The Taming of the Rake (15 page)

He ran his hands over her body as if on a journey of discovery, and she felt her body coming alive, hungry
to feel that same rapture he’d introduced her to, this time without the fear of the unknown standing between them. Because now she knew. Now she wanted, instantly, and when she pushed her lower body against his it was clear he wanted her, too.

“Yoohoo! I say, you up there on the hill! Deuced sorry to interrupt and all of that. But—
Yoohoo!
”

Chelsea watched as Beau aimed what could only be described as a homicidal glare in the direction of the intruding voice.

“Yes, that’s it, you! Sorry to be a bother! I say, good sir, could you lend some assistance to a fellow traveler?”

“I could shoot him, put him out of his misery,” Beau suggested as they looked at the tall, thin young exquisite as he attempted to climb up the bank and into the rolling meadow in what appeared to be red-heeled evening shoes fit only for the dance floor. “What in bloody hell is he doing out here, dressed like that?”

Chelsea had been half turned away, buttoning the jacket of her riding habit, as Beau seemed to be an expert in undoing buttons while she was unaware of anything but his touch. She spared a mere half second wondering where he had gained his expertise but dismissed that thought as unworthy of her. After all, he was seven years her senior. He was bound to have bedded other women. Possibly scores of them. Not that he’d ever do it again, or there would be six arrows sticking out of
his
back. Goodness. It would appear that she was one of those dreadful jealous sorts. She hadn’t known that.

But she’d have to examine that new knowledge later, for the man was still advancing toward them as rapidly as his mincing walk could manage.

Now she got her first really good look at their, quote, fellow traveler, and she understood Beau’s question. The young man was dressed for a ball; satin knee breeches, clocked hose, those dreadful shoes and more lace at his throat and wrists than that which adorned her great-grandmother Enid’s hideous heirloom tablecloth. He was so painfully young, and trying much too hard to appear sophisticated.

A further inspection revealed that there was what looked to be a high perch phaeton on the roadway below them. There appeared to be a young woman hanging on to the precarious seat for dear life because one of the wheels of the equipage was sunk deep in the mud thanks to a combination, Chelsea decided, of muddy roads from yesterday’s rain and some cow-handed driving.

“There’s a woman down there,” she told Beau, pointing in the direction of the phaeton. “A young woman by the looks of her. Oliver! Do you suppose they’re an eloping couple? Oh, they must be. Just like us. Do you know what that means, if it is?”

“Yes. It means, if that wheel is as stuck as I think it is, that I am about to become very angry.”

“No, silly. Well, yes, you probably are going to do that, because I think we’re honor-bound to help them. But what it really means is that we must be on the correct road, after all.”

“Unless little mister dandy is as lost as we are,” Beau pointed out dully. “And if I’ve no better sense of direction than that hair-for-wit looby heading for us, I may feel obliged to slit my own throat. Come on, let’s mount up and meet him halfway. Otherwise, he’ll break one of those damned heels and I’ll end up carrying the twit.”

Chelsea carefully, and probably wisely, hid her smile by turning her head and then felt herself being half lifted and half tossed up onto her sidesaddle before Beau mounted his horse and they walked them down the grassy hill to where the young gentleman had stopped and was now attempting to pick some small burrs off his stockings.

“Who the hell are you and what in blazes are you doing with that young woman?” Beau said without preamble.

“Oliver!” Chelsea exclaimed, not as shocked as she probably could have been by his bad manners. After all, anyone who thought to drive a high perch phaeton all the way to Scotland with a young lady sitting up beside him wasn’t really deserving of courtesy. She wasn’t sure what Beau deserved, having his runaway bride making the same journey on horseback, with only a small satchel of increasingly tired undergarments with her. But now probably was not the time to point that out to him.

“Kind sir,” the young man said, taking off his chapeau—it had a feather in it!—and sweeping Beau and Chelsea an elegant leg—or at least as elegant as it could be, considering he was slipping on the wet grass. “Dear
lady. Please allow me to present my sorry self to you both for your explanation and edification.”

“I believe I can safely state that I won’t be edified in the least,” Beau said. “But do go on. I departed London early this season, before I could attend a farce.”

The young man, who couldn’t possibly even have reached his majority, blushed becomingly, which rather tugged at Chelsea’s heartstrings. Why, she would imagine he had only just begun to shave.

“Sir,” he said, standing up very straight now, as if in the presence of his schoolmaster. “I am Jona—that is to say, John…Smith. Of Leicestershire. The fair lady is under my protection.”

“Your protection. That should be sufficient to terrify the creature,” Beau said, looking toward the phaeton. “And her name is—no, wait. Let me save you the trouble. Her name is Mary. Shall we call her Mary Brown?”

