The Taming of the Rake (9 page)

T
O SAY THAT SHE’D
entered a house of mourning under rather odd circumstances did not begin to tell the tale of Lady Chelsea Mills-Beckman’s introduction to this strange family she had stumbled into on impulse.

It was, in fact, the furthest thing from a house of mourning that she had ever seen.

There were flowers everywhere. Bowls, vases, nearly overflowing with colorful blooms. Several potted palms with white ribbons streaming from them as if they were fully topped Maypoles lined the enormous entrance hall. None of the mirrors was draped in sheets, and no black crepe hung anywhere. Every chandelier was lit.

The bedchamber she was immediately led to had been similarly decorated, the fragrance of flowers everywhere, and the maid assigned to her even had a flower tucked into the brim of her mobcap.

Although it wasn’t possible to avoid the fact that the young girl had red-rimmed eyes, as if she’d been crying more than just a little bit.

“Edith?” Chelsea asked as she waited for the tub to be prepared in the usual way—a long line of footmen carrying bucket after water bucket of heated water from the kitchens and pouring them into the enamel tub, with a lovely floral design painted all over its exterior,
rather amateurishly, unfortunately. “The footmen all have flowers in their buttonholes. In fact, there are flowers everywhere. May I ask why?”

Edith sniffled, pulling a handkerchief from her apron pocket and loudly blowing her nose. “It’s for Miss Abigail, ma’am. She did so love flowers. Painted that there tub herself, she did, when his lordship said he was sorry, but he’d very much like it if she didn’t paint the piano. Anymore,” she added quietly, and then her bottom lip began to tremble and she broke into sobs.

Chelsea didn’t know what to say, nor what to do. Clearly the maid was overset. The footmen had all been stone-faced and sad-looking as they’d filled the tub, and the Major Domo she’d been rushed past by Beau had first shaken hands with him and then grabbed him in a tight hug, saying, “She’s gone, Master Beau. Our sunshine has left us for another place.”

Chelsea had squirmed uncomfortably as she’d stood there, unused to such open displays of emotion. She didn’t belong here, she knew. She wasn’t a part of the family, she hadn’t known the marchioness, and she could be more easily inserted under the heading of Problem than of Mourner.

And she didn’t understand these people. Yes, she’d been warned that the marchioness had been different, rather special, but she’d had no idea that the woman had been so loved. Chelsea had very little experience with that emotion, considering that her love for her cat, Twiddles, had been her main source of affection growing up at Brean. Her parents had ignored her, her brother
had at times forgotten her name and Madelyn had actively loathed her. Even the servants were far from the fuzzy sort of kindly people she’d read about in novels, coming and going so quickly that it had been impossible to get to know any of them.

She’d had her books. Thank God for her books, and her imagination.

But no book could have prepared her for this, and her imagination certainly had never stretched so far.

“Edith,” she ventured once the maid had gotten her sobs under control, “I’m perfectly capable of bathing myself. If you’d just unpack my night things and place them on the bed, I’m sure I can muddle through, and you can…well, maybe you should lie down?”

The maid’s eyes widened in horror. “And leave madam to fend for herself? I would never, ma’am! His lordship prides himself on his hospitality, not that we see much of it, what with him not being the sort to give grand parties and such. Oh, he tried sure enough, years ago. My mam told me how it was, she being a maid like me back then, when Miss Abigail first come. But they came to laugh, my mam said, and then when Master Beau and his brothers started to grow up there was some nasty talk. Master Beau, he blackened a few eyes, my mam said, and then everyone left us alone. Oh, and now here I am, prattling on. I’m that sorry, ma’am. We all loved her so much.”

Halfway through this lengthy speech, Chelsea had led Edith to the chaise lounge and sat her down, and was now sitting beside her and patting her hand, something
the maid didn’t seem to think was out of the ordinary. How odd. Or perhaps not. The marchioness, according to Beau, had been a child in a woman’s body. She wouldn’t have understood the hierarchy of master and servant; she would have had
friends.
How lovely. Perhaps it was the rest of the world that was odd. After all, why dress in black, and cover the mirrors, and speak only in whispers, and hide your sadness if you were sad?

And why not decorate the house and even yourselves with flowers, if the person you were mourning loved flowers? It seemed a finer tribute than sitting around like lumps, clad in heavy, depressing black, with opened but unread prayer books in your laps, and meanly whispering to your sister that she would not get any of Mama’s jewelry because she wasn’t the oldest.

Tears and stories and flowers. What a lovely way to be remembered.

