The Reckless One (20 page)

He chanced to catch sight of his reflection in the mirror and frowned. This would never do. One simply couldn’t commence a seduction in a plain white periwig. He would see that the increasingly—and thankfully—close-mouthed Rankle prepared a lavender powder for his new bagwig for this evening.

But first… He moved to the wall and yanked on a silk bell pull. A footman arrived in a few minutes.

“Go to the conservatory and have the gardener cut several of whatever bloom is most exotic. Deliver them immediately to Miss Favor Donne with my regards and tell her I look forward to her company this evening.”

“Ah. Er. Yes,” the tall, strapping, and exceedingly ornamental young man said. “Ah. Sir?”

Unfortunately the best-looking of this sort were invariably the most dull-witted.

“What?” Carr snapped irritably. He’d much to do before this evening’s
soirée
began.

“Miss Donne ain’t going to be coming down to dine this evening, sir. Her old auntie sent her regrets, saying as how the young lady had the headache and how the old lady would sit by her.”

“Damnation!” Carr thundered. “Get out of here!” The footman began to bolt. “No. Wait. Go get the bloody flowers and deliver them to her anyway. With my regrets that she’s feeling vaporish.”

The footman ducked his head and backed out of the room. Carr slammed the door after him and commenced pacing.
Headache?
He’d been all set for the next part of his plan and now she had a
headache?
Of all the gall.

Clearly, Janet had done this to the chit simply to taunt him. Or maybe the chit had done this to Janet, simply to thwart her. It was hard enough understanding the primitive workings of one female mind but to have to deal with two conjointly! A lesser man would fail in so tortuous a task.

“The momentary aberration” Favor had promised would not return the day before had, apparently, returned. Not only did it cloud Favor’s mind, it had eclipsed her reason as well. Raine wasn’t even certain how it was they’d started kissing. And he didn’t care.

Then thought receded and pleasure took precedence as Favor’s soft lips found the base of his neck. He groaned as she nibbled her way up the side of his throat to the angle of his chin, his small measure of self-restraint fast being depleted.

When she’d appeared in the room he’d been searching, her mouth sulky and succulent and the purloined men’s garb draped over her arm, he’d promised himself he would treat her as the convent-bred lady she was, not the girl her presence in this Scottish Sodom declared her. It quickly became a task far more arduous than he’d imagined.

Favor sighed, her fingers exploring beneath his shirt with shattering eagerness. Her eyes were closed and her head had fallen against his shoulders, inviting more kisses. Genteel, sweet kisses, nectar when he was fast growing thirsty for a more potent brew. But he would be good. He would hold back. He would keep control of the hunger rumbling through his body like distant thunder. Not only because he was no longer a willful, irresponsible boy, not only because her upbringing cautioned any wooer to use restraint to bring this little falcon to hand, but because, just as Favor had never been wooed, he had never courted.

It was a rich, complicated dance and one not without its own subtle, piquant rewards. All of his early sexual experiences with women had ended in bed. All of it, the petting and licking and kissing, had been accomplished too hastily and most often frantically, an obligatory prelude to mating.

This was … exquisite.

Delectable. Ambrosial. Honeyed kisses, pulpy sweet, open-mouthed exchanges, wet and yearning and deep. Caresses like satin. Smooth, deep polishing strokes. Skimming feathering touches. He’d never known such delicious torment.

She nestled trustingly in his embrace, unskilled yet wise in a way no woman in his past had ever been wise—with a deep understanding of unselfishness, of pleasure gained through pleasure given. She was a treasure.

“Treasure,” he murmured against her forehead.

Her eyes opened. “Yes.” She sighed. “You’re right. We should get back to it.”

“I … I didn’t mean—” He stopped. What was he going to do, admit he’d been speaking about her? Unwise. Not with everything so bloody complicated and daily growing more so.

She didn’t appear to note his stumbling near-confession. Her arms slid languidly away from his throat. She smiled regretfully. Regretfully, he released her.

“I have to leave. Tonight is Carr’s masque.” Her cheeks colored and he knew she was remembering his comments on masques and their attendees.

“You don’t have to go,” he said.

Her gaze was fixed on the opposite wall. She’d pinned a faux smile to her countenance. He hated it.