“You mock me, sir,” Mr. Smith accused, his fair cheeks growing ever more colorful. “Think what you wish of me, but the lady is sacrosanct. You will not malign her or else I shall demand satisfaction from you.”

“Good God, man, I would never do that. Pity her, long to shake some sense into her, yes. But I will not malign her, as she probably believes herself in love with you, you arrogant young puppy. Have you really driven all the way from London in those clothes?”

This also probably was not the optimum moment to remind Beau of his own “arrogant young puppy” days, Chelsea decided. Or his own rather ill-judged sartorial choices back then. Although she felt fairly certain he
must have been having at least some small nigglings of remembrance, which was probably all that was saving young Mr. John Smith from a truly blistering scold by the now older and wiser Oliver Le Beau Blackthorn.

“London? Why, I should say not! We fled a dashed dull masquerade ball at my…that is to say, at a home in…several miles distant from here.” If at all possible, he seemed to draw his slight frame up even higher, as if he’d gone up on tiptoe. “I shan’t hide what we’re about, as we know our minds. We are in love, just as you say, and we are flying to Gretna Green ahead of our disapproving parents. You will not stop us!”

“Stop you? And why would I do that? Chelsea, why don’t you go see to Miss Brown while Mr. Smith and I get to know each other a little better. With any luck, she may be having second thoughts.”

Chelsea brought her mare close beside his mount. “Don’t scold him,” she whispered. “They’re in love.”

“They don’t know what love is,” Beau shot back.

“No, but neither do I. Do you?”

He turned his head to glare at her and probably to say something extremely cutting, but then he stopped, shook his head slightly and smiled. “You’d drive a man to strong drink.”

“I thought not. Thank you, Oliver,” she said, happy again, and then urged her mount forward, toward the phaeton.

T
HE EARL OF
B
REAN
paced the packed dirt of the inn yard as the coach horses stamped in their traces, eager
to be on their way. He muttered under his breath, occasionally stopping to lift his head and peer toward the street, hopeful he would see his sister approaching with her maid.

He longed to see Madelyn now, but once this was over, he hoped never to lay eyes on her again in this lifetime. Francis was right. Women, all women, were one occasion of sin after the other.

It was as if they were traveling to Scotland while dragging an anchor behind the coach. She rose late, breakfasted leisurely in her room, found trumped-up excuses to stop in every village along the way and had indulged herself in a near fit of hysteria when he’d dared to suggest they continue on after dusk thanks to a full moon, swearing that highwaymen would accost them.

And she shopped. Wherever they stopped, Madelyn shopped. The coach boot was nearly overflowing now, and yet she was at it again. Ribbons, bolts of fabric, yards of lace, parasols. A round of cheese, cutlery, plates, a basket of fruit. Soaps, candles, bed linens—and two large trunks to store her purchases. A damned wooden rocking horse sporting real horse hair and painted all over in white with blue polka dots, meant as a birthday present to her son—and Thomas was surprised she even remembered the brat’s name—was now strapped to the coach roof.

The woman would buy mud, if some enterprising shopkeeper were crafty enough to put it in a jar and charge for it.

In fact, the only thing she didn’t purchase on any of
her stops was books. When the reverend offered to loan her one of his own books of sermons she informed him that she considered reading a waste of time—and reading anything the reverend wrote bordering on a criminal waste of time.

Thomas knew what she was doing. She’d invented those several hells she’d threatened him with, and she had done so with an evil genius he would have to admire if he were not the recipient of her craftiness.

She had set out to drive him round the bend because he’d insisted she accompany them all the way to Scotland, and with every day that passed, Thomas knew himself to be getting closer to the final turn.

She’d even had the nerve to explain that it mattered little if they arrived in Gretna Green in time to stop the marriage or only encountered Chelsea and Blackthorn once the deed was done. Blackthorn was a dead man either way, and an immediate marriage to Reverend Flotley would easily explain away any brat their sister might pop out nine months later.

Madelyn should have been born a man. She probably could have ruled kingdoms. Or goaded them into revolt.

In any event, Thomas had begun including her husband in his nightly prayers. Last night, he had prayed that the man somehow manage to grow a spine and take to beating her.

“There she is now, Thomas,” Flotley said from his seat inside the coach. “Ah, she has bandboxes. Perhaps
she bought you a gift. She must remember that today marks the anniversary of your birth.”

“If she did, she bought it with my blunt.”

“Perhaps if you stopped giving her money?” Flotley suggested. He’d been treading more carefully these past days, as the earl was becoming increasingly volatile, one moment praying, the next eyeing each inn’s taproom as if he’d very much like to enter it.

