Never Resist a Rake (12 page)

The little John remembered of his early years were a blur of activity and merriment, alternating with squalor and neglect.

“But this is what I most wished to tell you about your father: He loved your mother. He loves me. But most of all, he loves his children.” She set her teacup back into the saucer with a soft click of bone china meeting its mate. “And that, my dear Lord Hartley, will include you in time. I only ask that you give him that bit of it, so he can get to know you.”

His lordship could have had all the time in the world with John if the marquess had fought a little harder to keep John's mother. However, looking at the composed, generous woman before him, he couldn't fault Lord Somerset's choice in his second wife. She was more magnanimous than John had a right to expect.

“I'm sorry for the pain this situation has caused you,” he said, meaning it.

“It is not your doing. And it is not my husband's either.”

John couldn't agree with that.

“I think we should chalk it up to bad luck all around and begin afresh. It is my dearest hope that you are willing to give us a try.”

John mumbled something appropriately noncommittal and excused himself.

Bide
your
time
and
toss
them
all
out
once
the
old
marquess
shuffles
off,
Blackwood had advised him. John wondered if this little introductory tea was Lady Somerset's first sally in the campaign to see who would still be standing once the title passed from her husband to him.

Part of him didn't want to suspect this gracious lady, who'd had kind words for his mother, of such subterfuge. Another part of him, the small boy who'd grown up as an unacknowledged bastard, decided to walk wary.

In the spring, a young man's fancy turns more naturally to hearts and flowers. In the bleakness of early November, it takes a special young lady indeed to bring out a gentleman's softer side.

—Phillippa, the Dowager Marchioness of Somerset

The chamber John had been allocated in Somerfield Park was bigger than the entire cottage in which he'd grown up. Porter had his bath waiting and a fresh suit of clothing laid out. He chattered on while John bathed, and kept up a steady diatribe as he helped him dress. Mr. Porter even hummed while he tied John's cravat. Clearly someone was happy to be there.

John still wasn't. It felt as if his life was happening to someone else, as if he were a Drury Lane player acting the part of heir. He simply wasn't
himself
anymore, and he didn't like it one bit.

“Would you like someone to show you over the house, my lord? I'll warrant the place is a bit overwhelming at first.”

John had been surrounded by quite enough opulence while he made his way through the grand foyer, and up the even grander stairs to this chamber. He hadn't dared think for longer than a blink that it would someday all be his. “No, I think I'll take a walk around the grounds.”

A dry winter garden wouldn't be as commanding as the rest of Somerfield Park. The very brick and mortar seemed to demand to know who he was and why such a common pretender would dare try to fit into the proud line of Somersets. The house itself was whispering, “What are
you
doing here?”

John stood immobile while Porter draped his garrick over his shoulders. It still seemed odd to have someone dress him as if he were a helpless child, but this was the way things were done among the Upper Crust—one more oddity of life to which he would have to become accustomed. He wondered if he'd be allowed to blow his own nose if he caught a cold.

“Dinner is served at eight. The dressing gong will sound at seven, my lord,” Porter told him as John headed toward the door.

“I'm to change clothing again?”

Porter shot him a puzzled look.

John could have kicked himself. He'd visited Blackwood's home once. He knew everyone who was anyone in a great house dressed for dinner.

“Everyone” had just never included him before.

He stomped out of the chamber before he embarrassed himself before his valet again.

* * *

Rebecca needed to stretch her legs after the coach trip from Tincross Bottom with old Lady Somerset and Sophie. Not that she didn't think the world of those ladies, but being in an enclosed space with two such forceful personalities made her feel as if she were in the middle of a battledore and shuttlecock match. And she was the shuttlecock!

They had launched into ways she might help Lord Hartley, to smooth his way with the higher-ranking young ladies who would be descending on Somerfield Park in a day or so.

“He'll not have had much experience with polite discourse. Not after growing up in Wiltshire,” the dowager had said with a delicate shudder, as if she hadn't been instrumental in situating John there in the first place. “He'll want training in the proper way to woo a lady of quality.”

Rebecca could attest to that. First, he'd spoken to her in the museum without benefit of introduction. Then, even though he had saved her from a terrible situation in that boxing crib in Whitechapel, he'd been surly and taciturn to her in the coach as he took her home. In their next encounter, he'd all but extorted a kiss from her. And at the coaching inn in Tincross Bottom, he contrived for her to remove all her clothing in his presence.