“You should leave Wanton’s Blush,” he said, unable to keep his frustration from sounding like anger. “Pack up your aunt and go back to your brother’s home.

“If you must find a rich husband, go to London when your brother returns. I assure you, this isn’t the only society that would welcome you. There are better hunting grounds, Favor. You don’t have to be
here.”

She turned her head toward him. She looked weary, in some unfathomable manner depleted, as though all her reserves had suddenly found an end.

“There you’re wrong. I need to … marry soon.”

“Why? Can’t your family fend for themselves for an additional few months?” he asked angrily. “Are they such poor specimens that they would sacrifice you to provide them an easier life for a few weeks more?”

Her blue eyes quickened with anger. Better lightning than emptiness. “You don’t know anything about it!”

“Then tell me!”

“Ach!” She backed away, driven off by his words. But he wouldn’t retreat. He couldn’t.

“Tell me.”

She crossed her arms under her breasts and glared at him. “Men! You think you have a monopoly on honor. That only males need the catharsis of discharging a debt. But you’re wrong.”

“Why would you need catharsis?” he asked, holding his breath, afraid she’d tell him, terrified she wouldn’t. He wanted her trust. He didn’t deserve it. He hadn’t even told her who he was. “Why?”

“I did something. Years ago.” She hesitated. He searched her face and saw a young woman, little more than a girl, torn by indecision, wanting desperately to share the most intimate details of her life with a man she knew next to nothing about. Desperate because there was no one else to tell.

How alone she must be to have come to such a pass. How achingly alone.

“My actions cost my … it cost people their lives,” she said finally.

“Did you know they would pay such a price?”

“No!”

“Then if unintentional, you cannot be blamed.”

“Ignorance is no excuse.” She recited the words in such a way that he knew she’d heard them many, many times.

He started toward her but she held up her hand, denying him, stopping him. “Explain.”

“I … I was a child,” she mumbled, eyes averted. “My … people were seeing that a criminal was brought to justice.”

“A criminal?”

“A rapist.”

Odd he should flinch now, upon hearing that label on her lips, when years ago he’d not only refused to flinch but had endured blow after blow without giving satisfaction.

She misunderstood his recoil and nodded. “They brought him to where we lived to see justice meted out by my father. But he was gone and my mother, who was a lady of standing, bade me stop them.”

“Why?”

“Because she feared that if they hanged this rapist, my brothers would be killed in retaliation.”

“I see.”

“I did what she asked. I stopped them”—her arms tightened about her—“just long enough for
his
family to arrive with armed men. They killed most all of those people. Slaughtered them. Cut them down like wheat before the scythe. I found out later that my brother was already dead.”

Her eyes were dazed, her expression ravaged, stunned anew by the memory. He had to draw her back from that terrible inner vista he knew so well himself. “Bedamned, Favor! What else could you have done?”

Her brow puckered, looking for an answer to a riddle posed years before and never answered. “I should have let them kill the boy. If I hadn’t stopped them they could have hanged him and been gone by the time the soldiers arrived. And even if they hadn’t been gone, at least justice would have been served. A rapist would have died.”

“You did what your mother asked,” he said soberly. “It wasn’t your fault.”

He had the distinct impression that he’d failed her, that she’d been waiting hungrily for an answer she’d yet to hear.

“I know,” she said, as though he were being purposefully obtuse. “But ‘fault’ isn’t part of this. Nor blame. This is about what I can live with, what I need to do.”

“And marrying a wealthy maggot is the only way you can live with yourself?” he asked, frustration spawning sarcasm.

“Aye.” Her voice was distant.

“Why not don a hair shirt?” Raine asked bitterly. “I’m sure I can find a flail somewhere about to help aid you in your pleasure. This is Wanton’s Blush after all.”

“Don’t,” she said, not angry, not pricked, simply resigned. “ ’Tis you who are being unreasonable, not I. I’m not the first woman who chooses a husband for what he can bring her family. Indeed, I have it better than most, for I do this of my own free will.” She appealed to him helplessly. “Would you rather I disobeyed the dictates of my conscience just to please my selfish heart?”

Joy was a piercing blade, killing him with never-to-be’s. He couldn’t say a word. He could only stand, drinking in the implication of her words.

“Rafe.” She smiled, shy and forlorn. He held out his hand. She pretended not to see it and turned and walked away. He closed his eyes.

