The Rake's Ruined Lady (12 page)

‘And Sir Toby?’ Bea asked after a short silence.

‘The less I see of him the better I like it,’ Hugh replied. He jammed his fists into his pockets, turning his head to gaze out over the fields. ‘He is an unpleasant character and I would advise anybody to steer clear of him. My aunt Edith couldn’t abide him, so she said.’

Beatrice sensed the soft clod beneath her feet giving way and scrambled backwards. Hugh grabbed at her whirling hand, jerking her away from the water and to safety higher up the bank.

He didn’t immediately relinquish her and Bea made no effort to wriggle her fingers free of his warm grip. She blushed beneath the golden gaze she sensed scorching the top of her head, finally liberating herself with murmured thanks for his assistance. She was determined not to give the impression of being susceptible to his polished charm. And he was very attractive...more so than when she’d fallen in love with him...she grudgingly acknowledged while darting him a glance.

He had the height and dark good-looks that appealed to women and made lesser-blessed fellows resentful. He also now had the wherewithal to purchase expensive tailoring to enhance his broad shoulders... Beatrice abruptly curtailed her wild appreciation. It was now nothing to her how handsome his face, or how snug his clothes! But she could understand why women everywhere—even in exotic locations—might succumb to him...

‘I have been remiss in not offering you my condolences,’ Beatrice uttered briskly, in order to curb her annoying preoccupation with his attractiveness. ‘I had no idea that your aunt Edith had passed away till recently.’ She started to walk along the bank. ‘Elise told me the sad news when she came to Hertfordshire. I liked Mrs Vickers, although I spoke to her only a few times when in London.’

It had been during that particular sojourn in town three years ago that she had met Hugh Kendrick and almost disgraced herself with him.

With hindsight Beatrice was aghast at what she’d done. Why she had ever thought it a good idea to adopt the soubriquet
Lady Lonesome
when advertising for a husband in a gazette, or to arrange clandestine trysts with strangers to select her mate, she would never fathom. She’d matured in character since, with Colin’s staid influence, she was sure. But the memory of what she’d risked—and forced her younger sister to risk as her reluctant accomplice—horrified her.

Bea was very fortunate that her antics had not completely sullied her future and her family’s name, already tarnished by her parents’ divorce. Few people had ever been aware of her stupid scheme; the man at her side had known because he’d responded to her advert. As a lure she’d pretended to possess a dowry and Hugh Kendrick had been eager to lay claim to it, if not to her...

‘Ah...I do recall you first met my aunt and me at Vauxhall Gardens. You were attending a concert with your sister and the Chapman family.’

Hugh sounded as though he’d dredged up the details from the pit of his memory while strolling at her side. In fact he’d not forgotten a solitary thing about that first encounter. Neither had he forgotten that he’d replied to
Lady Lonesome’s
advertisement because of Toby’s refusal to loan him money to pay his rent and keep a roof over his head.

But there had also been the matter of Sophia Sweetman’s expensive tastes depleting his bank balance. Sophia had been under his protection then—until he’d found he couldn’t afford to keep her any longer. Now she was again his paramour, and he was able to give her all she wanted this time round, but Hugh wasn’t sure he wanted Sophia—or Gwen Sharpe for that matter—no matter what delightful tricks they dreamt up to keep his interest and defeat one another. Annoyingly, he knew that the coltish blonde at his side would have no such difficulty arousing him...

Hugh cursed beneath his breath at the direction his thoughts...and his loins...were taking. ‘My aunt liked you,’ he said in a voice roughened by frustration. ‘When you and your sister left town that year and returned to Hertfordshire she lacked your company.’

‘I expect Edith missed having the details of our hasty escape explained to her.’

Beatrice had sensed his irritation. If he were already bored with her company she’d not impose on him longer. She retraced her steps towards Molly, hoping he might offer to assist her in remounting rather than watch her scramble in an ungainly fashion onto the mare’s back.

‘I missed you too.’

‘Did you?’ Beatrice jerked around. ‘You had an odd way of showing it, Mr Kendrick, as I recall.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘I believe you were paying attention to Fiona Chapman before I had unpacked my case in Hertfordshire.’

‘Were you jealous?’

Beatrice whipped a biting glance to his rugged profile but found a denial refused to trip off her tongue.

