[Cornick Nicola] The Last Rake in London(Bookos.org) (10 page)

With a vague wave of the hand she scampered along the corridor, and Sally heard the decisive click of the door behind her. Sighing, she walked back to her own room and started, rather listlessly, to hunt for something to wear. Talking to Connie about her attempted extortion had depressed her spirits. Even if Connie and Bertie were reconciled, it seemed likely that Lord Basset would think the connection highly unsuitable and try to separate the pair, using Jack as his messenger. And Connie’s feelings for Bertie did not appear to go very deep.

Anxiety gnawed at her. In the heat of the night with Jack she had forgotten all about Connie and her extortion and blackmail. She had given herself to him with a passion and a hunger that had driven everything else from her mind. Now, however, she remembered that they would not have met at all had Jack not come to the Blue Parrot to find Connie. And he would not have forgotten his original intention, no matter how hot the desire that burned between them. She thought of Jack, and their fledgling affair, and the fact that her bed was cold and empty in the morning. She thought of her newly discovered love for him, how fragile and foolish it was, and then she felt afraid, and she could not quite shake the superstitious conviction that something was going to go terribly wrong.

‘Mr Churchward has called to see you, Mr Kestrel,’ Hudson, the butler, intoned. ‘I told him that you were still at breakfast and he is awaiting you in the library.’

Jack threw down his napkin and got to his feet. He had taken breakfast alone as his uncle’s poor health left him bedridden and Lady Basset never rose before midday even though she was as fit as a fiddle. The house in Eaton Square was gloomy and quiet as a tomb now that his uncle was so ill and the Bassets no longer went out or entertained. Jack felt a strong urge to move out again to his club for the rest of his stay in London.

Bertie had made no appearance at the table that morning and Jack had assumed, a little grimly, that he had not come back the previous night. Not that he could talk. These days the milk was being delivered when he arrived home. Once again he had forced himself to leave Sally sleeping and had crept out like a thief. This time the impulse to stay with her had been even stronger than the night before. Their intense lovemaking had not quenched the need he had for her. The reverse was true. He had tried to satisfy his desire by slaking his body, but it only seemed to make matters worse. He wanted to possess Sally Bowes’s soul as well as her body, bind her to him as his alone. He had thought it no more than a physical urge. He had been profoundly wrong. The urge to propose marriage to her after a whirlwind three days was growing ever stronger. But that was madness. He had wanted to marry Merle, but there had never been another woman since whom he wished to wed. He could not love Sally as he had loved Merle. He did not want to expose himself to that sort of pain again. Surely this instinct he had to claim her was no more than a combination of old-fashioned guilt and primitive possessiveness.

Frowning, he crossed the hall and went into the library. He had forgotten about Churchward’s visit. Several days ago, when his uncle had first told him about Bertie’s indiscretion and Connie Bowes’s blackmail, he had asked the lawyer to look into her history. Now he felt vaguely uncomfortable about this, as though he was in some way being disloyal to Sally. He thought of Sally’s candid eyes, of the honesty that she had shown him. Whatever her sister’s duplicity, Sally had surely been telling the truth when she had said she knew nothing of it. All he could do now was to try to deal with the matter as best he could without hurting her.

Mr John Churchward, of the firm Churchward, Churchward and Boyce of High Holborn, was perched on a chair in the library, his briefcase on his knee, looking slightly nervous. John Churchward was only the latest in a line of the Churchward family who had served the Kestrels as lawyers for decades. The Boyce mentioned in the company name was a recent partner, but Jack had never met him. All his business, including the sorrowful meeting before Jack had been banished ten years before, had been concluded with this man, a thin, stooping figure who had a nervous habit of constantly adjusting the glasses that habitually slid down his nose and whose age was indeterminate. Ten years before, Mr Churchward had been in the unhappy position of confirming that Jack’s father did not intend to pay him any type of allowance at all during his exile. On Jack’s return as a rich, self-made man, Mr Churchward, who had not looked a day older, had seemed genuinely pleased to see him and to discover the independent success Jack had made of his business ventures.

‘I came as soon as I could gather the information you required, sir,’ Mr Churchward said now. ‘I have made some enquiries into the background of Miss Bowes and her relationship with Mr Basset.’ He shook his head sorrowfully. ‘A most flighty young lady, if I may say so, sir, and…’ he cleared his throat, blushing slightly ‘…somewhat indiscriminate with her affections as well.’

