[Cornick Nicola] The Last Rake in London(Bookos.org) (20 page)

Connie was in her element, so full of her own importance as Mrs Bertie Basset that Sally could see even the kind-hearted Charlotte was rueing the day Bertie and Connie had decided to come to Dauntsey. Connie flaunted herself in a dashing gown of purple silk, draped herself all over Bertie in a very public display of affection and insisted loudly on taking precedence over her sister as a married woman, just as Jack had predicted. Lady Ottoline, who had greeted her godson and his new wife that night with a cool civility that, Sally thought, had fooled Connie into thinking she was an insignificant old relative, was watching Connie very sharply with her shrewd dark gaze.

It was late that night when the dancing was over that Connie sought Sally out as she was on her way to bed and fitted yet another cigarette into her mother-of-pearl holder.

‘I suppose Mr Kestrel is very handsome,’ Connie said, drawing daintily on her cigarette as she tripped up the stair beside her sister, ‘and he is rich, of course. I can see why you might wish to marry him.’ She sighed. ‘But really, Sally, I could kill you for causing such a scandal!
I
wanted to be the centre of attention.’

‘Well,’ Sally said, her borrowed shoes pinching and her irritation just as sharp, ‘I do not think you need to fear that, Connie. You have managed to make a profound impression on everyone in a very short space of time. Besides,’ she added, ‘this weekend party is to celebrate Lady Ottoline’s birthday and it is for neither of us to steal her thunder.’

Connie brightened. ‘Yes, and Bertie has just told me that he is the old lady’s heir! Why he chose to keep that piece of information from me until now is a mystery, for I have wasted a whole day when I could have been making up to her, but never mind.’ She caught Sally’s arm, dropping cigarette ash on to the sleeve of the gown Sally had borrowed from Charley. ‘But you must tell me what she is like, Sal, and how best I can get into her favour.’

‘I cannot help you,’ Sally said. She felt furious at this further example of her sister’s barefaced greed. ‘Lady Ottoline will make her own judgements.’

Connie’s face was working like boiling milk. ‘Well, upon my word! You have become very high and mighty all of a sudden! I suppose this is because you are engaged to Mr Kestrel. Well, I shall become a lady long before you are a duchess!’ She looked down the stairwell to where Jack and Stephen Harrington were standing chatting in the hall. ‘You know, Sally darling, I think I am happier with my Bertie than you will be with Jack.’ She fidgeted a little with the cigarette. ‘Bertie made me promise not to say anything, but I think you should know…’

‘Know what?’ Sally said. Her attention was half-distracted because Jack had just looked up and smiled at her and her heart turned over in her chest in the sweet and poignant way to which she was becoming accustomed.

‘That Jack Kestrel murdered his mistress, of course,’ Connie said. She looked with satisfaction at Sally’s shocked, horrified face. ‘There! I told Bertie that you would not know. It is scarcely the thing a man tells his new fiancée, is it?’ And, having delivered her barbs, she slipped past Sally with a sinuous little slither of silk.

S
ally was not sure how she got outside. She vaguely remembered running back down the staircase and seeing Jack’s and Stephen’s startled faces as she rushed past them. Jack put a hand out to her and called her name, but Sally brushed him aside and slammed the door open. She hurried across the terrace and stood with her palms resting on the flat top of the wall that bounded the moat, and breathed in deep breaths of the fresh night air in an attempt to still the whirling, giddy spin of sickness within her.

You mustn’t listen to all the gossip about his past,
Lady Ottoline had said to her only the night before, but it was difficult not to listen to fiction when Jack himself refused to speak of his first love and Sally knew nothing beyond the fact that he had loved her and they had run away together and that she had been shot. To think that it might have been Jack who had killed Merle was shattering, impossible, even if it had been a tragic accident.

An icy trickle of despair ran down Sally’s spine. She could not believe it of Jack. She simply could not. It was not just because she loved him. She did not think she was so blinded to his faults because of that. She knew Jack could be ruthless. She knew that his mistress had died. But the rest…

It would explain the scale of the scandal,
a little voice whispered inside her.
It would explain why he was banished abroad. It would explain Jack’s silence…

‘Sally?’

With a start Sally realised that Jack had come to stand beside her. The night wind was ruffling his dark hair and he raised an absentminded hand to smooth it down in one of the gestures that she was coming to love. He was looking at her with concern and Sally realised that she was gripping the masonry so tightly that her knuckles were white and the stone was scoring her hands.

‘Sally?’ he said again. ‘What is the matter? What has happened? Did Connie say something to upset you?’

‘Yes,’ Sally said. She did not think of lying to him. She could not see a way of pretending that there was nothing the matter when suddenly there was this ugly, monstrous secret between them.

‘Yes,’ she said again. ‘She told me that Bertie had told her—’ She stopped and cleared her throat. ‘She told me that Bertie had told her you killed Merle Jameson,’ she said. ‘She said that you murdered her.’

There was a silence. Behind them the fountain in the courtyard splashed softly. A swan floated past on the smooth waters of the moat, its head tucked beneath its wing as it slept.

‘And did you believe her?’ Jack asked quietly.

