The Taming of the Rake (3 page)

At last, Beau smiled. “You’re only four years my junior, and at thirty I’m far from tottering about with one foot hovering over a grave.” But then he stabbed his fingers through his own thick shock of sun-streaked blond hair. “Although, at the moment, I might consider it. I don’t remember the last time I felt like this. You’re a bad influence, little brother. One might even say noxious. When do you return to France?”

“Hustling me back out the door only a few days after I’ve come through it, and after only a single night’s celebration of my return to the bosom of my wretched family? Papa keeps this great pile for all of us, you know. Why, I might just decide to take up permanent residence in London. Wouldn’t that be fine? Just the two of us, rattling around here together, driving the neighbors batty to know that there are now two Blackthorn bastards in residence rather than just the one. Never be all three, considering Black Jack won’t come within ten miles of the place.”

Beau attempted to straighten his badly wilted cravat. “Oh, he’s been here. Haughty, grumpy, scowling and bloody sarcastic. Don’t wish him back, if you don’t mind. Neither of us would like it.”

“He would have made a fine Marquess, aside from the fact that you’d be first in line. And if our dearest mother had deigned to marry our doting papa. There is still that one other niggling small detail.”

“Jack wouldn’t take legitimacy if someone were to hand it to him on a platter. He likes being an outlaw.”

Puck raised one finely arched eyebrow. “You mean that figuratively, don’t you?
Outlaw?
”

“God, I hope so. Sometimes, though, I wonder. He lives damn well for a man who refuses our father’s largesse. I’d reject it, as well, if it weren’t for the fact that I do my best to earn my keep, running all of the Blackthorn estates while you fiddle and Jack scowls.”

“Yes, I admit it. I much prefer to gad about, spending every groat I get and enjoying myself to the top of my bent, and feel totally unrepentant about any of it.”

“You’ll grow up one of these days. We all do, one way or another.” Beau got to his feet, deciding he could not stand himself one moment longer if he didn’t immediately hunt out Sidney and demand a hot tub to rid him of the stink of a night of dedicated drinking with Puck.

“He’s lucky with the cards? The dice?” Puck persisted, also getting to his feet, triumphantly holding up the black riband he then employed to tie back his hair.

“I don’t know. I don’t ask. Jack was never one for inviting intimacies. Now come along, baby brother. We need a bath and a bed, the both of us.”

“You might. I’m thinking lovely thoughts about a mess of eggs and some of those fine sausages we had yesterday morning.”

Beau’s stomach rolled over. “I remember when I could do that, drink all night and wake clearheaded
and ravenous in the morning. You’re right, Puck. Thirty is old.”

“Now you’re just trying to frighten me. Ho, what’s that? Was that the knocker? Am I about to meet one of your London friends?”

“Acquaintances, Puck. I have no need of friends.”

“Now that is truly sad,” his brother said, shaking his head. “You had friends, surely, during the war?”

“That was different,” Beau said, his headache pounding even harder than before. “Soldiers are real. Society is not.”

“The French are much more generous in their outlook. To them, I am very nearly a pet. A highly amusing pet,
naturellement.
My bastard birth rather titillates them, I think. And, of course, I am oh, so very charming. Ah, another knock, followed closely by a commotion.” Puck headed for the foyer. “This becomes interesting. I’d think it was a dun calling to demand payment, but you’re entirely too deep in the pocket for that. Let’s go see, shall we?”

Beau opened his mouth to protest, but quickly gave that up and simply followed his brother into the foyer. There they saw a woman, her face obscured by the brim of her fashionably absurd riding hat, quietly but fiercely arguing with Wadsworth.

“Wadsworth?” he said questioningly, so that his Major Domo—once an actual sergeant in His Majesty’s Army—turned about smartly, nearly saluting his employer before he could stop himself.

“Sir!” he all but bellowed as he tried to position his
fairly large body between that of the female and his employer. “There is someone here who demands to be seen. I am just now sending her on the right-about—that is to say, I have informed her that you are not at home.”

“Yes, well I suppose we needs must give that up as a bad job, mustn’t we, now that I’ve shown myself. Or do you think she’ll agree to go away now?”

