Читать книгу The Taming of the Rake - Kasey Michaels, Кейси Майклс, Kasey Michaels - Страница 9

MUCH TO THE CHAGRIN of his valet, Beau refused to take the time to sit and be shaved, opting for a quick wash at the basin, a brief encounter with his tooth powder and a rushed combing of his hair as Sidney helped him into a clean white shirt before handing him fresh linen and buckskins and then throwing up his hands in disgust and quitting the dressing room.

Beau was still having difficulty believing that Lady Chelsea Mills-Beckman, sister of his nemesis, was downstairs, sipping wine in his drawing room. Sans chaperone, clad in a rather startlingly red riding habit and clearly expecting him to go somewhere with her.

Lady Chelsea Mills-Beckman. Knowing things she shouldn’t know. Cheeky and impertinent as she’d been as a girl … and hinting of helping him revenge himself on her brother.

While helping herself. He shouldn’t forget that. Women with ulterior motives were the norm rather than the oddity, he’d learned, and as this woman was also intelligent, he would have to be doubly on alert.

“Well, that could be considered by the less discerning as a bit of an improvement, I suppose,” Puck said, entering the dressing room to lean one shoulder against the high chest of drawers as he visually assessed his brother. “I have reconnoitered your visitor, grilling her mercilessly for details. She informs me whatever is going on is a matter of life or death. Worse, she seems astonishingly immune to my charms, which would have me descending into a pit of despair were it not that I’m secretly delighted that she has targeted you rather than me for whatever it is she’s planning. Not that I’m not here to help.”

Beau snatched up a neck cloth and hastily tied it around his throat. “Your enthusiasm for throwing yourself down in the path to protect me nearly unmans me,” he grumbled, realizing he’d just tied a knot in the neck cloth—rather like a noose.

“You’re welcome. Disregarding female enthusiasm for melodrama, do you think she’s right? The brother is a nasty piece of work, as I recall. Are you sure you wish to become embroiled in whatever she’s prattling on about?”

“She’s in my house, Puck.”

“Our house, not to quibble about such a small point. But, as I am also here, I believe I should be apprised of whatever the devil it is I’ve somehow become embroiled in myself, if only by association. She’s ordered me to hide her horse and groom, and then to advise Sidney to pack a bag for you, as you will be leaving within the hour. Which, naturally, begs the question—where are we going?”

Beau shrugged into a hacking jacket and took one last, quick look at his reflection in the mirror above the dressing table. “We are not going anywhere,” he told his brother. “Whatever the mess, I brought it on myself by being idiot enough to think I was a cat, toying with a mouse. I should have let it go, Puck, years ago. But, for once, it’s my idiocy, not yours. You’re not involved.”

“What? You’d leave me here to face the wrath of the brother? I think not. If I’m not to go with you, I’ll inform Gaston to pack me up and I’ll be back off to Paris. The weather is better, for one thing, and the food at least edible. I damn near cracked a tooth on that bacon our cook dared serve me. We should sack him.”

Beau turned on his brother. “You do this just to annoy me, don’t you?”

Puck pushed himself away from the dresser. “Yes, but I’ll stop now. You’re much too easy to rile, you and Jack both. Takes the joy right out of a fellow. I was listening from the terrace, you know, and heard most of what she said. You’ve really been quietly ruining the earl? I’d say that was brilliant, except that Lady Chelsea found you out, so you couldn’t be overly credited for subtlety. Comparing you to Machiavelli? Hardly. And now your pigeons seem to have come home to roost.”

“We can’t know that. Not unless the damned woman left her brother a note before she ran off. Because she did run off, Puck, that much is obvious. It’s what women do. Without a thought to anyone else perhaps not agreeing to become an actor in their small melodrama.”

“Yes, you’re right,” Puck agreed as he followed Beau down the hall to a small room he used as his private study. “She would have been better off applying to Mama. She dearly adores a melodrama. But when I left her to come to town, she was about to begin a tour of the Lake District with her troupe. I hadn’t the heart to tell her she’s getting a little long in the tooth to play Juliet, but as long as Papa finances the troupe, she has her pick of roles and no one gainsays her. Are you listening to me? What are you doing messing around in that cabinet?”

