The Lure of a Rake

by Christi Caldwell

  Only to be accosted by her former betrothed. His stomach revolted and he wanted to return and beat the Duke of Aumere all over again.

  Except…

  It is really me who’s to blame… She was there because of me and was assaulted by that bastard for it… A low, agonized groan rumbled up from his chest. For there had also been what she’d witnessed prior to Aumere’s assault. From where she’d stood, and what she’d observed between him and the baroness.

  To give his fingers something to do, he yanked the red velvet curtain open and stared blankly out into the dark of the night. He should be thinking about what words he’d string together to ever pardon what had transpired this evening. Instead, he was unable to muddle through anything other than the staggering sight of her in the midst of that depravity. Of her former betrothed’s lips on hers. Of the fear, revulsion, and despair in her eyes as she’d looked at Cedric. It was the moment her innocence had died and it had been at his hands.

  He’d had the whole of the carriage ride from Montfort’s townhouse to determine exactly what he’d say to his wife. But as the black barouche rocked to a halt outside his home, not a single bloody word had come to him.

  Cedric bound up the handful of stone stairs. Avis pulled the door open. “My wife,” Cedric demanded.

  A flash of antipathy lit the loyal man’s eyes. Just then he very much despised himself. “She is abovestairs, my lord.” Without elaborating and in a telling display of loyalty to his mistress, the man stalked off.

  Not bothering to shed his cloak, Cedric climbed the stairs. The fabric whipped noisily about his legs as he raced to her chambers and pressed the handle expecting the door to be locked. “Genevieve,” he barked, scanning his gaze over the room lit only by the faintest burning fire in the hearth. His gaze alighted on her maid who stood, turning down the bed. “Have you seen your mistress?”

  Loathing glared strong before she lowered her eyes to the floor. “I have not, my lord.”

  He’d wager what was left of his sanity in this moment that she knew, just as Avis knew, and they all protected the lady from her bastard of a husband. She deserved that loyalty and he their contempt. Spinning on his heel, he stalked off so quickly his cape snapped about his ankles. He strode purposefully down the hall, shoving door after door open, doing an inventory of each room. With each frantic search, the painful vise squeezing his lungs choked off air so that his breath came in hard, angry spurts. He concentrated on that pain to keep from thinking what Genevieve had witnessed this evening.

  She, the only unsullied person who’d seen good in him, had entered his world and it was a sight she’d forever remember. “Genevieve,” he called, as he reached the end of the hall. He pushed open the last door of the corridor and scanned the darkened nursery.

  Cedric turned to go, when his gaze snagged the soft light cast by the moon’s glow and he followed it. His heart squeezed painfully. He closed the door softly behind him, but the unoiled hinges squeaked loudly in the silence.

  From where she sat in the corner, knees drawn to her chest, Genevieve stiffened, but remained silent. Silent, when she’d always been one to fill voids of quiet as she’d done since their first meeting. Agony lanced his heart. And as she’d done every day in the gardens she tended so diligently, while he lazily lounged like the worthless cad he was. He came forward, loosening the fastenings of his cloak, and removing the garment. He set it aside.

  She remained motionless, with her cheek layered against her skirts.

  “Genevieve,” he said quietly, because really, in this instance, what else was there to say? She’d had no place in Montfort’s. A lady of her character and worth did not belong in the underbelly of his world. He’d told her that and, yet, she’d waded in anyway…and now, he wished he had been an altogether different man, worthy of her. He sank to his haunches beside her. Her cheeks shone with the sheen of tears. Her swollen eyes pools of empty despair. His belly contracted with an agonizing pain. I did this to her. I am my father’s son. “I am sorry.” It was the first time in the course of his life he’d uttered those words to anyone.

  She picked her head up and eyed him. “Why? Because I interrupted your evening’s entertainment? Or because I saw you with your lover?”

  “She is not my lover.” The denial ripped from his lungs. For it mattered that she knew that. For reasons he could not sort through in this jumbled moment.

