This Rake of Mine (3 page)

A gratuity of sorts, found in the sight of pink lips, the rosy hue of fair skin. And considering her other endowments, could a former rake be held responsible for the temptation she had hidden beneath her ugly black bombazine gown?

Besides, it had been a long time since he'd done anything to retain his title of Mad Jack Tremont.

So could he really be faulted if he nearly forgot himself and lowered his lips to hers, to taste a bit of their pert promise, to see if the rest of her charms could be matched by her kiss…

That is, until he spied her hair.

The devil take her, the chit was a redhead! How he had missed it before, he knew not, but there was no denying the color now.

Even tied up and contained as it was in a spinster's knot, he knew without a doubt what was bound beneath that prison of pins and ribbons.

Red, tempting flames of passion.

He nearly tossed her into the heap of luggage as he released her, his rediscovered ardor fleeing like the hordes before the Huns.

She stumbled out of his grasp and, like any good woman, shot him a most aggrieved look.

Whether it was for the state of her tangled sewing basket or ruffled senses, he wasn't too sure. To be honest, he didn't care.

For while the Tremont family motto was
Justus esto et non metue
(Be just and fear not), he had added his own addendum to that brave credo.

And no redheads.

Demmed beguiling, mysterious creatures. Sent like the ruddy hounds of hell to be his undoing.

Thankfully, the lady didn't look all that pleased to make his acquaintance. Her fair brow furrowed, and she backed away from him like he was showing signs of plague.

"You!" she sputtered, her greeting coming out like an accusation or the warning cry of "Bar the door."

The flashing look of horror in her green eyes pricked at his sense of honor. Despite what his brother, or obviously Miss Emery and her cohorts thought of him, he was a gentleman these days… well, most of the time.

"Lord John Tremont, at your service," he said, mustering his out-of-practice manners and managing a decent bow.

"Harrumph," she stammered, still looking at him expectantly, fists planted on her hips, her elbows jutting out.

Now he was getting annoyed. She needn't look so put out. It wasn't like he'd actually kissed her. But that was a spinster for you. Only a lady who had avoided matrimony as long as she obviously had could hold such a look of outrage.

"I know who you are," she was saying as she bent to the task of retrieving her fallen belongings. "You should be well and gone by now."

So much for a polite welcome and an offer of tea and biscuits.

Still, it wounded him that this lady, whom he'd never met, regarded him with such open disdain.

Maybe it was the fact that he had always been partial to redheads, but maybe it was the fact that she also had a look of sharp-eyed intelligence about her.

As he went to work picking up Arabella's belongings, her strained silence drove him to distraction. It was as if he could hear the crackle in her straight spine and ramrod shoulders.

He decided to try again.

"Hard to believe one chit requires so many hats and gowns," he said, hoping to ease the tension. "Perhaps a few less trips to the dressmakers and more lessons in decorum might have been in order." As he stacked up his niece's hatboxes, he thought he saw a slight flash in her eyes, as if she shared his unspoken opinion that Lady Arabella Tremont possessed more gowns than sense.

"By the way," he said, taking her hint of a smile as a crack in her spinster's armor, "I didn't catch your name."

She glanced over at him, her arched brow in perfect imitation of Miss Emery's glare. Even as she stared at him, he thought there was a sense of a brewing tempest between them, as if she were on pins and needles over such a simple thing as an introduction.

Finally, she took a deep breath and offered the barest of introductions. "Miss Porter."

By Jove, it was as if even that much were a great imposition.

"Are you a teacher here?" he asked, hoping to engage the lady in even the merest hint of conversation. It had been a long time since a lady had even spoken to him.

He received a curt nod in reply. So much for a polite exchange, he mused. Bending over to retrieve an upside-down valise, he asked, "And what do you teach?"

"Decorum," came the clipped reply.

Jack cringed. So much for his earlier remark about Arabella's need for additional lessons.