Sally looked at him. ‘You told me yourself that she had died,’ she said slowly, knowing that it was no answer.

Jack took a step closer to her. ‘You don’t trust me,’ he said, and his voice was hard.

‘I don’t know!’ Sally spun around on him. Her heart felt torn. ‘God knows, I don’t want to believe you capable of murder. I cannot believe it! I cannot even imagine that you might hurt her by accident. But you have never told me the truth, Jack. You told me Merle died, but you never told me what happened.’

‘And because of my reticence you think I may be guilty?’ Jack’s icy tone flayed her to the bone.

‘No!’ Sally spoke, once again on instinct, and when he turned away from her she felt sick and dizzy all over again. She did not want to believe it, could
not
believe it was true…

‘Connie was right.’ Jack drove his hands into his trouser pockets and stood braced, staring out into the darkness. ‘I did kill Merle.’

‘No,’ Sally said again, but this time it came out as a whisper. She felt cold with shock.

‘I did not pull the trigger myself,’ Jack went on, as though she had not spoken. ‘But that does not matter. I was guilty. Her death was my fault. And I have carried that guilt ever since.’ He turned slightly towards Sally, but when she reached out a hand to touch his arm he drew back as though he could not bear it.

‘It was my fault,’ he repeated. His tone was violent. ‘You wanted to know the truth and now you have it.’

‘What happened?’ Sally felt cold through and through. She had thought she wanted to know the truth, but now she was desperately unsure. ‘Was there an accident?’

Jack folded his arms. ‘I told you before that I was young and foolish. I fell madly in love with Merle and was desperate for her to leave her husband and run away with me. When she agreed I thought I was the happiest man on earth. Merle wasn’t happy, though. She was afraid. She was afraid of what her husband would do when he found out. And I…’ he sighed ‘…I laughed off her fears. Jameson was frail and I was young and strong and arrogant and thought I could protect her.’

His face was bleak.

‘When Jameson caught up with us he had a gun. I thought he was going to challenge me—kill me, even. That would have been just. I never thought that he would kill Merle instead. Up until the last moment, his attention, his hatred, was focused entirely on me. I was afraid too by this point. I thought I was going to die. But he shot Merle, not me, and it was my fault. Her death was my responsibility.’

‘No,’ Sally said. Her lips shaped the word, but made no sound. ‘It was not your fault,’ she said. ‘You did not pull the trigger.’

‘As good as,’ Jack said. ‘I was the one who persuaded Merle to elope. I was the one who swore to protect her. I was the one who failed.’

‘She chose to go with you,’ Sally argued. ‘It was her decision, just as it was Jameson’s decision to pull the trigger. You cannot bear that blame, Jack.’

Jack’s expression was blank and Sally despaired of her words ever reaching him. He had kept his guilt and his misery locked away inside for ten years. At last she understood that part of him that was unreachable; the bitter part that had abandoned the idea of love. She felt hopeless of being able to change that now.

But she had to try.

‘You told me you loved Merle sincerely,’ she said, ashamed that even at a time like this she could feel jealousy over Jack’s deep love for the other woman. ‘You loved her and you wanted her to be happy. You thought that happiness could be achieved if the two of you ran away together. And who knows—you could have been right if matters had fallen out differently.’ She fixed her gaze on the dark trees etched against the night sky. ‘You knew that Michael Jameson was a dangerous and violent man. That was one of the things that you wanted to save Merle from, because you loved her. So you did what you thought was right. You asked her to elope with you and she agreed. She chose to go with you.’

Jack did not speak, but she sensed that his dark eyes were fixed on her face. ‘Neither of you could have foreseen what would happen,’ Sally said. ‘Neither of you knew what Michael Jameson would do. Merle’s death was
his
responsibility, Jack. It was his fault.’

‘You did not go with Gregory Holt,’ Jack said.

‘That was different,’ Sally said. ‘I did not love him. But if I had, I would have chosen to run away with him exactly as Merle did with you.’ She smiled at him, but his face was set hard in the moonlight. ‘I think that you could love again,’ she said softly, ‘though I expect it will be different from your feelings for Merle. But it need not be less profound.’

She took a deep breath. This was the hardest part. ‘Which is why,’ she said, ‘you should not marry, Jack, until you find someone you can love. Least of all should you marry me.’ She stopped, her voice threatening to break. She wished she had guarded her heart more carefully when they had first met instead of tumbling into love with him like a young girl fresh from the schoolroom. But it was too late for those regrets now. She loved Jack Kestrel, but he could not love her in return and, foolish as she might have been, she would not be so unwise as to marry him and then watch him fall in love with someone else when his heart had healed.

‘Good night, Jack,’ she said. ‘Think about what I have said. It was not your fault. Let it go.’

She heard him call her name, but she did not wait. She knew she had to get back inside the house and into the privacy of her room before she was tempted to reveal her most secret feelings. She could not tell Jack that she loved him and expose the deepest vulnerability of all.