To say that John Fitzhugh Barrett didn't know how to properly woo a lady was an understatement of gargantuan proportions.

“Of course,” Sophie had added, “it would be best if John were unaware he was being tutored. Men tend to resent female instruction about anything.”

Freddie would have looked at this as a challenge. Perhaps she'd have even seen it as a scientific inquiry into whether human behavior might be drastically altered in a limited amount of time. Freddie would have drafted a plan, designed specific scenarios to elicit the desired response, and then presented her findings in a beautifully footnoted paper.

Freddie enjoyed anthropology far more than Rebecca did. More often than not, the study of her fellow humans depressed her. Rebecca loved the stars. She couldn't change them. No one would expect her to. All she need do was lie back on her terrace and watch them parade across the sky.

Rebecca wasn't sure if she could do anything to change John Fitzhugh Barrett. Or if she really wanted to. There was something appealing about a man who was so dreadfully honest, even when it was improper.

She walked along the pea-gravel path that led through Somerfield Park's extensive gardens. In high summer, it would be a riot of blooms, but now dead vines rattled over a trellised stone bench. She strode toward it, seeking shelter from the occasional breeze.

As she drew near, she saw that the bench was not empty. John was seated there, leaning forward, elbows on his knees and head in his hands.

“Hello, John.”

He rose to his feet and stood to one side to make room for her on the bench. “I trust you're not wandering the gardens because your accommodations are lacking.”

So far so good—John was polite and solicitous. Even the dowager would have found his behavior impeccable.

“Not at all. My room is splendid.” She was a baron's daughter and by rights ought to be accustomed to fine things, but her father had pockets to let. The paintings in their ancestral home had been sold to pay his debts of honor. Her mother's jewelry was paste replicas of her original pieces. After her threadbare chamber at home, her guest room at Somerfield Park was like the difference between a starless night and a meteor shower. “You're wandering about too. Isn't your chamber to your liking?”

“Not really. It's too fine, I suppose. Too big.”

That wouldn't please Lady Somerset. Nothing was too big or too fine for the future marquess. “You ought to take it as your due. You are the heir, after all.”

“I know something I'd like to take as my due.” He sat beside her and swept her form with his dark-eyed gaze.

This was not at all what the dowager had in mind when she suggested Rebecca school John on how to woo a lady. Still, her insides capered about.

“Taking is not at all the done thing.” She forced herself to frown at him even though a naughty part of her wanted to encourage him to take whatever he wished. “Wouldn't it be better if whatever it is you want was offered freely?”

“I take your point, but you're far too intelligent to be so obtuse. You know perfectly well I'm talking about another kiss.” He stretched out his long legs. “And you're right. As I recall, I did enjoy it immensely when you kissed me of your own accord.”

“Of my—” Rebecca blinked hard. “Of all the cheek. You practically blackmailed me into that kiss.”

“Is that how you remember it?” His mouth spread in a slow grin and the feel of his lips on hers came back to her unbidden, all warm and sure and beckoning her to follow him to darker depths of wickedness.

“I remember kissing you was the only way I could get you to agree to come home.”

“And that's the only reason you kissed me?”

“No.”

“So you wanted to kiss me?”

“I really don't want to talk about this with you.”

“Very well. What would you like to talk about? How about why Lady Sophie and the dowager insisted that you travel here with us instead of coming later with your family?”

“I don't understand. Do you wish me to leave?”

“No, just wondering why you're staying, that's all.”

Despite Sophie's advice to the contrary, she decided honesty was the best policy. “When we first met, you committed a social faux pas by speaking to me before we were properly introduced. Your family is hoping I'll teach you a more appropriate expression of social discourse with the fair sex.”

“And you agreed?”

“I did. You see, I want to help you.” She couldn't very well tell him the dowager had privately offered to settle some of her father's most pressing debts if she succeeded. “Will you let me?”

“I think you know by now that I'll let you do whatever you like with me.” One of his brows lifted, and a vision of him with that blanket wrapped around his waist flitted across her mind. For a blink, she imagined unhooking the blanket and exploring him in all his splendid nakedness. Yes, indeed, there were certainly things she'd like to do with him, but none that she should. She shook off those naughty imaginings.