“She’s bad enough as she is, Francis, and would only find new ways to torment me. Say a prayer, will you, that we reach Leeds before the sun drops below the horizon. We should have been all the way to Gateshead by now, the coachman tells me. You won’t be marrying a virgin at this rate, Francis. I’m sorry.” The man didn’t answer him. Thomas looked toward the coach window. “Francis?”

“She will be purged of her sin,” the reverend said, the late morning sun in his eyes, so that they seemed to glitter.

“Yes,” the earl said, looking away from that sudden and disturbing gleam. “Yes, of course. I…I think I forgot something inside. Please see that my sister’s packages are secured and that she and her maid are settled in the coach. I won’t be above a minute.”

He was seeing new and rather disturbing sides to his spiritual mentor. Perhaps he could lay the blame at Madelyn’s door. She had no use for the reverend or his teachings and had made that painfully clear almost hourly for the past few days. The further Thomas got from what he’d believed might be his deathbed, the
more
some
of what she said made sense, what Chelsea had been saying made sense. These past two years had been the longest of his life, and he hadn’t enjoyed them overmuch. Thinking about what he’d do to Beau Blackthorn didn’t feel like sin. It felt good. He felt alive again.

He stepped inside the inn and entered the taproom.

After all, if God hadn’t wanted man to drink ale, he wouldn’t have created hops and barley…

H
IS NAME WAS
Jonathan Harwell, and he was the only son and heir of one Baron Robert Harwell, a tough old bird who’d buried two wives before getting lucky with a fortunately fertile third, a woman not quite half his age. Having borne him his heir, the third Lady Harwell absconded three years later with the head groom and most of the family jewelry and silver, and was now, according to rumor, living very comfortably on some island off the southern coast of America.

“Mary” was Emily Leticia Somerset, youngest and definitely dowerless daughter of the local squire, a lusty buffoon of a man who wore his riding boots to dinner, slept with his favorite hunting dogs sharing the bed with him and who was very definitely far beneath the lofty level of expectation the baron had for a mate for his son.

This and more, Beau reluctantly learned over the course of the next two hours.

Jonathan was nineteen, but just barely, as the ball they’d fled had been held in honor of his birthday, the high perch phaeton one of his birthday gifts, as a matter of fact, which might explain why he’d run it into a ditch,
as he’d never before tooled the ribbons on anything more daring than his father’s old curricle. Emily swore she was of a similar age, but Beau didn’t believe she was a day over seventeen.

The Harwell heir’s other present from his doting papa was a yearlong trip to the Continent, and he would be leaving England in the next week. Jonathan and Emily hadn’t been pleased at the news and had immediately fled. They’d been on the road since midnight of the previous evening, their only clothing that which they stood up in, and had six pounds four pence between them.

They were confident that they would not have been missed until sometime this morning, so they had a lovely head start and were not really concerned about pursuit. Or clean underclothes, it would seem.

But they were in love. Determined to marry. Even though the baron and the squire were undoubtedly at this moment armed to the teeth, soused to the gills and riding hotfoot to put a stop to the nuptials.

Oliver Le Beau Blackthorn, sitting alone in the darkest corner of the small taproom at the wayside inn he’d been forced to stop at—or else, Chelsea had promised, she would not cease telling him he should until he either did or his ears fell off—stared into his mug of home-brewed beer and almost believed he could hear the squire’s hounds baying as they picked up the scent of fleeing daughter.

If Puck were here, and thank the good Lord he was not, he’d be laughing so hard at his brother’s new pre
dicament that Beau felt sure he would have had to stuff his cravat down his throat.

“Well, I had no trouble tracking you down, did I? They’re fine now,” Chelsea said as she slipped into the chair across the table from him, looking entirely too self-satisfied for her own good, not that she probably cared. “Emily’s had a bath and a good cry, and she’s sound asleep. Jonathan is standing watch.”

“Oh, good, I can relax now. The twit is standing watch. In my opinion, if Wellington had only had another twenty like him, we’d all be speaking French now,” Beau grumbled and lifted the mug to his mouth, taking several long swallows that would probably do him as much good as the other two mugs he’d downed in the past two hours—which was none. “I’ve been sitting here, looking back over my life, contemplating my deeds and misdeeds and wondering precisely what it was I did to make the fates believe I deserve any of this.”