“She most certainly will not,” the woman said from somewhere behind Wadsworth. And then a kid-riding-glove-encased hand was laid on Wadsworth’s elbow and the man who had once single-handedly subdued a half dozen Frenchmen during a skirmish by means of only his physical appearance and commanding voice—and the bloodied sword he’d held in front of him menacingly—was rudely shoved aside.

The woman’s gaze took in the two men now before her, sliding from one to the other. “Oliver Blackthorn? Which one of you is he? And the other must be Mr. Robin Goodfellow Blackthorn, as I hear the third brother is dark to your light, unless that’s simply a romantic statement and not fact. Such an unfortunate name, Robin Goodfellow. Did your mother not much like you? Oh, wait, you are Oliver, aren’t you?” she said, pointing a rather accusing finger at Beau. “I believe I recognize the scowl, even after all these years. We must talk.”

“Gad, what a beauty, if insulting,” Puck said quietly. “Tell her she’s wrong, that I’m you. Unless she’s here to inform you that the bastard has fathered a bastard,
in which case I’ll be in the breakfast room, filling
my
belly.”

Beau wasn’t really listening. He was too busy racking his brain to remember where he’d ever seen eyes so strange a mix of gray and blue, so flashing with fire, intelligence and belligerence, all at the same time.

“You remember me, don’t you?” the young woman said—again, nearly an accusation. “You should, and the mumps to one side, you’re a large part of the reason I’m in such dire straits today. But that’s all right, because now you’re going to
fix
it.”

“She said mumps, didn’t she? Yes, I’m sure she did. I’ve been abroad for a few years, brother mine. Are they now in the habit of dressing up the Bedlamites and letting them run free on sunny days?”

“Go away, Puck,” Beau said, stepping forward a pace, putting a calm face on his inward agitation. “Lady Chelsea Mills-Beckman?” he inquired, positive he was correct, although it had been more than seven long and eventful years since last he’d seen her. But why was she here? And where was her maid? Maybe Puck was right, and if not quite a fugitive from Bethlehem Hospital, she was at least next door to a Bedlamite; riding out alone in the city, calling on him, of all people. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“Ah, so you do remember me. And there’s nothing all that pleasurable about it for either of us, I assure you. Now, unless you are in the habit of entertaining your servants with aired laundry best discussed only in private, I suggest we adjourn to the drawing room.
Not
you,
” she added, pointing one gloved finger at Puck, who had already half turned to reenter the drawing room.

“Oh, yes, definitely. You heard the lady. It’s you she wants, brother mine, not me. I’m off, and may some merciful deity of your choosing protect you in my craven absence.”

“Wadsworth,” Beau said, still looking at Lady Chelsea, “the tea tray and some refreshments in ten minutes, if you please.”

Lady Chelsea stood her ground. “Wadsworth, a decanter of Mr. Blackthorn’s best wine and two glasses, now, and truth be told, at the moment I really don’t much care whether you please or not. Mr. Blackthorn, follow me.”

She then swept into the drawing room, leaving Wadsworth and Beau to look at each other, shrug and supposedly do as they’d been told. That was the thing with angry women. Experience had taught Beau that it was often just easier to go along with them until such time as you could either locate a figurative weapon or come up with a good escape route.

And Beau did long for escape, craven as that might seem. The moment he’d recognized Lady Chelsea the memory of the last time he’d seen her had come slamming into his mind, rendering him sober and none too happy to be thinking so clearly.

His reunion with Puck had given him the chance to relax the guard he’d so carefully built up around himself. They’d laughed, definitely drunk too much and
Beau had realized how long it had been since he’d allowed himself to be young and silly.

Only with his brother could he joke about their bastard births, make light of the stigma they both would carry for all of their lives. Puck seemed to be dealing with his lot extremely well, although he had attacked the problem from an entirely different direction.

Where Beau thought to gain respect, if not acceptance, Puck had charmed his way into French Society.

Jack? Jack didn’t bear thinking about, as he seemed to be a law unto himself.

But no matter the path Beau had chosen, he knew he’d come a long way from the idiot boy he’d been seven long years ago. He’d put the past behind him—except for what he believed to be the one last piece of unfinished business that had brought him to London—and he would rather the door to that part of his life remain firmly shut.

Shut, and with Lady Chelsea firmly on the other side. She with her childish teasing and then her sympathetic tears. If anything could have taken him to his knees that day, and kept him there, it would have been the sight of her tears. “Sir?”

