The Lure of a Rake (36 page)

“St. Albans, my good man. How are you?” the earl asked with boisterous cheer as he swiped the bottle of brandy and motioned for a servant.

Cedric studied the other man’s lazy movements; the way he poured himself a snifter full and then searched around for an available whore. Montfort caught the eye of one woman and the young beauty sauntered to their table. “How much?” Cedric asked quietly.

The earl blinked several times.

“How many silver pieces does it take to betray one’s friend?”

The beauty he’d previously summoned stopped before the table. “Not now, love,” Montfort murmured, his gaze still locked with Cedric’s.

Fury thrumming through him, Cedric concentrated on the safe, hollow sentiment, for it prevented him from thinking about the only person who truly mattered. The only woman who’d ever meant anything to him. “You bastard,” he seethed.

Montfort rolled his shoulders.

Cedric curled his fingers into hard fists to keep from bloodying the other man senseless. How had he ever called him friend? “Nothing to say?” he asked coolly when the other man remained silent.

“I gather you’re speaking about my involvement with your father?” With an infuriating calm, Montfort shrugged. “I didn’t do anything different than what you yourself would have done had you been in my shoes.”

Cedric surged forward, rattling the glasses on the table. “I called you my friend,” he bit out. Other gentlemen peered over in curiosity and he lowered his voice to a furious whisper. “I confided in you things I shared with no one. And knowing all of that, about the man I hate, you betrayed me, anyway?”

The earl tightened his mouth. “Oh, how difficult it must be for you,” he spat. He swiped his hand in Cedric’s direction. “You speak as though your life has been a rotten one. Why? Because you had a nasty father?” He leaned forward shrinking the space between them. “We all have miserable fathers. Children serve but one purpose. To advance our lines. Yet, you,” he peeled his lip back in a mocking sneer, “you act as though your father is somehow different. Hate him all you want.” He lifted his glass in salute. “But the man has built a fortune you’ll one day inherit, whereas men such as me are left in near dun territory because of my sire’s recklessness.”

Cedric sat unmoving, staring across the table to the man he’d called friend. How had he failed to see the ruthlessness in him? He’d long considered himself cut of the same proverbial cloth as the Montforts of the world and yet… “I do not even know you,” he said to himself, puzzling through a twenty-year friendship in the midst of one of the most scandalous clubs in London. “You knew about my fears and the goals I had and it mattered not at all. All you cared about was the coin dangled before you.”

“Oh, come,” the earl scoffed. “With your indignation and holier than thou attitude, you of all people would take me to task?
You
?” He placed a mocking emphasis that deepened Cedric’s frown. “You can hate me all you want and act the offended party for me having placed my own needs before yours.” Montfort jerked his chin in Cedric’s direction. “But you are the same as me.”

“I am nothing like you.” The denial sprung easily to his lips. “I would have never put my interests before yours.”

“No.” Montfort propped his elbows on the smooth surface of the table. “You’d only put yourself and your happiness before that of your wife.”

The air left him on a slow hiss and he opened his mouth wanting to refute those mocking words. To lash out with the truth that he was nothing like the Earl of Montfort or the Duke of Ravenscourt. And yet… His throat constricted so that it was painful to draw breath. Genevieve
was
proof that he’d always placed his needs and desires before anyone else’s.

“You see that I am correct,” Montfort observed. The too-casual earl picked up his glass and reclined in his seat. “You thought about your need for coin and saw the Farendale chit as the easiest way to fill your coffers while maintaining your dissolute lifestyle.” With every word uttered in truth, the blade of guilt twisted all the deeper. Montfort flicked his hand. “There is nothing wrong with that decision. Nor is there anything wrong with the lifestyle you live.” There had been everything wrong with it. Too many errors to now count. Too many sins he could not undo. Genevieve’s once smiling visage flashed to mind and pain wracked his heart. “You merely did what any gentleman would do.” Montfort held his gaze. “Just as I did. But allow me to buy you a drink and the comforts of a beautiful whore to make up for the ill-will.”

