The Rake of Hollowhurst Castle (3 page)

‘Thank you for knowing my capabilities better than I do myself, Sir Charles, and on such a short acquaintance, as well.'

‘Ten years is no trifling term, ma'am.'

‘It
is
when we barely knew each other even then and have not seen each other to speak to since my eldest sister's wedding to your cousin nine years ago.'

‘Then we can look forward to improving our friendship, can we not? Especially as we're to be such close neighbours.'

‘I hope you don't expect me to be overcome with delight at the prospect,' she muttered just loudly enough for him to hear her, then fixed a false, social smile and hoped he knew how much she'd love to slap him. ‘So we are,' she said aloud with a forced lightness he'd be a fool to mistake for cordiality. ‘Pray, how long do I have to remove myself from here, sir, or do you wish me to decamp tonight?'

‘I would never be so hardhearted, Miss Courland, despite the fact you obviously think me capable of any crime short of murder.' He gazed at her through the increasing gloom and she saw his eyebrows rise in apparent amusement, the infuriating devil! ‘Ah,' he went on, the laughter she'd once listened for so eagerly running through his deep voice in a warm invitation to share his amusement, ‘so you don't set even that limit on my villainy.'

‘Of course I do,' she spluttered as the good manners everyone had tried so hard to drum into her made a weak attempt to control her temper and, she had to admit it to herself, her pain. ‘I can tell you're not a monster.'

‘Can you, my dear Miss Courland? I doubt it, but take as long as you like to gather your new household about you, and take what you want with you, so long as you leave me some furniture and a bed to sleep in.'

‘I'll take no more than is mine,' she informed him haughtily, seething at his apparent belief that she'd strip the house to its bare bones in some vulgar attempt at revenge.

‘And have the neighbourhood accuse me of turning you out with not much more than the clothes on your back? That really wouldn't do my credit any good in the district, now would it? I claim the privilege of changing my mind and will return tomorrow to make sure you don't distort my good intentions into infamy, Miss Courland, and leave with little more than the clothes you stand up in. I'd be a scandal and a hissing in the area if I turned you out with such apparent cruelty.'

‘I doubt it,' she said impatiently, imagining the effect his looks and wealth would have on the local ladies. ‘Do as you please, sir, and, as this is your house, I certainly can't stop you coming and going as you please.'

‘You can so long as you persist in not employing a chaperone.'

‘Whatever follies I choose to commit are mine, Sir Charles, and have nothing to do with you.'

‘They do when you make yourself extraordinary by them. You're the sister of one of my oldest and dearest friends, Miss Courland, and while you might have run rings round him however early he got up in the morning, I'm no easygoing David Courland in search of a quiet life.'

‘That's self-evident,' she told him darkly, those good manners she'd congratulated herself on threatening to
slip away if she yielded to temptation and punched him on his patrician nose as she longed to do.

‘Good, then, as we've established I'm certainly not your brother, hadn't we better consider how we're to remedy your chaperone-less state?'

‘No,
we
had not. If I'm to be saddled with one, I'll select her myself. Indeed, it would be highly improper for a man like you to select a duenna for a single lady.'

‘True,' he said without noticeable shame, ‘but I do have the odd female relative, you know. And one or two respectable friends who've yet to cast me off, who have ladies to lend their aid if I explain your situation.'

‘You do surprise me, sir.'

‘I always endeavour to confound expectations, ma'am, especially when they're so very low.'

‘I'm quite sure you do, but pray don't put yourself to the trouble of disproving mine. I look forward to us seeing very little of one another once I've packed up and left Hollowhurst for good. You'll be far too busy managing such a large estate to worry about socialising with your neighbours for a while, and I intend to travel, so I dare say we'll hardly ever meet. My brother isn't the only member of our family possessed of itchy feet,' she lied.