Beau turned to look at Wadsworth, snapping himself back into the moment. “Yes?”

“Are we going to do what she says, sir?” The man screwed up his face for a moment, and then shook his
head. “Got the air of a general about her, don’t she, sir?”

“That she does, Wadsworth,” Beau said, at last turning toward the drawing room. “That she certainly does….”

H
E HADN’T REALLY CHANGED
in seven years. Except that he definitely had. He seemed taller, appealingly thicker in muscle, she supposed. He still carried his arrogance with him, but that had been joined now by considerably more self-assurance. His cheeks seemed leaner, his jaw more defined. He’d been only a year older then than she was now, and had obviously lived an interesting life in the interim.

He’d impressed her then, silly as he’d been in his embarrassing calf-love for Madelyn, uncomfortable as he’d looked in his ridiculously over-tailored clothes, gullible as he’d been when she’d teased him. Vulnerable as he had been, lying in the street as Thomas had brought the whip down over his body, again and again.

She’d had nightmares about that terrible day ever since. She assumed Mr. Blackthorn had, as well.

But the years had made him a man. Going to war had made him a man. What had happened that fateful day in Portland Place had made him a man. Then, he had amused her. Now, just looking at him made her stomach rather queasy. He was so large, so very male. Not a silly boy anymore at all.

Perhaps she had acted rashly, coming here. No, she definitely had acted rashly, considering only her own plight while blithely believing he would grab at her idea with both hands, knowing immediately that she was helping him, as well.

But there was nothing else for it. She had done what she’d done. She was here, an unmarried woman in a bachelor household, and probably observed by at least two or three astonished members of the
ton
as she’d stood at the door and banged on the knocker. Oh, and her groom and horse were still just outside, on the street.

She couldn’t have been more open in her approach if she had ridden into Grosvenor Square shouting and ringing a bell.

Now she had to make Mr. Blackthorn—or Oliver, as she’d always thought of him—understand that there was no going back, for either of them. She may be frightened, suddenly unsure of herself—such a rare occurrence in her experience that she wasn’t quite sure how to handle it—but she would not allow him to see her fear.

“You look as if you’ve been dragged through a hedgerow backward,” she told him as she stood in the middle of the sumptuously furnished drawing room, pulling off her kid gloves, praying he wouldn’t notice that her hands were shaking. “And you smell none too fresh. Is this your usual state? Because if it is, my mind won’t change, but you will definitely have to.”

He reached for a jacket that was hanging over the back of a chair and then seemed to think better of it,
remaining in front of her clad only in his buckskins and shirtsleeves. “Much as it pains me to disagree with you, Lady Chelsea, I don’t have to do anything I don’t want to do. Bastardy has its benefits as well as its drawbacks.”

She rolled her eyes, suddenly more comfortable. He might not appear vulnerable, but clearly he still carried the burden of his birth around with him; it must be a great weight he would choose to put down if he had the chance. “Are you still going on about that? You are, aren’t you. That’s why you’ve been slowly ruining my brother.”

Beau frowned just as if he didn’t understand her, which made her angry. She knew he wasn’t stupid.

“Don’t try to deny it, Mr. Blackthorn. You’ve sent person after person to insinuate himself with Thomas this past year, guide him down all the wrong paths, divesting him of our family’s fortune just as if you had been personally dipping your hand into his pockets. Granted, my brother is an idiot, but I, sir, I am not.”

“Nor are you much of a lady, traveling about London without your maid, and barging uninvited into a bachelor establishment,” Beau said, walking over to one of the couches positioned beneath an immense chandelier that, if it fell, could figuratively flatten a small village. “Then again, I am not a gentleman, and I am curious. Stand, sit, it makes me no nevermind, but I’ve had a miserable night and now it appears that the morning will be no better, so I am going to sit.”

Chelsea looked at the bane of her existence, who was
also her only possibility of rescue, and considered what she saw. He was blond, even more so wherever the sun hit his thick crop of rather mussed hair, so she hadn’t at first noticed that he had at least a one-day growth of beard on his tanned cheeks. He looked rather dashing that way, not that she would tarry long on the path to
that
sort of thought. He also looked—as did this entire area of the large room, for that matter—as if the previous night had been passed in drinking heavily and sleeping little.

Good. He probably had a crushing headache. That would make him more vulnerable.

