[Cornick Nicola] The Last Rake in London(Bookos.org) (17 page)

‘Nothing, I suppose,’ Jack said.

Sally paused with her hand on the door. ‘Incidentally, Mr Kestrel,’ she added, ‘I have requested a room as far distant from your own as possible. I shall be removing my name from the panel by the door. And anyone creeping in there in the dead of night will be met with a chamber pot to the head, two hundred pounds or not. Do I make myself clear?’

‘As crystal,’ Jack said. ‘Good night, Miss Bowes.’

J
ack was up early the following morning. He had slept poorly, tantalised by the knowledge that Sally’s room was just down the corridor from his own, so near and yet so far. More disturbing than his sexual frustration was the fact that he actually missed sleeping with her; he missed her warmth and her scent and the confiding way that her body curled closely with his, bringing a deep sense of peace and comfort to him. It was not a feeling that was familiar to him and it irritated him profoundly.

He wished he had not provoked her when they had parted the previous night. She had spoken so convincingly about her reasons for refusing Gregory Holt that he had almost believed her. Then he had kissed her and once again he had been swept by the need to have her, to hold her, to keep her close. He wanted to believe in her. He was hesitating on the edge of a precipice and it infuriated him that Sally could get under his skin like this because he knew he was losing control; after Merle, he had no wish to let a woman get that close to him ever again. It was impossible. He would not permit it. He would keep Sally with him on his own terms, but keep his heart locked against her. She
had
to be the corrupt and venal adventuress Churchward had shown him.

He took one of Stephen’s specially ironed newspapers and made his way to the library. It was quiet and the early morning sunshine dappled the carpet. One of the Labradors was dozing in a patch of warmth and raised its head when he walked past only to sink back down with a grunt again as Jack sat down. In the parlour the servants were laying out a gargantuan breakfast, but no one could eat until Lady Ottoline decided to put in an appearance and she was probably still in bed enjoying hot chocolate and toast. Jack wondered how anyone could eat as much as his great-aunt and still remain stick thin. She had an appetite like a Labrador and he was beginning to think that her much-vaunted frailty was merely a cunning trick to get her own way. It worked, he thought ruefully. He could imagine Sally being like that in fifty years’ time, still as beautiful, still as strong-willed and busy terrorising a younger generation. He realised he was smiling indulgently at the thought and stopped abruptly. His wits were definitely going begging that morning. He had never thought of any relationship in terms of such longevity before, not even his affair with Merle.

He paused. When had he started to think of his hastily arranged false engagement to Sally in terms of something more enduring? He had almost forgotten that it was meant to be a short-lived ruse. Even more disturbing was the fact that his family had warmed to Sally and taken her to their hearts, even Aunt Otto, who was notoriously hard to please. Sally had Gregory Holt’s loyalty too—Jack gritted his teeth—no, she had Holt’s love to the point he was prepared to stand as her brother to protect her when he clearly wanted a very different relationship with her. Yet she refused to take advantage of Holt’s devotion. But perhaps she was after a better catch, someone who would one day inherit a dukedom. The test would come if she sued Jack for breach of promise when they broke the false engagement. Then she would reveal her true colours.

He could imagine that happening. It would be another logical step in the Bowes sisters’ financial plan.

Yet still his doubts persisted.

Jack unfolded the paper and tried to distract himself with the news.

His business acquaintance Robert Pelterie had made a mile-long flight in a monoplane. Jack, who had financed some of Pelterie’s work in aviation, was impressed. There was much news on the last-minute preparations for the Olympic Games, which were opening at the White City stadium in London the following month. And at the bottom of the third page there was a not particularly sympathetic account of the miseries experienced by the suffragette campaigners in Holloway jail:

‘All the hours seem very long in prison. The sun can never get in…and every day so changeless and uninteresting. One grows almost too tired to go through to the exercise yard and yet one has a yearning for the open air…’
There was also a list of other suffragists who had been arrested trying to enter the House of Commons by concealing themselves in a furniture van. Jack perused the list casually, his interest sharpening when he saw the name of Petronella Bowes. He remembered Sally mentioning her other sister when they had taken dinner together and saying that Nell’s life was made miserable by lack of money for food and medicines and how the constant threat of imprisonment and the need to pay fines seemed sometimes to overwhelm her.

The breakfast gong sounded. Jack finished the article he was reading before casting the newspaper aside and striding out of the library. The others were already in the breakfast room; as he approached he could hear the sound of voices and his great-aunt’s cut-glass tones as she requested kedgeree and lamented the lack of properly brewed coffee.

