Читать книгу A Rake To The Rescue - Elizabeth Beacon - Страница 9

‘Oh, I am sorry...please excuse me,’ the stranger murmured.

How could Hetta have left her toes where a society beauty might tread?

‘It was nothing,’ Hetta lied politely.

‘All this bustle is distracting and I hate the sea,’ the lady explained as if she was grateful to have another woman to talk to, even a travel-worn and weary one dressed in a shabby cloak and old gown.

‘I’m none too fond of it myself,’ Hetta admitted ruefully.

The lady grimaced at the mud-grey water. It was calm at the moment, so she would have a far better crossing than Hetta had endured coming the other way, but it was still the sea and she obviously did not want to be on it.

‘I wish I could stay,’ the lady said wistfully, glancing back at the town as if she was having second thoughts about leaving it.

‘Then why go if you don’t want to?’

‘Because I must,’ the lady said, then seemed to recall Hetta was a stranger and stepped out of her path, looking regal and chilly again.

‘The swell has almost calmed now, so you should have an easy journey,’ Hetta said and turned to go.

‘Thank you,’ the lady said absently, her attention now fixed on a woman walking towards them with a grizzling baby of about eight or nine months in her arms.

‘She needs you, Lady Drace,’ the nurse said.

‘I know,’ Lady Drace replied, with a tender smile for her little girl. Love for the pretty, dark-haired and dark-eyed baby lit her face to a beauty far more compelling than the icy mask she seemed to use to keep the adult world at bay.

‘No, my lady, she needs you,’ the woman insisted.

Hetta saw the lady blush as the meaning behind those careful words sank in—Lady Drace must be suckling her child herself. Hetta had been happy to dislike her as a privileged being who stood on other people’s toes and then frowned as if it was their fault. Now she sympathised with a dilemma she knew all too well and warmed to a fellow mother.

‘There is nowhere private enough to feed you, my angel, but I expect you’ll work yourself into a tantrum and refuse to be comforted if I don’t, and the sea is quite enough to contend with without you adding to it, my pet,’ Lady Drace told her fretful infant with a besotted smile and shot a panicked look round the bustling harbour. Her pale blue eyes looked tearful, as if this was the last straw for her. Hetta could not make herself pretend it was none of her business and simply walk away.

‘Over there,’ she said, pointing at a pile of baggage waiting to be claimed and unwilling to admit it belonged to her family since it was much used and had their names on and she had learned to be wary on her travels. ‘That looks a quieter place than most and out of the way of all the hustle and bustle. If you hold your cloak around your mistress on one side, I can do the same with mine on the other, and Lady Drace will be hidden from view. Between us we can make a tent and glare at anyone rude enough to try to overlook us,’ she told the maid. Having to feed Toby in all sorts of odd places when she had been tracking her father across Europe after her husband died, Hetta knew how rude and crude some could be to a lady suckling her baby. ‘You will be nigh as private as at home in your own bedchamber, your ladyship.’

‘Ah, home,’ the lady said wistfully, eyeing her hungry and fretful baby as if torn between love for her child and her dignity. She must have made up her mind the little girl was more important since she sighed and shrugged. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You are very kind.’

‘High time I found Toby,’ Hetta’s father muttered and left the ladies to it.

“Coward,” his daughter whispered at his retreating back, but since she was worried where her boy had got to, she hoped her father really did mean to look for Toby. It felt wrong to dismiss this stranger’s dilemma and find Toby herself now she had made her impulsive offer. So once Hetta and the maid formed their circle, Lady Drace sat down to nurse her child while all three of them thought their thoughts and the baby fed. Hetta wished this trip to her homeland was over and she could go back to the warmth of a real summer somewhere more interesting. Now the greyish-brown waters of the Channel seemed to mock her with gentle ripples after the bitter squall on the way over here and she was quite surprised she was still alive. She stared towards Dover as tame little waves lapped at the quayside gently enough to soothe a fretful babe to sleep.