“Yes, do that, sit down before you fall down, and allow me to continue. In this past year, which happens to coincide with Thomas reentering Society after our year of mourning that also gained him the title, and paired with your return to London now that the war is finally over, we have been visited upon by a verifiable plague of financial ill-fortune, one to rival the atrocities of the Seven Plagues of Egypt.”

Beau held up one hand, stopping her for a few moments, and then let it drop into his lap. “All right. I’ve run that mouthful past my brain a second time, and I think I’ve got it now. Your brother, the war, my return after an absence of seven years—and something about plagues. Are locusts involved? I really don’t care for bugs. But never mind my sensibilities, which it is already obvious you do not. You may continue.”

“I fully intend to. You know the
locusts
to which I refer. Mr. Jonathan Milwick and his marvelous
invention that, with only a small input of my brother’s money, could revolutionize the manufacture of snuff. The so-charming Italian, Fanini, I believe, whose discovery of diamonds in southern Wales would make Thomas rich as Golden Ball.”

Beau closed his eyes and rubbed at his temples. “I have no idea what you’re prattling on about.”

“Still, I will continue to prattle. The ten thousand pounds Thomas was convinced would triple in three weeks’ time in the Exchange, thanks to the advice of one Henrick Glutton, who would share his largesse with Thomas once his ship, filled with grapes to be made into fabulously expensive wine, arrived up the Thames. I went with Thomas to the wharf when the ship arrived. Have you ever
smelled
rotten grapes, Mr. Blackthorn?”

“Glut
ten,
” he said rather miserably.

“Ah! So you admit it!”

“I admit nothing. But nobody can possibly be named
Glutton.
I was merely suggesting an alternative. Excuse me a moment, I just remembered something I need.” Then he reached down beside him to pick up a bottle that had somehow come to be sitting on the priceless carpet, and took several long swallows straight from it, as if he were some low, mannerless creature in a tavern. He then held on to the bottle with both hands and looked up at her, smiling in a way that made her long to box his ears. “You were saying?”

“I was saying—well, I hadn’t said it yet, but I was going to—I don’t blame you for any of it. Thomas deserves all that you’ve done, and more. But with this
last, you’ve overstepped the mark, because now you’ve involved
me
in your revenge, and that I will not allow. Still, I am here to help you.”

The bottle stopped halfway to his mouth. At last she seemed to have his full attention. “I’m sorry, I don’t follow. You’re going to
help
me? Help me what, madam?”

Chelsea held her tongue until Wadsworth had marched in, deposited a silver tray holding two glasses and a decanter of wine on the table and marched out again.

“I haven’t made a friend there, have I?” she commented, watching the man go. And then she shrugged, dismissing the thought, and finally seated herself on the facing couch and accepted the glass of wine Beau handed her. “You know that my brother became horribly ill only a few weeks after our father died. It was believed he’d soon join Papa in the mausoleum at Brean.”

“I’d heard rumors to that effect, yes,” Beau said carefully, shunning the decanter to take another long drink from the bottle. “Am I to be accused of that, as well? The illness, perhaps even your father’s demise? Clearly I have powers I have not yet recognized in myself.”

“Papa succumbed to a chest ailment after being caught in the rain while out hunting, so I doubt his death could be laid at your door. It was Madelyn’s brood, come to Brean for the interment and bringing their pestilence with them, who nearly killed Thomas just as he was glorying in his acquisition of the title. You had a victory there, didn’t you? With Madelyn, I
mean. Thomas’s vile behavior that day had repercussions on my idiot sister, and she had to be married off quickly in order not to have all the
ton
staring at her belly and counting on their fingers. Do you remember what Thomas screeched at you that day? Something about you taking advantage of her innocence? Poor Madelyn, hastily bracketed to a lowly baron when she had so set her sights on a duke, but she couldn’t convince Papa. That you and she hadn’t—you know. And poor baron, as he’s had to live with her ever since. You had a lucky escape, Mr. Blackthorn, whether you are aware of it or not.”

His blue eyes narrowed, showing her that she had at last touched a nerve. “You term what happened that day a lucky escape? Your memories of the event must differ much from mine.”

“You’re still angry.”

Beau leaned against the back of the couch and crossed his legs. “Anger is a pointless emotion.”