  The cold emptiness in Genevieve’s eyes chilled him from the inside out. “How free you are with your touch then, my lord.” The bitter cynicism underscoring her words hit him with all the force of a kick to the gut. It spoke of a newly found jadedness that he was responsible for and he hated himself for it. “Regardless,” she said in weary tones. “There is nothing to apologize for. You never promised me more,” she said, looking beyond his shoulder. “I am wrong to ask for or expect anything more.” Her slight shuddery breath, the only crack in her remarkable composure.”

  He stiffened. She wanted nothing to do with him and with all deserved reasons, of course. “Are you saying you’ll deny me my rights as husband?” he demanded with a harshness that brought her head up. Lying in her arms, he felt a completeness he’d never before known.

  She gave him a sad smile. “Come, Cedric. You’re not truly my husband. Nor do you wish to be. You spend not even a handful of hours with me during the day and visit my bed. But that’s not truly special to you.” A soft, humorless laugh escaped her that ravaged at his insides. “No, you are the manner of man who engages in those acts with any woman—”

  “I was that man,” he cut in, his tone gravelly with emotion and the lie he’d told her…that she didn’t matter, or her ill-opinion didn’t matter, proved false, in this moment. “But I’ve not touched another woman since the day you stepped inside my father’s library.” From that moment she’d upended his world and he’d never been the same since.

  The long, graceful column of her throat moved. “Well, that isn’t altogether true, is it?”

  The baroness. His skin heated. “I will allow you, it was damning.”

  With effort, Genevieve pushed to a stand. Panic swelled. By God, did she intend to leave? He shoved to his feet, and positioned himself between her and the doorway.

  “Damning?” she asked in clipped tones, advancing toward him. “It was damning? You come to my bed, night after night. Make love to me, and then go and bestow your attentions on another?” With each word, she took a step closer, until they were a mere hairsbreadth apart. A healthy dose of outrage sparked in her previously devastated eyes and he preferred her this way; spitting and hissing to hurt a broken man. She jabbed him with a finger. “You’ve nothing to say?”

  For the first time in his life, he who was never without a clever retort came up—empty.

  A sound of disgust escaped his wife. “I have all but begged for your attentions. What a bloody fool you must have taken me for.”

  “Never.” The denial burst from his lungs. With her clever wit and stunning spirit she was unlike any he’d ever known. How could he desire anyone beyond her? And how had he failed to realize it—until now?

  “I actually insisted you take me to that party,” she continued with another little laugh, as though he hadn’t spoken. As though his contradiction was useless and mayhap it was for as little as he’d proven himself to her. “Why should you want me around this evening to interfere with your,” her lip peeled back in a sneer, “pleasures.”

  I am losing her. Panic rattled around his mind. “It was nothing more than an empty touch,” he said futilely. “She put my hand there.” A goddamn caress he’d not even wanted. As soon as the words left him, he winced.

  “Well, you certainly did not move it.” The fight went out of his wife as she passed another sad glance over his face. “And her touch would, no doubt, have been a good deal more if not for my poor timing,” she said in tired tones that spoke of a woman who’d given up on him.

  “It wouldn’t have,” he insisted. A cloying dread spiraled inside
as she took a step around him. He shot a hand out. “Please.” Another never before word uttered, spoken for this woman. Only, he didn’t know what he pleaded for. Her forgiveness. For joining her to his worthless self. For who he was. For who he could never be.

  Genevieve stilled, but said nothing and with an intuitiveness that came from a place of knowing, realized what he said in this instant would determine so much of their future. There was so much to say and yet he had no idea where to even begin. “I am sorry you witnessed that display, tonight,” he said quietly. “I am sorry because it is an ugly, shameful world that you do not belong to, and I hate that you became part of it because of me. But I need you to know that I have not been unfaithful to my vows.” The irony of this was not lost on him; he, a caddish Falcot, pledging his fidelity.

