Once she had got over her reluctant host’s impressive show of temper and made sure her son wasn’t really harmed, Hetta had been secretly delighted to leave Carrowe House. If not for her father’s vague order to go where she was bid and keep the boy out of trouble, she would have resumed her hunt for another lodging straight away. That wretched promise again. Why the deuce had Papa invoked it simply to get them out of his way as fast as possible? She frowned at the thought there was something real and a little bit anxious behind her father’s irritation today. She was almost glad Magnus was staring at the wall as if he wished he was alone, so he couldn’t read her thoughts. However hard she tried to tell herself he and his family mysteries were nothing to do with her, she felt involved. Somehow, she couldn’t simply put the Haile family to the back of her mind and carry on with her life as if she had never met any of them.
And poor old Carrowe House had felt so oppressive and strange she could easily believe a man was murdered there. It felt as if the tremors of such a violent crime lingered there like the aftershocks of a great earthquake. Fanciful to even think such a thing and she blamed her fascination with Gothic romances she picked up during long, lonely nights sitting up with Toby as a baby as he grew teeth or was fretful or simply his usual ravenous self. A series of shocking events happening at a distance to timid, yet recklessly curious, heroines seemed an ideal diversion when the rest of the world was fast asleep and hired lodgings could feel soulless by candlelight. Except last night, as she lay listening for the next creak or moan the old house made as if it tried to settle on its ancient foundations and couldn’t get comfortable, her secret vice had not seemed such a good idea. Even the latest chilling tale she had picked up could not divert her from the fancy she was living inside one and could be silently, watchfully observed from places that looked perfectly innocent in daylight.
And she knew far too much about its new owner to be at all comfortable under his roof at Carrowe House now, even if she hadn’t let her imagination run away with her. Lord Carrowe had ruined the lovely young girl who became Lady Drace, then wed an heiress rich enough to buy him control of the main Haile estates from his father. Despite her trick of presenting a stiff facade to the world, Hetta knew she wasn’t much of an actress. Sooner or later the Earl might have realised she knew more about him than he wanted anyone to know. So why had she agreed to come here when it was best to be done with the Hailes and all their houses? Panic, she supposed and called herself a craven. Anyway, Lord Carrowe didn’t own this house and he seemed fixed in London, despite the heat. It had seemed a safe enough compromise to come here while she got her breath back. But now it felt even more impossible to like the new Earl when his betrayal had skewed Lady Drace’s choices. Those choices, in turn, had made Magnus Haile into a cynic who refused to look at Hetta while they discussed trivial things and now tension sang between them like overstretched wire.
‘I suppose your father kept control of your London home because town life suited him better.’ She finally broke the silence almost tactfully.
Her mouth might say careful things, but her mind and too much of her imagination was still busy with the man in front of her. Even ten years ago, when he might have been a callow youth and she was busy being blinded by Bran’s golden good looks, ready smiles and flattery, she would have leapt at the chance of loving Magnus Haile instead. She silently cursed him for not being there, so she could have picked him and not Brandon Champion. Shocked by her own thoughts, she ordered herself to look hard into the next mirror she passed so she could see for herself why meeting him then would only have meant more heartache for her instead of less. Next to Lady Drace’s cool and perfect looks, Hetta Porter would have been nigh invisible.
But Lady Drace isn’t here now, is she? bad Hetta argued.
An urgent need for something deep and intimate with this gruff and unshaven idiot tugged at Hetta, and the I wonder... whisper that had shocked her so deeply at the first sight of him was plaguing her with unsuitable fantasies yet again.
Don’t, she told it sternly, looking for some way to resist his rough appeal. Despite all the reasons she should go, she didn’t want to leave him staring into the middle distance as if his sins were writ large on it for the whole world to see.
‘Your sisters’ old rooms at Carrowe House are comfortable and one of the kitchens is usable,’ she said as if his brother’s house fascinated her.
‘Their old bedchambers are as secure as Wulf and I could make them, but not comfortable,’ he argued as if he was amazed a lady voluntarily spent half an hour there, never mind a whole night.
‘I had to make all sorts of unlikely places home on our travels,’ she explained, glad they were safely off perilous ground. ‘As the alternative was coming back to England with my tail between my legs, I learned to adapt. Can you imagine how bored Toby would be in a neat little house away from any action?’
‘Not without a shudder,’ he said, and it was unfair of him to have a sense of humour under all that gloom and rough-edged glamour.
‘Neither can I, and as I travelled with my mother and father as a girl, it seemed natural to join my father when my husband died, so I set out as soon as Toby and I could travel once he was born.’
‘Intrepid of you to make such a journey with a babe in arms, Mrs Champion,’ he said as if he didn’t quite approve of intrepid females.
‘I did my best,’ she said ironically, and if he turned out to be a washout as a wild seducer it was all to the good, since she didn’t want to be seduced. She tried to recall why she was out here wasting her breath—ah, yes, reassuring him his secrets were safe with her and trying to find out if there was a nice clean inn on the doorstep. Time to get on with that, then, and never mind the rest.
Chapter Five
‘And now I have to find somewhere to stay,’ Hetta said as briskly as she could with that ridiculous notion of him staring at her with all his sensual attention on her instead of Lady Drace haunting her.
