Ravished by the Rake (24 page)

‘Ah, but you do not understand.’ Imogen cast a hunted look around, as if expecting to see assassins appearing from behind every topiary bush. ‘I must shut myself away for my own protection.’

Dita pinched herself. No, she was awake so she could not be dreaming that she had strayed into a Minerva Press novel. ‘From what? Or whom?’

‘Alistair,’ Imogen declared, as she sank on to a
bench and pulled Dita down beside her. ‘May I confide in you?’

‘I think you had better,’ Dita said. ‘You can hardly leave it there.’

‘When I was a girl, he loved me, you see,’ Imogen said. ‘He adored me, worshipped the ground I walked upon. It was a pure love. A young man’s love.’

‘Er … quite,’ Dita said, feeling vaguely nauseous. ‘It would be if this was before Alistair left home.’ At least, he was only twenty, so
young
was accurate, although whether his affections were entirely pure, she had her doubts—very few young men of that age had a pure thought in their heads in her experience. ‘And you loved him? Encouraged him?’

‘I was flattered, of course, although I had many admirers.’ She simpered and Dita folded her hands together firmly—the urge to slap was tremendous. ‘Perhaps I was too kind and he misunderstood.’

Dita said nothing, thinking back. She had no memory of Alistair mooning about, love-struck, but then she had only been sixteen and she never saw him at dances or parties. But he had seemed different, somehow. That fizzing excitement, the way he was almost flirtatious. Had that been it? He had been in love and she had sensed it. Perhaps that had awakened her own new feelings for him.

‘Then another man declared himself and I was …’ she sighed ‘… swept away. He was older, more sophisticated, titled.’

The realisation of what Imogen was saying hit Dita like a blow. ‘You are saying that Lord Iwerne courted
you at the
same time
as his son? It wasn’t after Alistair left home that he paid his addresses?’

‘No.’ Imogen produced a scrap of lace and dabbed her eyes. ‘It was dreadful. My lord found me alone and his passions overcame him. He held me to him, showered kisses on my face, declared his undying devotion—and Alistair walked in.’ She went extremely pink.

‘He was doing rather more than rain kisses on your face, was he not?’ Dita said with sudden conviction. ‘He was making love to you. Where?’

‘In the library,’ Imogen whispered.

So that was it. He found his father and the woman he loved in an act of betrayal and he walked out, furiously angry, and got drunk. And then I found him.
And when she had given herself to him the disgust he must have felt with Imogen, with women in general and with himself, had swept over him. He had thrown her out of his room and the next day he had left.

Of course he had. How could he live in the same house as his father when he had seduced the woman Alistair loved? How could he accept Imogen as his stepmother after that betrayal? He had been in an impossible situation. Any other man he could have punched, or called out, but this was his father.

‘So he left and made a new life for himself abroad,’ Dita said, thinking out loud. ‘And now he is back.’ How hideously embarrassing for both of them. ‘But I am sure with tact on both sides you can put it behind you.’

‘But he still loves me,’ Imogen said. Dita stared at her. Impossible. ‘He desires me,’ the young widow whispered. ‘I am afraid to be in the house with him, that is
why I must take refuge in the Dower House. I told him, it is wrong, sinful. I am his father’s widow. But—’

‘That,’ Dita said with conviction, ‘is nonsense. Of course he no longer loves you. Or desires you.’ Her certainty wavered a little there—Imogen was very lovely. No, surely Alistair had better taste now he was an experienced man.

‘Oh!’ Imogen glared at her. ‘I see what it is—you want him yourself and cannot face the fact that he is besotted with me. Well, you beware, Lady Perdita, he is dangerous.’ She sprang to her feet and swept off along the terrace, silken skirts swishing.

Dita sat and stared after her. ‘Dangerous? No, but you are,’ she murmured. After a few minutes she got up and made her way back to the drawing room. ‘Lady Iwerne was a little tired and went to lie down,’ she said. Alistair looked at her, questions in his eyes, but she produced a bright smile, incapable of thinking what to do about this revelation.

Alistair was charming to all three of them, saw them to the door, waved them off, but Dita had the impression that his gaze rested on her with speculation.

‘What on earth did that woman want with you?’ her mother demanded, the moment the carriage door was closed.