  Genevieve searched her gaze over his face. Did she seek the veracity of his claim? “Mayhap not yet.” She sighed, a whispery exhalation of sadness. “But the time will come and I do not want to be the poor, pathetic, whispered about wife whose husband takes a string of lovers.”

  He swiped a hand over his face. “I do not want any woman other than you,” he repeated. She had slipped inside and held him in an unyielding grip…and he did not want to be free of her.

  His wife tipped her head at a small angle. “Why?”

  “Why?” he repeated dumbly.

  “Yes, why?”

  Except he could not give her an answer. He raked a hand through his hair.

  Genevieve gave him a sad look and turned her palms up. “I do not know what we are, Cedric. For nearly eight weeks, I’ve existed in this dual universe, convincing myself during the day that there is a tenderness between us, affection.”

  “There is,” he managed to get out past a thick tongue. These words she gave him, they were unfamiliar to him; words never before uttered from the women who’d shared his bed because they knew what he offered—nothing.

  “But then you leave and go off to your clubs and your scandalous parties, and we are any other loveless, coldhearted couple,” she continued as though he’d not spoken, as though his admissions were throwaway statements he’d made about the weather or some such mundane matter. “I love you, Cedric, and it terrifies me for I am certain I have made the gravest mistake in giving you my heart.”

  His heart gave a jump, picked up a frantic beat, and then slowed to a stop. “You love me?” he repeated dumbly. When was the last time anyone had uttered those words to him? He struggled to drag forth the words she deserved, to be that man…

  “You must think about what you desire in our union. Do you wish to be a family?” With a father and sister still living, Cedric still didn’t even know what that meant. “Or do you wish to live our separate lives?” And yet, the idea of a life without her in it ravaged him. “It cannot be both.” Which is what it had been. “But I cannot dwell in this suspended world where I’m always wondering what we are or hoping we are more. And you owe it to me to tell me what we, in fact, are.” She held his gaze. “And you owe it to yourself.”

  He curled his fingers into fists. She was…correct. He’d crafted this alternate existence for them, where he was the rake he’d been and the…husband…which he did not know how to be. He’d inevitably muck it up. This evening was proof of it.

  Genevieve stared at him as though seeing the battle he waged within himself.

  A knock sounded at the door and Cedric cursed. “Get the hell away,” he shouted.

  Silence fell and then an incessant rapping resumed. “My lord?” Avis called from the other side.

  By hell, this bloody townhouse had better be ablaze and death imminent to merit this interruption. “What the hell is it, Avis?” he thundered.

  Which apparently constituted an enter. The fearless servant shoved the door open. “The duke is demanding to see you, my lord.”

  “Tell him to go to the devil,” he snapped. His father and his late night visit could go hang, so very irrelevant they were when compared with the stoically silent woman before him.

  Except, his butler remained. He cleared his throat. “His Grace indicated you’d no doubt say as much and said he’d tear down every door until he found you if you weren’t in your office posthaste.”

  Posthaste. Like he was a bloody servant. However, the duke had also proven his threats were no idle ones and he was not above following through on those threats. Nonetheless—“I said—”

  “Go,” Genevieve urged. “It is late. I am tired and there is nothing left for us to say.”

  She was wrong. There was everything to be said. “This is not finished,” he said curtly and then turning on his heel, he marched off. His butler stepped out of the way and Cedric continued his forward march, rage growing inside him with every step. And he clung to that safe emotion. Found strength in it. Let it fuel him. For the building fury with the man who’d sired him was safer than the tumult of emotions his slip of a wife had unleashed inside him. Eager for the impending fight, Cedric reached the room and paused outside. His father stood at the window. Hands clasped behind his back, he stared into the grounds below. To those long neglected gardens, his wife had toiled over. By all intents and purposes, the duke may as well have owned this very townhouse. He curled his fingers into tight balls, as not for the first time in the recent years that he resented not his father, but rather himself, for being the wastrel who’d lost so much and had developed a need for his father’s assistance. Yes, it was the way of their extravagant world, but he’d come to hate every part of it.