“I’ll ignore that, mostly because I have an answer for you that I’m convinced you wouldn’t much care to hear,” Chelsea said, shifting slightly in her seat. “I’ve paid one of the barmaids to brush the mud off your clothing as soon as it dries, and one of the ostlers has promised he knows all about cleaning boots and will tend to them tonight, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

“I’ve already mentally consigned my clothing and my boots to the rubbish. But I thank you for the effort. I’ll be even more grateful if you were to remove from your mind any memory of the damned wheel becoming
unstuck all at once, and my unfortunate fall into the puddle. Which, as I am learning the unfairness of the world all over again, meant that Jonathan, sitting up on the seat, is still ridiculously overdressed but pristine, and I am sitting here in a pair of trousers that itch unbearably and a shirt no respectable rag-and-bone man would attempt to sell in the bowels of Piccadilly. Where did you say you found these clothes?”

Chelsea lowered her chin and spoke softly.

“Excuse me? I’m afraid I didn’t quite catch that.”

“I said, I borrowed them from the innkeeper’s wife. For ten pence. She wants them back.”

“Oh, no, really? But I had so hoped to keep them.” Beau leaned back against the chair, stretching his legs out beneath the table. “God. To think that only a few short days ago I was that happiest of men, a still fairly young, reasonably well-set-up, deep in the pocket and entirely unencumbered male. Now I’ve got an angry brother pursuing me, a pair of irate fathers hunting us, an almost wife and two nursery brats.”

Chelsea laughed, clearly delighted. “Hardly children, Oliver. They’re going to be married. And you forgot Madelyn and Francis Flotley.”

“And the bloody hounds,” he said and then sat up, reaching across the scarred tabletop to take her hand in his. “I’m sorry. I should be seeing the humor in this adventure, the way you do. Puck’s right, I’m becoming old and stodgy.”

“No,” Chelsea said, resting her chin in her hand, “you’re responsible. It’s probably because you’re the
oldest brother. Thomas certainly keeps reminding me that he’s the oldest and therefore responsible for me. And we can’t just leave them to their own devices, Oliver, now can we?”

Beau realized that if he answered honestly, Chelsea would look at him as if he’d just announced he enjoyed pulling wings from butterflies. “No. No, of course not. For one, I don’t think they possess any. We…we have a Christian duty. Something like that. We definitely can’t leave them to their own, nonexistent devices. Why, they might take it into their heads to stand outside in a rainstorm with their mouths open, and drown.”

“They’re not sheep, Oliver,” Chelsea said sternly. She leaned forward, both elbows now on the table, her eyes shining, her expression bordering on the beatific. “I have formulated a plan.”

Beau, who had been in the process of washing down his most recent words with the last of the ale, was hard-pressed not to spray the air with the sudsy mouthful, although he didn’t come off unscathed—it was fully a minute before he could stop coughing.

Through it all, even as he fished his handkerchief out of the roughly sewn pocket of his borrowed trousers, Chelsea looked at him through slitted eyelids. “You aren’t all that amusing sometimes, Oliver.”

He wiped at his eyes one last time and returned the handkerchief to his pocket. “I was choking. Many an affianced bride would have jumped up and pounded me hard on the back, you know.”

“I thought about it,” Chelsea said, folding her hands
on the tabletop, “but I didn’t have a weapon. Do you want to hear my plan or not?”

“Do I figure in this plan in any way?” he asked, irrationally longing to kiss her.

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact, you do.”

“In that case, I plan to listen very closely. Go on.”

“Thank you. It’s really very simple, and quite obvious. We take Jonathan and Emily with us to Gretna Green, to be sure they get there safely.”

“Oh, God…”

“I’ll ignore that, as well. They can neither of them travel as they are, of course, or riding up on that ridiculous perch phaeton—which Jonathan clearly does not know how to drive. So you will ride into Gateshead, Oliver, just as you planned, but after ascertaining that Thomas and Madelyn are not already there or have come and gone, you will hire a closed coach and the best team you can find, purchase some clothing for all of us if Puck has not yet caught up with us, as you said he would wait for us in Gateshead, and then return here. Also, I’d truly adore some
real
soap, if you can find any, please. At any rate, we’ve already outrun Thomas, or so you believe, and if we hide the phaeton somewhere here in the village, the pursuing parents will spend their time looking for it, never thinking the eloping pair is now an eloping quartet.”

She sat back on her chair, looking much too satisfied. “Oh, and the same goes for Thomas and Madelyn. They also will not be inquiring about
two
couples traveling to Scotland.”

“All right. It’s better than I’d hoped for,” Beau said, knowing he wasn’t going to convince her to abandon the young couple.

She cocked her head to one side and looked at him inquiringly. “And what had you thought I was going to say?”