“Edith, I hesitate to say this, but my bath water may soon be too cool if I don’t take advantage of it now, and if there’s only one thing I wish more than crawling into that bed over there, it is a bath, and to wash this mass of hair.”

“And very pretty hair it is, madam,” Edith said, sniffling one last time and then slapping her hands on her knees and getting to her feet, suddenly all efficiency. “It will take us some time to dry it by the fire, so we’d best get started. Don’t know why we’re dawdling, so whenever you’re ready we’ll get to work.”

Chelsea hid her smile as she also got to her feet.
“What a marvelous idea, Edith. And while we’re busy, you can tell me more about Miss Abigail, and all of the people here at Blackthorn. Could you do that?”

“Oh, my, yes,” the maid said as Chelsea handed over the jacket of her riding habit. “Talking is about the best thing I do, my mam says.”

“Isn’t that wonderful? Because listening is about the best thing I do, and everyone says it. Let’s begin with Master Beau…”

B
EAU WAS WAITING
at the bottom of the wide, sweeping staircase the next morning when Chelsea walked down the steps. He’d stationed himself there a good thirty minutes earlier, after he’d watched Edith enter the bedchamber, that same ruby-red riding habit he’d seen for the past two days draped over the maid’s arm, the material now brushed clean and pressed.

As he lingered in the entrance hall, avoiding the footmen’s quizzical looks and pretending a nonchalance he didn’t feel, he wondered what they were to do about Chelsea’s wardrobe. The lack of one, actually.

The bag she’d carried with her when she’d arrived in Grosvenor Square had hardly been large, so he believed it safe to assume her maid had packed up only the essentials, which probably did not include a gown, or pelisse, or even shoes other than those pointy boots she’d employed to such good effect last evening. He had the bruise on his ankle to prove that.

So now he didn’t just have an unexpected fiancée, he also had a fiancée with a pitifully minuscule trousseau. One might even say she had pretty much come to him in the clothes she stood up in and nothing more.

Sidney had arrived early this morning with three trunks carrying Beau’s own extensive wardrobe, not that those trunks or his valet could travel with him to Scotland, considering the pace they’d have to keep, the secondary roadways they’d be forced to travel and the inferior inns they’d rest in along the way.

But where Beau and Chelsea went on horseback, Sidney would follow with the traveling coach and those three trunks. Once the deed was done, Beau would be damned if he’d ride all the way back to London in anything less than comfort.

Three large trunks. One small, hastily packed bag containing God only knew what. That one dark red riding habit, day after day after day.

No. It wasn’t possible. Nor fair. Nor even practical. But what else was there to do?

“Then again, who tarries to do a little shopping while engineering an elopement, with an irate brother hotfoot on your trail?” he asked himself quietly.

“Master Beau? There’s something you’d be wanting?”

“No, John, thank you,” he said to the footman. “I was just looking for my conscience.” He looked up the expanse of staircase and realized that Chelsea would know he was loitering down here, waiting for her. He was about to head for the drawing room when she suddenly appeared along the balcony. “Ah, and there it is now.”

John looked up the staircase, shrugged and went back to doing whatever it is footmen do when sitting in an
entrance hall in a grand mansion on a grand estate, waiting for no one to arrive.

“Good morning, Chelsea,” Beau said, holding out his hand to her as she neared the bottom of the staircase. “Don’t you look…familiar.” But then he noticed the white flower pinned to her jacket, and his notion of teasing her died an abrupt death. The bloom matched the one stuck in his buttonhole.

“Is his lordship downstairs as yet?” she asked, ignoring his hand and turning unerringly in the direction of the morning room—probably coached by Edith, but still, she had the look of one who knew where she was going at all times and did it with grand panache. “I would like to offer my condolences on his loss, as well as thank him for his hospitality.”

Left with the options of either trailing after her like some puppy or shouting his answer to her departing back, Beau chose to follow her as he replied. “My father is over at the cottage, awaiting my mother’s arrival. But Puck is in the morning room, or was the last time I saw him, slopping down eggs.
Now
where are you going?” he asked as she turned down a hallway in the opposite direction of the morning room.

Because he doubted very much she was lost. Lady Chelsea Mills-Beckman seemed to know what she was doing at all times, or at least thought she did at the moment she was doing it. It was one or the other, and he was never quite sure which.

“Edith told me there’s a portrait of the late marchioness in the music room. I want to see it.”

“And why did she tell you that?”

“I should have thought that would be fairly obvious. Because I asked her if there might be a portrait somewhere, that’s why.” Chelsea stopped and turned to face him. “I asked Edith quite a few things. We talked until nearly midnight, as a matter of fact. I know all about you now. Do you mind?”