Oh, yes, he'd made a muddle of all of this. He'd rather intimately tangled with (and if he was honest, contemplated kissing) a spinster who specialized in training young ladies to avoid such situations. And he'd insulted her capacity as a teacher.

He could hear his brother now, casting it down upon him that he wasn't capable of venturing into any society without allowing his sinful nature to overtake the good sense he'd been given.

Of course, Jack's more wicked senses would have said that the real sin was having a lady with Miss Porter's curves and tempting red hair trapped in this spinster's museum, especially now that she was bent over to catch up a ball of yarn and he had an excellent view of her rounded behind and a hint of her curved ankles…

Oh, yes, it had been too long since he'd been in a lady's company, for even the mere sight of her ankles sent his imagination running wild.

In the height of his rakish days, he might have been tempted to pull her into his arms and tell her that he found her hair divine, her breasts tempting, and her lips perfect for kissing. Then rather than let the lady protest, he'd prove his point by devouring those lips, stroking her breasts, and holding her so close he'd leave her with an intimate knowledge of the power a beautiful woman could wield over a man as imperfect as he.

Stealing another glance at the prim and proper teacher, he had to imagine that if he undertook such a declaration, she'd go into a state of apoplexy that would be her undoing.

And his.

Demmit, it would take another ten, nay, fifteen years, to live down such a ruinous scene.

She was in the midst of picking up the last of her belongings, tucking them into the sewing basket with all due haste, clucking with disdain over the state of her yarns, and muttering something about "dropped stitches."

Try as he might to go back to his own task, Jack couldn't help but watch her.

Dear Lord, if ever there was a woman who needed something really important to worry about, it was this Miss Porter. Properly folded napkins, perfect curtsies, and posture pointers were her life. She probably spent her days lecturing young girls on how to return calls, the correct seating of guests at dinner, and, most of all, how to avoid the likes of libertines.

A rather dull existence, he surmised, for a woman with hair that hinted at a passionate nature and a sharp tongue that could skewer a man as easily as it could tease him to distraction.

Jack heaved a sigh. As much as it grieved him to see a life wasted—for he knew a thing or two on the subject—there was nothing he could do about it. If he were to liberate Miss Porter with a kiss, there'd be hell to pay.

And Parkerton would most likely use it as an excuse not to pay the debts he'd promised to redeem.

So instead of giving Miss Porter a taste of the wicked temptation that could be found in a misspent kiss, he bent over to pick up Arabella's remaining valise. There beneath it lay one last treasure from Miss Porter's sewing basket that she'd missed.

A silver button.

He turned it over in his fingers and realized it wasn't just an ordinary button but an expensive one. Most likely from a gentleman's jacket or waistcoat.

Glancing up at Miss Porter, he wondered if he'd underestimated her. She kept a man's button as a keepsake? Perhaps from the coat of a beloved brother, or the vestment of her sainted father, the vicar?

Or even that of a lover?

"Is this yours?" he asked as innocently as he could muster.

She glanced over at him, then her gaze fell to his outstretched hand. Instantly her cheeks colored. Her hand moved so quickly that he barely realized it when her fingers swept over his palm, snatching back her treasure as if it were gold.

"Thank you," she said curtly.

A chill ran across his still open hand, while a disconcerting niggle whispered in his ear.

Remember.

Remember what?
he thought, closing his fingers and stuffing his hand in the pocket of his coat, letting the warmth of the wool chase away the lingering echoes that urged him toward something disagreeably familiar.

The only lesson he had learned in the past was that the days long gone were best forgotten.

And what about this Miss Porter? What did her past hold? Her hasty reaction spoke of a scandal she'd rather forget as well. Still, she'd held onto her token for some reason, held onto this reminder, and he couldn't help but wonder what had driven Miss Porter and its former owner apart? Forced her to spend her life teaching manners to spoiled young chits while the villain (for who else would have been idiot enough to let this redheaded handful get away) left her in this feline prison of sorts.

