A Rake to the Rescue

by Elizabeth Beacon

  ‘I thought I was lonely here, but it was nothing compared to being so far away from...’ Delphi let her voice tail off and for a dreadful moment Magnus thought she was about to say she found life impossible without him. It showed how far he had come when relief nearly felled him as Delphi’s gaze went past him to fix on Gresley instead. ‘Him,’ she continued as if she couldn’t help herself.

  ‘Was anything you ever said or did true?’ Magnus had to ask.

  ‘Yes, he was,’ she said, her eyes wild and all the pent-up passion in her finally flying free and a bit terrifying. ‘I loved him when I was little more than a girl and he loved me back, but he had to marry you for money,’ she said, pointing at poor, shocked Connie as if she hated her.

  ‘I...well, I can’t believe it, even of you,’ Constance said and Gresley stood speechless and watched Delphi as if he longed for and feared her at the same time.

  ‘I would have walked through hell for him, and lived in a hovel on nothing a year—but, oh, no, you wanted his title and Haile Carr to queen it over and the vile Earl of Carrowe coveted your dowry to pay for his sordid pleasures. So Gresley was sold to you like a chest full of tea or a slave from one of your father’s plantations and I wed Drace, because what did it matter who my husband was when I could not have yours? I got a husk of a man nobody else wanted despite all his wealth and ancient, if puny, title. You had everything I ever wanted,’ Delphi raged as if she had to get all she had kept quiet for a decade out in the open. She looked as if she truly hated Connie, when the late Earl of Carrowe was the one who’d caused such grief and fury, not poor plain, ambitious Connie. ‘You wed my only love for the sake of a title. I loved him even after he left me to live half a life without him, just so you could preen yourself on becoming a countess one day.’

  Delphi turned her eyes away from her rival as if she could not endure the sight of her open-mouthed and silenced. Her gaze lit on Gresley and softened, as if only for him could she be as nature probably intended her to be. ‘That wicked old man told me he had threatened to have me killed if you refused to marry his fat little heiress,’ she told him sadly.

  ‘That’s true,’ Gresley muttered.

  ‘So, when he tried to blackmail me about the true parentage of my child I had to make him understand I am not a terrified girl anyone can brush aside like a fly now...’ Delphi paused and her eyes were on Magnus. ‘Didn’t you realise he would turn on me when you refused to wed a fortune?’ she challenged as if this was his fault.

  ‘I thought he might blackmail his friends or maybe the King, since he knew far too much about them all, but I never dreamed he would turn on you.’

  ‘He already knew too much about me, though, didn’t he? I suppose you didn’t know it wasn’t his first scheme to sell an unwilling son to the highest bidder.’

  ‘And you took me to bed in lieu of my brother,’ he said because he could not let her shuffle off the blame on everyone else for her crimes any longer.

  ‘Yes, you are better in bed than Drace and it was time I had a proper lover again. My husband didn’t even realise I was not a virgin on our wedding night,’ she said, her eyes on Gresley again, as if she forgot everyone else when he was near—even if she almost hated him for it at times.

  Poor Gres seemed almost in agony. By loving the girl Delphi was then too much to leave her be, he must have felt weighed down by guilt ever since he married poor rich Constance instead of his young lover.

  ‘My father ruined everything he touched, including me. I was never strong enough to fight back like you and Wulf did, Magnus,’ Gresley admitted bleakly.

  ‘You knew what the Earl was doing to squeeze more money out of me last year, though, didn’t you?’ Magnus asked him bitterly. ‘You stood by with your hands in your pockets and whistled while he tried to push me into a marriage of convenience as well. You did not protect Delphi and her child when he wanted to use them to get his greedy hands on a share of the Drace fortune from the sounds of it either.’

  ‘And at least Magnus had the grace to want to marry me,’ Delphi added as if she regretted having turned him down. Magnus shot Hetta a desperate look to plead for rescue. Even having to think about asking Delphi to wed him for the sake of their child felt hellish now. ‘Although I suspect he doesn’t want to now,’ Delphi added with a long look at Hetta and a shrug to say, He’s yours. I never wanted him anyway.