Slowly he turned his head, his hawk-like eyes trapping her, bringing her to an involuntarily halt.

‘It is a shame you have become arrogant and conceited,’ she whispered. ‘I think I liked you better as a penniless fortune-hunter.’ She marched on, but had covered very little ground when a hand clasped her wrist, jerking her back.

‘And I liked you better when you were a country miss keen to please me.’

‘That silly girl no longer exists.’ Bea twisted her wrist in an attempt to free herself.

‘I think she could be resurrected, given time...’ he growled.

‘And I think you might now be rich, thanks to your aunt’s bequest, but the Indian sun has addled your wits.’ Beatrice forced a fist between them to prise herself away from him.

Hugh grunted a laugh, dipping his head as though he would kiss her. But he skimmed his mouth past her mutinous face, letting her go. ‘Quite possibly something’s addled my wits,’ he muttered, and walked on.

Inwardly he mocked himself for feeling like a randy youth. He’d been burning with desire for her yesterday and only the thought of an audience with her father had checked his lust. If a roomful of mourners at a wake hadn’t put him off pursuing her he knew he should quickly distance himself, in case he lost control while they were alone. He should have gone home yesterday, he realised, and straight to Gwen and a long night of release.

There was nothing to be achieved by wanting her; he was tormenting himself for no reason. Alex would kill him if he seduced his sister-in-law, and Hugh was sure he wasn’t ready for a wife. Inwardly, he mocked himself that if he did propose Beatrice Dewey would throw the offer back at him. But she’d accepted Burnett, and Hugh knew there’d been a suitor before the doctor...

‘Did Mr Vaughan propose to you?’

Beatrice quit gazing at the mud underfoot. ‘Mr Vaughan? How do you know of him?’ she gasped in surprise.

‘Because you told me,’ Hugh replied dryly. ‘Don’t you remember that conversation, Beatrice?’

Bea bit her lip. No doubt when in Hugh’s arms, in a blissful haze, she had confided her secrets to him. Mr Vaughan had been the first gentleman for whom she’d formed a
tendresse
. The lawyer had pursued her when she was eighteen, then repaid her shy devotion by dropping her like a stone to wed the fiancée he’d omitted to mention.

‘No...he did not propose. Rather like you, he enjoyed flirting while chasing a dowry to make taking on a wife worthwhile.’

Hugh strode back towards her, caught her face in a fierce grip when she avoided looking at him. ‘I told you at the time I was wrong to mislead you when I had nothing to give. If things had been different we would by now have been man and wife. Things for me are different now.’

Beatrice would have pulled back but Hugh caught the tops of her arms, keeping her against him. Oddly, he was calmly certain that whatever he thought he knew about himself, whatever secrets he’d be obliged to expose, he was on the brink of asking her to marry him.

‘Things for me are different now, too,’ Bea retorted, glaring into hard hazel eyes. ‘Once home that year I fell in love properly, with a decent man, and soon realised that I’d felt mere infatuation for you.’

‘Is that so?’ Hugh asked softly. ‘I wonder if I’m able to infatuate you again now your decent man has disappeared...’

This time his mouth closed with hers relentlessly, tracking every evasion until she ceded with a little gasp and allowed their lips to merge. She felt his long fingers forking into her hair, dislodging her hat and a few pins. But though she struggled Bea knew she was defeated. Since the moment he had turned up at her father’s house with news of Alex’s mother she had unconsciously craved this. Within a second of his caress skimming her silhouette she had melted closer.

Hugh sensed her need and immediately deepened the kiss, manoeuvring her jaw to part her mouth. His tongue teased the silk of her inner lip, sliding and circling with slow eroticism, while a determined hand stroked from her back to her buttocks, jolting her into awareness of the effect she was having on him. His hands cupped her face, forcing her back from him so he could gaze at her features. A flush had spread across a soft cheek where his stubble had grazed her and her mouth, moist and temptingly slack, was scarlet and plump from his passionate assault.

But she was not the sweet ingénue she’d been before. He could read behind the desire in her large eyes that her response was reluctant...measured...and he wondered just how much the doctor had taken before he’d gone away.

‘You’re easily infatuated, sweetheart,’ Hugh murmured. ‘I’m beginning to wish I’d bedded down at the Hall last night, after all, and got to know you again.’