“If you'll allow me to help you, then let me start by pointing out that you mustn't speak in double entendres to a respectable lady.” Of course, a respectable lady might not even have caught his suggestion.

“I didn't mean any disrespect.”

He reached over and wound one of the locks of her hair that had escaped her bonnet around his finger. If she weren't careful, he'd be doing the same thing with her heart. She gently unwound the hair and scooted farther from him.

“All right, Rebecca. What subjects of conversation are permissible with a lady of quality? And please don't tell me the weather.”

“The weather is always safe, but there are any number of other things. For example, you might discuss books.”

“I doubt I've read many a lady would approve.”

“Music, then.”

“I've a tin ear.”

“The theatre?”

“I didn't attend any plays while I was in London. My set tended more toward gaming and cock fights,” he said.

“What about the opera?”

“God save me from women who sound like a cat being gutted. How can they call it singing?”

She frowned at him. “You really do have a tin ear. If none of your interests are suitable to discuss, you could ask about the lady's.”

“Now we're making progress,” he said, his urbane drawl making him sound more like his friend Blackwood than himself. “Tell me. What are unorthodox debutantes like yourself fascinated by other than the Rosetta Stone and trying to manipulate a rake like me?”

“You are not a rake.” At least she didn't think he was. It was true that John had sown his wild oats in London, but she didn't think that behavior was typical for him. Even this haughty “milord” facade he presented to her now didn't seem believable. She was still looking for another glimpse of that boy from Wiltshire she'd caught once or twice. The man who fought for her in that boxing crib. The gentleman who left her untouched in that coaching inn when they both knew he might well have had his way with her. He was the sort who could command any woman's heart. “You ought to think more highly of yourself.”

“And you ought to listen more carefully,” he said. “You're not answering my question.”

John took her hand in his. There was a little opening at her wrist where the glove fastened with a tiny button. He undid it and ran the pad of his thumb in slow circles over that patch of bare skin. Pleasure radiated from the spot. It was as if she were a still pond and he'd just dropped a pebble into her center. Concentric rings of sensation surged and ebbed.

“Please tell me your fancy isn't wrapped up entirely in feminine gewgaws and folderols, or worse, demands for women's suffrage.”

“As a matter of fact, my friend Freddie and I are both proponents for the women's vote.” Rebecca had dozens of cogent arguments in favor of it, but at the moment, all she could focus on were the exquisite tingles John's strokes sent up her arm.

“I'm not opposed to women voting,” he said. “I just don't know why they need to be as shrill as opera singers about it.”

She bristled at that and almost pulled her hand away from his beguiling touch. “Maybe because we aren't sure anyone is listening if we aren't ‘shrill.'”

“You have my undivided attention, I assure you.” When John's intense gaze swept over her, every bit of her tingled with awareness. “Isn't there anything else you find fascinating?”

You
, Rebecca almost blurted out. How could she be so irritated by him one moment and drawn to him as inexorably as a lily to the sun the next? Then, to cover her unladylike response, she admitted, “I'm a bit of an amateur astronomer.”

She tugged her hand away and did up the button on her glove quickly, before his soft touches removed all possibility of rational thought from her head.

He smiled at her, seemingly unaware of the effect he was having on her. “Stargazing, eh? That sounds like a suitable feminine diversion. Moonlight is supposed to be romantic.”

She'd sighed over the moon as much as the next girl, but she'd also taught herself to recognize the constellations and tracked the progress of a number of planets across the heavens.

“Not all women are romantics. My astronomical studies are quite scholarly,” she said. “If you wish to impress a lady with your conversational skills, you shouldn't denigrate her interests.”

“Sorry. Do most ladies engage in scholarly pursuits?”

“No, they don't,” Rebecca admitted. And even if they did, like Freddie, they often tossed their other interests aside in favor of a woman's supposed only goal in life—to marry the right man.

“Then you are as exceptional as I thought. Dazzle me with your knowledge of the stars.”

“Just so you know, being confrontational like this is not the best way to advance a conversation with a lady,” she said. “But as a matter of fact, I can dazzle you, or rather the stars themselves can. The annual Leonid meteor shower is due shortly.”

“Is it? No doubt it will be easier to see here in the country than in London. What do you say we meet on the roof at midnight and count the falling stars?”

“That doesn't sound very safe. Your father fell from that roof, remember.”