“Raine,” he whispered back in so low a voice she could not hear him. He knew now why poets spoke of a heart breaking for something spilled in his chest, something hot and hurtful. He opened his eyes. Her slender back was to him. The slope of her shoulders was burdened, her steps heavy.

She stopped, looking around the room, trying to find an excuse to stay, knowing she should go. “You.” She cleared her voice, tried again. “You said you were looking for an oriental box.” Her tone tried hopelessly for its former brightness.

He answered in kind, searching for a place hidden from the demands and machinations of the world outside, the place they’d found in these empty rooms, searching for a fabled treasure and finding another even greater, one they’d never sought and knew they could never keep.

“Yes,” he said dully. “An oriental box.”

“Dark? About two feet across?” Irrepressible interest flickered to life in her expression.

“Yes,” he muttered. “A tea chest.”

Her eyelids were stained mauve with fatigue. Her skin looked ethereal, clean of the white face powder she usually wore, fragile and all too mortal.

“Does it look like that?” She pointed.

He glanced in the direction she indicated. This room was less crammed than the others: a pair of water-stained sideboards; a moldy rolled-up carpet; a leather-clad traveling trunk; and, against the wall, a huge bookcase, one door missing, the shelves dark and empty. Atop this monstrosity sat several boxes that, because of the bookcase’s height, had hitherto gone unnoticed. Only now, looking up from across the room, could one see them.

One was intricately carved. Foreign in appearance. Black.

“Yes,” Raine said, his heart beginning to race. Inside that box could be the answer to the dream he forced himself to forget upon waking each day. But now, with the box within reach, that dream emerged from the nether world he’d relegated it to and became dazzling potential.

With McClairen’s Trust
he
would be wealthy.
He
would be a prize to any woman who would marry for money.

Immediately, he slaughtered the ridiculous notion. She was a McClairen. She held him accountable for her clan’s massacre. Not ten minutes earlier she’d been regretting his having lived.

He grabbed hold of one of the mahogany sideboards and leaned into it, grunting as he shoved the mammoth piece across the floor toward the bookcase. He could not ask Favor for her hand but at least with McClairen’s Trust in his possession he could make sure she didn’t have to marry some bleeding idiot like Tunbridge. He could give her the bloody jewels.

He gave the sideboard a final heave, bringing it within a few feet of the bookcase, and jumped atop it. He peered at the dark box. It
was
his mother’s tea chest. He recalled the rippling inlaid back of the dragon that danced across the lid. He pulled it into his hands and jumped down.

An intricate bronze clasp swung listlessly from the back hinge. One tiny set of drawers was completely missing. But the top, the portion that had opened to reveal the jewels, was still seamlessly closed.

“Do you really think it holds the treasure?” Favor asked. Raine could not read either her tone or her odd, unhappy expression.

“I don’t know. Let’s find out.” He seized a heavy candlestick holder and brought it smashing down on the tea chest’s lid. The fragile, delicately carved wood splintered and flew apart.

Together Raine and Favor stared down at the shattered chest. For a full minute they stood. Slowly, Raine reached down and lifted a large, covered tray from the ruined box. He pulled it open, revealing a faded velvet lining and nothing else. Favor knelt beside the splintered pieces, lifting and discarding splintered boards, peering into the few interior trays that survived the demolition. Raine nudged the last of the pieces with his foot, turning them over. There was no place a ring could hide let alone a complete parure of heavy gold and gems.

“I’m … I’m sorry,” he heard Favor whisper.

Desolation swept through him. He’d nothing left now. Not pipe dreams. Not honorable intentions.

He stared in bemusement. He should leave. The chances of his finding McClairen’s Trust among the dozens of rooms crammed with hiding places was infinitesimal—assuming it still existed. But that wasn’t the real reason he wanted to flee. How could he stay while she sought some other bastard for her spouse?

“I guess we’ll just have to continue looking,” he heard Favor say in a small, rough voice.

He looked up, read her face, and understood. As far as Favor was concerned, she’d found that place where they could be together, separated from debts and duty. And she found the excuse she needed to stay with him: searching for the Trust.

She wasn’t smiling but guilty happiness illumined her face like sunlight.

He didn’t stand a chance.

“Yes,” he agreed softly.