‘Oh, to poke at me and be catty,’ Dita said. ‘She is bored, I have no doubt—I do not grudge her the amusement.’ She fiddled with the pearls for a while, then asked, ‘Will she be moving into the Dower House?’

‘I imagine so. Alistair said something about having it renovated,’ Lady Wycombe said.

That sounded likely. A planned renovation for the Dowager to move into before Alistair came home with a bride was only to be expected. Surely, if Imogen felt threatened in any way, she would have fled there immediately. No, for some reason she was feeling the need to attack Alistair and he ought to know what she was saying.

Inwardly Dita quailed at the thought of discussing that day when he had made love to her, but if Imogen spread this vicious nonsense some of the mud might stick. How could she? she railed inwardly, more furious the more she thought about it. How she must have changed—or had Alistair been blinded by love, all those years ago? She would have to think how to tell him, but she must do it tomorrow. It would be a sleepless night.

P
lease meet me at the hollow oak by the pond, the note read in Dita’s impatient black hand. Ten o’clock this morning. It is very important. D.

Alistair studied it while he drank coffee. That could only be the old tree that he and her brothers had used as a shelter when they fished in the horse pond as children. Dita would tag along, too, but it was one of the few occupations that would drive her away with boredom after half an hour.

What did she want that was so urgent and that could not be discussed in the house? Had she thought better of her situation—or realised how determined he was—and had decided to accept him?

He suspected not. Dita was stubborn. No doubt a frustrating encounter lay ahead, but it would get him out of the house with its increasingly poisonous atmosphere. Alistair found himself longing for the moment when he could, with a clear conscience, leave the estate and go up to London.

He strolled down to the stables and spent an hour with Tregowan, looking over his father’s horses, but he found he was too restless to concentrate.

Was Dita unhappy? He missed her, he found, more every day. There was no one to wake him up with tart observations over breakfast, no one to make him laugh or to freeze him with a sharp look from green eyes. No one to stir his blood as only Dita stirred it.
Green-eyed hornet,
he had thought her that evening in Calcutta. She would certainly sting when he finally had her trapped.

Alistair shifted restlessly, changed his position leaning against the mounting block, and considered how long it would be before he could go to London and set up a mistress. It would be a short-term arrangement until he took Dita as his wife; he despised men who took marriage vows and then immediately broke them.

‘I’ll take the grey hunter out now, Tregowan.’ It was early, not half past nine, but he’d gallop the fidgets out before he met her.

Dita was already sitting under the oak when he got there, her back against the trunk, her knees drawn up with her arms around them as she’d been used to sit, watching the boys fish until her patience gave out. It made him smile despite everything, just to look at her. She turned her head at the sound of hooves, but did not move position. The long skirts of her riding habit pooled around her feet and his horse snickered a greeting to her mare, tied to a nearby willow.

‘He’s handsome,’ she said in greeting as Alistair dismounted and threw the reins over a branch.

‘Very,’ he agreed and came to sit next to her on the
turf. ‘My father had an eye for horseflesh.’
And female flesh, too.
‘Are you all right?’ She was silent and he turned his head against the rough bark for a better look at her face. ‘You are not, are you? Couldn’t you sleep?’

‘No,’ she agreed, ‘I couldn’t.’

‘Nightmares? Or have you made up your mind to do the right thing and marry me?’ He put his arm around her shoulders. She sighed and leaned in to him for a second and he felt himself relax.

‘No. A dilemma.’ After a moment she sat up straight, pushing herself away from his arm. ‘Alistair, I am worried about Lady Iwerne.’ When he did not reply, she added, ‘She told me a very unpleasant story about you. If she is spiteful enough to spread it, she could do a lot of damage.’

‘What is she saying?’ he asked, surprised his voice was not shaking with the temper that flashed through him.

‘That you were in love with her, eight years ago, and that you left home when you realised she was going to marry your father, which in itself is quite understandable,’ Dita said flatly. ‘But she told me that she is frightened of you now and feels she has to flee to the Dower House to be safe from you forcing your attentions on her.’

Alistair swore. ‘Quite,’ Dita said. ‘The question is, what are you going to do about it?’

‘You don’t believe her?’ He had to ask.