“And revenge is a dish best served cold. Thomas humiliated you for all the world to see, whipped you like a jackal he refused to dirty his hands on. The woman you thought you loved with all your heart turned out not to possess a heart of her own. Between them, my siblings brought home to you that you are what you are, and that Society had only been amusing itself at your expense, while it would never really accept you. I would have wanted them dead, all of them.”

“Thank you for that pithy summation. I may have forgotten some of it.”

“You’ve forgotten none of it, Mr. Blackthorn, or else I would not be saddled with Francis Flotley. I, who remain blameless in the whole debacle, a mere child at the time of the incident. Do you think that’s fair? Because I don’t. And now you’re going to make it right.”

“You’re here to help me, and yet I’m supposed to make something right for you.” Beau looked at her, looked at the bottle in his hand and then looked at her again. “Much as it pains me to ask this, what in blazes are you talking about? And who the bloody hell is Francis Flotley?”

Chelsea’s hands drew up into fists. She wasn’t nervous anymore. It was difficult for one to be nervous when one was beginning to feel homicidal. “You admit to Henrick Glutton and the others? We can’t move on, Mr. Blackthorn, until you are willing to be honest with me.”

“Glut
ten,
” he said again, sighing. “And the others. Yes, all right, since you clearly won’t go away until I do, I admit to them. Shame, shame on me, I am crass and petty. But, to clarify, I’m not out to totally ruin the man, but only make him uncomfortable, perhaps even miserable. Ruining him entirely would be too quick. As it is, I can keep this up for years.”

“Why?”

“I should think the answer to be obvious. Because it amuses me, madam,” Beau said flatly. “Rather like pulling the wings from flies, although comparing your brother to a fly is an insult to the insect. I’m unpleasantly surprised, however, that you connected me with
your brother’s run of ill luck, although I should probably not be, remembering you as you were. A pernicious brat, but possessing higher than average intelligence.”

It was taking precious time, but at least they were finally getting somewhere. “So you admit to Francis Flotley.”

“If you’ll just leave me alone with my pounding head, I’ll admit to causing the Great Fire. But I will not admit to Francis Flotley, whoever the hell he is.”

Chelsea sat back in her seat. She had been so certain, but Beau clearly did not recognize the name.

“Francis Flotley,” she repeated, as if repetition would refresh his memory. “The Reverend Francis Flotley, Thomas’s personal spiritual adviser. The man who interceded with God for him in order to save him from the mumps in exchange for his promise to mend his ways. You used Thomas’s vulnerability to insinuate the man into our household, to defang the cat, as it were, make him believe that he had to give up drink, and loose women, and his rough and tumble ways, in order to save his immortal soul. Curb his vile temper, turn the other cheek—all of that drivel. A man who would whip another man in the street, reduced to nightly prayers and soda water, doing penance for his crime against you, even if he doesn’t realize that he is, lacking only sackcloth and ashes. How that must please you.”

“Ah. The Reverend Francis Flotley. Yes, I will admit that I am aware of a cleric’s presence in your household,” Mr. Blackthorn said, sitting forward once more. “But no, sorry. I had nothing to do with that. Wish I
had, though, having once been at the wrong end of what you call your brother’s vile temper. It sounds a brilliant revenge.”

Chelsea sat slumped on the couch, like a doll suddenly bereft of all its cotton stuffing. “Oh,” she said quietly, seeing her last and only hope fading into nothing. “I’d been so sure. So brilliantly Machiavellian, you understand. I have given you too much credit. Forgive me. I’ll go now.”

She got to her feet and picked up her gloves, putting them on slowly, giving him time to sift through everything she’d told him. Surely he wouldn’t let her leave. He couldn’t. He had to at least be curious as to what she’d meant about having her own life ruined, and that she’d come here to help him. Even if she hadn’t been correct about the Reverend Flotley, perhaps her plan could still work.

But Beau stayed where he was, not even rising because she had stood up, and very much ignoring her, as if she’d already gone. Perhaps he wasn’t the man she’d built him into in her head. Perhaps he was just as bad as her brother in his own way.

Still, knowing she had no other options, she dared to continue hoping, even as she walked toward the foyer, slowly counting in her head.
One. Two. Three. Four. Oh, for pity’s sake, I’m here to hand you the perfect revenge, you jackass! Does it really matter that you didn’t send Flotley to us? Five. Six…