I
n fact, Roxanne would have been content to continue at Hollowhurst for the rest of her life if fate had only allowed it, but she needed an excuse to avoid the new owner of her beloved home in the months to come. Travelling would do as well as any other plan, and was far better than staying and risking being charmed out of her fury by the very man who'd just deprived her of useful occupation.

‘But I hope you don't plan to set out just yet, and certainly not alone?'

‘That, sir, is my business.'

‘In so far as you are of age I suppose that's true, but David asked me to look to your welfare and happiness in his absence and I warn you that I fully intend to do so. I suspect we're both about to discover that there's no stricter mentor for a lady of quality than a reformed rake, Miss Courland.'

‘Then you're reformed, are you, Sir Charles? I can't claim to have seen any indication of it so far.'

‘You may not think so, ma'am, but you've enjoyed the fruits of my good intention ever since I walked in and found you communing with the twilight.'

‘I have? How fortunate for me.'

‘Fortunate indeed,' he returned blandly and even through the gloom she'd be an idiot to mistake the wolfish glint in his eyes for anything but what it was and feel unease, despite her determination not to let him fluster or intimidate her.

‘Then perhaps you'd take yourself back to wherever you came from for the night, Sir Charles, since it would be such a shame to spoil it all now.'

‘Yet something tells me you're truly wild at heart. Do you secretly prefer recklessly courting danger to pretending respectability, Miss Courland?'

‘Don't presume to know me,' she snapped back, much tried and confused by her own reactions to the veiled threat in his husky voice.

She'd got over the idea that Charles Afforde was put on this earth to be her destined mate many years ago. He was a dangerous rake and, despite his undoubted heroism in battle, she doubted he made a single move on land without calculating its effect. Why, then, was her silly heart racing with excitement like some mad moth sighting a brilliant light and speeding towards it, eager for its own destruction? She was woman enough to know he'd just introduced his sensual appetites and experience into this shadowy encounter, but she was old and wise enough not to call his bluff now, wasn't she?

‘Then discovering your secrets will add spice to the
game, my dear,' he mused, almost as if he was talking to himself; suddenly he was very close.

It was so dark now she could only gauge his intentions by the tension in his silence and a hint of something new and unsettling in the outline of his powerful body. Then he lowered his head and captured her lips with his and only that contact sparked between them like lightning, but such a contact that she felt half-scorched and half-terrified. She was free, she told herself with little effect; she could disengage from the searing touch of mouth on mouth and be in sight of sanity in a mere breath. Yet the clamour of emotions and curiosity that took over her reeling senses wouldn't let her move.

His mouth was surprisingly soft on hers; deliberately unthreatening, a cynical voice informed her sternly, but she blocked her inner ear to it. The sensual reality of Charles Afforde's kiss on her eager lips at last overcame her defences with no effort at all and she felt him deepen the pressure of his kiss with such a warm welcome, she bitterly decided when she reviewed events later, that she might as well have offered him everything he hadn't already taken from her and let joy be totally unconfined. Not that joy made much of an effort to restrict itself as her mouth opened under his in a wanton response to his more insistent caress. She felt such a lift of her silly heart that he might be excused for thinking her an experienced flirt, if not a full-blown sensualist.

But wouldn't he know the feel of one of those abandoned women when he met one, for it would only be the sort of welcome he was used to? That hated, warning voice was at it again, even as the sound of his breath hitched just a second or two quicker than usual. She struggled between the heady notion that he wasn't used
to such fire flaring between him and his lovers and the cold voice of common sense. Then he opened his sinfully tempting mouth on hers and silently asked for something even more intimate. Gasping in breath they could only share, so close as they were, she succumbed to heat and pleasure and curiosity and opened for him as he silently demanded.

Now she was done for, even at the moment when he'd proved himself a rake, after all. His tongue first probed the swollen wetness of lips that finally knew what they'd been made for, then delved within, as if exploring the most exquisitely delicious sensation he'd ever encountered. He gave an unconscious hum of satisfaction in his throat that woke her sensual self from its silly daydreams and showed her just how potent a kiss could be. A flush of heat threatened to melt her as he openly revelled in the chaos he'd wrought, the feel of him seducing and plundering with her absolute consent warming her primly covered bosom and suddenly rosy cheeks in a sharp flush of need that warned what untold, forbidden pleasures he still had left to teach her.