Beau turned back to his brother, the wooden case that held a pair of dueling pistols in his hands. He then opened a long wooden box kept on a sideboard and pulled out both the sword and belt he’d taken to war with him and a short, lethal-looking knife kept safe inside its sheath. “See that these are taken downstairs, if you please. I probably won’t need the sword, but I know I’ll want the knife.”

Puck frowned as the weapons were thrust at him. “Really? Would you be wanting me to hunt up a piece of field artillery as well while I’m at it? You really think the brother will come here, don’t you?”

“I was unprepared once, Puck. That won’t happen again. Now, take yourself off and do what you said you were going to do—get yourself prepared to return to Paris. This may all come to nothing, but the girl knows things she shouldn’t have guessed, and I’m going to believe her until she says something that changes my mind. Damn, what a morning—if I’d known this last night I wouldn’t have crawled so far into the bottle with you.”

“Yes, of course, blame me. It was a terrible thing, how I held your nose pinched shut and poured three bottles of wine down your gullet as we celebrated your birthday.”

“In case you’re about to add that the woman downstairs is some sort of birthday present from the gods, let me warn you—don’t.” Beau left his brother where he stood and headed downstairs to where Lady Chelsea was now pacing the Aubusson carpet, slapping her gloves against her palm.

She was, upon reflection—something, according to her, he didn’t have time for—a startlingly beautiful woman. He remembered that, as a child, she’d shown a promise of beauty, but that he’d believed she’d never hold a candle to her sister. Time had proved him wrong.

He’d seen Madelyn a time or two on his visits to London since his return from the war, driving in the park in an open carriage. The years had not been kind to her. She’d developed lines around her mouth, which seemed pinched now rather than pouting, and the nearly white-blond hair aged her rather than flattered her. She looked like what she was—a haughty, clearly unhappy woman.

He’d learned she had taken lovers over the years, sometimes without employing enough discretion, and her reputation, as well as her standing in Society, had suffered. For that, she blamed her brother, and the two of them had not spoken since their father’s death. She also probably blamed Beau, as well, for her fall began only after what he thought of now as The Incident.

But Beau had taken little satisfaction from any of Madelyn’s problems. To him, justice had been served up very neatly to Lady Madelyn for what she had done.

It was Thomas Mills-Beckman who had yet to feel justice come down on his neck. Hence the cat, toying with the mouse’s purse strings.

And now, pacing his drawing room, full of cryptic statements and offers to help him administer that justice, was this intriguing and maddening young woman, fallen into his hands either like a ripe plum or as the agent of disaster, clearly wanting to get some of her own back on her brother and eager to use Beau to help her.

“My brother tells me you assured him that we are embroiled in something very serious. Life or death, I believe he said—or perhaps that was you saying it? I’ll admit I’ve begun to lose track.”

She stopped pacing and looked at him, her blond head tipped to one side as she ran her clear blue-gray gaze up and down his body as if he were a horse she was considering purchasing. “You look somewhat better. Are you sober now?”

“I believe I’m heading in that general direction, yes. At least enough so that I want to make it clear to you yet again—I do not know this Reverend Flotley. I did not arrange to have him introduced to your brother, so if the rest doesn’t bother you—the smell of spoiled grapes notwithstanding—perhaps you wish to rethink whatever it is you believe you can do for me and go away. Quickly.”

“I can’t. I think we both know it’s already too late for that,” she said and then sighed. “We really don’t have time for this, but I have truly burned my bridges just by coming here so openly, and yours, as well, which I’m sure I don’t have to point out to you. I’m sorry for that, at least a little bit, but I had no other choice open to me. I left my brother a note explaining every—”

Beau slammed his fist into his palm. “I knew it! Why do women always feel they have to explain themselves?”

She straightened her slim shoulders. “I was not explaining myself, you daft man. I couldn’t allow my maid to take the brunt of Thomas’s anger, not when she helped me tie up some of my belongings and met me at the corner so that I could strap them onto my saddle without anyone being the wiser that I was leaving.”

“Oh, yes, of course. I can see the wisdom of that. He won’t turn her out without a reference now, not when you’d clearly cowed her into doing what you’d asked.”

“Oh,” Chelsea said quietly. “I hadn’t thought of that. But I didn’t tell him where I was heading. I’m not stupid.”

“Wonderful. The girl assures me she’s not stupid. Tell me, Mistress Genius, did you happen to confide your destination to your maid? Because, were I said maid, staring the loss of my position in the teeth, I do believe I’d try to save myself by being of assistance to my employer.”