Dita made a scornful little noise. ‘I believe you were in love with her, yes. She is quite extraordinarily lovely and I expect then she was prettily behaved and flirted with a sweet sort of innocence. You were in such a state
when you realised the truth that your emotions must have been deeply involved.

‘But now? I can imagine that she is distractingly beautiful to have around the house, but she is foolish and empty-headed and you have higher standards than that. I would guess that she irritates you greatly. Leaving aside the small matter of it being incest to lie with your father’s widow.’

The relief that Dita so categorically believed in him distracted Alistair from how she had phrased it and it took a while for her words to sink in. ‘Thank you for your faith in me.’ He found her calm intelligence both bracing and refreshing after Imogen’s tantrums. ‘But how do you know how I reacted to the realisation that she and my father—’

‘I saw you that day, don’t forget.’ She kept her voice carefully neutral, but Alistair winced. ‘Imogen said that your father found her alone, his passions overcame him and he swept her into his arms and showered kisses on her face while declaring his undying devotion. It was rather more than that, I imagine.’

‘I walked into the library and found him taking her on the map table,’ Alistair said. ‘I turned right round and walked out and didn’t go back until I was sure I wouldn’t do something stupid, such as hit him.’

‘And so you went and got drunk.’

‘Yes. And, unfortunately you know more about what happened next than I do.’ He got to his feet and walked away from her. ‘I must have sunk at least two more bottles after you left me.’

‘I am so sorry. Look at me,’ Dita said. ‘It is all right,’ she went on as he turned, and he saw she was studying
him gravely. ‘I told you after the shipwreck—it wasn’t your fault. And it wasn’t your fault that I realised that I was in love with you and that you broke my heart.’

‘What?’ He sat down with a thump on a tree stump.

‘Along with every other impressionable girl for twenty miles around,’ Dita explained with flattening calm. ‘You were very handsome then, you know. You still are, of course, but so many of the boys and young men we knew had spots, or kept falling over their feet or were complete boors. I didn’t see it because I was still thinking of you as my friend, you understand. Or like George. Only, when you kissed me like that I realised that you most certainly were not my brother and I didn’t want you to be. That is why I came to you. Don’t think you forced me.’

Alistair knew he was gaping and had no idea what to say. ‘I was
sixteen,
Alistair. Girls that age are all emotions and drama and there is nothing they enjoy more than the agonies of exaggerated love. We grow out of it, you know. You broke my heart, of course, when you went away. I thought it was all my fault, because I didn’t know about Imogen. But then I heard Mama and Papa talking about some row you had had with your father over land and I saw it was nothing to do with me. Girls that age fall in and out of love four times a month.’

‘You were in love with me? Then why the hell won’t you marry me?’ he demanded. ‘That’s what you want in marriage, isn’t it? Love?’

‘I told you—I fell out of it soon enough. And I was rather hoping for a husband who loved me,’ she said tartly. ‘Mind you,’ she added, ‘it did make a lasting impression, making love with you. You know how if
ducklings hatch and there is no duck around they become fixed on whatever they see first and think the cat or a bucket is their mother?’ He nodded, bemused. ‘Well, I think I must have become imprinted with the image of tall, dark, handsome men with interesting cheekbones—because Stephen looks a bit like you, I realise now. And I don’t find blond men very attractive.’

He shook his head as though to dislodge an irritating fly. ‘Look, you know you have to marry me. You love me.’ The thought filled him with terror.

‘You were not listening,’ she reproved. ‘That was eight years ago. Calf-love. But that doesn’t matter now. How are we going to neutralise Imogen before she spreads this tale round half the county?’

Alistair dragged his mind—and his body, which was taking an entirely inappropriate interest in the thought of how Dita might demonstrate love—back to the problem. ‘I need a chaperon,’ he said. ‘In fact, half a dozen of them. I’ll invite a houseful of men, sober professional men, to stay immediately. I’ll get in my London man of business, an architect, someone to advise on landscaping the grounds, the steward here, my solicitor—they’ll drop everything if I call. I’ll have the vicar to stay, while I’m at it, tell him I want to discuss the parish and good works, or something. I’ve got the devil of a lot of business to see to—I’ll do it here and now.’