The Taming of the Rake (26 page)

T
HEY’D BEEN BACK
at Blackthorn for nearly a week, and Puck had just departed for London, having decided to take up lodging in the Grosvenor Square mansion for what little remained of the Season. He said it was to do some reconnoitering on Jack’s two friends before he approached them the following year with his pointed request that they assist him socially.

“I’d say I’ll miss him, but I don’t think I will,” Beau told Chelsea as they watched the pair of coaches move off down the gravel drive. Puck did not exactly travel unencumbered.

“Oliver! That’s a terrible thing to say about your own brother.”

“Possibly. But with my parents currently playing at happy villagers in the cottage, we’re finally alone. No one to ask why we never come down to breakfast. No one to make what he thinks are amusing remarks when we retire early. No one to walk in on us in the conservatory…”

“That could have been embarrassing,” Chelsea said as they turned and headed back up the marble steps and
into the entrance hall. “All right, I’ll agree. We won’t miss him. Are we going upstairs?”

He put his arm around her waist and led her to the stairs. “I think so, if you don’t mind. We can celebrate Puck’s departure.”

“But we already celebrated the sun rising this morning,” she teased, lifting up her skirts and running down the hall ahead of him to the large bedchamber that now belonged to both of them. There was an adjoining bedchamber, and that was supposedly hers, but she’d yet to sleep in the bed and probably never would. Edith said that wasn’t proper, but then she’d winked at her.

Once inside the room, Chelsea stopped with her back to Beau, silently indicating that he could play at maid for her and undo the long row of buttons on her new morning gown. She could be more subtle, she supposed, even coy, but that was such a waste of time.

Besides, she had something to tell him, and she’d rather get it over with, as she’d been attempting to hide her reaction to the news all morning.

“Oliver?” she said as he opened the buttons one by one, dropping quick kisses on each new exposed area of skin. “I had a letter from Madelyn in this morning’s post.”

“And promptly dispatched it into the nearest fireplace, I would hope.”

“No, I read it. She has disowned me. How did she say it? Oh, yes. Seed, breed and generation. All disowned. Can she do that?”

The last button undone, he turned her about to face
him. “I thought that was the prerogative of the head of the family. But I imagine she sees it as symbolic. I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

“I don’t think I am. Sorry, that is. There’s more, Oliver. She also wrote that Thomas is back to his old haunts, drinking and whoring and gambling rather deep. Our elopement doesn’t seem to have affected him at all, except that Madelyn says all of Mayfair is buzzing about the
stern thrashing
he gave you when he arrived in Gretna Green too late to stop the nuptials. Within an inch of your life, or so Thomas tells it. Madelyn wanted to know if that’s true. So now it’s my turn to say I’m sorry.”

Beau smiled. “And here I was, feeling somewhat guilty—not much, mind you, but somewhat—because it was too late to somehow warn him about the investment he’d been neatly steered to last month.”

“Investment?” Chelsea began backing up toward the bed, urging Beau with her by the simple expedient of tugging on his neck cloth. “More grapes?”

“Even your brother isn’t so dim that he’d trust a scheme like that a second time. But did you know, Mrs. Blackthorn, that it is said there is gold to be found in the hills of Shropshire?”

She stepped out of her gown and climbed up onto the bed, to kneel there in her shift while she undid his neck cloth and shirt buttons. “Why, no, Mr. Blackthorn, I did
not
know that there is gold to be found in the hills of Shropshire. But that’s because there isn’t any, is there?”

“If there is, your brother will be a very wealthy man.
But I’m fairly certain that won’t be the case. However, that’s the last bit of amusement I’ll be having at your brother’s expense. He isn’t worth the effort, to be honest. Are you going to be all day with those buttons?”

“Don’t feel badly that you couldn’t stop the scheme. My brother attempted to have you hanged for looting. He’s a horrible, horrible man. No wonder he was so terrified of dying and being sent straightway to hell. There, all done. You can take everything off now and come to bed. Aren’t we becoming proficient?”

“And one of us is becoming rather cheeky,” he teased as he joined her, taking hold of her shoulders and lowering her onto the pillows. “How many times today have I told you that I love you?”

She reached up her hand to run her fingers through his thick blond hair. “Only three. But that’s already once more than yesterday. Does it get easier, Oliver?”

“I don’t remember why it ever was difficult. I think I knew I loved you the moment you kicked me in the ankle, the night we came here for the first time.” He leaned in and kissed her. “Or maybe,” he continued as he began untying the laces at the top of her chemise, “I knew I loved you when I saw that blister on your thumb and you lied, said you hadn’t noticed it. No, that can’t be it. I know. It was when I was helping as you leaned over that ditch, ridding yourself of that truly horrible meat pie. Or maybe—”

She put her hand across his mouth.

“Oliver,” she said sternly. “I believe that will be enough.”

He put his hand over hers, kissed her palm and then pressed it over his heart, which belonged to her in any case. “Yes, sweetheart, that’s it. I knew I was in love with you when you called me Oliver.”

“But…but that was the very first day.”

He leaned down to whisper against her ear. “Yes, I know.”

She turned into his arms. “Oh, Oliver…”