Chelsea glared at him. “I could truly begin to dislike you.”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Beau said, looking longingly at the wine decanter. “How long before he misses you and comes racing hotfoot over here, brandishing a pistol and demanding I present myself?”

Chelsea glanced assessingly at the mantel clock. “We should probably be going.”

“Yes. Going. And where would it be that we should probably be going to, madam? Oh, and one more small thing. Why? Why me? Why am I going to be helped by you, and how am I going to assist you? My mind is still a little fuzzy on those two points.”

She looked toward the clock once more. “We don’t have time for this now.”

Beau crossed his arms over his chest, prepared to stand his ground for the next fortnight. That she should wish to flee her brother’s household was commendable. That she should involve him in her escape? Not quite as laudatory. “Make time.”

“Only if you come with me now,” she told him, heading for the foyer and then unerringly turning toward the rear of the house. “Your brother has ordered your horse saddled, and both mounts await us in the stables. If we keep away from the main thoroughfares, I’m sure we can be clear of London before Thomas can pick up our scent and kill you.”

“Oh, this gets better and better,” Beau said as Puck, never to be left out of anything even remotely exciting, joined them as they passed through the green baize door that led to the servant area of the mansion. “One minute I’m fairly happily contemplating my life through the bottom of a bottle in celebration of my birthday and my brother’s return from France, and the next I’m running from someone else’s irate brother, who may already be on his way over here to save his sister from the clutches of a man who hadn’t even remembered her existence a mere hour ago.”

Chelsea stopped just at the doorway to the kitchens and turned to face him. “Shut. Up. I’ve been trying to tell you since I arrived, but you keep interrupting me. Now we have to leave, unless you really are stupid enough to want to face Thomas while you’re still so obviously intoxicated. And obnoxious, as well, although I have begun to doubt that will change much even once you’re sober again.”

“I take it all back, brother mine,” Puck said, snorting. “I think I’m beginning to like her.”

Chelsea pressed her palms to her cheeks, seemed to perhaps be counting under her breath for a few moments, and then dropped her hands to her sides and let out a breath.

“One, my brother did you a great, unforgivable harm seven years ago. Two, he is by nature a very stupid man—and easily led, as you seem already to have ascertained on your own, hence the spoiled grapes. Three, just after our father died, Thomas became very ill and thought he was going to die before he could enjoy the fruits of our father’s labors now that he was earl. Four, he truly believes that Francis Flotley came into his life as a gift from God, the same God Thomas had made all manner of promises to if only the good Lord would allow him to rise from his sickbed. Five, Francis Flotley delivered Thomas’s promises to God, personally—yes, I know that’s insane, so you can stop making those odious faces at me—and now Thomas is not only still stupid and easily led, but he thinks he is on some holy path, and in charge of my soul, which he is not! Seven—”

“I think you skipped six,” Puck corrected helpfully. “Sorry,” he added quickly, when Chelsea glared at him.

“Six,” she said heavily, “because I have chosen not to marry any man Thomas could like, he has decided to take me to Brean first thing tomorrow morning, lock me up and then marry me to Francis Flotley as soon as the banns can be read. In order to save my inferior female soul.”

“Seven,” Beau interrupted, holding up his hand, “as you were clever enough to ferret out that I am responsible for your brother’s financial plagues of locusts—don’t ask, Puck, just listen—you assumed, incorrectly, I might add, the reverend to also be one of my inventions. So that, eight, it is now my fault that you are to be bracketed to the man. Ergo, I am responsible for saving you from this fate, which I, nine, will somehow do by escorting you out of London with your brother in hot pursuit and out for my blood. For which, ten, you will offer me some sort of favor in return. To which, one, but not to worry because my list is quite short, I say no. Thank you for the honor, putting my head on the chopping block the way you have, but no.”

“I may never drink again,” Puck said quietly. “I mean, I actually think I understand this. But what could Lady Chelsea offer you that would help you? And to help you, it would follow that whatever she’d offer would somehow revenge you against her brother in a way that makes up for the audacity you had as to come to his house and, bastard that you are, besmirch the family escutcheon by asking for his sister’s hand in—uh-oh. Beau? Do you even know the route to Scotland?”