  ‘Our daughter is the only good thing to come of this foul mess,’ Magnus said austerely.

  ‘And that devil threatened to expose her secret when he failed to push you into a rich marriage. He had already borrowed against Miss Alstone’s dowry, you see?’ Delphi explained, as if anything could explain what she had done.

  Magnus heard steel in her voice and thought his father had been even more of a fool than usual to risk goading her when her child was all she truly had to show for the heartache and denial of ten long years without her lover, or for most of them, if the guilty look Gres cast her, then his wife, now was anything to go by. After Angela was conceived, when Delphi had turned a hard face on Magnus and refused to wed him, they must have resumed their passionate affair. No wonder she’d turned down every impassioned plea he made her to let his child be born legitimate. Maybe Gres found out what she’d done when he stayed away too long after Drace died and that was the goad that finally stoked Gresley’s pent-up desire for her to breaking point. He might even feel sorry for them, if his child wasn’t in the middle of the havoc they’d created.

  ‘I should have realised he would turn on you when he failed with me,’ Magnus reproached himself even so.

  ‘You don’t think like your father or brother or Lady Drace,’ Hetta said and came to stand by him, as if she had been trying not to intrude on family business until now, but this was too much for her to be silent about.

  ‘He nearly spoilt Isabella’s life by forcing me to offer for her or blight my daughter’s life before it had hardly begun and I sat around feeling sorry for myself while you had to face him alone.’ Magnus found he could apologise to Delphi with Hetta’s hand in his.

  ‘Not entirely,’ Delphi argued.

  ‘No, you had a confederate that night and afterwards.’

  Delphi sighed as if she was glad to tell her secrets even with Sir Hadrian looking on as if none surprised him. ‘Gresley showed me a secret entrance and guided me through a musty old hidden passage to the Earl’s private sitting room that everyone else had forgotten about,’ she admitted recklessly. ‘And I made him stay outside to be sure nobody disturbed me. I told the old man he could tell the world and if I had to wed you he would not get a penny by revealing our secret. He sat there and laughed at me. He slouched in his worn-out old chair with a chipped old wine glass in his hand and jeered as if I was nothing and my daughter did not matter a snap of his fingers. I took a stiletto dagger my father brought back from Italy with me to make me feel braver as I crept through that old ruin in the dark. I never intended to stab him, but he said such terrible things the knife was out and in him before I even knew it was in my hand. It went in so easily I could not even believe I had actually done it until he slumped back in his chair and swore I had done for him and was even more damned than he was now. He didn’t even bleed until I pulled the knife out, so I only had to wipe it on his sleeve to get clean away, and I could hardly raise an outcry or be found there by some unlucky chance, so I ran back through that dreadful passage and out into the night and I didn’t stop running until I got back to our lodgings in Chelsea.’

  ‘Was that where you lived with my elder brother whenever you could steal away to meet him?’ Magnus asked.

  ‘Never you mind,’ Gresley said curtly.

  ‘I knew you were not in Leicestershire when you got the terrible news the old man was murdered,’ Connie said furiously. ‘You were so furtive about the accident you claimed you had out hunting I knew you were lying. I thought you were with your mistress when he died and y
ou were, but not quite in the way I imagined.’

  ‘He was dead by the time I realised Delphi was long gone. I admit I tried to make it look as if a thief broke in and killed him when there was nothing left worth stealing. Then I took off every stitch I had on, bundled the bloody rags together under my arm and crept up to my old room by another passage for a change of clothes, before I left secretly as I got in. Nobody else realised there was a warren of passages behind all that rotten wainscoting and I could not be seen at Carrowe House. I took away every sign I could find that we had ever been there and went off to get the full story of what happened from Delphi and burn my bloody clothes.’

  ‘I thought the late Lord Carrowe was already dead when the second attacker struck him to confuse the magistrates,’ Sir Hadrian said coolly.

  ‘Maybe his heart gave out. The wound didn’t look deep enough to kill him and Delphi hasn’t strength enough to drive a knife far into a man’s chest.’