“Does it matter if I do?” he asked her as she set off once again, turning left at the next hallway, and then right, into the music room. He’d had hunting dogs with a less perfect sense of direction.

He’d been avoiding the music room all morning, wanting to visit with the portrait, to try to feel Abigail’s presence in the house, yet knowing that he’d only feel a keener sorrow if he did. The flowers helped, as did bringing those absurd potted palms she’d decorated herself in from the conservatory and lining them up in the entrance hall like some sort of honor guard. But Abigail was gone, and he’d never see her smile again, hear her innocent laughter, be able to marvel at the world as seen through her eyes. For she’d been unique, special and irreplaceable.

“Oh, my,” Chelsea said beside him, stopping just inside the doorway, looking at the large portrait that hung over the massive white marble fireplace. She advanced slowly, her gaze on the portrait. “Oh, my goodness. She looks like an angel.”

Beau smiled. “That could be the effect of the wings she insisted on, although she called them fairy wings,” he pointed out mildly. “I remember when that was
painted. My father had to pay the artist twice what he would have, because Abigail would only pose for a few minutes before deciding she’d rather be somewhere else. Puck bribed her with sugarplums if she’d sit still until he’d counted to five hundred, but that rarely worked. Especially since Puck was only seven or so, and seemed to get lost somewhere around four hundred and ten. I’d forgotten that.”

Chelsea leaned the side of her head against his upper arm, sliding her hand around his waist. “Such an ethereally beautiful woman. Delicate, perhaps even fragile. And yet with the happy, open mind of a child. Your mother was right, Oliver. To have Abigail put away in some madhouse would be to invite disaster on her. Still…couldn’t she have married your father and brought Abigail here with her?”

Beau slid his arm around Chelsea’s shoulder and absently rubbed at her upper arm as the two of them stood there, unable to look away from Abigail’s image. It seemed almost alive, as if she could at any moment fly out of the portrait.

“You’re forgetting my mother’s ambition,” he said, feeling a knot forming in his gut, for there were some things that still could touch him, hurt him, even as he tried to convince himself that they didn’t matter. “I was born in Ireland, you know, because she was performing there that summer. My father didn’t even know she was carrying me. She didn’t tell him because then he would have forced her to stay, forced the marriage on
her. By the time she returned, his marriage to Abigail was an accomplished fact.”

“And you and your brothers born after you were declared bastards. You could have been your father’s heir. This estate, the mansion in Mayfair and all the rest. Even Madelyn, although if I were you I’d still say I’d had a lucky escape there. Still, your mother robbed you of all of this. Will you ever forgive her?”

“What is there to forgive?” Beau looked down into Chelsea’s upturned face, surprised to see his own hurt reflected in her eyes, possibly even some anger. But not pity, which was as marvelous as it was lucky for both of them. He would not be pitied. “My life is my life. What I can’t change I choose to ignore. I could have been raised in a hovel, wondering where my next crust of bread was to come from. Instead, I was raised here, on my father’s estate. Educated above my station, many would say, clothed, fed, given every advantage possible to give.”

“Yes, but all of it here, within sight of all that can’t be yours, that should be yours. I would go out of my mind, I know it. But, then, I am probably selfish.”

She lowered her arm and made to move away from him. But Beau rather liked her where she was, so he slipped his hand down to her waist and turned her to face him.

“You do know, Chelsea, that you’re giving up all that you do have, all you were born to, throwing it all away on marriage to a bastard. I never had Society’s approval, not really. But you did. They will consider your
slap in their collective face as worse than the circumstances surrounding my birth. You ask if I’ve forgiven my mother. Do you wonder if our children will forgive either one of us?”

“Children?” She said the word as if he’d been speaking some foreign language she didn’t understand—or wished she didn’t understand. “I…I hadn’t really thought that far. I mean, how they would feel. Neither fish nor fowl, some would say they’d be, wouldn’t they?”

He touched the tip of her nose with his index finger. “You’ve thought no further than this, have you? Perhaps having to stop here is Fate sending you another chance to rethink your plan. We could make up some faradiddle about you being called away to the country for a funeral, which is almost true, if we squint sideways at the thing. Your brother would be wise to agree to such a story.”

She looked daggers at him. If he wasn’t mortally wounded, it was only out of sheer luck. “From the moment I met you, Oliver, you’ve been trying to get rid of me. When you’re not looking at me as if you’d perhaps like to kiss me. Is that because I remind you of Madelyn?”