Beau looked at Chelsea—the bane of his existence at fourteen, a ripe plum fallen out of the sky seven years later. The perfect revenge against Thomas Mills-Beckman and all of London Society, wrapped up like a lovely gift and dropped into his lap.

No. He couldn’t do it. Could he? He’d prided himself on being a gentleman in a world that, for the most part, had branded him as something all but inhuman. Yes, he was taking his revenge against Brean, but that was different; it was only money.

To elope with the man’s sister, bed the man’s sister? That was not only despicable, it would be akin to signing his own death warrant if they were caught before the deed was done, the girl was deflowered and her reputation already so ruined that killing Beau could only make a bad situation worse.

Brean would be disgraced, the entire family would be disgraced.

Madelyn? She’d said that he would “never be one of us.” It had never occurred to him that he could turn that particular table, make her one of him, that she could be made to know what it was like to be secretly laughed at, looked down upon, kept to the fringes of Society. Beau had become a student of Society since The Incident, and he knew what would happen. Her sister’s ruin would be Madelyn’s final ruin, as well, even after all these years.

But that would be petty revenge, beneath him. He could never forgive her, but that was because he hadn’t been able to forgive his own youth, his own blind assumptions about the way the world worked. He could have friends, even a few real friends, among the ton. But rich as he might be, well-mannered as he might be, educated and affable as he might be, the Marquess of Blackthorn’s bastard son could never marry any of their sisters.

“Beau? You’re staring, and I have to tell you, it’s a little repellant,” Puck said, stirring his brother from his thoughts. “What are you going to do?”

Beau shook himself back to the moment and looked at Lady Chelsea, who returned his look as she nervously bit at her bottom lip.

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “I can’t do it. I’m sorry, but one of us has to think of the consequences. You’d be shunned by Society, disowned by your family. Perhaps this all seems romantic to you, perhaps you see it as some sort of adventure, the sort best reserved for the pages of a novel, but—”

“His mouth is always wet,” Chelsea said quietly. “He says a female on her knees is a woman who knows her place. He preaches that women are inferior in their minds and must be led, guided, or else be considered harlots who must be shown the staff.”

Puck pulled at his brother’s arm, leading him a short distance away to whisper, “Which one, brother mine? The staff of obedience, or his own personal rod? Wet mouth, spouting religious nonsense, a girl as luscious as this one—I think we both know the answer. Not a pretty picture, and I would sleep nights, thank you. Damn it, Beau, we can’t let it happen, not now that we know. We can’t let her go back to her brother and this Flatley fellow.”

“Flotley,” Beau corrected distractedly, feeling Fate slipping its strong fingers around his throat, and squeezing.

“Doesn’t matter. Man’s a rotter, plain and simple. If you don’t marry her, I will. There are worse things than marriage to a rich, handsome and eminently affable bastard. That would be me, you understand. You’re just rich and passably handsome.”

Beau looked across the hallway at Chelsea and saw a single huge tear run down her cheek. The girl in tears, his brother threatening to sacrifice himself, the girl’s brother probably on his way to Grosvenor Square even now, armed to the teeth and with half his serving staff with him. If the girl were gone, Brean couldn’t try anything, but with the girl here, he could probably claim she’d been kidnapped, shoot both Puck and him and not be charged. After all, everyone knew their shared history; Brean would be believed.

But if Beau managed to put a hole in the earl? That would mean the gallows for him and probably for Puck, as well.

And the always-wet mouth for Lady Chelsea.

So why was he still standing here? There was only one decision, only one route to travel, and that led straight to Gretna Green and marriage over the anvil.

“Damn it all to hell,” he said, grabbing Chelsea’s elbow and turning her toward the kitchens once more. “Puck, get yourself out of London. Leave now, with us. Take the yacht, and let your baggage follow you to Paris. Brean is most probably about to lose his newfound religion, and I don’t want you anywhere in the vicinity when it happens. Give me five minutes to instruct Wadsworth, and we’re off.”

“Then … then you’ll do it? You’ll marry me.”

“Or die in the attempt, yes. You’ve left me no choice.”

Her smile nearly knocked him off his feet. “Yes,” she said sweetly, all trace of tears now gone. “I know. Escape is only a temporary solution. But marriage rids me of Thomas and will, even though you did not send Francis Flotley to us, probably go a long way toward pleasing you—as our marriage will make him positively livid. See? It’s all working out.”