Bile singed the back of his throat. Cedric was everything like this man…and yet, at the same time, nothing. A commotion sounded at the front of the club, momentarily distracting, and he glanced past Montfort’s shoulder just as a servant pushed through the two men who stood as sentinels at the front of the club. A liveried servant. He furrowed his brow.
His
liveried servant.

What…?

The man, gasping and out of breath, skidded to a stop before his table with the hulking brutes racing after him. “My lord,” he said, panting from his exertions. He held out a note. “It is Her Ladyship.”

He cocked his head, not making sense of the words. “Her Ladyship?” he repeated dumbly. Unable to process. Not wanting to process. The world hung suspended in an unending moment of humming silence and then it resumed in a whir of noise. He ripped the sheet from the man’s hands and skimmed the words. His heart stopped.

“St. Albans?”

Montfort forgotten, Cedric surged to his feet so quickly his seat toppled over with a loud thwack. He sprinted from his club.

Heart pounding a frantic beat, Cedric raced outside, searching for the youth whom he’d turned his mount over to. Finding the boy, he rushed across the street, dodging past a quick moving phaeton. He concentrated on his every movement or else he’d descend into a level of madness that he’d never be able to climb back from.

Her Ladyship is unwell
.

His pulse beat loudly in his ears, muting sound. The handful of lines that said everything and nothing. Throwing a purse at the lad, Cedric swung his leg over his mount and kicked it forward into a breakneck speed that earned him furious stares and shouts.

He nudged Wicked ahead faster.

Why had he gone out?

Because she had no wish to see me. Because I was too much a coward to remain in the same townhouse with her and be reminded of the weight of my sins.

Terror licked at his senses as his ride stretched into forever. At last, his townhouse came into focus and he urged Wicked onward past other lords setting out in their carriages. He jerked on the reins and his mount reared, pawing at the air with his hooves. Cedric swiftly dismounted and a servant waiting outside hurried to collect the reins.

In wait, Avis pulled the door open.

“Her Ladyship,” he rasped as this moment unfolded in an eerily similar way of last night’s hell.

“Her ch-chambers, my lord.” He briefly noted the ashen hue and the tremble to the man’s words and it fueled his panic. “I summoned the doctor. He arrived a short while…” Letting those words to go unfinished, Cedric surged up the stairs, taking them three at a time.

He stumbled and then righted himself at the top landing and then tore down the hall. Sucking in ragged breaths from his constricted lungs, he staggered to a halt. Two ladies lie in wait outside his wife’s chambers. Tears stained the cheeks of his sister-in-law and terror anew licked at his every sense.

“Oh, Cedric,” Gillian whispered as he rushed over. She placed herself between him and the oak panel. “She is not well.” His heart lurched and he sought words. “I’ve summoned my mother.”

Incapable of words, he made to step around her just as a maid came out.

His stomach revolted at the bloodied rags she carried. The young woman averted her gaze. “You should not go in there, my lord.”

In a daze, Cedric stepped past his sister-in-law and entered the room. He froze in the doorway. A dull buzzing filled his ears and an inky blackness played at the corner of his eyes. Genevieve lay at the center of the bed, moaning. He shot a hand out to steady himself. The old family doctor who’d long served the St. Albans family looked up and said something to a young woman at his side.

“You should not be in here, my lord,” Dr. Craven murmured, rushing over. The doctor took him by the arm and steered him away, but not before Cedric’s gaze snagged on the crimson towels.

Blood. So much of it.
An agonized groan ripped from his throat. “Genevieve,” he roared. What had she done?
What did I make her do?

“Come, my lord. It will not do Her Ladyship well to see you like this,” the physician said with the same firmness he’d used when he scolded Cedric as he’d cried over his broken nose as a boy of eight.

“My wife,” he managed to rasp as the doctor closed the door behind him. His wife’s two loyal sentinels retreated, allowing Cedric his privacy. He dragged a trembling hand through his hair as his world threatened to ratchet down about him. “Will she l—be all right?” There was no life without Genevieve in it; no life that was worth living.

The doctor removed a kerchief and mopped at his damp brow. “Your wife will live.”

He slid his eyes closed on a prayer. “And you may rest assured, my lord, there will be others.”

Cedric opened his eyes and gave his head a shake. “Other what?” he demanded gruffly.