‘And they call this summer?’ she muttered as soft drizzle began to crown her miserable homecoming. She had barely been back in England half an hour and she was wet and chilled and her head ached. She felt dull and weary and almost wished she could go with this almost haughty lady and her child to Paris and beyond, although it would mean crossing the Channel again while her stomach was still heaving from the journey over, and even if she could find her son in time, that felt like a bad idea.

‘I believe you are finished, my little minx. She might even sleep now,’ Lady Drace announced hopefully at last. Hetta heard rustling as the lady got herself back in perfect order then settled her little girl in the crook of her arm and shook her head at the maid as if she didn’t intend letting her child go. ‘You can let the world back in,’ she said resolutely.

‘I wish you well on your travels,’ Hetta said gently, wondering where this blonde, blue-eyed lady was going with the dark-haired, brown-eyed baby now looking about her with wide-eyed wonder and not in the least bit weary.

‘Thank you. It was kind of you to help a stranger,’ the lady said as if she was surprised anyone would put themselves out for her.

The lady’s life must have been a hard one to make her put on so much elegant armour to keep it at bay. Hetta was glad the woman felt she could love her child wholeheartedly and she was pleased she’d stopped to help a lone mother. Now a nagging anxiety for her own child was urging her to leave the lady to get on with her journey. Her father had already said Toby should be allowed to run off his high spirits so he would be more bearable on the journey to London, so he would not make much effort to track him down, and Hetta knew her son too well to trust him very far with all this bustle and excitement to intrigue him.

‘And they do say you should be careful what you wish for, don’t they?’ the lady added with a rueful smile.

‘But learning when to ignore the naysayers is half the fun,’ Hetta said as she peered around the dock and saw no sign of her son or father and felt more like an anxious sheepdog than an English lady of gentle birth and unusual education.

‘Do you really think so?’

‘Travelling is a lot easier if you can see the lighter side of the obstacles in your way,’ Hetta said encouragingly, even if she did think there was little to be cheerful about in the sea crossing her new friend was about to undertake. ‘Paris is on the other side of the Channel, don’t forget, and if you can’t have an adventure there I despair of you,’ she added and found out the lady had a surprisingly earthy laugh.

‘Thank you. I will do my best,’ Lady Drace said, bade Hetta farewell with her baby cuddled close and turned resolutely towards the sea.

Hetta turned to go as well, but the noise and bustle of the busy dock faded away to nothing as a furious-looking and ridiculously handsome man strode into view so fast he was nearly running. The sight of Toby wriggling like an eel under one of the stranger’s muscular arms made her gasp in panic and her heart race with anxiety. Protective fury masked fear as she watched her son bundled along so fast he didn’t even have breath left to cry out. Toby was pummelling the man with his fists and kicking out, so at least he was not cowed by such rough treatment. Her heart thundered as she watched furious energy power every line of the man’s body, but there was always a chance Toby was in the right for once—a slim one from the temper in the stormy gentleman’s dark eyes. He was devilishly handsome, though, wasn’t he? She told her inner idiot not to be stupid and glared at the stern force of nature loping towards them like an angry tiger.

Her stomach had not got over that appalling sea crossing yet, so the stir of something hot and sharp deep in her belly was caused by it being emptied so often as the ship rode the waves of a vicious summer storm like a cork at the mercy of furious Mother Nature. This tall and formidable man could not stir her sensual instincts back to life without even a smile or an interested look, so there was no other explanation for it. And he had Toby firmly under his arm as if her boy was a mere bundle of faggots, so those instincts would be wrong anyway.

‘Is this yours?’ he barked at her as soon as he was within earshot.

As Hetta was the only woman gaping at him with her mouth open, it must be easy enough to pick her out as Toby’s mother. She was vaguely conscious Lady Drace had jumped as if she had been shot at the sound of his deep voice, then turned to stare at him with horror in her light blue eyes. So that made two women scared by the great clumsy oaf roaring and raging as if he had every right to make rude comments about anyone he wanted to, and she wondered why the rest of the world had not stopped to watch him open-mouthed as well.