“SO, IT’S SETTLED? I had supposed she might object. I prayed over that, entreating our good Lord to intervene, lead her feet down the correct path.”

The Earl of Brean looked up from the papers from his estate steward he’d been reading for the past hour or more without much hope of understanding them—something about yields per acre and a request to leave four of the fields fallow next season, which he most certainly would not allow, not if that had an impact on his wallet in any way. He’d had some bad investments of late. He waved the black-clad reverend to a chair.

“She did protest with her usual heat. But she’ll come around,” he told the man with some confidence. After all, Chelsea was not raised to be prepared to live beneath London Bridge. Besides, she had no other recourse. When in doubt, always remember who held the reins, and the reins were in his hands.

“Your sister is willful, Thomas. I have prayed on this, as well, and the only solution is to take her most firmly in hand. I shall begin with her books. Too much education is not for women. Their intellect is too frail to fully understand complex ideas. I have, in fact, taken the liberty of preparing a list of the more laudatory works fit for her more limited sensibilities. Books on proper deportment, the efficient running of households. And a fine variety of sermons, of course.”

“Good, er, good,” the earl said, perhaps thinking of the book of sermons that had so lately come winging at his head. “My father let her run wild, you know. Thought it amusing that she wanted to learn Greek.”

“Heathens,” the Reverend Francis Flotley said flatly. “With unnatural sexual practices.”

Thomas perked up his ears. For the past few years, his sole knowledge of unnatural sexual practices was that he’d bedded only his stick of a wife, and although others might not think that unnatural, it still was damn boring. Prayer was fine, he knew that, but when the woman beneath you prayed aloud, asking Oh, God, when will he be done? No, there were times even prayer hadn’t been able to rid his mind of memories of his last mistress, Eloise, and her willingness to do anything he asked. She’d cost him, but what were a few baubles when she’d helped dress him in her silk stockings and garters that one night—that had been quite the giggle. “Really? And what were they? Perversions, I suppose?”

Flotley ignored the question. “I have no fears that she will accept her lot, in time. Once we are wed. A woman must cleave only to her husband.”

“If muttering a few vows in church was all it took, Francis, Madelyn wouldn’t be tipping back on her heels all over Mayfair. It is my greatest fear that Chelsea will be just like her.”

“Yes, I know well your fears. Her husband is weak. I am not. Do you doubt me, Thomas? Have I not shown you the way?”

The earl seemed to think about this for a moment. “She throws things.”

“Not once under my roof, I assure you. Speaking of which, Thomas, you had promised me the deed once Chelsea and I were affianced.”

The earl may have found religion, but that didn’t mean he’d entirely given himself over to parting with his money unless he saw a good chance of receiving something in return. “When you two are married, Francis. On that day, I will turn the deed to Rosemount Manor over to you, as promised.”

“And the dowry? I do not ask for myself, as you well know.”

“The Flotley Haven For Soiled Doves. Yes, I remember. You are a good man, Francis.”

The reverend nodded solemnly. “I will have them on their knees, repenting of their sins so that their souls may be saved.”

The earl thought of a few other reasons the soiled doves he’d encountered over the years had been on their knees, but that was an evil thought and he needed to banish it. Francis was so pure, and he was still such a wretched sinner. “As you rescued mine, Francis. Yes?” he then said, turning his head toward the doorway, where the butler hovered, looking as if he’d rather be anywhere but where he currently stood.

“I am so sorry as to bother you, my lord, but it seems that Lady Chelsea has … disappeared.”

“What? In a puff of smoke? Don’t be daft, man.”

“No, my lord. That is to say she … it would appear that she has run off. She left a note.”

“What!” The earl leaped to his feet, his hands drawn up in fists. “Damn that girl! When I get hold of her I’ll—”

“Thomas? Sit down, Thomas,” the reverend said quietly but with an air of command. “Anger aids no man, and nor does violence. We will see this note, and we will find her. We will pray together for her safe return to the bosom of her family, and the Lord will guide us to her. But it is as I said, Thomas. She is female and therefore, willful. I promise you, this will be the last of the rebellion you will see from her. I will lead her steps to the Almighty, and with me to guide her, her husband and master to show her the errors of her sex, she will learn well the pathways she must trod.”

“That’s all well and good, Francis,” Brean said with some hint of intelligence. “But first we have to catch her.”