‘You do not surprise me, Churchward,’ Jack said, grimly. ‘Tell me your worst.’

‘Well, sir…’ Churchward made a fuss of opening the case and removing a sheaf of papers ‘…Miss Constance Bowes is the youngest daughter of Sir Peter Bowes, an architect of some renown who unfortunately lost all his money in unwise speculation at the end of the last century. She has two elder sisters, the notorious suffragette Petronella Bowes—’ here Churchward’s voice dipped with distinct disapproval ‘—and the equally infamous Mrs Jonathan Hayward, who owns a
nightclub
in the Strand.’

‘Miss Sally Bowes,’ Jack said, his lips twitching. ‘I believe she prefers not to be known by her married name, Churchward.’

‘I dare say,’ Mr Churchward said frostily. ‘A woman of that stamp—’

‘To return to Miss Constance,’ Jack said, cutting in ruthlessly as Churchward’s description of Sally roused a violently protective feeling in him, ‘what of her subsequent career?’

‘Well, sir…’ Churchward cast Jack a startled look at his inflexibility of tone. ‘Miss Constance was twelve when her father lost all his money and fifteen when he died. She lived for a number of years with a maiden aunt. There was…’ he consulted his notes ‘…some scandal over a flirtation with a piano teacher and later a thwarted elopement with a young gentleman called Geoffrey Chavenage.’ He cleared his throat. ‘When her sister, Mrs Hayward—Miss Bowes, that is—was widowed Miss Constance went to live and work with her at the Blue Parrot Club.’ Churchward stopped. ‘Two years ago, both women were involved in a rather unsavoury lawsuit for breach of promise.’

Jack, who had got up and strolled over to the window whilst this recital was continuing, now turned around sharply. ‘
Both
women?’ he questioned. He felt a chill down his spine, a premonition that something was about to go awry. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, sir.’ Churchward extracted a couple of sheets from his pile of papers. ‘Miss Constance Bowes sued a Mr John Pettifer over breach of promise to marry. Her elder sister stood as a witness and supported her throughout the case. They won,’ Mr Churchward said, with gloomy dissatisfaction, ‘and were awarded substantial damages.’ He paused, pushing his glasses back up his nose. ‘It was also Mrs Hayward who dealt with the matter of her sister’s unfortunate elopement. The Chavenage family allegedly paid out to keep the matter from the courts because Miss Connie was under age at the time.’ He cleared his throat. ‘So one might conclude, sir, that this case involving Miss Constance and your unfortunate cousin is part of a pattern to entrap young gentlemen into indiscretion and subsequently extract payment from them.’

Jack’s dark eyes had narrowed and a muscle tightened in his cheek. ‘And you are certain,’ he demanded, ‘
absolutely
certain, that Miss Sally Bowes—Mrs Hayward—supported her sister in bringing both these cases?’

He saw Churchward’s surprise at the vehemence of his tone. The lawyer’s eyes blinked myopically behind the thick lenses of his glasses. ‘Yes, sir.’ He held out the papers. ‘I have the court transcripts here. Miss Bowes was her younger sister’s most staunch supporter in the case against Mr Pettifer and my sources also informed me of her role in the Chavenage case.’

Jack took the papers. He would not, he told himself sternly, believe a word against Sally until he had seen the evidence with his own eyes. And yet even as the thought went through his mind he was scanning the papers before him. In Churchward’s neat annotations he read that the Chavenage family had apparently paid Mrs Hayward seven thousand pounds to keep the matter of her sister’s elopement with Mr Geoffrey Chavenage out of the courts. Chavenage senior was a Member of Parliament and Jack could see how badly the elopement of his son with an underage girl might affect his political standing. With increasing anger and disbelief he turned to the court transcripts for the Pettifer breach of promise case. Again, Sally had been very active in supporting her sister’s claim and had presented Connie Bowes as an innocent who had been cruelly betrayed by an experienced older man. Jack raised his brows with incredulity that the judge could have been so taken in.

‘Of course,’ Mr Churchward was saying, in his precise manner, ‘we must consider the possibility that Miss Constance Bowes was indeed the injured party in both of these instances—’

He broke off as Jack slammed one fist into the palm of his other hand. ‘I think,’ Jack said, ‘that is as likely as hell freezing over.’