  ‘Unless Lady Drace was very lucky, or unlucky, where she stuck her knife. It would take considerable strength or expert knowledge to get through his ribs to his heart,’ Sir Hadrian said as if weighing up their story. ‘If the wound was not severe enough to kill him, the blows to the head certainly were, so the Coroner would not look for signs of apoplexy with so many signs of violence on his body. You could have hung the very person you wanted to protect, Carrowe.’

  ‘You can’t hang her, Papa,’ Hetta said and what a moment for Magnus to finally realise how much he loved her. He wanted her to love him back so much he squeezed her fingers too hard and she shot him a startled look. He eased the pressure, but the truth was he never wanted to let her go again.

  ‘The Hailes will be dogged by rumour and suspicion for the rest of their lives if we let her get off scot-free,’ Sir Hadrian objected.

  ‘And before we go any further I would like to know which of you shot me yesterday,’ Magnus put in with a hard look for his brother, so at least he knew how startled Gresley was that anyone had shot at him.

  He had his answer. Hard to know a woman he once made love with so passionately could aim a shot at his heart. What a fool he had been not to see there was a vixen hidden under all that blonde beauty years ago. He would have saved the agony of the past eighteen months if he was a more perceptive man, but then there would be no Angela and he refused to regret her for a second.

  ‘Obviously she must go to Bedlam,’ Connie said as if that shot was the final proof she needed that her enemy was mad. Magnus warmed to his sister-in-law again but shook his head in denial.

  ‘She is not mad, just obsessed with Gres. I almost feel sorry for you,’ he told his elder brother truthfully as all Delphi had done for frustrated and twisted-up love of him ever since he married Connie looked as if it now sat like lead on Gres’s shoulders.

  ‘So do I,’ his brother said with a twist of saving humour that almost disarmed Magnus, now he knew the great fool had not lain in wait to kill him yesterday after all.

  ‘Distraction,’ he confirmed for his own satisfaction, although that was the wrong word. She had meant to kill or maim him in order to draw Sir Hadrian out of London and away from Gresley and all those panicked attempts he had made to drag the King’s Bloodhound away from his lover’s trail.

  ‘I was close to finding the secrets built into Carrowe House when you wrote to your lover, was I not, my lord? I believe you were supposed to wait for him in some quiet French or Italian city where nobody would know Lord Carrowe from Adam, Lady Drace. You did not stay away very long, though, did you? I admit you are the wild card I did not allow for when I let my daughter leave London with you, Mr Haile. I had a watch put on you, Carrowe, after the bumbling attempt at snatching my grandson failed as you probably meant it to. The idea was to shock me into defending my family so I did not go after any of yours.’

  ‘I thought you would abandon the case and go away,’ Gresley confessed with a shamefaced look at Hetta. He avoided Connie’s gaze altogether.

  ‘At least you lack the ruthlessness of a true villain,’ Magnus said as if he could comfort his big brother for being such a bumbling great fool when he had made such a mess of so many lives by not standing up to their father and walking away with Delphi when he should have done all those years ago.

  ‘Unlike her,’ Connie said, pointing at her rival like an avenging angel.

  ‘You are the expert, Papa. You can decide what to do with them,’ Hetta said with a revolted look of her own at Delphi. Magnus hoped that was for his sake and decided it would take the judgement of Solomon.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘It took me far too long to find the passages built into Carrowe House so cleverly you hardly believe they are there even when you know the secret of them,’ Sir Hadrian told Hetta and Magnus while they were waiting for the horses to be harnessed to his carriage a few hours later. ‘I thought that a canny man who survived the Civil War with his fortune increased tenfold would be sure to have a way ready to hand if he ever needed to leave stealthily when the country rebelled against another king. Someone was certainly coming and going at Carrowe House at will and listening in places they should not be able to listen, but it was Lord Carrowe’s fury when Toby got too close to one of the entrances to those hidden ways by a chimney in the oldest part of the house that finally put me on the right track. Until then I thought I might have to have the house taken down stone by stone to get at the truth of what happened that night.’