‘Good morning, nephew,’ she said sharply, as Jack appeared in the doorway. ‘Late again, I see.’ Her gaze swept from him to Sally’s demurely bent head. ‘I trust that you slept well?’

‘Never better,’ Jack said untruthfully. He smiled a greeting at Charley and Stephen, managed a civil nod for Gregory Holt, then went to Sally and took her hand, pressing a kiss on the back of it. He was rewarded with a slight blush and a flicker of her eyelashes as she cast one, quick look at his face. Astonishingly, she seemed shy. It made Jack feel protective. He reached for his customary cynicism. She must be no more than an extremely accomplished actress, as he had always suspected.

‘Good morning, my love,’ he said, and saw Lady Ottoline, if not Sally, smile with approval.

Sally was dressed very plainly today in a blue blouse and panelled skirt, and if she had slept as badly as he it certainly did not show. She looked fresh and, to Jack’s eyes, exceedingly pretty.

‘Miss Bowes tells me that you are both to leave today for a pressing engagement,’ Lady Ottoline said, her smile fading into a look of disagreement. ‘That does not suit me
at all.
In fact, I absolutely forbid it, nephew. Tonight is my birthday dinner and if my own nephew and his fiancée cannot be present, then it is a sad day for the family. As it is, neither your papa nor Buffy can join us, which I consider shows a deplorable lack of respect. That boy does not deserve to be a duke.’

Jack was saved from replying by a sudden rapping at the main door. Patterson, the butler, who had been overseeing the breakfast arrangements, hurried out, adjusting his livery as he went and wearing a faintly disapproving expression. Visitors were not expected to have the bad manners to arrive at ten when the family was still at table. It was the height of discourtesy.

There was a commotion in the hallway with the butler’s voice raised in surprised greeting and then a cacophony of voices. Jack looked at Charley and raised his brows. She got to her feet and hurried out, closely followed by Stephen.

‘You had better run along too, Jack,’ Lady Ottoline said, digging her knife bad-temperedly into the lime marmalade. ‘I would hate any of you to preserve good manners and remain at table with me.’

‘That sounds like Connie’s voice,’ Sally said. She sounded suddenly nervous. She put down her napkin. ‘Excuse me, Lady Ottoline.’

Jack followed her out into the hall. The familiar dapper figure of his cousin Bertie Basset was crossing the marble floor towards him. There was a blonde woman with him, achingly fashionable in a suit of cerise with a wide-brimmed hat framing her china-doll face. She was speaking in a light, drawling voice to one of the hapless footmen who was attempting to bring in what looked like vast quantities of luggage.

‘Be careful with that bandbox, you oaf! No, don’t hold it like that—you will squash my hat! And mind little Herman the Dachshund. He does not care for motorcar journeys and may well be sick on you…’

‘Connie!’ Sally said, in failing tones. ‘What are you doing here? Where have you been?’ She flashed Jack a look. ‘We thought—’

‘Sally darling!’ Connie wafted towards her sister on a cloud of expensive perfume. ‘What fun to find you here! We looked for you at the club yesterday, but Matty said that you had gone with Mr Kestrel.’ Her perfectly arched eyebrows rose in a look of wide enquiry. ‘I thought it most odd since I understood that you barely know one another.’ She pouted. ‘Indeed, it was most thoughtless of you not to be there to greet us when we were newly wed and simply
aching
to share the good news with you!’

‘I am sorry that I missed you,’ Sally said politely.

Connie waved a dismissive hand. ‘No matter. We saw Nell instead, and she was very happy for us.’ She frowned. ‘She was at the club. Apparently she had come to find you to thank you for the money you sent her.’

Jack’s stomach dropped. He looked sharply at Sally. She met his eyes for a brief, guilty moment and then looked away with a studiously feigned lack of interest, fidgeting with the cuff of her blouse before glancing quickly back at him again. Jack raised his brows and smiled at her and she blushed. She looked the picture of guilt. Some of the tight, angry feeling inside Jack eased. He knew now where his two hundred pounds had gone the previous morning. He knew what Sally had wanted the money for. He knew that his original instincts about her had very probably been sound. He felt an overpowering urge to confront her there and then, but unfortunately his new cousin was still holding the floor.