"A man's button, Miss Porter?" he said softly. She glanced up at him, her shoulders returning to the taut, wary lines she'd worn earlier. Whatever he thought of her tart opinions, her sharp manners, they all fled in the face of the fear he saw in the most beautiful pair of green eyes he'd ever beheld. They pinned him with a grief he couldn't fathom, filled him with guilt for his earlier notions.

For there was only one reason a woman looked like that, and it was because a man had wreaked havoc on her heart. Left her to twist alone in a scandalous breeze.

"I'm… I'm…" he stammered.
I'm sorry
, he tried to say, but the words faltered in the face of her private anguish.

He straightened his shoulders and stood like a nobleman, instead of his brother's lackey. "Oh, demmit. My apologies, Miss Porter. For whoever he was, he was a fool to leave you here."

With that, Lord John Tremont bent to the lowly task of fetching the last of his niece's belongings and left Miss Porter standing in the hall gaping after him.

Miss Porter stood rooted in the hallway, biting back a thousand retorts before she found the right one.

But by then it was too late. Mad Jack Tremont was gone.

Departed yet again from her life.

"Dreadful man!" she muttered anyway, unwittingly echoing her students' earlier assessment.

Why, he'd barreled into her like a stevedore, barely managed a decent apology, and then had possessed the audacity to hold her… not just hold her but
claim
her, as rakes were wont to do.

Well, some things never changed. Or rather, she corrected herself, some men. He'd been a degenerate sort without a care in the world back then, and he was still a bounder.

She took a deep breath and smoothed her hands over her skirts, hoping it would be enough to still her trembling limbs, her beating heart.

It wasn't that the man affected her, not in the least. It was just that it was so… so… unsettling to see him again.

And despite her best intentions to turn heel and march away, she slowly and reluctantly made her way to the window at the front of the house and peered through the opening in the curtains at him, as half the girls in the school were most likely doing at this very moment despite her earlier admonitions to the contrary.

Gazing down at the man who had ruined her with just one kiss.

For having neither been sold to a harem nor married off to some Colonial merchant, nor even succumbed to some dramatic decline, Miss Miranda Mabberly had done what any lady of good sense would have done in such circumstances—she'd picked up the ruined pieces of her life and gone on living with what was left to her.

By society. By her unforgiving parents.

And when it had become obvious that Lord John would not marry her, she'd been packed off with due haste to live with distant relations, the Hibberts, in a remote corner of the north of England.

Mr. Mabberly, livid at the irreparable loss of her reputation, and, as such, the end of any noble marital prospects that could improve his business standing, cut off his only daughter with the same cold business acumen that had made him one of the wealthiest
cits
in London.

A clean sweep of the ledger book, as it were, written off like a lost ship or a hold full of wet powder kegs.

Having grown up in the hustle and bustle of London, the north country held few delights for Miranda. Especially when the Hibberts decided it was their moral duty to see her wed before her unnatural tendencies reared their ugly head again and brought shame on their upright home.

Besides, there was always the hope, Miranda suspected, that having seen her respectably married, her wealthy father might reward the poor couple.

So they'd brought forth vicar after widower after yeoman farmer for her choosing.

But Miranda had clung to her girlhood hope that she could marry someone who fit her original list of attributes. Someone noble and honorable, charming and heroic. And one other thing, a trait that her encounter with Lord John had etched into her heart.

He must be passionate.

Mad Jack's kiss had given her a tantalizing glimpse into the very improper world of passion and temptation, one she couldn't shake from her memory, her imagination.

Yet as the years passed, and the line of eligible men slowed to a trickle, she still couldn't let go of her dream. Not that time hadn't compelled her to realize that making some concessions would be necessary.

The lonely English countryside had a way of forcing one to forsake some of one's more lofty requirements. Yet, if she must marry, what was sophistication if the man couldn't inspire her heart to beat fast? And weren't heroism and nobility slightly overrated if the man's lips held all the appeal of week old mutton?

So Miranda had continued to wait.

And wait. And wait.

Appeals to her parents went unanswered, though she knew that the Hibberts received intermittent correspondence from her father's solicitor, along with funds for her keep.