  “What the hell do you want,” he said without preamble as he entered, bypassing his father and made for the sideboard.

  The duke didn’t draw his attention away from moon-filled sky and Cedric clenched his jaw. Of course, his father would not give him the fight he was spoiling for. “Do you know,” his sire said at last as he turned slowly around, tapping the ornamental cane at his side. “I’ve long known you were cut in my image.” A hard smile lined the man’s cold lips. “In nearly every way,” he added, waggling his eyebrows meaningfully.

  Cedric tightened his grip on the snifter in his hands. Yes, they were the same manner of lecherous reprobates. Their presence at Montfort’s this evening was proof of that. “Is that why you’ve come, to wax proudly as a father?” he asked, carrying a decanter of whiskey and a crystal snifter over to his desk. Perching a hip on the edge, he proceeded to pour himself a tall drink.

  His father snorted. “I said we’re alike in nearly every way. Not every way. Not in the ways that matter, Cedric.”

  The ways that matter. What were those?

  Then all false humor faded from the duke’s eyes. “Wives always are kept separate from your whores,” he snapped. “For the integrity of the line, you do not bring her to those events or share her with others, until you at least beget a few mewling, legitimate brats on her.”

  Of course. The way that mattered. Cedric’s own mother had lived a solitary existence, shut away in the country while her husband lived his separate life in London, carousing and whoring. He stilled… “What she said about living separate lives…” He’d cut out his own tongue before he ever admitted to this man that he’d kill a man with his bare hands before willingly sharing Genevieve with another.

  “Is that what this is? A late evening ducal lecture on my responsibilities?” he swirled his drink in a slow circle.

  With a bemused look, the duke took in his lazy movements. He swung his cane in a slow, deliberate circle. “Do you know, Cedric, I never believed you would marry.”

  He stilled, his glass halfway to his lips and said nothing. What game did the man play now? Time had taught him every word on the duke’s lips, every action, decision, was with purpose. “Your Grace?”

  His father strode over to the leather button sofa. Laying his ornamental cane on the edge, he settled into the folds of the seat. “Married,” his father repeated, spreading his arms wide. “Until you, I never thought I’d see a man less eager to wed than myself. For all my threats regarding if you
did not hurry and beget an heir for the Ravenscourt lineage, you have been inordinately stubborn. I told you I did not approve of Lady Genevieve Farendale.”

  Cedric tossed back his drink. He well knew. It was what had made the prospect of wedding palatable. He made to reach for his bottle, when his father’s words froze him.

  “That sweetened your decision to marry, eh? Especially when the seed was planted by your friend…a man you trust.”

  He narrowed his eyes, that ugly niggling of suspicion grew, and then the true weight of those words slammed into him. Surely not. Surely the one person he’d called friend had not…

  His father flicked a cold stare over Cedric’s person. “You were clear that you’d no intention to wed. Yours was nothing more than a petty, irrational decision bent on revenge.” He flicked an imagined piece of lint from his immaculate coat sleeve. “Alas, I knew you’d never dare wed one of those proper misses whom I approved of. One of those spiritless ladies like your mother who would be the biddable, subservient creature all wives should be.” The niggling grew, and with it, a slow dawning horror. “But when presented with the carrot of wealth I dangled and presented that with my disapproval of the whorish Farendale girl…?”

  He was going to be ill. The mastery this man had and continued to exercise over his life was unrelenting.

  “You see, Montfort is not unlike us, either, Cedric. Only in that one’s case, his vice of wagering has made him weak in ways this family will never be.” He winged a ducal eyebrow up. “But it has proven useful to obtain information from the man and to enlist his help.”

  The air left him on a whoosh. Every conversation about Genevieve, every suggestion that Cedric wed her, all the inquiries he’d put to Cedric after he’d wed had been well-placed questions, not of a friend, but rather, just another coldhearted bastard manipulated and used by his father.