‘What have you done, Toby?’ Hetta didn’t quite answer the man’s rude question and told herself she was too worried about her son to care about gruff strangers or her new friend’s reaction to them.

The Honourable Magnus Haile frowned at the strange woman staring back at him like a simpleton. Given the gasp of relief the boy had given on first sight of her, she was his mother, and what a neglectful shabby-genteel idiot to leave her offspring running loose without a keeper. He didn’t have any time to spare, so why was it his job to chastise a brat who threw himself under his weary horse and nearly killed them both? Luckily his younger brother’s man, Jem Caudle, told Magnus he would stable the exhausted and unnerved beast for him, then reminded him the packet would sail if he didn’t hurry. Jem even told Magnus to leave the lad to him and get to the vessel faster, but Magnus was too shocked and angry to leave the boy to Jem’s mercy. So, he’d grabbed the brat in order to berate the boy’s parents before he thought of some way to stop Delphi and his little girl leaving England without him, even if he had to throw himself aboard the boat and leave his homeland with no more than the shirt on his back.

He was a father now, whatever Delphi had to say about it. His frown went fierce again as he grappled with that fact and his helplessness to do anything about it when Delphi refused to marry him. He longed to be able to keep his daughter out of wild scrapes like this when she was big enough to be naughty. Not that his little Angela could ever be as wayward as this brat, but the boy’s parents obviously didn’t know how lucky they were to have the right to protect him from harm. Yet they let him run around like a street urchin! Now the boy was scratching and trying to bite, as if Magnus was the villain, and he was tempted to drop him on the cobbles and walk away. ‘Try that trick again and I’ll dust your backside for you, whether your mama is looking or not,’ he threatened dourly.

‘No, you won’t. She won’t let you,’ the lad shouted, lower lip wobbling and his dirty face scrunched up with the effort of producing a tear.

‘Once she knows what you did she will thank me for saving her the effort of doing it herself.’

‘No, she won’t. She will skin you alive, then boil you in oil if you even try to smack me.’

‘Then I won’t need to worry about anything, will I? Least of all a wicked little liar like you,’ Magnus said grimly.

‘Put my son down this minute,’ the sunburnt woman in dull clothes, a drooping bonnet and the most ridiculous pair of eyeglasses he had ever seen demanded furiously as she finally snapped out of her trance.

Magnus could now see where the boy got his temper, if not his wild blond curls, wide blue eyes and the daredevil spirit that made him look like a fallen cherub. Perhaps his father was absent for a good reason, but Magnus’s inner sneer felt cheap when he eyed the termagant in petticoats and wished for a brief, mad moment he’d fallen in love with such a tigress in spectacles, instead of the woman hiding behind her, trying to pretend she had never seen him before in her life, even with his baby in her arms chortling at her father with Haile written all over her darling little face like a banner.

‘Gladly, if you promise to keep him under better control in future,’ he told the woman grimly and tried to ignore the pain in his heart when his Angela reached out her arms to him and Delphi snatched her away as if she hated him. ‘A collar and lead should serve. He nearly killed himself running under my horse just now. Luckily for all of us the poor beast was too weary to throw me when I curbed him, or you would have a lot more to worry about than a filthy little thug in a foul temper. A blow from the nag’s iron-shod hooves would have killed him outright.’

The woman went even paler under her unladylike sunburn and Magnus regretted his harshness for a moment. But, no, she needed a shock like this to force her to keep a better eye on the boy in future. He had to harden his heart again when she pushed her spectacles up her nose with a shaking hand and he counted himself lucky she wasn’t having an attack of the vapours. She braced her shoulders instead and he had better things to do than admire her resolution and the fine figure he should not even notice when he had ridden all the way here at breakneck speed to plead with Delphi not to take his child so far away he might never see her again.

‘Stop that ridiculous wriggling and pretend-crying, Toby Champion,’ the boy’s mother snapped at her flailing offspring.

