A Rake's Redemption

by Donna Lea Simpson

  “I think him a wise man. You are in every way more precious than rubies. Your happiness and safety is important to him,” Hardcastle said. “And a prudent man guards what he holds dear.”

  “As does a prudent woman,” Phaedra said ruefully, thinking of the rash wager of her virtue. Her newly discovered love for Lord Hardcastle would have made the fulfilling of her debt both exquisite pleasure and horrible torture. To give him the rights accorded a husband could only have been pleasurable to her body—she felt flushed with desire for him just at the touch of his hand—but it would have left her with the bitterness of regret, that the occasion would be only an aberration in the smooth texture of her life. Was it better to never taste a delicious fruit that one could never have again, or was it better to experience the taste and live life while it was within one’s grasp? It appeared the decision, or the opportunity, had been taken from her.

  “You did what you thought right, my dear. I have never met a woman of such rigorous morality, and I do not think you wagered what you did lightly. It strikes me that for one who does not believe in an immutable rule of honor, you hold fast to the code in your own behavior. I respect that about you.”

  It was a relief, anyway, that he did not think ill of her. She looked over at him, sitting at his ease, the sunlight glinting blue-black sparks off his hair. His face was a study in hard planes and harsh lines, and yet his manner was gentle. At least toward her. He could not be so mild-mannered if he tore down to Oxfordshire through the middle of the night to persecute a debt. What was she to think now, if his appearance on their road and attack by robbers was not part of some God-created scheme to save poor Charles’s estate? Was it chance only that had brought Hardcastle into her life? It was that which she would ponder long after he had gone back to his life and his amours and his gambling.

  “I have heard,” Phaedra said, turning deliberately away from unhappy thoughts, “that Squire Daintry believes they have found the place where the robbers go with their booty. He is hoping to round up some of the locals and raid the den at some point when they know the men have just committed a crime.”

  “I wish them well.”

  “Do you not care? Do you not want your rings back, at least? They are family rings, I believe you said.”

  “I would like them, yes.” Hardcastle frowned and stared down at his ringless fingers for a moment. “But I do not regret their loss as much as I would have thought.”

  He was unfathomable, she thought, watching the changing emotions passing over his handsome face. Every time she thought she knew him, he showed some other part of him, some new depth to his character. Far from being frustrated or angry that the wager could not be fulfilled, one would almost think him sanguine. Or was it resignation only? It would take a lifetime to plumb the depths of his mind and heart, but instead his valet would come on the morrow, and he would leave forever. How soon he would forget the vicar’s daughter one could only surmise, but she would never forget her rakish earl.

  Ever.

  • • •

  It was peaceful in the kitchen with Sally gone, Phaedra thought, paring carrots for dinner. No sooner had she thought that thought than the back kitchen door flew open and Deborah rushed in.

  Phaedra dropped her knife in surprise even though she had known the girl was coming, and was, in fact, late. “Deborah, why did you not come to the front door? You are my guest, not the kitchen help.”

  Deborah dropped her bag on the floor and moved to swiftly hug Phaedra. “I knew you would be back here, and I didn’t want—I didn’t want—” The girl broke down into sobs, standing in the kitchen in her pretty muslin dress and spencer, weeping dejectedly.

  “Oh, my dear, what is wrong?” Phaedra pushed Deborah down in a chair and moved to put the kettle on the hob to boil for tea. She came back to her friend and took her hand.

  Deborah wept quietly for a moment, large tears trickling down her cheek. “It is over. All my hopes are over! Oh, I am so miserable!”

  Phaedra took her in her arms and the girl leaned on her friend’s bosom and wept out her whole story, how she had finally rode, just that morning, over to the Fossey estate. She was determined to have it out with Charles, and she met him coming out of the house.

  “And he was so c-cold! I asked him what was wrong, why he no longer loved me, and he j-just turned red and stammered that he had n-never asked for my hand and h-he was sorry I had misunderstood his intentions! M-misunderstood!” She broke down again, and filling the kitchen were the sounds of her weeping, Phaedra’s murmurs of support and the kettle hissing and bubbling over the fire.