“Truthfully? I thought you might want to hand over our horses to them in exchange for the phaeton. I hadn’t, by the way, thought at all of outfitting either of them. Are you certain you’ll be all right here while I’m gone?”

“Jonathan’s here,” Chelsea said, just as if that meant something.

“Oh, good. How that soothes my mind.”

“Now you’re being facetious,” Chelsea told him, following him out of the taproom. “Can’t you simply pretend he is Puck and treat him accordingly?”

Beau turned in the small entryway and smiled at her. “You mean submerge his head in the horse trough until he came to his senses and took the girl home? Yes, I thought of it.”

Chelsea stepped closer to him and took hold of his shirtfront, going up on tiptoe to whisper in his ear. “They’ve anticipated their vows, Oliver.”

“They’ve
what?
Damn it to hell, Chelsea, where is he? I’m going to break that idiot’s scrawny neck for him.”

“No! Oliver, you can’t do that. Emily spoke to me in confidence.”

Wasn’t that just like a woman. “Then why did you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to, but I wasn’t sure you’d be…amenable to helping them. It was, I believe it’s called, my ace in the hole?”

Beau rubbed at his aching head. “Is the girl pregnant?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t ask how
often
they’d done their anticipating, for pity’s sake! But clearly you can see that they must be married immediately. From the sounds of it, neither father is the sort who would take such news calmly.”

“You know, Chelsea, you’ve just thoroughly put me in the middle of two families I do not know, protecting two people I’d never met until a few hours ago and liable to get my nose broken for my efforts. Wasn’t having Thomas out for my liver enough for you? Perhaps while I’m gone you can take a stroll around the village, see if there are any waifs or stray dogs you might want me to put under my protection.”

“I don’t think so, no,” she said, lifting her chin. It was still early days in their acquaintance, but he already knew this was not a good sign. “I’ll be much too busy getting us settled for the night. Ordering a substantial dinner, and then arranging a room for you and Jonathan. Emily, naturally, will stay the night with me. It may be a little late for such things, but clearly those two need chaperones.”

Beau wasn’t often at a loss for words, but since the only ones he could find lining up to leave his mouth were not those fit for female ears, he had to satisfy
himself by slamming the inn door on his way to the stable yard.

Ten minutes later he was on the road to Gateshead, wearing his still muddy boots, the ostler’s wide-brimmed hat with the rip in its brim pulled down hard over his hair and ears, and riding one of the sorry nags kept at the inn for renting out to the desperate, which he considered to be a realistic definition of what he was at the moment.

But he could not afford to be recognized, neither he nor his horse, and since he doubted his own mother would give him a second glance in these execrable clothes if she were to pass him by on the street, he felt fairly safe as he headed for the first coaching inn the ostler had described to him.

Two hours later he was back at the inn, several paper-wrapped packages tied to the saddle, and feeling rather smug, actually.

Chelsea may have had a plan, but he could also plan, and he liked his much better.

And it was Chelsea who had given it to him, not that he’d tell her that. She certainly had given him the motivation he needed to come up with that plan. That much he might tell her at some point, preferably after they’d made love again.

Share his bed with the twit? Not in this lifetime, not when Chelsea was in the same inn, a wall away from him.

Damn but the town had been crowded with eloping couples, as well as those in the pursuit of errant sons
and daughters. A person could hardly step more than ten paces in any direction without meeting up with either a stupidly grinning couple or an irate father with wild eyes and a pistol stuck in his ample waistband.

He felt fairly certain he’d spotted Emily’s father, unless more than one pursuing parent traveled with a yapping pack of brown-and-white hounds, and had made sure to stay out of sight as he’d been joined on the flagway outside a small hotel by a man who’d looked depressingly like Jonathan, if the boy had another fifty or more years and five stone tacked onto him.

But no one had fit the description Beau had given to each of the innkeepers: portly, pink-faced gentleman with no lips, accompanied by a minister and a beautiful woman with nearly white-blond hair, huge melting blue eyes and the temperament of a snake. He also had described the crested coach he’d seen Thomas riding in about Mayfair, down to its yellow spoked wheels. He’d refrained from mentioning Flotley’s always-wet mouth.

Beau dismounted, untied the packages and gave the horse a pat on its head before heading for the inn to find Chelsea and tell her what he’d done.

Not that he needed her approval. Craved her approval. He had made a decision, and that was that; she had no choice but to go along with him. He hoped.

Because he’d had this niggling thought in the back of his mind from the moment he’d walked into his entrance hall and seen her for the first time in seven years.
That he’d been usurped as the, well, as the captain of his own ship, in charge of his own fate.

It might be that he’d been taken in by the thought of the perfect revenge on Thomas Mills-Beckman.