Surprise stamped the other man’s weathered face. “You did not know?”

“Know what?” The entreaty ripped from him.

“Her Ladyship was with child.”

G
enevieve was restricted to her bed, cared for by Dr. Craven, and suffering through the wrenching pain of her loss. An agony that defied the mere physical pain ripping at her insides, Genevieve found herself fixing on the ceiling to keep from going mad.

Except madness was a powerful thing. It licked at the corner of her mind, until all logic and reason disappeared under the cacophony of pain and despair. When insanity nearly dragged her under, she fought to stave it off.

It was then she’d first noticed the twelve cherubs in the mural above her bed. She’d come to notice one peculiar, particular detail each time. That particular number continued to surface.

From the doctor, to the maids, to her only two friends in the world, and even her mother, there were twelve people who’d alternated their presence over the course of the sennight.

It took Dr. Craven twelve steps to reach her bed and another twelve to march the same path out of her chambers.

There were twelve cherubs in the mural overhead.

And twelve letters in the name Cedric Falcot. Twelve more in Lord St. Albans.

And it had been twelve hours.

Twelve hours was all it had taken for her life to come apart.

In the early morn hour, with her maid hurrying about her room tucking her dresses and garments into her trunks, Genevieve lay on her side and stared at the opposite wall. With the brocade curtains tightly drawn, not even a hint of sunlight penetrated her chambers. The porcelain clock atop her mantel ticked the passing moments in a grating rhythm punctuated by Delores’ cheery whistling.

“Oh, I will be so sad with you gone,” Francesca said on a forlorn whisper.

Genevieve forced herself into a sitting position at the edge of her bed. It had been a fortnight since her world had fallen apart. But it wasn’t fair to wear her misery before Gillian and Francesca who’d been loyal, daily visitors.

“I still think it’s a rotten idea for you to leave,” Gillian grumbled, giving her a disappointed look. “It’s cowardly to leave. You should stay and fight for love.”

How beautifully innocent Gillian was. A believer in love triumphing over all. She gave her sister a gentle smile. “Sometimes love is not enough.”

A sound of impatience escaped her younger sister. “Rubbish. If you love one another then you can conquer all.” From where she stood at the vanity, Gillian planted her arms akimbo. “And I saw your husband. That man is in love with you.”

Francesca gave a concurring nod. “It is true. He’s seated like a stone statue outside your room whenever I come.”

Throughout the weeks, Cedric’s voice had penetrated the wood panel, but since he’d staggered into the room and then promptly out, she’d heard nothing more than his muffled words as he’d spoken to the doctor.

…will she live…?

…if anything happens to her, I will hold you accountable…

…By God, man, I do not care about a future heir, I care about her…

Her heart convulsed and she pressed her lids tightly closed to blot out the memory of those furious whispers; words that said so very much about Cedric’s regard for that now-gone life and also about her.

She’d never doubted Cedric cared for her in some way. Time had proven, however, they were friends and lovers, but never anything more. They’d never be a husband and wife in the truest sense. She’d held that dream ever since she had first arrived in London, bright-eyed and idyllic, seduced by the glittering world of London Society, all those years ago.

They would never be the bucolic couple upon the porcelain perfume bottle.

They would never be parents. Not because of the loss she’d suffered, but because she’d bound herself to a man who never wanted to be a father. The truth scoured her skin like jagged glass. But she’d not disabuse her friends of their romantic sentiments. “What has come to pass between Cedric and me…” she began softly. “It goes beyond love.” The chasm between them was a gulf so wide; of divergent dreams and wishes on every aspect of life.

She made the mistake of looking to the sketchpad on her nightstand. With her friend and sister debating the power of love, Genevieve leaned over and grabbed the book and flipped through the pages. Cedric’s visage danced along the fanning sheets. She paused. Her own countenance as she’d been on their wedding night, a lifetime ago, stared back. The clock continued to mark the passing moments and her heart squeezed painfully as she touched her fingertip to the face she’d sketched with Cedric’s hand guiding hers. The smile, the grin that reached all the way to her eyes, spoke of the naïve girl she’d been. Even with Aumere’s betrayal and her parents’ defection, there had been hope and laughter…and a dream for more.