Magnus felt the boy still as if she had waved a magic wand. Deciding the brat was not likely to get away with his sins after all, Magnus swung him down. ‘Buy him a chain if you can’t keep him under better control in future, madam,’ he barked.

‘How can you be so harsh, Magnus?’ Delphi broke in as the lad threw himself at his mother so enthusiastically she lurched and nearly fell over.

Magnus had been so intent on the boy’s mother he hadn’t noted how Delphi’s wide and horrified eyes were fixed on him as if she expected him to lash out as the late, unlamented Sir Edgar Drace was prone to when something about his young wife did not suit him. It said much for his baby’s sunny nature that she was gurgling and wriggling in her mother’s arms as if this was a fine show, instead of cowering and grizzling as she caught the megrims from her mother.

‘If someone doesn’t check the boy, he will kill himself,’ he explained with an impatient glance behind him to convince Delphi he wasn’t in the least like the straw man she had married for some reason he had never managed to fathom.

‘Only your horror at the idea of doing so could excuse such a wicked display of temper,’ Delphi said, reproaching him with the stiffness in her voice.

‘I could hardly pat him on the head and bid him be more careful next time.’

‘No, he could not,’ the boy’s mother admitted with a sigh, as if it cost a lot to stand up for such a grim stranger. She turned to Delphi with a resigned shrug and said, ‘He’s right. My son is far too adventurous for his own good. And I want you to see your eighth birthday, despite all your best efforts not to, my lad, so you can take the wounded expression off your face and listen to your elders and betters for once,’ she added as her boy let go of her narrow waist to stare up at her with the wide eyes of a wronged cherub.

Magnus revised her age down a decade and decided, if she still had a husband, the neglectful idiot should be here, trying to back up her efforts to keep their child alive so she wouldn’t look elsewhere for comfort for herself and a little help with the lad. A ridiculous, totally unacceptable part of him wanted to be the source of both for her for a moment and hadn’t he already had a harsh enough lesson about throwing himself at complicated and unfathomable women? And what did he know about how to bring up well-balanced and happy children after the childhood he and his younger siblings had endured at their father’s hands anyway?

‘I see,’ Delphi said almost as if she did.

Hope leapt in Magnus’s heart for a heady moment as his daughter blew kisses at him as if she would always be on his side. ‘Please, Delphi, let me come with you?’ he begged the child’s mother as softly as he could with all these wild emotions roiling around inside him right now. He would plead in front of the devil himself if it got him a place in his child’s life.

‘I told you before, Magnus. No. Have the manners to listen to me and stay away from us in future, before you do even more damage than you already have.’

‘Should I send for the Harbour Master?’ the strange woman said as if ready to leap into battle on Delphi’s behalf. Why must she be such an interfering, reckless female? He almost had to admire her for it. All his attention should be focused on Delphi and trying to persuade her to let him have any sort of role in his daughter’s life, but parts of it kept straying to this vital and puzzling stranger who was threatening to get in the way at the worst possible moment.

‘No, although I really do thank you for the offer,’ Delphi said with such horror in her expression a disinterested bystander might laugh at the show they were putting on. ‘He won’t hurt us,’ she explained.

Magnus was glad she gave him that much credit and supposed he ought to be grateful for small mercies. ‘I won’t,’ he added shortly.

‘Well then, perhaps you could work harder at seeming a little less threatening in future, Lord Drace,’ the woman said and made it all worse somehow.

‘He’s not my husband,’ Lady Delphine Drace said with such an appalled expression Magnus almost gave up and went home.

‘Oh,’ the stranger said, looking from one to the other and then at the baby in Delphi’s arms as if she had put two and two together and got four. She blushed and looked as if she wished herself a few hundred miles away as well right now, but she still met his eyes with defiance blazing from behind those disfiguring spectacles of hers and his reluctant admiration for her courage fretted like an itch under his skin. ‘It seems to me you have even more reason to leave her ladyship in peace, then, sir,’ she said severely.

‘None of your business, madam,’ he snapped because her words stung all the more sharply for being right.