She wished she couldn’t see past his whiskers and dour frown to the good man underneath. She smiled wistfully and he looked puzzled, then turned back to stare at the wide landscape on the other side of the wall as if he didn’t want to know why. Her husband would have agreed and she grimaced at this man’s back. Once she was enceinte Bran was revolted by her changing body. If she’d ever hoped a child would bring them closer, she didn’t enjoy the fantasy for long. She recalled Bran taunting her that his slender filly had become a fat mare and his contempt had picked at her fragile self-confidence ever since. She could be a lioness on her son’s behalf and refused to be overlooked or undervalued because she was female, yet as a sensual and sensitive woman she felt more like a wary tabby cat who had avoided mankind since Bran showed her his true colours.
She glared at Magnus Haile’s strong back as he peered at the Heath as if he wanted to forget her as well. Drat the man for destroying the notion she was safe from his kind. Jealousy of Lady Drace still gnawed at her, despite his dismissal of her own limited charms. She really must stop gazing at the play of his powerful muscles outlined by a damp shirt when he shifted as if he felt her gaze. He was a drunken rake and that ought to put her off his lethal mixture of power and vulnerability.
‘A child should never suffer for its parents’ mistakes,’ she told him earnestly.
‘Yet so many do,’ he replied. ‘I am glad my elder brother had the sense to send you away from Carrowe House, Mrs Champion, and amazed you stayed as long as you did. Most ladies wouldn’t step over the threshold of such a wreck even if it wasn’t the scene of bloody murder.’
As his brisk change of subject was for the best, she allowed herself a shrug of resigned acceptance since he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head. ‘It doesn’t pay to ask too many questions about past events in grand old houses, does it?’ she said. ‘And that one’s shortcomings are less of a problem now than they must be in winter when I imagine the whole place is cold a
s charity.’
‘Colder if anything, but not a suitable place for a lady in any weather, especially not one who lacks the chaperone you seem to have forgotten to employ when your last one left,’ he said with a severe look over his shoulder and a careful shake of his head as if he was the most respectable man on earth.
‘My father has an aversion to the breed since the last two he insisted on hiring tried to marry him. Now he is quite happy for me to do without one and I am a plain widow with a son who makes devastatingly honest comments about any man who tries to take advantage of me, so all three of us are happy.’
‘Your son is hardly the sort of sop to the proprieties the high sticklers insist on,’ he turned around properly to tell her with a coolly assessing look she wished he had kept on the landscape. Now the Honourable Magnus Haile was back, she sighed for the unshaven pirate who made her shiver with something it was best not to name. At least that version of him had feelings to drown in brandy. This one had his emotions walled up behind so much chilly indifference she almost gave up and walked away. ‘And your father is not exactly attentive to his daughter or grandson’s comfort, is he?’ he added disapprovingly.
Papa was very busy about Haile business and might save this one’s neck from the hangman, so she couldn’t see why Magnus Haile was so intent on his shortcomings as a father. ‘Papa has never made me feel a burden and he loves us deep down,’ she defended Sir Hadrian loyally.
‘At least we have hating to be a weight on our loved ones’ shoulders in common, then, Mrs Champion,’ he murmured. ‘Champion?’ he added as if her married name had finally caught his attention. ‘My friend, Sir Marcus Champion, had a brother.’ He was silent for a moment and Hetta wished they had stayed on the subject of Magnus Haile’s loves and losses instead of hers. ‘Brandon, yes, that’s it. I remember now there was some tale about him eloping with a schoolgirl. He was Captain Champion last time I met him in London waiting for some appointment at the Admiralty.’
‘Yes, he left me in Lyme. He thought I should not travel so far in my condition,’ she lied, avoiding his eyes as she told the comfortable version of Bran’s absence she’d tried to fool her neighbours with at the time.
‘I dare say he was right,’ he said almost gently, as if he didn’t blame her for papering over the cracks in her marriage to a man he looked as if he hadn’t liked very much, however much he enjoyed the company of Bran’s elder brother.
‘Maybe he was,’ she said as airily as she could.
She shifted under Mr Magnus Haile’s sceptical gaze. It had not taken her long to realise Bran had wed her for her father’s fortune and the Dowager Lady Porter’s influence. He must have thought her the perfect wife for a naval officer determined to outrank his elder brother and be a Lord of the Admiralty as soon as his relatives by marriage could push his name forward. But then her grandmother had washed her hands of Hetta and Papa had written that he would not save his son-in-law from being eaten by lions, so what madness had possessed Hetta to run off with such an ambitious fool? She had naively believed Bran’s lies about loving her and never mind who her father was, but madness? No, misery at losing her mother, then being sent away by her father, had made her vulnerable to Bran’s flattery and her youthful longing to be loved had done the rest. She had been so lonely under her grandmother’s roof she’d agreed to elope with him because she was so afraid of being left alone with her grandmother until she was so cowed she agreed to be married off to some middle-aged protégé of Lady Porter’s simply to get away. She had been a fool to be so wilfully taken in, but having Toby meant she could never truly regret marrying his father.