Jack stood on the darkened terrace for a long time after Sally had gone. He could smell the faintest, most elusive hint of her fragrance still in the air and for a shocking moment he felt so bereft without her presence that he was hollow with longing. For the first time in ten years he felt at a loss, unsure of himself in his relationship with a woman. He had told her more of his feelings for Merle than he had ever told another living person. He had locked that pain and that grief away for all those long years, but Sally had gently brought him right to the edge of the precipice. He was so close to opening his heart to her and revealing his true feelings. Except that now he was not sure what those feelings were.

A few days ago it had all seemed so easy. He had desired Sally Bowes. He had felt so powerful a passion for her, but he had thought it no more than lust. He had told himself that he could manage his lusts. He had always done so before. His emotions had never been involved.

But one night with Sally had made him realise that he needed her as well as wanted her. Yet still he had not seen his danger. He had assumed that because he had kept the memory of Merle preserved so perfectly, because he had loved her with a youthful and idealistic first passion, that nothing and no one could ever match that. Now he was not so sure. He did not feel for Sally what he had felt for Merle. His first love had had an innocence about it, despite the circumstances. It had been rash, idealistic and magical. What he felt for Sally was deep; his desire for her was the least complicated part of his feelings. He had tried to pretend that they were his only feelings, but he knew now that he needed her. He wanted to spend his life with her. He wanted to grow old with her and for her to have his children.

He did not want to have to live without her.

He admitted to himself that he was afraid. He, who had fought for his country in the cause of freedom and justice, who had shown extreme physical bravery and made difficult decisions of life and death, did not have the moral courage to confront his fears of love.

‘You should not marry, Jack, until you find someone you can love. Least of all should you marry me.’

Sally’s words seemed to hang on the night air. She had been generous, just as she had been to Gregory Holt when she had refused to take advantage of his love for her. Jack had misjudged her and insulted her, yet now she was generous enough to try to help him and to prevent him from making an error that could conceivably lead him to repeating the mistakes of the past. She had thought that he might marry her and then fall in love with another woman and be trapped.

Except that he could not imagine wanting to be with anyone other than Sally…

Jack swore softly under his breath and started to walk slowly back towards the house. He knew where his thoughts were leading him and he did not like it. He did not like it because he was not in control. Sally had the power in their relationship now. He thought about the power that she had over him because of his emerging feelings for her. He was afraid to confront them.

They terrified him.

Sally slept badly and awoke to a bright, sunny Sunday morning that seemed an ill match for her feelings. They rode to church by horse-drawn carriage—Lady Ottoline would not dream of permitting anyone to be conveyed to the service in a motorcar—and immediately the difficulties of precedence raised their head again when Connie insisted on riding in the first barouche with Lady Ottoline and Charlotte, leaving no space for Sally.

‘As a widow woman,’ Connie said to her sister, ‘you must become accustomed to taking a step back, Sally.’

‘I am a
spinster
, Mrs Basset,’ Lady Ottoline said sharply, her bright gaze fixed on Connie’s petulant little face, ‘not even a widow, and I have never been accustomed to taking a step back
in my life
.’

‘Oh, but it is different for you, ma’am,’ Connie said blithely, ‘for you are the daughter of a duke.’

‘And Miss Bowes is your elder sister,’ Lady Ottoline said, ‘and, for reasons that I cannot quite fathom but that do her great credit, she has wanted the best for you all your life. The least that you can do is show her a little respect.’ And she patted the seat in the barouche beside her and gestured to Sally to join her.

Not even Connie’s elephant hide was proof against such a set-down and she rode in the second carriage with Bertie and the Harringtons, all the while shooting venomous glances at Sally and Lady Ottoline and waving her hand in ostentatious display at the villagers so that everyone could see her enormous diamond ring.

‘Truly, Sally, I do not know how you tolerate her,’ Charley whispered to Sally as they slipped into the family box pew in the little fifteenth-century church and Connie’s complaining tones bounced off the rafters as she sent the hapless Bertie off to find her extra cushions. ‘I am afraid that I would have strangled her long since if she was my sister!’

‘I know,’ Sally whispered. ‘I am sorry. She has become much worse since the wedding. I think that her status has gone to her head.’

Charley snorted. ‘Bertie is no great catch! Not like Jack. And it is not for you to apologise for her, Sally. It’s not your fault! Besides—’ she shot Sally a mischievous look from her dark eyes ‘—I think that Aunt Otto will utterly crush her. I know Aunt Otto, and I am not taken in by her quietness. She is working up to something tremendous!’

Sally did not have a great deal of spare energy to worry about Connie and her discourtesy. She was far more concerned about Jack. The pleasure that they had taken in each other’s company the previous day had vanished. Jack had sat across from her in the barouche, moody and withdrawn, and once again Sally had felt a helplessness that she could not reach him and barely knew him at all. Charley had also noticed Jack’s bad mood and had sought to reassure her:

‘It is just a way that men have, you know,’ she confided. ‘I have observed that if Stephen is wrestling with a problem he barely speaks to me
at all
until the matter is solved.’ She opened her eyes wide. ‘Such silence is quite incomprehensible to me and it used to worry me dreadfully in the early days of our marriage, until I realised that it was just his way. Jack is the same.’