  ‘You knew someone could go wherever they wanted in the awful old house, yet you let me stay there with Toby?’ Hetta said sternly.

  ‘Yes, but I allowed you to go to Hampstead, then dash about the country with Lady Aline and Mr Magnus Haile when my grandson’s usual curiosity had served its purpose. I knew you were a lot safer with them than with their elder brother and from the day I arrived in London I realised Lord Carrowe was trying to bend his family to his will. I took exception when he tried to manipulate mine as well and put a constant but very discreet watch on his movements to make sure he could not come after you again without me knowing about it.’

  ‘I don’t know how he intended to have the house demolished without those passages even I had no idea were there coming to light,’ Magnus said hastily to avert the argument Hetta had to have with her father in private to make herself feel better about having it.

  ‘Carrowe House is as rotten as a pear and tinder dry,’ Sir Hadrian said with a shrug to say who would care if it burned to the ground so long as nobody was hurt?

  ‘You are going to be busy, Papa,’ Hetta said rather ironically. ‘What with fetching Mr Haile’s daughter home and working out the most effective way of committing arson so every trace of old secrets are obliterated before you go. I dare say you will not have enough time left to order my life as well as everyone else’s any longer,’ she ended and neatly stepped around that argument.

  ‘Are you not capable of ordering it yourself, then?’ he asked as if he had not interfered in his daughter’s life before and after he extracted that promise from her when Toby was a baby. Magnus felt his fingers tighten to a fist and made them relax when Hetta shook her head at her father as if she had already wriggled out from under his thumb and had no intention of ever going back there, so it did not matter what he thought she could or could not do.

  ‘Of course. I shall make Mrs Wulfric Haile a fair offer for this house and estate, and if she refuses, I will find somewhere else to make Toby a home for the next ten years or so,’ she said calmly.

  Magnus’s heart sank at the discovery she had a large enough fortune to buy such a place outright, rather than rent it as he had supposed she might until she found a smaller, neater and more convenient place closer to London. Once a fortune hunter, always a fortune hunter, he could almost hear the gossips whispering eagerly if Hetta was ever foolish enough to marry him.

  ‘What busy folk we promise to be,’ Magnus said heavily and left them to bid one an
other farewell.

  * * *

  ‘What will you do now?’ Hetta asked after her father’s carriage rumbled away with Lady Drace on board again, bound for yet another and more lasting new life. As soon as the last echo of their going had died away, the Abrah Valley was so quiet it was almost as if they had imagined all the upheaval.

  ‘Work and raise my daughter,’ Magnus said. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I intend to become a staid and settled Englishwoman after all. Papa is off to chase rainbows for the King somewhere even more exotic than usual and you have taught me to love my own country, so I shall stay here and let him do so without me. With a few sturdy servants and your sister’s excellent company, if she will agree to lend it to me, we will be very comfortable here or in some other fine house even nearer to the sea if your sister-in-law does not wish to sell Abrah House.’

  ‘Live with me instead, Hetta?’ he said recklessly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I know I must look a bad risk, but please take it with me anyway. I am all yours.’ He ran his fingers through his hair and left it wild again. Time to set caution aside and dare to hope, he decided, as the prospect of life without her seemed bleak indeed. ‘Be my first and last true love, Mrs Champion. I would love to try to be Toby’s father to the best of my ability and however many children of our own we might have as well as my Angela. Can you trust me enough to be the best reason I breathe, Hetta?’

  ‘How am I to do that when Lady Drace was at the centre of your world for so long? How can I be sure I am there now instead? You yearned for her all those years, then made a child with her, Magnus. How can I ever lie next to you and listen to you call out her name in your dreams? Marrying Brandon was foolish of me, but wedding Lady Drace’s lover would be like promising to walk on hot coals for the rest of my life.’

  ‘I’m not that bad and I don’t love Delphi. I love you. No, don’t wave the word aside as if you can’t or won’t believe me because I once mistook something else for love. I did not say it a few hours ago when you might have believed me, but you said you didn’t want me, so how could I?’