She still shuddered at the memory of Bran cursing her as his clog and telling her he had put himself out to wed a plain nonentity for no return at all. He managed to blame her for their elopement as if he had never made all those false promises and pretended devotion. His passion for her was heady while it lasted, she reminded herself. Being wanted so urgently by a handsome lover had filled a lot of gaps in her life until her grandmother’s rebuff and Papa’s horrified denial made him show his true colours and made the gaps yawn wider than ever. The last time she ever saw him her husband was striding away from her after a mere day at home, leaving her feeling fat, miserable and humiliated by his open revulsion at her visibly pregnant body, so she had hurled insults after him like a fishwife. She doubted her neighbours believed her fairy story about Bran leaving her behind because she was in no state to travel either after hearing her impressive collection of insults in a variety of outlandish languages. Then she had to live with herself when she found out her husband wasn’t coming back. The guilt at realising a terrible tension had unwound inside her the day she knew Bran would never be able to teach their baby to despise its mother still haunted her even now.
‘Anyway, I’m sure you know my husband died and was buried at sea since you are so well acquainted with his elder brother,’ she said stiffly.
‘My condolences,’ he said with the contained look she already knew was a smokescreen to hide his true feelings. ‘It must be hard to be left with a child to raise alone,’ he added with real sympathy in his deep voice this time.
‘Toby wasn’t born until three months after his father’s death,’ she said, and her secret euphoria that her son had come into the world fatherless felt wrong even now. She’d never wished Bran dead, just a few hundred miles away and not married to her, but at least he had died young and vigorous and full of promise instead of a disappointed man. Something told her he wouldn’t have got to the places he’d planned to even if her family had been more inclined to help him, but now he was a force that had burnt out too young and no one would ever know what he might have achieved.
‘From Mark’s tales of him, your husband was nigh fearless as a boy and must have been a fine naval officer. Sir Marcus would welcome you both at Wellaby Hall if you are in need of a refuge while your father is busy. Mark enjoys having a pack of brats running wild about the place. Come one, come all should be the motto carved over his door since he and his lady retired to the country to raise their children in the fresh air.’
‘I have no wish to be a duty guest,’ she said stubbornly. Being one didn’t work out with her grandmother or Lord Carrowe, so she was very reluctant to wear out another welcome and maybe too proud as well. ‘I told you how I dislike being a burden, and since Papa forgets to eat for days when he’s on the scent of a felon or a solution to a knotty problem, at least he needs us.’ Hetta recalled whose mysteries Sir Hadrian was trying to solve this time and blushed. The bloody and violent end of an aristocrat in his own home seemed so unlikely in this peaceful place. With the sun gentle on her back and the warmth of an unusually benign English summer’s day all around her, the loss of it felt a terrible crime for any man to quit this world before his time.
‘The Champions would never think of you and your son as a duty,’ Magnus Haile said gently, as if he recognised her pride and almost applauded it.
‘You must know them well to say so, but I would still feel like one,’ she said briskly. ‘I did not follow you out here to seek sympathy, Mr Haile, only to ask for your help and to repeat your secrets are safe with me. I would never play with the life of a child even if I was spiteful enough to gossip about her parents, which I am not.’
The spark of curiosity in his rather fascinating dark brown eyes died. He was once more the arrogant aristocrat she first saw on the quay at Dover, and only a brief shiver, as if he had been reminded his life was now barren, gave him away as human at all. He stared at his precious view again as if she was an unwanted guest who refused to leave and she was, she supposed, so she ought to get on and go.
‘That would be reassuring, if I had any idea what you mean,’ he said coldly.
‘Given my father’s occupation, I learned to be wary even as a child, Mr Haile. Once Toby could walk and talk there was even more reason to be discreet, so you can stop pretending with me.’
‘The little devil; I told him to stay with your housekeeper and cook,’ she said and spun round to glare at her son. He was too far away to overhear them, and she really ought to find a tutor to keep him busy until it was time for school. He needed to be kept fully occupied before he got into more trouble. ‘Come out from behind that currant bush, Toby Champion, or no puddings for you for the rest of the week.’
‘He looks perfectly all right to me,’ Toby said accusingly as he did as he was told and seemed disappointed Magnus Haile wasn’t as sick as a dog.
Her son had mastered the art of deflection far too early, Hetta decided, and wondered if girls were easier to deal with than boys. Since she’d inherited her mother’s fortune at the age of five and twenty and Bran’s prize money was held in trust for his son, there was no need for her to go out as a governess or, heaven forbid, find another husband to support her, so she would never find out. Now her son was old enough for preparatory school she could be an independent woman. She tried not to think about the empty sound of it, and forming a picture in her head of a dark-haired tot of her own with velvet brown eyes and her father’s stormy temper was simply no help at all. She was done with men and marriage, and the man her inner idiot seemed determined to yearn for was about as likely to ask her to change her mind as he was to sprout wings and fly after his former lover instead.
Chapter Six
‘I would have thought you had seen enough people being miserably ill on our way across the Channel last week,’ Hetta told her son with a straight look to say, Stop right there, before you say something even more insulting.
A Rake to the Rescue Page 6