  Phaedra thought of poor Charles, and how he must have felt when faced with the girl he loved. How could he tell her? A stronger man would have told her the truth, but Charles was young and he adored Deborah. And so instead of telling her his weakness he was breaking her heart by pretending he didn’t care. Foolish, but understandable. Should she tell the girl the truth? It was not her truth to tell, and it would be abominable interference.

  “Hush, Deborah. All will come clear in time.”

  “No, it won’t. H-he will marry some other girl and I will be an old m-maid like you!” The girl stopped after saying that, and the consternation on her face would have been comical if it were not mixed with the evidence of her devastation. “I didn’t mean—I wouldn’t ever—”

  “It’s all right, Deborah.”

  Breaking down into tears again, Deborah wailed, “He says he may be going away! Where would he go? Why? I don’t understand! Mama says I should go back to London, but I don’t want to, I don’t want—” She broke down completely then, incoherent through her sobs.

  Phaedra felt helpless, not knowing what to do beyond patting the girl’s shoulder and offering her tea. And she was angry. Damn Hardcastle anyway for his rigid “code”! Damn all gamblers and damn Charles Fossey, but damn especially Lord high-and-mighty Hardcastle, who could not give an inch to help two young people in love. Charles and Deborah would break their hearts over each other, and their lives could be ruined. It was wrong, wrong, wrong!

  “I w-want Mama!” Deborah was sniffling now, but her eyes were bloodshot, her nose running and her whole body shaking. This time when she broke down in tears again, it was the deep shuddering sobs of heartbreak, of hopelessness.

  “Then you should go home to your mother, my dear,” Phaedra said. It was the only solution she could think of, because she did not know what to do for the girl, who was probably best off at home in her own bed, with her mother there to apply hartshorn and lavender water along with motherly love.

  Deborah nodded mutely, and Phaedra picked up her bag and found, outside, that the Daintry pony cart was sitting by the back shed, not even unhitched yet. She gave the girl a hand up and sent her on her way. Dobbin, her faithful and elderly pony, knew his own way home and would get her there safely. Deborah clearly did not even remember that there was a reason she was coming to stay at Phaedra’s for the night, but her own needs at that moment far outweighed Phaedra’s.

  Phaedra went back in to the kitchen and took up her knife, viciously chopping and slicing harmless cabbage. How could he, how could he, how could he?—the phrase kept running through her mind. She threw the knife down on the counter, and, furious, raced up the stairs and flung open the door to her room. “I hope you are pleased with your work, sir, for you have ruined the lives of two very dear young people. You and your damned gentleman’s code! How can you live with yourself?”

  Hardcastle looked up from the cards he was playing. “What’s wrong? What has happened?” he asked, frowning.

  “You! You are what is wrong!” Phaedra paced up and down the small room, and then stopped in front of him. “Deborah Daintry—it is she who is Charles’s sweetheart—was just here, crushed, devastated! She has been to see poor Charles, and he—the idiot—made a mull of it, of course. Couldn’t tell her the truth, that he had wagered a hard-hearted aristocrat his estate and lost, and so he pretended he didn’t care for her and brok
e her heart, and now the poor darling has gone home to cry her eyes out! And all because you—” Phaedra plunked down on the edge of the bed and put her hands over her eyes.

  “I have done nothing wrong. I bet him what he asked and I won. Put the blame where it belongs, Phaedra, and not on me!”

  It was too much, his casual denial of any blame, and even though she knew that in his eyes, in his world, he was right, she still felt the anger burning bright within her. Why did he have to be who he was? Why was he the Earl of Hardcastle and not some commoner? “How can you be so cold,” she said, her voice trembling. “Do you care about nothing or no one? Does nothing touch you? Are you so empty—”

  She did not have time to finish before he grasped her in his arms and kissed her.

  “Cold, you think I’m cold?” he said, his voice grating hoarsely over the words. “Is this cold?”