“Please don’t hold that ancient mistake against me, if you don’t mind,” he said tersely. “And you don’t look the least like her.”

“Oh, I do so. She’s blond, I’m blond. We’ve both got the Brean chin. And our eyes are—”

“Nothing alike,” Beau said, rather vehemently, he realized. “Hers are beautiful, yes. But cold, lifeless.”

Chelsea looked up at him from beneath her lashes, suddenly shy—he hadn’t realized she could even
look
shy. “And mine?”

He knew he was in trouble now. Saying things he shouldn’t say. Thinking things he shouldn’t think. “Yours…yours are like nothing I’ve ever seen. One moment gray, the next blue, or even slightly green. They’re…they’re like transparent, sparkling jewels. Fascinating. And they show your every emotion.”

“Oh,” she said quietly, dipping her head to hide her eyes from him. “I didn’t know that. I mean, I thank you for saying that. I wasn’t pushing you for a compliment, you know. That would be shallow and silly. But it is nice to know that…well, that you noticed. That you see me not just as Madelyn’s sister, that is, or as your revenge on Thomas. Not that you shouldn’t wish revenge on all of us, just as you probably would like revenge on the entire world for—”

He lifted her chin and put his mouth to hers, shutting off her nervous prattling. He’d regret his action later, he was sure, but at the moment it seemed to be not only expedient, but expected behavior.

What he hadn’t expected was his response to feeling her untutored mouth under his. He’d avoided innocence for all of his life, perhaps because he didn’t think he deserved it, perhaps because he’d had no interest in innocence. He’d never questioned why.

Another woman would have drawn away. Another
woman would have melted against him, yet another would have gone further than that, rubbing her soft body provocatively against his strength, his arousal.

Practiced women. Knowing what they wanted, what he expected in return.

But not Chelsea. She simply stood there, her hands at her sides, her head tilted up to him, those so-revealing eyes closed so that he couldn’t see into her head, her soul.

So he drew her in, closed the physical gap between their bodies, thinking to engage her more, and ended by finding himself engaged in a way that shook him to his core. He wanted her.

He wanted her innocence. He wanted to be her first. He wanted to be the one who awakened her. He’d thought he was above such things, but he wasn’t. In two short days the damned girl had moved beyond nuisance or means to an end. Beyond revenge.

He simply wanted her.

“My God, man, there are thirty bedchambers in this pile, at the least. The coach, now the music room? What next? The stables? Give a man some warning, if you please. I’ve a sensitive nature.”

Beau broke off the kiss and stepped in front of Chelsea, a move that was definitely a case of too little, too late, if he thought he was protecting her reputation. “Twenty-six rooms, the hell you do and why are you here?”

“I’d say I’m here to torment you, but stating the ob
vious is so boring, especially since I’ve been doing it all of my life. Good morning, Chelsea.”

“Puck,” she answered shortly, stepping out from behind Beau. “As one youngest sibling to another, I feel I should compliment your ability to be annoying to your elders. However, you are not half so amusing as you suppose yourself. After all, we must all grow up at some point.”

Puck shrugged his shoulders eloquently, in the French style, Beau supposed. He’d probably studied the move, practiced it in front of a mirror until he’d gotten it perfect.

“I think you’ve just been put in your place, little brother. I’m gratified I could be here to witness it.”

“Well, as long as you’re feeling gratified, I suppose it was worth it. But I’ve come to tell you that Mama has returned to the cottage, and is in fact even now at the ice house.”

“At the—oh,” Chelsea broke off, turning to look up at the portrait, and then at him and Puck. “Have…have you been? I shouldn’t if I were you. My mother and father both were laid out in the drawing room at Brean. But, then, it had been wintertime both times. There isn’t much dignity in death, either way. My biggest memory of Mama’s service is watching to see if she might suddenly sit up. I was only ten,” she added in explanation. “Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be talking like this, should I?”

“No, it’s all right,” Puck told her. “Isn’t it, Beau?”

“I should have smothered you in your cot when I had
the chance,” Beau told him calmly, but then looked at Chelsea. She was biting her bottom lip, clearly upset. “You don’t like thinking about dead bodies?”

“I don’t think I
enjoy
seeing dead bodies, no. I feel so sorry for the dead person, being put on show like that. Do you know my greatest memory of my papa’s laying out? That I’d never realized how much hair he had in his ears and nostrils. Isn’t that terrible? I swore then and there that when I die I will be put immediately in a box and the box be nailed shut, with nobody standing over me as I lay there dead and on some ghoulish sort of display, with everyone saying how
wonderful
I look. How could I possibly look wonderful? I’d be
dead.
”