‘Sir?’ Churchward looked confused.

‘Apologies, Churchward—’ Jack straightened up, casting the papers aside ‘—but I do not for one moment think that is likely. Miss Constance’s attempt to blackmail my uncle fits too neatly with the pattern for it to be a coincidence.’ He strode over to mantelpiece and rested an arm along the top whilst he tried to think coolly and calculatedly about Sally Bowes’s deception. She had told him that she knew nothing of Connie’s extortion threats and that she would do all she could to return the letters.

And he had believed her.

Fool that he was—he had been taken in by her apparent frankness, intrigued by her intelligent mind, led astray by his lust for the luscious body she hid beneath those deliciously silky gowns. There was evidence here, chapter and verse, of two occasions on which the Bowes sisters together had entrapped a young man and walked away with a fortune, but in his hunger for Sally Bowes he had almost fallen for her lies. He had exonerated the elder sister from the greed and cupidity of the younger, when in fact she was probably the one who arranged all the details of these unscrupulous affairs. Sally provided the brains, Connie the looks, to fleece the gentlemen of their choosing.

Something twisted inside him that felt almost like pain. Jack was not accustomed to feeling pain in any of his love affairs. It was something that had not happened to him for ten years. Then he felt anger, so intense and searing that for a moment his mind went blank.

‘Mr Kestrel?’ He became aware that Churchward was addressing him. ‘What would you like me to do now, sir?’

‘Churchward,’ Jack said slowly, ‘thank you for gathering this information for me. What I would like you to do now is to find out who the investors are in Miss Sally Bowes’s club, the Blue Parrot. Find out, and then approach them to see if any would be prepared to sell their stake.’

Churchward’s brows shot up. ‘Are you looking to invest in a nightclub, sir?’

‘No,’ Jack said grimly. ‘I am looking to ruin Miss Sally Bowes’s business, Churchward. Find the investors and buy them up. I want that club. I want Miss Bowes in my power.’

‘Mr Kestrel is here to see you, ma’am—’ Sally’s secretary had barely managed to get the words out when Jack Kestrel shouldered through the doorway into the office.

‘I’ll announce myself,’ he said. ‘Miss Bowes…’ He gave her an unsmiling nod.

Sally had been unable to concentrate all morning, a fact that she knew her secretary had noticed with curiosity. She had made half a dozen errors in her arithmetic and had started and abandoned three letters to the club’s suppliers. Her attention had been torn in half between worrying about Nell’s situation and thinking about Jack, and neither had been conducive to work. When Jack’s name was announced she had felt her heart do a little flip and the heat had rushed through her body in an irresistible tide, but then she had seen his face, his hard, uncompromising expression, and the smile had faded from her eyes as she had known at once that something was dreadfully wrong. Her superstitious dread had been well founded.

He did not look in the least glad to see
her
. In fact, he looked thunderous.

‘Thank you, Mary,’ Sally said, rising to her feet and nodding to the secretary to close the door behind her. Her heart was beating uncomfortably fast now. Already the abruptness of Jack’s tone and the dislike that she could see in his eyes reminded her all too clearly of their first meeting, before they had taken dinner together, before he had kissed her, before that tempestuous and passionate lovemaking that even now stole her breath to remember it. She felt confused, as though time had slipped back and all the things that she knew had happened between them over the past few days had never been.

‘This,’ she said, as calmly as she was able, mindful of the staff in the outer office, ‘is distressingly similar to your arrival two days ago, Mr Kestrel.’

Jack slapped a pile of papers down on the desk in front of her. ‘Do you deny that you supported your sister in a claim for damages after an elopement and also in a breach of promise case in 1906, Miss Bowes?’ he demanded.

Sally’s stomach lurched. She felt a little sick. So Jack had been digging into Connie’s past affairs. She might have guessed that he would. He must have started his enquiries before they had met, but even so she felt horribly betrayed. She remembered the previous night, the things she had done, the heated, intimate, perfect things she had allowed him to do to her, and she could not bear to think that all the time he’d had no trust in her. Even now the memories could make her melt with longing and she hated the fact that he could still do that to her when he was standing there like a cold-faced stranger. That was humiliating. But what was blisteringly painful was the fact that she had loved him then and, despite everything, loved him still.