  Still stunned from the first kiss, she found herself swirled into a dark dream as he took her lips in a hard, almost brutal kiss that quickly softened and became tender, loving, full of desire. Her eyes closed, she could feel his heart pounding against her breast, and the strength of his arms, and yet he was restraining his power; she felt that it was leashed, harnessed by his will.

  Before she knew what was happening, she was kissing him back, and holding him, and threading her fingers through his silky hair. He pulled the pins from hers and it tumbled down over her shoulders.

  “I’m not cold, woman, I’m an inferno! My sweet Phaedra, do you know how badly I want you? Need you? I’ve never felt this deep a need for any woman, but I want to be with you.”

  Her heart pounding, she could not speak. He had pulled her into his arms until she was lying with him on the bed, and he was looking down into her eyes, his own smoldering with desire. Gently, he kissed her again and pulled her close until her own slim frame was resting against his massive one on the narrow bed.

  “Do you—” Her voice was oddly breathless, but she continued. “Do you mean to take your wager now, sir?” Did she want him to or not? She could no longer think rationally on the subject.

  • • •

  He touched her hair, spreading it out on the pillow with gentle hands, splaying it across a sunbeam that touched them where they lay together. He had never seen anything so beautiful in all his life. Her body was warm against his. He could imagine lifting her dress and taking off her stockings, one by one, caressing her dainty feet, kissing the sweet arch of her foot, letting his hands roam up to her slim thighs— And she accused him of being cold? Yet others had done the same. But he would show her he was not cold; she would experience— His breath coming faster, he asked, “Did I understand some part of your ranting? Miss Daintry, who was supposed to stay for the night, has gone?”

  Phaedra nodded mutely. He was glad to see that her breast was rising and falling quickly too. She might be angry with him, but she wanted him. If he knew anything about women it was that. There was a pang in the region of his heart when he thought about her dislike for him, but triumph that she still, against her conscience, wanted him. He could only imagine what it would be like if she loved a man, what kind of luscious fire would course through her veins for that lucky bastard.

  But he would take what he could get. If a physical semblance of love was to be all, then so be it. “Yes, my sweeting, I mean to take my wager, my precious, precious prize. Today, from now until tomorrow’s morning light, you are mine.”

  She trembled and her eyes grew wide, their blue like crystal in the sunlight.

  “Are you afraid, my sweet?”

  “I’m not afraid of what we are to do,” she said, her voice coming in little gasps. “Every married woman does this, and many who are not. Mrs. Lovett says it’s enjoyable, and she should know.”

  He chuckled, charmed anew by her ingenuous seduction. He kissed her nose, then her cheek, then her lips. He nuzzled her neck and with quivering hands fumbled for the simple buttons that did up her homemade gown. He pushed the shoulder of the dress down, and nipped at her shoulder blade, the soft skin showing a tiny red mark. His kissed it better, and vowed to restrain himself, to hold himself back until she came to delight herself. She would have pleasure before him, and then she would have pleasure again, before he took his own.

  He opened his eyes to find that hers were closed. Her sweet mouth was slightly open and her hands were caressing the nape of his neck. He had been right about one thing; because this was payment of a wager did not mean she would hold herself stiff. She would fulfill the spirit as well as the letter of the bet.

  His angel. He remembered in that moment the first time he had opened his eyes, battered and almost unconscious as he was, and had seen her floating down the road to him. Dazzled by the sunlight behind her radiant hair, the glow like an aura, he had thought her a real angel, come to minister to him. His angel, his little savior.

  • • •

  Phaedra opened her eyes, wondering why he had stopped. His black eyes were on her, and she gazed up into their depths, and then traced the hard planes of his face, the deeply grooved lines that told of a life of dissipation, the harshness that was erased at this moment, to be replaced by an expression of wonder, if she read him right.

  What did this mean to him? For her it was the bittersweet culmination of her deepest desires and most hidden longings. What he would do to her she had dreamt of, a confused jumbled dream, to be sure, but in the end they had been one body, one soul, man and woman together.