Breathing fast and shallow, she forced herself to jump back from him as if he'd scalded her. He might well have done just that, she decided, and she wouldn't know the full extent of the damage until she had privacy and calm enough to assess it. Yet her mouth felt bereft as his kiss cooled on the chill evening air, and suddenly she felt the cold of the October night and noted the diamond wink of stars emerging in an almost frosty sky.

‘Oh, what have you done now?' she heard herself gasp out, as if protesting something crucially important, but also impossible.

‘I hardly know,' he replied and his deep voice was
hoarse with something that sounded like bemusement and regret, as if he had felt the wonder and novelty of that kiss as deeply as she. Which was a self-deceiving lie, of course; he'd kissed so many women he probably couldn't provide a full list of them even under torture!

‘Liar,' she accused softly and stepped back again so that the scent and heat and reality of him couldn't trip her senses again.

With distance came the full slap of sanity, and she was tempted to sink on to the cushioned window seat and cradle her silly head in her hands and weep. What had she done, for goodness' sake? Only actively encouraged a rake to believe her a great deal more willing to be seduced than she was and rekindled all those silly girlish fantasies of being kissed by her pirate prince. No, she wouldn't permit them to haunt her, and she resolved to avoid his company whenever possible, as they'd be living too close until she went on her travels.

‘I think you should leave now, Captain,' she heard herself say in a stiff voice that should tell him what a proper and starchy spinster she really was.

‘I believe you're right, Miss Courland,' he replied softly and the thread of something she couldn't quite read in his deep voice tantalised her with ifs and maybe's, but she stalwartly shrugged them aside.

‘The Feathers does an excellent ordinary,' she went on blithely, as if she had no idea he could make her forget her own name with an idle kiss.

‘My thanks, but I have good friends living not ten miles away.' For some reason he sounded as if he didn't relish being dismissed as a lightweight who'd forget what had just happened on the promise of a hot meal and a soft bed for the night.

‘Indeed?' she replied with a haughty look that was probably wasted in the gloom. ‘Then I'll call for a groom to light you to your destination.'

‘No need, it's a fine starlit night and I have my private servant and a groom with me. It's more than time we were on the road if we're to reach my friends' house before they retire for the night, so I'll wish you a good night, Miss Courland,' he replied, and she could just discern his quick bow of farewell before she could ring for a lantern to guide his way. ‘Rushmore will have acquired a light by now,' he assured her shortly.

‘Goodbye then, Sir Charles,' she said, wishing there was the slightest hope he wouldn't return to haunt her.

‘Until tomorrow,' he confirmed, and she listened to his assured steps as he found his way down the hall and into the early darkness, seemingly without the slightest hesitation.

She waited until she heard three sets of hoofbeats retreat down the drive before she rang the bell for candles and all the help she could muster. There was a great deal to do before she could sleep tonight if she was to be all but gone when Sir Charles arrived in the morning. Another encounter like that and she might do something even more ridiculous, and suddenly there were worse things than being evicted from her beloved home, after all.

 

While Hollowhurst Castle was jolted out of its accustomed calm by a mistress who'd become a whirlwind of frenetic energy, a dozen or so miles away Westmeade Manor was serenely comfortable. Charles tried not to envy his old friend Rob Besford, the younger son of the Earl of Foxwell, his contented domesticity with his
lovely wife and smiled as he contemplated what Miss Courland would think of such a disgrace to the rakehell fraternity as he was proving to be. Not a great deal, he suspected, and absently contemplated the intriguing task of changing her mind.

‘So will you do it, Charles?' Caroline Besford asked him.

Charles wondered cautiously what he was being asked to do, but luckily Rob took pity on him and explained.

