case, he had better be convincing if he planned to win his bet. “I want to be sure, before we commit ourselves to a lifetime together.”

“Sure of what?”

He paused and looked deep into her eyes. “Susan, my dearest girl, I want to be sure of our love.” He almost had her, he could feel it. Love was the bait, marriage the goal, for her. She was on the line, but now he had to set the hook. “If only…” He paused and shook his head, looking away, assuming an anguished expression.

“‘If only’ what?” She rubbed her hands up his arms and touched his cheek, the satin of her glove smooth on his skin. “Speak to me, Edgar. You can tell me anything, ask me anything!”

“If only I knew for sure! Kissing you like that…I would almost swear we were meant to be together for eternity, but…” Again, the phrase left dangling.

She hugged him and laid her face against his chest. “I can hear your heart beating,” she whispered. “Edgar, listen to me. I’m sure. I have never felt like this before. The way you talk to me, the things we have in common, the times we are silent…it is all so…so delicious.”

He put his arms around her and let his hands slide down, almost to the provocative curve of her back as it sloped to her bottom. His breathing rate was increasing, his imagination running away with him as he thought of what he sought from her: Surrender. “Susan, I care for you a great deal, but I will not saddle you with my troubled self for a lifetime without being sure,” he murmured, his voice breaking artfully in just the right spot. “I’m not good enough for you, my dear, not nearly good enough for such an angel as yourself.” It was an inspired and cunning touch, for what girl could resist such an appeal to her valiant desire to make a man over into her own hero? “I drink too much wine, sweet girl, and my friends are disgraceful.” He shook his head, muttering “Shocking!” under his breath.

She responded perfectly. Her eyes glimmered with unshed tears as they trembled on her lashes, and her lip quivered. “You’re a good man, Edgar. I will not listen to you disparage yourself in that manner. I believe in you, and know you can reform if you but try. All those terrible friends would fall away from you if you married, so the temptation would disappear.”

He pushed away from her and turned his back, repressing a shudder at the life she was holding out to him as a shining hope. His friends gone? No gambling houses nor deep drinking? No more tupping the maids? Hell on earth. Dull, plodding, merciless boredom. He had to remember that was not about to happen. He sighed, letting his shoulders sag. “If only I could believe that.”

After a moment of silence, she circled him and nudged herself into his embrace again, looked up into his eyes and softly said, “What can I do to convince you we should be together forever?”

“I don’t know!” he cried, his tone full of anguish as he pulled away from her yet again.

She caught him to her, laying her head on his chest. “Tell me, my dearest, tell me. What can I do?”

At that moment, fate intervened. At first, Lankin thought it was the end of his plot, just when he had her where he wanted her, but as it turned out, it was quite the opposite.

“Susan!” a loud voice trumpeted. It was Lady Stoddart. She had awoken to find her charge gone.

“I have to go.” Susan softly said, looking over her shoulder toward the opening to the treed copse.

“Susan Bailey, where are you?” The voice was getting louder.

Trembling, Susan gazed up into Lankin’s eyes. “Meet me here tonight, about midnight,” she whispered. “I shall steal away after it is thought that I am abed. Meet me here—or rather, meet me at the cottage.”

“The cottage?” he asked.

“Yes. It is a folly on the hill in the copse of alders. You will see it if you go just beyond the stew pond and up the hill. Meet me there at midnight.” She fled from him on light feet, but looked back just before leaving the bower and blew him a kiss.

He caught it and put it to his chest. He knew in his heart that he had her, then. She would surrender. Triumph tempered by trepidation surged through him.

The room was silent after Lankin’s long, rambling story, and Hamilton thought his friend might be sleeping, but he turned his gaunt face toward the other man and sighed. Shrugging, Lankin turned his face away again before speaking.

“It was the moment in my life when I had the potential to go toward light and life and normalcy, or toward darkness and self-indulgence and loathsome hardheartedness,” Lankin said, staring at the ceiling. “I think you can guess which choice I, in my benighted idiocy, took.”

Hamilton watched him for a long moment, then said, “What was it that made your decision for you? The young lady was only doing what hundreds of girls do every season, what they are taught from the cradle to do—seek the safety and security of a kindhearted husband.”

“I’ve told you, John, I was willful, conceited and concerned only with my own happiness.”

“I’m not sure how your happiness could be secured by ruining her life?”

Lankin smiled, a ghostly rictus grin. “Ah, see, John, even you cannot help but judge. But you have the right of it. How can happiness ever be secured by someone else’s pain?” His smile died, for he was beyond stamina for such a bold expression. “How to explain?” he muttered.

He was silent for a long while. The house settled, as all old buildings do, like an ancient beldame, bones creaking and grateful sighs spilling from partly open lips. It groaned and muttered and finally silenced in the fitful sleep of the elderly. Hamilton began to wonder if his friend had given up the ghost, and was about to get a mirror to check for breath.

“I haven’t a real answer, John. I was absorbed wholly in my own wants, and I did not wish my pleasure-seeking life to end. I had made the bet, and I would win it. That’s all.”

“Tell me, then, what happened. But not in detail. I have no stomach for the downfall of such a sweet young lady as you have described.”

“Now you begin to understand my revulsion, when I look back on my youth. I will continue, though, not sparing myself, but not giving the most intimate details of poor Susan’s downfall.”