  How could she hate so much what he would do to Charles and Deborah and Anna and their mother, and yet—and yet love him? She reached up and touched his face, feeling the stubble of his chin, tracing the outline of his lips.

  “And so, my dear, will you pay me the wager now? If you’re afraid, or if you will hate yourself for this, I would have you renege. Do not do this if you will suffer irreparably. But I say to you, you will have nothing to be ashamed of. Man and woman are meant to fit together as we will; it’s natural and beautiful.”

  “I will do this with you without hating myself after.”

  He swallowed and smiled, his face transformed by the gentle expression; even his dark eyes seemed warm. “I will be gentle, I promise, my dear,” he said. He leaned down to kiss her again, and his whole body trembled against her. “The first time will hurt—I cannot make that different, though I would if I could. But I vow, I will give you pleasure. I want to show you how beautiful, how exquisite is the love between a man and a woman.” With trembling fingers, he reached up to peel back the bodice of her soft, worn housedress.

  Chapter Nineteen

  He bent his head to kiss her again as he fumbled with her dress, and felt within their connection the wonder of all that was new to her. He was the first man to kiss her; he would be the first man to touch her breasts, to see her nakedness, to take her in lovemaking. And forever after, in her little village, she would know herself to be different than the chaste maiden everyone thought her. It would mark every day for one so upright. And the sadness was, she was innocent enough that she didn’t know what it would do to her.

  More, by making love to her, he would mark her forever as his woman, and yet he would leave her behind.

  It wasn‘t right. He pulled back from her and she opened her eyes and gazed up at him, unblinking, in the sunlight. He saw acceptance in her eyes, and something else he could not name, was afraid to name. It was nothing he had ever seen, the depth of a woman’s love.

  No, not that. He was mistaken, for he had never done anything to deserve a gift of such magnitude.

  He slipped off the bed and straightened, willing himself to ignore his arousal. “I find myself in the odd position of refusing your payment of your debt.”

  “Did I—do you not want—”

  Ruefully, he answered, “No, my dear, I very much want. But you have no idea what our lovemaking will do, and I won’t have you remember me with tears and regret. There is already one dark stain on my memory for you, that I’m ruining your young friends’ lives.
I will not add shame to the mix. I care for you, Phaedra. And your father is right. You are a virtuous woman; I do not happen to think lovemaking incompatible with virtue, but I’m not society, and you’re a woman who lives for other people. Even if no one else ever knew about our wager and your surrender of your innocence, you would know and it would change you. It would change how you felt about yourself, and it would change your behavior. I will not risk the rest of your life for my pleasure.”

  Blushing, Phaedra sat up on the edge of the bed and pulled the shoulder of her dress up to hide her partial nakedness, though nothing beyond her shoulder had been exposed. Hardcastle smiled, though he did not feel particularly happy. He recognized that in making love to Phaedra, he had hoped to plunder some deep well of good, of purity. Was he hoping a little would rub off? Life didn’t work that way. His best friend for most of his adult years had been Mercy Dandridge, one of the best men he had ever known or known of, and yet Mercy’s goodness had not transferred.

  By leaving her innocence intact he was performing the first deed in his life that was solely for another’s benefit. It felt good. It felt very good.

  “I will be leaving tomorrow,” he said, looking away from her. He limped to the door. “I will leave you to compose yourself, my dear, and then I will find someplace else to sleep this night, the local inn, or some other place. There is no point in you being condemned for a sin you have not enjoyed.”

  • • •

  Phaedra was confused—horribly confused—by the feelings of almost-regret that she was suffering. With unseeing eyes she stared out the back window, not taking in the landscape, seeing nothing beyond the pane of glass in front of her. Her vision was turned inward. She had offered herself to Hardcastle, body and soul, and yet in the end it was he who had the will to stop. She would never know what the mysterious world of lovemaking was all about. And yet it was not so much that that she would regret. Embarrassingly, she had wanted the memory of him to cling to through the coming years, and would have welcomed the change in her body as a vivid reminder of that moment when they joined as one.