‘My wife is asking you to be godparent to our next offspring in her own unique manner, Charles. On the principle that you've already committed most of the follies he or she will need to steer clear of if they're to grow into an honest and sober citizen, I suppose,' Rob Besford told him, looking lazily content as he lounged beside his very pregnant wife.

‘Couldn't you ask Will Wrovillton instead? After all, you plan to give this one his name,' Charles argued half-heartedly.

‘Only if it turns out to be a boy,' Caro said with a wicked sparkle in her eyes as she encouraged him to imagine the fate of a girl called William. ‘If it does, we want to name him after Rob's brother and James insists it must be a second name as it would cause too much confusion if there were two James Besfords, even though James is Viscount Littleworth as well, and I can't see it myself. We thought Charles James unkind, since Charles James Fox has only been dead for a decade or so. So we couldn't name this one after you
and
Rob's brother, Charles. Maybe next time,' she ended with a teasing look at Rob that he carefully ignored.

‘With Fox having been so fiery a Whig and notoriously profligate with it, it'd be a backhanded turn to
serve any brat to name him so, I suppose, but did Will turn down your offer to make him the child's godfather after landing him with William James as a name instead?' Charles asked suspiciously.

‘He couldn't turn us down because we can't find him. No doubt he's knee-deep in some daft venture,' Rob replied with exasperated resignation.

‘With his wife at his side,' Charles agreed with a reminiscent smile, for if ever he'd come across a fine pair of madcaps they were Lord Wrovillton and his highly unconventional lady.

‘That's a certainty, I should say,' Caro confirmed.

‘She's as bad as he is,' Charles pointed out.

‘Worse,' she agreed placidly, considering Alice, Lady Wrovillton, was her best friend, ‘and it's my belief you never forgave Alice for marrying Will instead of you, Charles.'

‘No, it's Rob I'm furious with for wedding the one woman I'd gladly sacrifice my single status for,' he argued solemnly and for a moment Caroline looked horrified, until she noticed the wicked glint in his brilliantly blue eyes and threw a cushion at him.

‘Boy or girl, your coming child has no more chance of growing up a sober citizen with you two as parents than its big sister has, and she has my sympathy, by the way,' Charles informed her with mock severity. ‘It's clearly my duty to set a better example to your children and, as little Sophia is halfway to being as big a minx as her mama, I might as well start earlier with the next one.'

‘More than halfway, if you ask me—so you'll do it, Charles?' Rob asked, as if the answer really mattered to
him, despite Charles's rakehell reputation and apparent unsuitability as a spiritual guide.

‘Gladly,' Charles agreed at last, touched to be asked, watching the besotted look on Rob's face as he smiled at his wife and feeling the lure of seeing a wife of his own great with his child.

First of all he'd need to marry one, of course, and that might prove more of a challenge than he'd expected. Rosie Courland with her ardent dark eyes and wild midnight curls had become a strong woman with guarded dark eyes and tightly restrained midnight curls, so what of his promise to win and wed her that he'd made Davy Courland now? An idea born of guilty conscience on Davy's side and convenience on his, perhaps, but he needed a capable wife to help him run his new house and estates, even if tonight it had all felt much less convenient and more urgent. Memory of their kiss in the twilight threatened to spin him into a world of his own again, so he forced himself to concentrate on the matter in hand.

‘If she's a girl, you might run off with her yourself one day, of course, so we'd best find you a wife to save Rob killing you,' Caro teased roguishly.

‘You, my girl, haven't improved at all with marriage and motherhood,' he replied sternly, hoping pregnancy would stop Caro from introducing him to half the neighbourhood when he'd just met the woman he was going to marry.

‘Never mind that,' Rob told his wife impatiently, obviously sharing Charles's fears. ‘Here's your maid come to cluck over you and quite right for once. It's high time you were in bed, Caro.'

‘Only if you'll take me there,' she said with a wicked
smile and a shameless lack of hospitality Charles could only applaud.