‘I thought Nell looked quite frightful,’ Connie was saying, blithely ignoring everyone else as she gossiped to her embarrassed sister. ‘She was all ragged and thin, but perhaps now that I am Mrs Basset I may be able to help her. It is good to be in a position where one can be charitable…Yes, what is it, Bertie?’ She spoke to her husband in tones of extreme irritation.

‘Sorry to interrupt you, darling,’ Bertie said uncomfortably, ‘but I wanted to introduce my cousin Charlotte Harrington and her husband Stephen, and also my cousin Jack Kestrel—’

‘Mr Kestrel!’
Connie ignored Charley and Stephen completely, but held out a hand to Jack upon which glittered the largest diamond he had ever seen. She was smiling winsomely at him, but it left Jack singularly unmoved. Looking from her little painted face to Sally’s, seeing them together for the first time, he was struck by how very different the two of them appeared. Connie, with her vapid airs and sharp tongue, was exactly how he had imagined her. He thought his cousin an even bigger fool than previously.

‘How do you do, Mrs Basset,’ he said, and Connie preened herself.

‘Connie,’ Sally intervened, ‘what are you doing here? This is Mrs Harrington’s home, you know, and everyone is here for a family party.’

‘Great-Aunt Ottoline’s birthday,’ Jack said helpfully, turning to Bertie. ‘You will have remembered that it is her party, of course, Bertie? She will be delighted to meet your new bride, I am sure.’ He had the pleasure of seeing his cousin turn a gratifying colour of white.

‘I had no notion Aunt Ottoline would be here,’ Bertie choked. ‘Came to see Charley, to ask that she might help smooth our way into the family, don’t you know.’ He looked askance at Jack. ‘Didn’t know you would be here either, Jack, for that matter.’

‘No,’ Jack said. ‘I dare say that if you had you would have thought twice about coming. I have been looking for you on your father’s behalf for the past week.’

Bertie gulped. ‘Deed’s done now,’ he said, ‘signed and sealed. We were married yesterday.’

Connie skipped up to Sally and thrust her hand under her nose. ‘Look at my diamond! Is it not tremendous!’

‘It is extraordinary,’ Sally said. ‘We thought that you might have headed for Gretna Green for your runaway match, Connie.’

‘Gracious, no!’ Connie wrinkled up her nose. ‘I could not possibly get married in such a hole-in-the-corner way! We had a special licence. Bertie bought it weeks ago.’ She caught Sally’s arm, smiling beguilingly. ‘I am sorry to have deceived you about my intentions, Sal, but it was the only way to keep the whole matter secret. I know you would have tried to dissuade me with your tiresome scruples.’

Jack looked at Sally again. She was pale and her face was set. ‘My tiresome scruples,’ she said. ‘Yes, they have always been such a trial to you, have they not, Connie?’ Again, she met Jack’s eyes for a brief moment, but there was no triumph in her own to have been vindicated. She looked hurt and regretful, and Jack felt a sudden fury that Sally could care so much for other people when Connie clearly cared nothing at all for her sister’s feelings.

‘Well, you cannot help yourself, I suppose,’ Connie said, smiling blithely. ‘You always were prim and principled. It was fortunate that I had Bertie to conspire with instead!’

Bertie flushed bright red. ‘I say, old thing,’ he protested, ‘it was not really like that! All we did was plan to raise a bit of cash.’

Jack turned to his cousin.

‘Congratulations on a stunning piece of duplicity,’ he said icily, and watched Bertie wither beneath his contempt. ‘You have nearly driven your own father to his grave with your blackmail, leaving aside the anxiety you have both caused Miss Bowes.’

‘Only wanted enough money to get married, what,’ Bertie said plaintively. ‘Papa wouldn’t countenance it, don’t you know, so Con and I had to think of something.’

‘I’m glad to see that in the end a shortage of funds didn’t stand in the way of true love,’ Jack said bitingly.

‘Papa will probably stop my allowance now it’s happened,’ Bertie said gloomily, ‘but he can’t disinherit me because of the entail.’

‘And his health is poor—’ Connie started to say, then stopped as Bertie shot her a look and Jack realised that even Connie Bowes did not quite have the brass neck to come out with the bald statement that she was merely waiting for her father-in-law to die.

‘I do apologise,’ Sally said, turning to Charley and Stephen, who had been standing watching the exchange in fascinated horror. Jack was not sure whether she was apologising for her sister’s behaviour or Connie’s very existence.

Charley shook her head and gave Sally a squeeze of the hand, which seemed to convey sympathy and support together, then stepped forward hospitably to smooth things over, offering breakfast and to show the newcomers to their room.