His brutal comment was like a dousing with cold water for Beatrice. He couldn’t have made it plainer that he thought her a wanton, desperate for his attention, just as she had been years ago when she’d promised him anything he wanted, then cried when he’d coolly told her he must stop seeing her.

A small hand, liberated from entrapment between their bodies, flew up to crack against his unshaven cheek, jerking his head sideways. ‘I’m not infatuated and never will be again...not with you, at least. I’m disgusted by your lust and insolence.’ She backed away, pressing quivering fingers to her pulsing lips. ‘Colin might not be able to marry me under the terms of his inheritance but I’d sooner be his mistress than your wife.’

Hugh stalked her on their way back, until she realised she’d got the stream directly behind her and could go no further.

‘I don’t recall proposing to you...ever...not then, not now,’ he gritted through his teeth, infuriated with himself as well as her.

He would have risked even worse humiliation at her hands if he’d let those four damnable words circling his mind trip off his tongue.

‘But if it’s a lover you want...’ Hugh continued in a deliberately lewd tone as he trailed just one tormenting digit down a hot silky cheek. ‘I’ll provide a better service than the doctor...in every way. Just name it and it’s yours, whatever you desire.’ He grunted a callous laugh as she flinched at his crude proposition. ‘So...the decent man’s gone off to Miss Rawlings to keep his estates safe, has he?’

‘Don’t you dare mock him!’ Beatrice cried. ‘He didn’t want to leave me! He had to for his future heirs’ sake!’

‘Quite the martyr, then, isn’t he?’ Hugh mocked. ‘Yet Sir Colin, as he demands to be known, gives the impression of a man content with his lot in life...whereas I have just realised I am not, because I want what he doesn’t.’

Beatrice gulped down an indignant protestation. She had not seen Colin since he’d jilted her, but for her pride’s sake she’d clung to a belief that he was missing her as she missed him. She might tell her family...she might tell herself...that she was glad they’d parted, but in private moments she knew it wasn’t wholly so. There had been tender interludes during their relationship, if no great passion. For this man to brutally throw her fiancé’s faithlessness in her face—even if it were the truth—was galling.

‘If Colin seems content it is because he is stoic and sensible enough to know he must accept what he cannot change!’ Beatrice hissed. ‘Whereas
you
are a disgusting degenerate.’

‘Am I? Who told you so?’ Hugh enquired with specious softness.

Beatrice pressed together her lips, as though to prevent herself repeating what she’d learned about him from Lady Groves: he was a man who preferred spending time with harlots rather than decent women, despite his popularity with debutantes. If the ladies’ comments about the flirtatious Miss Rawlings were to be believed Colin’s future wife seemed, with awful irony, particularly taken with Hugh Kendrick. And if that were not enough then there was the
other business
which, if she’d guessed correctly, had taken place overseas.

‘Come...if you want to slander me, Beatrice, let me have some details and your source.’

‘But I’ve not slandered you, have I?’ she breathed, removing tendrils of fair hair that a stirring breeze had lashed across her vivid blue vision. ‘That damning description is accurate and could be added to.’

He shrugged, cruelly amused. ‘With a little more information, sweet, I’ll be able to judge.’

The temptation to provoke him into admitting he had dallied with exotic women was too great, and he had invited it. ‘It wouldn’t matter where in the world you were, you’d sooner scandalise decent people than curb your lust.’

‘Ah...I see... It worries you that I might have let my eye rove when in India. You told me you weren’t jealous, Beatrice...’ he goaded, glad that she didn’t seem in possession of any firm facts.

‘I’m not jealous...’ Bea raged.

But he was ready for her fist this time and caught the small curled digits inches from his face. ‘What do you want me to tell you, sweet? All of it?’

‘Get out of my way,’ she choked in frustration and fury.

Her eyes continued sparking blue fire despite the burn of tears making her blink. She’d never win this verbal battle and knew she was close to breaking down so must withdraw from it. She was not jealous or upset in any way because of Hugh Kendrick, of that she was certain! Her distress came from the unpalatable news that Colin might already have eased his conscience where she was concerned. It was hard to bear, especially as he must replace her with a woman who seemed likely to stray—perhaps before they’d even wed.